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Funoichi t1_iz3dynq wrote

Reply to comment by ting_bu_dong in How Death Can Help Us Live: a philosophical approach to the problem of death by simsquatched

Well we won’t be able to solve death entirely because of entropy. I think most of the research now is on extending healthy years.

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KillerPacifist1 t1_j1h1rnh wrote

Realistically entropy will only start to become a problem in a few trillion years, and even after the last star dies in a 100 trillion years there are many feasible (and relatively low tech) ways to harvest energy from black holes.

I don't know about you, but I'll start worrying about the technical differences of a few trillion years and forever when I get there.

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Funoichi t1_j1h2h5v wrote

I’m pretty sure the breakdown of the human body due to aging and wear and tear would lead to organism death well in advance of trillions of years.

Even the elderly consume the same amount of energy as the young but just eating can’t extend life forever.

Entropy is at work at all times to move systems from highly improbable states like human beings into highly probable states. It’s very much a problem.

It’s at work at all times. It only needs to work once. This is why magic is impossible and why the hard problem of death will never be solved.

Heck even computer systems degrade with time if you wanna go the human consciousness in computers route. Entropy defines the limits of the possible.

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KillerPacifist1 t1_j1h5n05 wrote

>I’m pretty sure the breakdown of the human body due to aging and wear and tear would lead to organism death well in advance of trillions of years. > >Even the elderly consume the same amount of energy as the young but just eating can’t extend life forever.

This break down of the body is something encoded into our DNA, not something dictated by the nature of reality. We have found life forms on Earth that appear to be biologically immortal and can continously regenerate themselves, seemingly without end as far as we can tell.

>Entropy is at work at all times to move systems from highly improbable states like human beings into highly probable states. It’s very much a problem.

Entropy only necessarily increases in a closed system. The human body is very much not a closed system. As long as there is other entropy to increase (such as from un-fused hydrogen or un-evaporated black holes), there is no physical reason we cannot keep the entropy of a human body low over very long time periods.

>It’s at work at all times. It only needs to work once. This is why magic is impossible and why the hard problem of death will never be solved.

Again, only in closed systems. If you spill milk on the floor nothing is physically stopping you from sucking it back up into the carton. Though the action of doing so will increase the overall entropy of the universe, even if it decreases the local entropy of the milk-carton-floor system.

>Heck even computer systems degrade with time if you wanna go the human consciousness in computers route. Entropy defines the limits of the possible.

I mean, if you never repair the computer (which you totally can, no magic needed I promise), sure they'll degrade over time.

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Funoichi t1_j1kkjq0 wrote

Alright, you’ve satisfied me that you know what entropy is at least. I jest, placating gesture.😅

I decided to look into these immortal organisms, and none of them are truly immortal. Even the regenerating jellyfish have been observed to fully die source. Tardigrades too. Even you wrote appear and seemingly.

Animals can extend life through various means, but not forever, organisms aren’t built to last, species are.

>encoded in dna not nature of reality

I regret to inform you that dna exists in reality so it absolutely is bound by its nature. This can explain how copying mistakes are made, etc.

Even certain animals without telomeres can’t live forever.

Aside from all that, predation, disease, and injuries are also related to entropy and the nature of reality.

To your point about causing other entropy to increase in order to decrease our own, that goes to my point about eating.

Even the highest quality foodstuffs can’t reverse the aging process, no matter how much energy is pumped in. This has to do with more than just telomeres (although I addressed those already). Aging is a complex process that needs to be further understood.

I’m optimistic about the future of aging science and technology also, we should shoot for the stars! But we should be pragmatic about the realities of being an organism.

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