> Buffalofish can go decades between successful reproductions because they require very specific environmental conditions—most of which are still unknown—to procreate. That’s why the fish evolved to live so long: It’s an evolutionary adaptation to account for long periods without breeding, according to Lackmann.
This reminds me of "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant" by Nick Bostrom [1]. Senescence is engraved in our brains as universal. Just like our expectation about health which should deteriorate overtime.
I think Altered Carbon brought up the most chilling view of a world without death. In that exploration only the rich are immortal, because the poor can’t afford immortality. Someone being rich for hundreds of years will only cement their their power, position, and their perspective. How do we feel if Rockefeller were still alive and powerful? What if our old kings never died? If any of them had a sexual perversion, what if it continued for hundreds of years? Where does that road lead?
This is dependent on a world where immortality is expensive because it's difficult to actually make someone immortal rather than because it's difficult to figure out how to make someone immortal. For all we know, immortality is as simple as a one-time injection into an egg cell, and the challenge is almost entirely in figuring out what to inject.
Also, how much is the death of bad individuals actually contributing to making the world a better place? It seems to me like the various abuses of robber-barons and tyrants past and present are perpetuated by institutions built around them rather than their own personal capacity to affect the world. A king in exile on a remote island or a Rockefeller driven to bankruptcy can remain unchanged as a person while losing virtually all of their capacity to impose their will on the world, while a kingdom or corporation can keep going centuries after the death of its leader if conditions stay favorable.
In these cases the bulk of such institutions is a bureaucratic apparatus, which serves as a tool. You cannot judge a tool for being used for evil purposes, and in the charge of those with different intentions, it may be used for better purposes in the future.
In the more general case (i.e. communities rather than kingdoms or corporations), judgment can perhaps be passed on the principles or aesthetics that keep it together. However changing it would probably require a change in its environment that rendered such principles or aesthetics obsolete. This is a much more difficult task that can require legislation or sociological advancement or something of that sort.
Jonathon Swift explored this idea in 1726, in Gulliver's Travels, with the Struldbruggs [0] - decrepit immortals. Struldbruggs also popped up in Larry Niven's Known Space universe [1], albeit there as the name of a club for the old and powerful (IIRC with an increasing minimum age to keep out the young whippersnappers).
In a rather unpopular opinion, I think most people are more of a product of their environments than we like to believe. If you look at the rate at which social change happens and public opinion about certain topics, it happens much faster than new generations replace the old. A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges. Certainly new generations have new ideas and put pressures on the environment, but I think there's too much weighting in most people's models of how much change is held up and requires older generations to exit the decision making process.
> If you look at the rate at which social change happens and public opinion about certain topics, it happens much faster than new generations replace the old.
Between 2011 support was 70, 53, 39 for 18-34, 35-54, 55+ age groups. 2021 was 84, 72, 60. So that's ~20 points on 35-54 and 21 on 55+. That's 10 years. The 45+ transition into the 55 and the 25+ into the 35-54, but that doesn't explain the change. Why? Because the 2011 difference between 55+ and 35-54 is 14 points while 2021 it is 12. Even more importantly, the 55+ group in 2021 has a 7 point lead from the 35-55 age group from 2012.
This difference __cannot__ be explained from just people dying and the support "aging in" to the next age bracket. Literally 50% (7 points out of 14) is impossible to explain through an aging process.
Something more is going on, and thus, my claim is unequivocally supported by the data. (Note my claim isn't that specific, it is just that there is more than aging) Yes, culture wars are long, but they are shorter than can be explained from generations alone.
This is so incorrect it's laughable. If you look at the data, public opinion in america has changed almost exactly in step with new generations emerging and old generations dying. People almost never change their opinion on political issues, they just die.
Did you look at the data? Because I don't think you did. I lay it out here[0]. In short, what we can see is that in 2021 the 55+ age group has higher support than the 35-54 group did in 2012. This is not people aging into the new bins and bringing their support with them. If that were what was happening, then the 2021 55+ group could not have greater support than the 2012 35-54 group. There is missing growth from your model. We're literally talking about 50% of the growth being unexplainable by your model.
That's precisely what you'd want politicians to do: represent the shifting will of the people.
Or, dare I say, learn what they themselves were wrong about and become right about it.
We vilify politicians when they change direction and make them dance around and mince words, when what they really want to say is "I was wrong before".
Yeah I don't get why people get upset over that. It's like the people that are like "we didn't learn that in school when I was your age." Times change, we learn, we correct, we update our beliefs. Being static is not healthy and creates a dissonance between the public and the __representatives__. i.e. the representatives become disaligned from those they are supposed to represent. And as my claim (which I add data to in other replies) shows, that's not even just a function of age.
We should commend people for updating their beliefs, not condemn. To me, one of the most honorable phrases one can say is "I stand corrected."
We wouldn't need politicians if all they did was repeat opinion polls. And very very few politicians say that they were wrong or that they stand corrected- they'll just blame their earlier comments on "it was a different time" or some similar nonsense.
To admit they were wrong would be to say everyone who previously voted for them was also wrong. We don't have that much bravery from most of our politicians.
Editing to add: of course, the real reason nobody expects them to ever say they were wrong is because nobody trusts they actually fully believe what they say in the first place.
>A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges.
Do you live on one of the US coasts? Because if so, you are probably right - before Obergefell, most people didn't care about your private life and after Obergefell it could all finally be out in the open. But in a big chunk of this country, it really doesn't matter what the courts decided because there is major political and religious pressure that says that ain't ok. Don't pretend for a moment that a wide swath of states wouldn't send us straight back to 1863 if they could.
Not important. I'm working off of US polling data. See sister comments for reasoning. Everyone that is calling me laughable and "haven't looked at the data" has clearly not themselves.
I’m not calling you “laughable” I’m saying that the data doesn’t matter. We lost Roe, there’s no reason to believe that ugly politics won’t seek to roll back Obergefell too given the opportunity. These people don’t give a shit what the majority think.
Sorry, I'm not saying __you__ are saying my claim is laughable, I'm saying "people" are[0]. The fact of the matter is 2/3 responses I got were certain I'm wrong with providing no evidence (@Georgelemental's link is not backed by data, only shows one plot related to belief in god, and is really just a socialist propaganda article that is shoehorning economic discussion into cultural that creates a premise that would validate my claim but contradicts their own (if socialism solves the issues, then it isn't about age... Though I'll agree that economic factors are important for estimating rate of cultural change)).
I agree with your point, but to be clear, it is not contrary to what I claimed. My claim is about how ethical values change faster than people age. See the reply in [0] or the linked comment there. The claim shouldn't be controversial because it is ridiculous to believe that your beliefs become fixed at some certain age. The fallacy is that people will think "well I update my beliefs but others don't" (i.e. I'm Bayesian, but others are immutable). You're not that unique.
Certainly this change can go in any direction. It is also a common fallacy to believe younger = liberal while older = conservative. While there is correlation, there is not much to suggest causation. Especially considering there are young people that are Republicans and many old people that are Democrats. We can argue nuance, but that's a different claim. I don't think most people have a good understanding of the demographics of voters[1] and instead focus on what data they want to see. Some of that complexity may be illustrated in looking at Figure 3 (education) closely. The most apparent differential is graduate level education. If you look at the top part carefully you'll see that there's a subtle distinction between completion of a college education vs not and the main difference is in graduate education, which is a much smaller number of people. The graph can be hard to read because the size of each bin is directly proportional to the education level (largest bin is H.S. (~80% of Americans) or less and postgrad is smallest (~5% of Americans if counting professional degrees)). Also take specific note at the differentials in the bottom plot as there is inferential race based data.
Basically, I'm saying it's a bit complex and people are trying to overly simplify the problem. I even think your claim of coast vs central is a point, but I'm not sure it really discredits the claim which is independent of party affiliation or if someone is rural or urban (which is highly correlated with cost vs central).
Oversimplification won't give you an approximate answer, but often will lead you in the wrong direction.
> I wonder if people really would ossify after hundreds of years or eventually learn to be hyper-adaptable.
I'm kind of fond of Vernor Vinge's take in Rainbows End: people who undergo rejuvenation therapy go back to high school to learn a trade in the modern world. Part of the justification for this is if their brain is restored from a condition like severe dementia, they may have different personality traits and interests from their original selves, which will take time and learning to acclimate to.
People definitely ossify, but certain drugs encourage neuroplasticity. I don't think it's on the scale that would be meaningful in this context though.
Every technology we know of started off as the exclusive purview of the rich and then saw progressive decreases in price as a result of providers fighting for market share by innovating on and scaling up production.
As for immortal tyrants, we already have immortal institutions that are functionally the same. And the activists, dissidents and opposition leaders who challenge their power will be almost certain to gain from immortality just as much as the heads of dominant political parties.
In a rapidly changing world, immortal tyrants will not necessarily have an advantage in keeping a grip on power. Insofar as they stick to their old ways, the nations they lead will stagnate and become more susceptible to foreign influence. And if they are open to change, they may be open to abandoning their repressive ways.
Opposing technologies that can save us from death due to hypothetical fears about the rich seems like a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Aging has a 100% probability of killing you if this technology doesn't emerge within your lifetime. It is strictly a greater threat than a speculated immortal tyrant. And if you think we are so abhorrent that we deserve a measly 80 years before we succumb to aging, then it doesn't follow that you would be so aghast at the idea of those same unworthy beings living longer under repression.
Have you seen the people under the fur suits? Someone is power would have no use for reality escapism because their reality is amazing. But hey, there always that really small chance I guess.
Epstein's crimes were heinous, but if someone were to make a reasonable attempt to rank the villains of the past century by harm caused I think he'd be pretty far down the list. He's also a poor example in the context of this discussion because he did not die of anything related to old age.
Epstein is a saint compared to a truly evil person. What did he even do? Him and his buddies slept with some 16 year olds from what I know. That’s not even a crime in most countries.
> Epstein is a saint compared to a truly evil person. What did he even do? Him and his buddies slept with some 16 year olds from what I know. That’s not even a crime in most countries.
Child prostitution and sex trafficking is a crime in most countries.
Become enough of a tyrant and you may not live to see old age -- Hitler and Stalin didn't. As for tyrants who do grow old -- is an effectively immortal tyrant that much worse than a tyrant who dies but consolidates power within his family to create a centuries-long dynasty?
Also, once the technology of immortality becomes well-characterized, the cost to replicate the procedures will go down barring price-fixing collusion that involves government regulatory bodies. This is the real problem with movies like Elysium: a version of the cure-all hospital bed that serves as the movie's McGuffin in a critique of capitalism would, in a free market, be readily available at Target or Costco; businesses would rent them like tanning beds; and charities would pop up to provide them at gyms and homeless shelters for those who still couldn't afford one of their own. You couldn't really restrict the availability of something like that to just the rich without the government putting their thumb on the scale somewhere. In fact the rich would respond by allowing themselves to grow old and decrepit; in a world where everybody could be restored to health and vigor, aging would be taken as a status symbol. Kinda like how in a world where photography became easy, having original paintings on your wall is a status symbol.
Right. The argument is especially silly for anti-aging treatments because the consequences of aging are horrifically expensive: look at the Medicare and Social Security budgets for starters. Governments and insurance companies would have every incentive to make them as widely available as possible.
I've heard that "In Time" was ripped off from "Repent Harlequin Said The Tictockman" (https://www.d.umn.edu/~tbacig/cst1010/chs/ellison.html). It's worth the 5 minutes it should take to read it, even if you take 6 ;)
There's a reason it is mostly the affluent that seek life extension, it's the one thing they can't buy just yet. And if and when they can I'm sure they will hope for it to be extremely expensive.
Evolution doesn’t choose these things and it isn’t a conscious choice with the organism
It’s just random mutations selected for or we never get to see a buffalofish, the latter happens far more often and is the crux of evolution by natural selection: orders of magnitude more species that died out
Those animals which have more offspring tend to live shorter lives. It's about equilibrium. If it were not the case, then their populations would grow out of control.
If animals which do not have many offspring did not live very long, they would have gone extinct already.
What a wonderful fable. I enjoyed reading it and wish there was more research occuring in this field. Still, I'm impressed from what I hear in the news from time to time.
There's a quite common misconception around life expectancy. We aren't living all that much longer than in the past. The main thing bringing up life expectancy number is that childhood mortality dramatically declined. [1] If one person lives to 80, but another dies in infancy, then you have a life expectancy of 40 years old. Rather than living longer, more people are able to reach the ages that we all start dying around, and have been for millennia.
So for instance in modern history, of the 15 key Founding Fathers, 7 lived to at least 80 years old: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, John Jay. John Adams himself lived to 90. The youngest to die were Hamilton who died in a duel, and John Hancock who died of gout of an undocumented cause - it can be caused by excessive alcohol consumption. All the others lived into their 60s and 70s.
It's the same as you go back further into history. Look up basically any Ancient Greek you're familiar with, and you'll see most lived to about the same amount of time we do now a days, sometimes quite a bit longer. For instance Hippocrates, of the Hippocratic Oath, lived to 90 back in the 4th century BC. The common claim there is a survivorship bias, but that's not really true - because most of these individuals made their mark on history decades before they finally died. In other words had e.g. Plato died when he was 50 instead of 80, he still would be known today.
I believe what you're saying is correct, but the OP is also correct in pointing out that those who lived prior to antibiotics or other modern inventions probably died a lot more often of things we can prevent now. Not to mention all the routine surgeries that save lives. The massively declining child mortality is the big disruptor here, but there's more going on in the data. More recently, we might be reversing the positive trends with our extremely unhealthy diets that have led to other issues such as heart disease and diabetes.
There is an enormous amount of money being spent on research to figure out how to prevent people from dying. You're welcome to donate your own money to the many non-profit foundations issuing research grants in that field.
A well written fable, but its moral would not be equitable in the world of today. It's inevitable that access to "defeating the dragon" would be available to only the most affluent in society, whom have also led the most comfortable lives. There is no fairness in allowing these people to enjoy extended or indefinite lifespans whilst countless others suffer inhumane conditions only to die early.
I think medicine gave a good hit to the dragon over the years.
At first only rich people beneficiated from it. But thankfully today medicine advantages are better distributed. We are not equals by any means and some countries are lagging behind, but it is better.
Perhaps the "rising tide" takes longer to reach some than others. I hope for a more equitable, fairer future, but it's likely my outlook is somewhat jaded.
I agree, the tide analogy kinda breaks down here though. We're all familiar that it's somewhat rare that a technological advancement goes from no usage to film and wide distribution in one step. New technologies are distributed only to the rich precisely because they are time and resource intensive to develop and can only be feasibly prepared via a process which will inevitably occur costs that the majority of humans will not be able to meet. But you _need_ those first few rich people, because the money they put in starts the feedback cycle that would not be able to start otherwise. Ideally this then begins a process of optimization which gradually allows these products to become available to everyone.
Inequality is the price of innovation, but it doesn't have to be paid forever.
Honestly I also get your take. I think it will depend on the "thing" that will enable us to live longer and healthier.
If it is something very expensive and an overnight discovery, then it is likely that a dystopian era will occur... Just imagine some kind of tyrant (as a reference to the fable!) reigning over a country for 100+ years.
But it could also be somewhat like what happened with medicine: the sum of smaller improvements, some more expensive than others, years after years.
The major increases in human lifespan have come from public sanitation, food safety, vaccinations, antibiotics, and trauma care. The rest of medicine has had only a small impact.
Imagine a world where immortality is given to 1% of the populace per year such that in 100 years everyone is immortal, but it is given in order of decreasing wealth.
Now imagine a world in which no one is immortal for 99 years, but on the 100th year everyone gains immortality at once.
The latter is vastly more equitable, but to choose such a world would be horrific in cost of lives.
I can imagine the dystopia that would come from an undying elite ruling over a mortal underclass. However, in any situation short of that extreme, I would never promote anything that would slow the search for immortality. Especially not for the mere bog standard modern conception of equity; crab-bucket mentality here will only serve to keep us all scrabbling in the dirt.
I disagree, it's more an argument that even though advancement of human capability can bring great gains (defeating the dragon) we need to pursue equitability in these gains or otherwise they are unethically allocated.
The rising tide should raise ALL boats, otherwise inequitability will lead to social instability as seen througout human history so far.
While I agree that modern societies and especially global wealth are very inequitable I think medicine is one of the areas where it is almost universally agreed in practice to raise all boats. Generic medications are made available, foreign aid is often in the form of medicines and medical support, and global institutions are funded with the aim of raising all boats. Should life extension become possible through medicine or treatments it seems likely that the existing process of trying to achieve global medical equity will continue. Clearly life extension will be very highly valued and if it is out of reach of 95% or 99% of the human population there will be intense pressure to socialize its benefits to everyone. Where I can see problems is if life extension is out of reach of 50% or 75% of the world population due to material/equipment/personnel costs; that's a lot harder to socialize globally and would be similar to advanced cancer treatments and organ transplants/replacements which could be seen as the leading edge of longevity treatments.
I don't think there's a moral argument against expensive cancer/organ treatments being made available in wealthy countries; it doesn't seem like any progress on treating those diseases will be made at all if the treatments can't be made available, regardless of their extreme inequity.
> It's inevitable that access to "defeating the dragon" would be available to only the most affluent in society, whom have also led the most comfortable lives.
I don't see that it's inevitable at all. (a) The solution may be very affordable. (b) Any government that does not get the treatment to all citizens is likely be voted out or overthrown.
There's no real overpopulation; there's only misuse of resources. There's too many people driving in big SUVs and living in McMansions and using too much fossil fuel energy.
Imagine we saw the mother of all asteroids incoming. It was large enough that it would almost certainly extinguish all life on Earth, and even throwing every nuke we had at it would barely scratch it. Yet we also saw this from relatively far away - let's say about 10 years. It seems exceptionally probable that by the time it got here we'd have established colonies on both the Moon and Mars.
The main issues are not technological in nature anymore - but economic. We put a man on the Moon more than half a century ago. The fundamental requirements to convert a short-term stay to a perpetual one are really not that great: food, home, maintenance. Water, which both the Moon and Mars have - in abundance, can be used to generate oxygen and fuel - taking care of near to all essentials. So what you really need is the infrastructure - housing, agriculture/ranching, industry, and recreation.
And that's all entirely viable, but has a very high price tag. SpaceX is trying to tackle this problem by bringing the price of space launches as close to $0 as possible, but even once that is achieved - the actual materials necessary to achieve this, even at cost, will be very substantial. And without some imminent danger, there will be people claiming that we shouldn't colonize another planet because everything here isn't perfect, which it never will be.
The cost of establishing a Mars colony is so high that the money is probably better spent in a different way. An asteroid defense program (using big Starship rockets), for example.
I don't see it as just a thing of ensuring the species, a la Elon. But even if you do, there are countless other scenarios it guards against - self annihilation via nuclear weapon, bioweapons or bioweapons research accident, any of the zillion astronomical phenomena that could screw out atmosphere (like a gamma ray burst, as hypothesized for a cause of one the great mass extinction events), a super volcano explosion (again hypothesized as the cause for a previous mass extinction event), and so on.
I think us doing something on a huge scale that people could actually be proud of, even if they didn't directly take part in it, is something that could be good for society on a much more broad level. We've achieved a lot in "our time", like the internet, but oddly enough it never really felt like an achievement - by contrast the Moon landing is something who got to experience even today speak fondly of.
And in any case, the exceptional cost is only for a truly self sustaining and independent planet, as would be needed in case of a catastrophe. We can "safely" start with a dependent system where various industrial goods can be shipped to e.g. Mars, and ideally even back to Earth as Mars' industry starts to come to life - even silly things like trinkets from Mars' surface, alcohol brewed on Mars, etc. will all be simple and valuable trade goods.
Getting things started will be done for a relatively low cost. Fortunately, thanks to interests like SpaceX this initial seeding need not even come from the public at large. And hopefully once something is there, that will inspire more people to see what could be there.
Getting the first human group on Mars does indeed sound like an inspiring goal. But getting the second or tenth group there sounds quite uninspiring. Remember, after some people landed on the Moon, the novelty wore off rapidly and taxpayers rapidly lost interest.
For Mars this problem is even greater -- we already sent a lot of robots to Mars, we got tons of high quality photographs from there, better than anything we go out of the Apollo missions. The novelty has already worn off to some degree. Getting humans there will be a nice achievement, but NASA will never get a gigantic Apollo-like budget for a Mars program.
Luckily, they can contract SpaceX for a lot of it, so the cost should be more manageable. But only for getting an American flag there. Setting up a permanent Mars base would be an undertaking which is orders of magnitude larger.
Currently NASA doesn't even have any plans for a permanent Moon base! There is a recent book, "A City on Mars", which highlights the enormous difficulties of establishing a permanent or even independent Mars settlement. I haven't read it, but in this interview with the authors the prospects sound grim:
For example, it is doubtful whether pregnancies and childhood growth work normally in low gravity environments. It hasn't even been studied properly using mice on the ISS, even though this would be perfectly possible. Maybe all the children come out severely crippled.
Then there is the constant radiation, which means everyone has to live deep underground. Then the question arises: Why not instead build underground (or underwater) cities on Earth, for a much lower cost?
They also mention things like this: Biological warfare against Earth would potentially be a lot more safe for the attackers if they sit on Mars, due to being separated by gravity wells. So the existential risk might actually increase.
They argue that we should first build a permanent Moon base before going for a permanent Mars base. There are just so many things we can learn in a much less difficult to reach environment. At least from the Moon you can fly people back to Earth in case of a medical emergency.
This isn't quite what happened with the Moon landing at all. Even throughout the Apollo program, it was relatively unpopular. A large minority were exceptionally happy about it, but you have to remember this was also the era of Vietnam, race politics, and more. And that led to a lot of opposition to things like spending billions of dollars on space that could be spent on [x]. Like today. But what happened is that after Nixon defacto cancelled the space program in 1972, support for space began to grow dramatically. It turns out that people looking back didn't quite realize what they had, until it was gone.
I'm sure there was also the gradual realization, conscious or not, that space is also one of the very few ventures where you get out of it what you put into it. Spend $10 billion on SpaceX, and we'll have ships headed to Mars to establish the first infrastructure of human civilization there. By contrast you can't just buy your way to a good education system, or spend away social problems. Spend it on most other things and you're going to see a relatively negligible positive impact. Spend it on our favorite way to waste money (and with orders of magnitude larger sums), geopolitics, and you'll likely see an overall negative impact.
I don't really see NASA playing a meaningful role in the future of space. Their role in the present, outside of funding, is already quite negligible. They lack consistent leadership/direction, and are driven by congress - who is driven by graft. The SLS (NASA's new rocket - made by Boeing/Lockheed) alone has hoovered up tens of billions of dollars, to one day hope to construct a rocket that already isn't competitive against a Falcon Heavy. At the same time SpaceX is constructing a ship which will revolutionize space, again. China has already designed, built, and launched a new space station into space (as ours continues to deteriorate), and so on. The systems and motivations which drove NASA to epic success in the 60s simply no longer exist in our public sector.
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The other things sound reasonable, but seem largely driven by a lack of knowledge - which I am not directing at you, but the authors in the podcast you linked. For instance you don't need to live deep underground to protect from radiation. One of the best shields against radiation is hydrogen. So one of the ways we'll likely protect against space weather on the way to Mars is by using the water storage on the ship as a shield. On Mars igloos, as odd as it sound, would make beasts of cheaply constructible radiation proofed housing, for but one example. You'd also conveniently be right next to basically infinite sources of water.
I'm happy to get into the other stuff as well, but this post is already turning into a novel!
If bigmouth buffalo procreate for more years because they live longer with stronger immune systems, then they will eventually make up the majority of the population.
Yes, you’re 100% correct. You’ve described kin selection. So if grandparent fish can somehow help their grandchildren procreate more, then that can be selected for.
I’ve heard of territory defense helping with fish, but no idea about the fish mentioned specifically.
Also to the previous comment, I think there’s already a fair bit of evidence that older larger fish do continue to breed, (hence throwing back the bigger fish breeders).
But if they stop breeding, and there is no kin selection; then yes, natural selection wouldn’t play a role.
Or if they care for their descendants in their later years.
(Not saying fish do this, though I wouldn’t be surprised if giant elder fish clear out predators. A lot of people forget this bit but it’s suspected of being a big factor in insect and lobster longevity, which both capable of recognizing their offspring and not being territorial to their presence.)
You may be into something. I’ve been on the fish keeping hobby for decades and right now the number 1 cause of mortality of captive fish is immune system overload.
> These calcium carbonate structures, which allow fish to hear and sense vibrations in the water, form a new layer each year that can be read somewhat like tree rings.
Each time I read dating method like these, I wonder how stable these method are. Sure they are sensitive to water temperature, right?
We have not-so-long-term climate changes, periodic solar storms and irregular volcano eruption.. All these are affect water temperture...
Wait, so you are saying that over the course of 85 years, we've had enough volcanic eruptions to disrupt the counting of the equivalent of tree rings in fish bones, in a lake in Arizona? When we KNOW when the fish were first put there?
Has Arizona had that many volcanic eruptions in the 20th century which we somehow forgot to notice, but were still strong enough to disrupt the fish?
Just over a century ago, several hundred game fish raised in ponds in Iowa were hauled across the country by rail to be released into Arizona’s newly dammed Salt River.
A recent study suggests some of those transplanted buffalofish are still alive today in the waters of Apache Lake.
Not their descendants. Not members of the same species. The same individual fish that were sent west in 1918, as World War I was winding down in Europe during Woodrow Wilson’s second term as president.
Yes, they are susceptible to temperature. Seasonal temperature changes are mostly what causes them in the first place. Additionally, researchers have used water temperature to create otolith barcodes in captive fish before release. Otolith bands are the result of seasonal changes in growth rate, which is highly trusted to temperature and is why it's a less reliable technique in tropical or deep water species.
That getting said, climate change and other things are unlikely to overwhelm the seasonal cycles. Yes, it's gotten warmer, but it's still colder in winter.
It's also preferable to have validation for a given taxa, but i wouldn't expect that particular worry to be the failure more.
It's not clear from the article but animals can generally live quite a bit longer than you'd expect if they continue to grow for their entire life, which is true for some types of fish. Gunk that builds up inside or between cells gets redistributed over larger areas, as do cells that become senescent. And larger size means more space for memory T cells. Those are only some aspects of aging of course.
It might be a matter of cell count still, elephants have many extra copies of p53, one of the main cancer-suppressant genes. We have one copy, elephants have 20. So the linear correlation may still be there if you'd remove those extra copies.
"Peto's paradox is the observation that, at the species level, the incidence of cancer does not appear to correlate with the number of cells in an organism. For example, the incidence of cancer in humans is much higher than the incidence of cancer in whales, despite whales having more cells than humans. If the probability of carcinogenesis were constant across cells, one would expect whales to have a higher incidence of cancer than humans. Peto's paradox is named after English statistician and epidemiologist Richard Peto, who first observed the connection."
It's not consistent across species because different species have different mechanisms for averting tumor growth. But within species (certainly among humans, and I'm pretty sure also among others), more cells means more opportunities for something to go wrong and so more cancer.
"The otolith analysis revealed that about 90 percent of Apache Lake’s buffalofishes were more than 85 years old".
That sounds very fishy. Perhaps they just have some sort of genetic code that make them create those new layers of calcium carbonate structures more often than once a year.
It is important to validate any aging method, including otoliths, and there have been cases of system misaging. The fin ray and scale based ages used in West Coast ground fishery management in the 80s resulted in systemic under aging that contributed to the over fishing and collapse of multiple rockfish species, for example. But otoliths in temperate fish species are generally one of the most consistent and reliable aging methods across multiple taxa.
So hopefully otolith aging has been validated for this species in particular or at least a closely related one, but if not it's more likely than not reasonably reliable.
As for the population dynamics, it's not actually necessarily that strange. For many species, mortality occurs almost entirely in the early life history. Once fish escape that period, they are very unlikely to die. This can take in exactly this kind of dynamic were very few young fish are alive at any one point and most of the extent fish are very old.
> otoliths in temperate fish species are generally one of the most consistent and reliable aging methods
Ha ha ha haaaa!!
Sorry, but that claim was hilarious. I had the (lets call it) "pleasure" to read otoliths in the past, and consistent and reliable is not how I would describe it. Not even close. For most species it just happens that nobody validated the system first. This means that everybody extrapolates, but nobody really knows how many rings are formed each year. But "oh, that fish lived for 800 years"... highly publishable
I currently work in a lab that primarily does otolith based growth and aging. It is and has been my primary job for over 7 years (although I don't do that actual reading of the otoliths, I work with the data that comes out of it)
I think you are misreading my comment. I did not say that it was easy or that it was always consistent and reliable. I said it was one of the most consistent and reliable aging methods, which is an inherently relative statement. Compared to other common aging techniques such as scales, fin rays, and vertebrae, it is exactly those two things: more consistent and reliable.
It can be more and yet still not particularly. And, in many cases, yes, it is not always very reliable and in many species it has not been specifically validated. But it is still the best, more reliable technique we have for aging fishes. In addition, please note that literally the first sentence in my comment was the importance of validating an age technique. I am well aware of the issues in aging. Those issues absolutely do not amount to the (implied) conclusion of your comment that they are garbage that shouldn't be relied upon.
Also, just a piece of advice: you do not come off as particularly authoritative when you make wildly hyperbolic statements like contesting claims of 800 year old fish.
> I currently work in a lab that primarily does otolith based growth and aging.
The magic of HN. That's pretty interesting. Can I ask with what species do you work?. Anchovy? Cod?
> I did not say that it was easy or that it was always consistent and reliable. I said it was one of the most consistent and reliable aging methods
Fair point. Yep, is all what we have, but I would wish that somebody find a better method. Is very fuzzy after some ages with all those rings that fork or fuse.
If you're curious to learn more, look into cold blooded vs warm blooded animals and longevity. Cold blooded animals might give us hints to slow aging in humans.
Energy expenditure might be related to longevity. Eating more and exercising more (and the energy required to keep your core temperature up) might kill you faster, maybe through free radical production from metabolism.
The Donald trump school of physical excellence [1]
As someone who only started to exercise in their mid thirties, the idea of living longer through not exercising is laughable. Even if it were true, I would rather live to 65 with an able body than to live to 90 not knowing what my body was capable of.
> Eating more and exercising more (and the energy required to keep your core temperature up) might kill you faster, maybe through free radical production from metabolism.
There's a theory that it's actually heartbeats. Most animals have about 1.5 billion heartbeats.
"The reason an elephant lives longer than a shrew is not because its heart beats longer. It's because its heart beats slower. So it takes a few more years for the elephant to complete his or her up to one and a half billion beats."
Otoliths are calcium carbonate structures that form in the heads of fishes that help with balance and orientation. Humans actually have similar things in their ear canals, they just don't aggregate and it's more like sand.
These structured grow with the fish and seasonal changes in growth rate cause lighter and darker alternating bands, similar to tree rings. When prepared correctly, these bands can be viewed and counted inter s microscope.
Similar methods are used in fin rays and spines, scales, and vertebrae, although otoliths are generally considered the gold standard
Along with that, the more expensive method that scales a bit easier is DNA methylation: most vertebrates, including fish, have a strong correlation between the percentage of their genomes that has been methylated and the age. It's like r=0.99, the older, the more methylated. (however, artificially de-methylating doesn't make you younger)
So you can sequence these genomes and count. Definitely more expensive than digging out a tiny bone, but you can sequence a few hundred or thousand genomes at once.
Thank you for the reply! Other repliers answered that I should look up "Otoliths", which is the bony structure in the ear canal of some fish that can be used to count these rings.
The older ones are better able to fight bacteria, and have a "lower ratio of neutrophils to lymphocytes in the blood", which ratio indicates stress. They evolved to live a long time because good breeding conditions are rare. No word on biochemical mechanisms.
Imagine you are a fish. Youbdodge predators for 90 years. You survive the dirty water with all the chemicals put there by humans. Then some asshole angler kills you.
If someone wants to eat fish capture them from human made pond used to raise fish.
well said, Catostomus are carps that remain still in the bottom a lot of time. They are not big swimmers. Their main concern is to suck a rock with enough force to stand their ground against currents. Remaining in waters with a lot of oxygen, that just travel straight to your gills, is like a holiday for the heart.
