Psychology/Biology? question! Thoughts on death

[The_OG_Nelta]

It's clear. We've all accepted it. We are all going to die one day. But I'm going to pose to you guys what may at first seem to be an absurd question:

Why do we die? (I'm referring to death from old age, and not a technical aspect like "your heart decays")

What is the significance of death? Why are all organisms fated to suffer the same fate: death? I want to say that I'm not asking this because I'm afraid of death (though I am, don't get me wrong), but out of genuine curiosity. I anticipate that some of you will say something along the lines of "we just do; it's how life works", and that indeed is a plausible conclusion. However, in life as we know it in all of its evolutionary greatness, how does death benefit? As a species evolves, the tendency is to become more fit and et cetera. But we've yet to encounter a species that has evolved to the point to where it is null of death (which I am guessing is a negative aspect). Why hasn't even a single individual's cell machinery evolved to the point where it can repair the causing factors of death from old age?

Two conclusions have come to mind in the short time I've spent pondering this.

1) Surviving indefinitely stunts evolution. I guess it's a system of "in with the new, out with the old". If we keep all the old stuff around then I guess we're not going to get any better as a whole. Is that why our cells are programmed to die after X amount of time, even though our strongest and most basic instinct is to survive? Possibly.

2) Evolution occurs across generations, so all life that occurs after the time for reproduction in an individual is essentially lost and unwarranted in the next generation, in that the individual only needs to be 'fit' up until they reproduce. After they pass that point, all factors that contribute to making an individual 'fit' are essentially useless, since that individual doesn't need to be 'fit' anymore.

As you can probably tell, I took an evolutionary approach to the topic. Now I want to ask YOU guys if you had any other ideas, or wanted to comment, or expand on/disagree with what I already said, or anything at all. If I didn't tag you, feel free to say something anyways.

One more thing: if you know anything about me then you know I'm an atheist. That being said, I'm not going to ask any people that I know are religious, because those people already have 'death' figured out and I probably already know what they are going to say if they decide to contribute to this. However, I'm not going to tell you NOT to say anything; just be aware that I don't agree with anything concerning afterlife stated in religion.

Some opinion's from BG would be great :D

[Andarvi]

Evolution would be unnecessary if an organism was able to survive forever, despite its environment changing frequently and dramatically. To try to connect these two will prove to be problematic for you.

[Neosutra]

Simpliest answer: Macroscopic biological organisms are a result of billions of years of complex chemicals, amino acids and proteins finding the most effective way to increase entropy. Due to this, we are a ever changing result of biochemical building blocks that are sustained only as long as the protein bases can maintain themselves (as long as your DNA remains solid). As time progresses and your DNA splits for reproduction over and over, it suffers degradation and damage. This degradation/damage causes what we call "aging" and then eventually failure of key compenents to our macroscopic biochemical packet we call bodies, resulting in death.

Or did you want some deeper/philosophical answer?

[Meph]

Im pretty much with you on the "in with the new out with the old", cant have progress if the same old crap is still in the room.

that and no death would just lead to overpopulation thus destroying any chance of equilibrium in nature

[Bunnykillah]

Simpliest answer: Macroscopic biological organisms are a result of billions of years of complex chemicals, amino acids and proteins finding the most effective way to increase entropy. Due to this, we are a ever changing result of biochemical building blocks that are sustained only as long as the protein bases can maintain themselves (as long as your DNA remains solid). As time progresses and your DNA splits for reproduction over and over, it suffers degradation and damage. This degradation/damage causes what we call "aging" and then eventually failure of key compenents to our macroscopic biochemical packet we call bodies, resulting in death.

Or did you want some deeper/philosophical answer?

That was actually a really solid answer.

[The_OG_Nelta]

Oh Neo, how I missed you..
Any answer is fine really, i'm just looking for opinions.
A biological answer / Philosophical answer, anything!

[Flatliner]

My Anthro teacher explained this fairly well, so I'll try to do the same: basically all species are in a fight for absolute survival. So, species have to out do each other. Evolutionarily, our bodies have to choose between benefits that are large in the short term, but may hurt us in the long term, or something that is of low or medium benefit, but may last forever. A good example of this is testosterone. Most men would live a lot longer without testosterone, but its fucking awesome to have when that sabertooth tiger attacks the village(at least for the society as a whole). Some other examples he gave were things such as stomach acid. Theoretically, our stomach acid would eventually eat through our stomach lining, actually most of our bodily systems would degrade in ways like this in the long term, but the difficulty of trying to digest things would be SO much harder if we didn't have stomach acid. Life expectancy pre modern medicine/society is so low on top of these things (if nothing else, due to other things eating us), its just plain better for species to be built for short term gains, as long as any others are as well.

[Kuya]

"we just do; it's how life works", and that indeed is a plausible conclusion.

That's not a plausible conclusion, it's not even a legitimate conclusion.

As a species evolves, the tendency is to become more fit

No.

[Mayareira]

http://freethoughtsociety.files.word...2/hydrozoa.jpg

Just look at this motherfucker, it doesn't die.

[Komm Suesser Tod]

I've always been under the assumption that we die because as our bodies age, the cells lose the ability to reproduce as well as they did before, and each copy gets worse and worse as time goes on until things start to fail.

[Stilzkin]

no reason why we should live forever, evolution doesn't care about making perfect things it just does whatever works.

1) Surviving indefinitely stunts evolution. I guess it's a system of "in with the new, out with the old". If we keep all the old stuff around then I guess we're not going to get any better as a whole. Is that why our cells are programmed to die after X amount of time, even though our strongest and most basic instinct is to survive? Possibly

You seem to be thinking about it backwards. It's not "why isn't it", its "what would it gain". No reason why evolution would have accomplished something hard like an everlasting organism when it can do with less.

[Eratosthenes]

Randolph Nesse is really good at explaining aging and natural selection. He gets into it at the end of this video and continues in the next.

[Darus Grey]

It's clear. We've all accepted it. We are all going to die one day

Speak for yourself, I plan to see the universe end with my own eyes.

[Eggroll]

Neo hit the nail on the head, there is gene loss during cell division. This is probably a terrible analogy, but think of it as having a piece of rope (single strand of DNA) which you're going to duplicate. You tie it at the end with another piece of rope for complimentary base pairing, but then you need to cut the knot off to separate both ropes, both of which are shorter than the original.
There has been some headway into prolonging aging though. Iirc, both cancer cells and embryo cells are the only immortal cells in humans, and don't have any gene loss.

[Kuya]

Weren't free radicals caused by metabolism also implicated in aging?

[The_OG_Nelta]

I know that I said all biological answers are accepted, anyone care to give a psychological/philosophical answer?

[Eggroll]

Yeah, cellular respiration is actually pretty destructive to cells as well, and is fairly damaging to mitochondria. Should probably get kurons to chime in though, he probably knows a lot more about the subject than I do.

[Kuya]

What do you mean by a psychological answer?

[The_OG_Nelta]

What do you mean by a psychological answer?

Nothing scientific I suppose, I don't know >.> Carry on! This is all great information and will be recorded ^^

[Neosutra]

Idk Takuun, you asked a scientific question, so not really sure psychological answers are relevant..

It would be like me asking "Whats 2+2?", and requesting the mathematic answer and the philosophical answer..

There is a specific scientific reason for human death, nothing else really contributes. Unless you want to go into why people die other than aging (depression, murder, health, mental states, disease, religion, etc etc)..