Why we die

I was reading an interesting article in American Scientist about the statistics of death, courtesy of the Seed Daily Zeitgeist. The author was making sense of the statistics of predicting death rates across age groups and determining the life expectancy of a population. The conclusion of the article attempts to then make sense of why we die. He offers a few explanations: evolution favoring young, virile baby-makers, a catastrophic buildup of mutations resulting in cancers, our own telomere time bomb. But I think he fails to consider one of the most important reasons for death; evolution must clear out previous generations to make room for the new hotness.

Evolution depends on mutation. I like to think about it in the following thought experiment. Say there are two species living in close proximity. One species can live indefinitely, the other species has a limited generation time. The second species has a strong incentive to reproduce and a better potential to generate useful mutations. The first species eternally languishes as the same generation watches their competitors cycle through generations. Eventually a positive mutation will arise in the second species and it will be able to overtake the other, stagnant species.

Evolution requires that generations turn over. The speed we do is probably best described by Stephen Jay Gould in Ontogeny and Phylogeny. He talks about k and R selection, which define two ideal states that a species experiences. In one state, resources are abundant and there is strong pressure to produce many offspring as quickly as possible. These animals reproduce quickly and die just as fast. The other state is of a stable population with limited resources which eventually develops a slow, long generation time to maximize the resources available to the population.

We definitely die because our telomeres shorten, senescing our body cells. We die because mutations build up in our cells and cancerous cells outcompete our own cells, and we die as machines as our vital systems degrade and shut down. These are not independant variables, they are determined by evolution, which once balanced us against a pleistocene backdrop. They are related because they also balance each other. We should stop considering ourselves as victim observers of a harsh world, we are a dynamic part of the history and ecosystem of this planet.

Pilotless Airplanes

There is a story in the "Ask a Pilot" column on Salon.com about air travel and the reality of pilotless planes. The author, a professed pilot, claims that air travel requires the input of real pilots in the plane at all times. Although I'm not a pilot, I disagree with the author for a few reasons. First it's impossible to make wild predictions about the world 20 years hence. It's also unrealistic to assume that computers aren't up to the task in some way. The whole article seems to be an apologetic justification for the author's own self professed rustiness.

The claim that something isn't possible in 20 years is foolish. The amount of technological progress to be made over two decades is baffling. It's impossible to predict the advances that could be made in that time. Much of the technology already exists. It would have to be strung together effectively and managed by a pretty significant computer brain, but I think it's a real possibility.
Flying aircraft seems to be the perfect job for a computer. Take-off, fly toward a destination, then land. I don't see what makes that job require any more ingenuity than a railroad or an assembly line. All sorts of inputs could be used. GPS for location, any number of systems for runway identification and taxiing, multiple altimeters for various altitude data, and input from traffic controlling computers for routing information. It's not impossible, I think it's the perfect place for a computer.

Pilot error accounts for up to a third of airline crashes, so I would welcome a competent computer. They don't fly the plane drunk, they don't mistake the ground for the sky, and they couldn't be hijacked like a normal pilot. I for one welcome our coming robo-pilot overlords.

Punctuation

I seem to have a problem with punctuation... Looking at my previous titles they either include an exclamation point or a question mark. I think I have spent a little too much time reading headlines at Digg. If I'm not careful, I could end up with a puerile top 10 list.

Vegas!

I spent a recent weekend in Las Vegas. That town always feels surreal, almost like anything can and probably does go. What seems most interesting to me is that people genuinely believe in fate and anthropomorphizing the casinos. It's really strange to me that otherwise intelligent people suddenly feel that the casino and even each slot machine are willing them to win or lose with each pull of the slots or roll of the dice. To me gambling is an entertainment. Without a well rehearsed strategy in the right game, the house will win in the long run.



We walked up and down the strip lots of times, so I had an opportunity to think about why the group I was with used luck to decide what casino we would visit. The first thing that I thought of was mere wishful thinking. Maybe they were just hoping to win, but I think they wouldn't have felt the need to debate the previous "luckiness" of the casino in current decisions. Maybe the size of the buildings causes some sort of reversion of their mental state to childlike levels, where the world is filled with magic and controlled by the Fates. I think it's a legitimate scenario, but I also think it's a symptom of a less educated populous.

Rather than taking the time to think about the probabilities of a game, most people seem to want to believe that the casino gods smile or frown on their weekend based on what cocktails they drink in which corner of a given casino. People don't want to be depressed by reality. They want to retreat to a mystical world far outside their control. It is odd to me that people demand free will, yet pretend to live in a world controlled by exterior forces with mysterious motives.

Hello!

I guess this introduction comes one post late. It's probably a good idea to lay out what I hope to make of this blog. I am an atheist scientist, two unfortunately negatively perceived social groups. The villainous word liberal can be applied to either. Given my stereotypes, I'd like to develop some of my ideas on atheism, science, and the intersection between science and religion here. And maybe some of my technophilia will bleed through.

So I'll pretend that I wrote this introduction a post ago and attempt to post more frequently. Ideas are constantly flowing in and out of existence on the foam of my mind, I just need to catch them before they are annihilated.

Predetermined?

I was listening to the excellent WNYC Radio Lab podcast about time, when I came to an strange thought. Some theoretical physicists and some conservative Christians happen to have in common that they believe the universe is predetermined.

The Calvinists and some other groups believe in a system where their god has predetermined their entire lives and all of time. Similarly, some physicists believe that time is more of an illusion than a reality, we may be living in a rolling "now." Each moment of our past and future may be static, "eternal" instants. Instead of time moving past us like a river, we may in fact be traveling through time. The word eternal loses a little meaning when time is erased.

It's not so much of a revolution to know that some religous groups believe that free will doesn't exist. It's a wonderful excuse for sins of all kinds, since they are not in control, God is. But for physics to predict that our own free will is an illusion is a strange thought. For some reason, the concept makes sense to me. Perhaps because of my long running fascination with time scales of all sizes. Either way, I don't think a predetermined future relieves any of our responsibility for our present acts. The fact that our future, or any possible future (if you believe the multiverse theory) exists means we would have chosen to do it.

None of this may even be a reality, it is theoretical physics, but it is an interesting idea that relates some conservative Christianity with some liberal physics.