Some unsolved mysteries.

Hmmm, I thought we solved the "why we age" question. At least my anthropology prof made it out that we did.

We only have so much net energy and a lot of that energy automatically goes into reproduction - yes, if you have kids, you'll reduce your life expectancy. And males always age and die sooner than woman since testosterone, although it gives you those nice, big muscles, takes energy/resources away from your immune system.

That sounds like vitalism, iow i don't think that could've been exactly what your anthropology prof meant. We have somewhat of a model for how aging happens, though obviously not a good enough one yet. (since we can't stop it )
The list is somewhat questionable anyway. Those are some interesting scientific ... things, but they're not exactly all mysteries, or all questions, or all possible to fit into one category.

defcon6000 said:

Hmmm, I thought we solved the "why we age" question. At least my anthropology prof made it out that we did.

We only have so much net energy and a lot of that energy automatically goes into reproduction - yes, if you have kids, you'll reduce your life expectancy. And males always age and die sooner than woman since testosterone, although it gives you those nice, big muscles, takes energy/resources away from your immune system.

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I think that your professor was pulling your leg.

I don't think we're ever going to have a Theory of Everything if only because, as the explanations later said, things like Newtonian physics - which works very well for large scale bodies - doesn't work when you get down into smaller and smaller particles. Quantum physics has, if not completely different rules, then slightly different ones. They don't behave like planets, for example, which was what Newton was observing.

The idea that *one* theory will somehow explain *everything* in the universe has always struck me as a prime example of human hubris. nothing more, nothing less.

defcon6000 said:

Hmmm, I thought we solved the "why we age" question. At least my anthropology prof made it out that we did.

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Eh, I had a Political Science professor who was convinced, among other things, that Einstein had invalidated Newtonian physics. And said so, in class, with clear conviction. (He also believed that George Washington lost every battle in the Revolution and that only the militia forces allowed us to win the war... but Spence was also an anarchist who insisted everything be done his way. So go figure. )

When I pointed out that Newton's observation of gravity seemed to be working just fine - though I wisely held my tongue about what had to be Spence's own rather large personal gravity (which increases with mass, of course) - I got a look that informed me I'd best be transferring out of the class.

Which I did anyway. 8 AM was too damn early for his BS.

PeterL said:

I think that your professor was pulling your leg.

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Well, do you have a better idea? I'd like to hear it.

The prof is Dr. Kim Hill (not a girl), dunno if anyone has heard of him. He does a lot of work with hunter-gatherer societies, or what's left of them.

Yeah, my Human Paleontology class was taught by an anthropologist. Some of the theories she espoused as fact bordered on the ridiculous and/or fanciful, not to mention the wet dreams of liberal feminism (which she was). It was during that class that I realized that anthropology was an extraordinarily soft science.

No offense is intended toward liberal feminists in any of the above and, if you're an anthropologist, well, I'm sorry...

Well, do you have a better idea? I'd like to hear it.

Yeah, it's called Kleiber's Law.

FOTSGreg said:

Well, do you have a better idea? I'd like to hear it.

Yeah, it's called Kleiber's Law.

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That doesn't sound too far odd what I was talking about. A creature's biological net system...

small adults of one species respire more per unit of weight than large adults of another species because a larger fraction of their body mass consists of structure rather than reserve

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So does that mean small people live longer than big people?

FOTSGreg said:

It was during that class that I realized that anthropology was an extraordinarily soft science.

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Just because a science isn't based on hard calculations doesn't mean it's soft. Yes, observations are not the strongest piece of evidence (although if everyone observes the same thing, then might as well be fact), which is why a good scientist will try to come up with a test or experiment and then look at the distribution of results to see if there's a trend going on.

defcon6000 said:

We only have so much net energy and a lot of that energy automatically goes into reproduction - yes, if you have kids, you'll reduce your life expectancy. And males always age and die sooner than woman since testosterone, although it gives you those nice, big muscles, takes energy/resources away from your immune system.

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defcon6000 said:

Well, do you have a better idea? I'd like to hear it.

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Well, for starters, there are a couple of inherent problems with all of the above statement your professor espoused, not least of which some underlying difficulties with just the way it's all phrased, leading me to question some of the assumptions being made.

The biggest of which is this idea that males "always" die sooner bcs testosterone somehow takes away from your immune system. Ignoring, just for a moment, that women also have this hormone present in their bodies - if in lesser quantities, this is the first time I've ever heard the human body represented as a closed system with a zero sum setup.

There is no taking energy from one system to give to another, least not in the way your professor implying. We don't experience a trade-off in our immunity for having more muscles. You could in fact argue the opposite, based on the fact that most people who exercise regularly - thereby toning muscles and the like, adding to those "systems" if you will - generally have stronger immune systems than those who don't. Hence one of the reasons why exercise is important.

Moreover, no reputable scientist ever offers up statements in absolutes like that. Statistically speaking, men are more likely to die sooner than women, but this does not mean that *every* man will die before *every* woman. A lot of this is also dependent on the fact that historically men have had more dangerous occupations that carry more threat of risk, and they tend to engage in more dangerous risk behaviors, as a general rule. Now, some of this ties into hormones and the like, but you cannot make cut and dried casual statements the rely on a single factor when there are multiple forces at work.

Also, this depletion of energy - while I have heard similar theories with a more biological basis, such as there are only so many times the muscles can perform a certain action just because of wear and tear - but this would seem to me to be a modern conceit, something only applicable when we're living long enough in the first place to age to the point where our bodies give out. Life expectancy has jumped dramatically in the past several hundred years, and dying of natural causes is far more prevalent than it used to be. (Hence Hobbes' quote on life being nasty, brutish, and *short*.)

As such, it doesn't explain historical trends of differing life expectancies between the sexes, if neither sex is living long enough for this supposed energy depletion to kick in.

slcboston said:

Well, for starters, there are a couple of inherent problems with all of the above statement your professor espoused, not least of which some underlying difficulties with just the way it's all phrased, leading me to question some of the assumptions being made.

The biggest of which is this idea that males "always" die sooner bcs testosterone somehow takes away from your immune system. Ignoring, just for a moment, that women also have this hormone present in their bodies - if in lesser quantities, this is the first time I've ever heard the human body represented as a closed system with a zero sum setup.

There is no taking energy from one system to give to another, least not in the way your professor implying. We don't experience a trade-off in our immunity for having more muscles. You could in fact argue the opposite, based on the fact that most people who exercise regularly - thereby toning muscles and the like, adding to those "systems" if you will - generally have stronger immune systems than those who don't. Hence one of the reasons why exercise is important.

Moreover, no reputable scientist ever offers up statements in absolutes like that. Statistically speaking, men are more likely to die sooner than women, but this does not mean that *every* man will die before *every* woman. A lot of this is also dependent on the fact that historically men have had more dangerous occupations that carry more threat of risk, and they tend to engage in more dangerous risk behaviors, as a general rule. Now, some of this ties into hormones and the like, but you cannot make cut and dried casual statements the rely on a single factor when there are multiple forces at work.

Also, this depletion of energy - while I have heard similar theories with a more biological basis, such as there are only so many times the muscles can perform a certain action just because of wear and tear - but this would seem to me to be a modern conceit, something only applicable when we're living long enough in the first place to age to the point where our bodies give out. Life expectancy has jumped dramatically in the past several hundred years, and dying of natural causes is far more prevalent than it used to be. (Hence Hobbes' quote on life being nasty, brutish, and *short*.)

As such, it doesn't explain historical trends of differing life expectancies between the sexes, if neither sex is living long enough for this supposed energy depletion to kick in.

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WHY MEN DIE YOUNGER: CAUSES OF MORTALITY DIFFERENCES BY SEX
(Sorry for the caps, I just copied and pasted the title and I'm too lazy to change it).

And yeah, my wording wasn't right on what my prof said, I didn't mean "every" male - but universally, yes, men die sooner.
And when I say "system" it's your entire body as a whole, it has to dole out energy to where it is needed most. Like a company has to dole out money to where it is needed most.

And it's not a depletion of energy, it's just what is your energy going to support? Will it support your fertility or will it support your longevity?
There are studies that look at the life expectancy of nuns verse women living in the surrounding area (so you know they're in the same environment). Nuns will typically live longer.

We often hear the statement (sometimes attempting to rule out Unknown events or processes, out of hat) that "natural law works the same everywhere"

And yet ... It's a big Universe, and even our own may not be "the same" as our assumptions and expectations.

In March of 2010 it was reported by Discovery News that NASA's Goddard Space Center confirmed this could be the effects of a sibling universe or a region of space-time fundamentally different from the observable universe.

Data on more than 1,000 galaxy clusters have been measured, including some as distant as 3 billion light-years. Alexander Kashlinksy claims these measurements show the universe's steady flow is clearly not a statistical fluke.

Said Kashlinsky: "At this point we don't have enough information to see what it is, or to constrain it. We can only say with certainty that somewhere very far away the world is very different than what we see locally. Whether it's 'another universe' or a different fabric of space-time we don't know

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow

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Just because a science isn't based on hard calculations doesn't mean it's soft.

Um, yes, it does. If the mathematical proofs for a science or the cold, hard observational facts are not available it is not a "hard" science. Anthropology is full of assumptions, half-assumptions (not even half proofs), guesses, and unfounded hypotheses based on nothing more than, in many cases, a few fossilized teeth found in a fossil bed somewhere. In many other cases it's based on modern perceptions of what stone age cultures are imagined to have been like under mythological perceptions of peaceful coexistence with nature and the environment.

From my exposure to the sciences over approximately 30 years anthropology is a joke when it comes to hard science. It has no proofs, not even the proofs of fossil remains various "experts" (often no better than amateur fossil hunters with an eye to something they're already looking for).

I'm sorry, even the famous Leakey finds have been shown to have serious scientific flaws in the assumptions made by the original anthropologist finders. They went looking for something specific and, winder of wonders, found what they were looking for in more cases than not.

defcon6000 said:

Hmmm, I thought we solved the "why we age" question. At least my anthropology prof made it out that we did.

We only have so much net energy and a lot of that energy automatically goes into reproduction - yes, if you have kids, you'll reduce your life expectancy. And males always age and die sooner than woman since testosterone, although it gives you those nice, big muscles, takes energy/resources away from your immune system.

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Don't trust an anthropologist on questions of medicine or biology. That's just so wrong that I'm not going to bother.

GeorgeK said:

Don't trust an anthropologist on questions of medicine or biology. That's just so wrong that I'm not going to bother.

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Pointing out that it's wrong and not bothering to explain why, just makes your comment meaningless.

And not all anthropologists study human remains or ancient cultures. The prof is actively studying and living with hunter-gatherer tribes. He has a BS in molecular biology (but then he decided he wanted to help people more than to work in lab).
And it isn't uncommon for a professor to have duel disciplines. I know a lot of psychologists who are also experts with computer programming, and I'm sure there's anthropologists who know a good deal of biology as well. It's almost impossible to stay isolated in your own little field, all these fields bleed together and you end up having to learn another, maybe many other disciplines to get a better picture of your own discipline.

I'm always glad that we have unsolved mysteries. That means we have room to improve, to advance, and to understand more.

The reason we age, is essentially the same reason any other machine falls apart. Wear and tear.

There's no perfect 100% recoverable process. Every process creates waste of some kind, be it energy, or material. I figure our bodies are no different than our cars, except that we're still working on how to fix our bodies while we've got the car thing licked.

Doesn't this thread belong in the "Science Fact" subforum?