Tuesday, May 5, 2009

biogerontology.

ive been pretty interested in biogerontology for awhile now, beginning in 2006 when i picked up a libertarians take on biotech, liberation biology.

its sort of an oddball topic for me, seeming to contradict natural selection and thus my neodarwinist perspective by way of participant evolution.

a full explanation might take a few seconds i dont actually have right now, but the short explanation is that i am a compatibilist about more than just determinism.

for all life endowed with free will, all evolution is inevitably participant evolution. once life gains even the most basic understanding of natural selection, or even of heredity, it actively chooses (perhaps unknowingly) to influence the course of evolution. consider a bird that chooses to kill off the weakest of its offspring.

the only difference between a bird that avoids death to remain a good steward of its genes, (taken to include instances of the same genes in other bodies,) and a human that seeks to live healthier and longer is the extent to which we humans are aware of our role in the long view of evolution. our motivation is still an evolutionary one. i dont want to quadruple my lifespan to party hard til i die. (though perpetual beach week is a motivating factor.) i want to live until i am satisfied with what ive contributed to my fellow man. (whether or not this would ever occur is another question altogether.)

and so here is a brief intro to why im into biogerontology...



i plan on blogging about this more often, enough to maybe justify its own section apart from ideas / ideology. expect me to someday soon blog about mitochondrial replacement and the ethics of transhumanism.

k thx bye.

ps... i made a bunch of notes in the margin of liberation biology about companies i wanted to invest in. heres an investment i for sure wouldve made if i had the money. (check out the 2 year chart.) apparantly glaxo smithkline beat me to it.

pps... give me money.

Monday, May 4, 2009