This conversation as a concept (topic), as well as an event (thread), is evolving at an accelerated rate. When it reaches a quantum divide of logic it either leaps it through creativity or *dies* (is destroyed) against the cold hard logic of fallacy.
The basic game theory that underlies Natural Selection is no more complex than that in many respects. The problem is what the perspective of *intention* (free will) introduces to it and that is why I first try to establish the importance of how various theorists are incorporating their personal biases into the evaluation of deterministic factors for the causality of Evolution.
I am also establishing that through a perspective of *intention* (the anticipation of a more desirable future) that our specific species (Humans) are imbuing Natural Selection with *progressive intent* (intelligent choice through Human Selection). This latter is the real debate IMO but is like trying to have a rational and relaxed electrified cage fight at times because of its innate hot button character.
I have been long seeking this simple connection to explain the paradigm shift to Memetic Dominance over Genetic. But it is also why this topic is the Third Rail of Evolutionary Theory because it uses the *E* word,
Eugenics.
Even worse than that it depends ultimately for reasons of resource allocation with respect of human demand upon another *E* word,
Economics. [huh]
It is one of the premises I am driving at in the Evolutionary Economics aspect of Human Selection. Again the introduction of Conscience Choice to the *Selection* process governing *resource* distribution through the entire biome of the planet.
Evolutionary Economicsas well as here:
Sociological Impact of ImmortalityOur Dying PlanetOverpopulation?and here
altruism is it selfish?The dominance of two primary logical strategies for successful evolution also depended on a coincidence of catastrophe because it is the ability to rapidly adapt to the drastically altered environment of the aftermath that provides a small independently evolving group (mammals) the opportunity to excel. No asteroid and perhaps no mammalian ascendancy as the resource allocation system for food would have been totally dominated by successful, long lived, immense growing animals consuming vast amounts of surface resource in populations diminished by primarily predator/prey relationships (the basis of parasitism).
You see mammals had essentially been baby food for dinosaurs/reptiles and even some amphibians as an environmental niche for tens if not hundreds of millions of years. What changed the rules of evolution happened as a single event triggering even tectonic and long term climactic change. The possibility that perhaps more than a single impact possibly clouds previous examples of recovery and divergent diaspora for life on Earth suggests a different model for how Evolution works than a strict Individualist one.
By this perspective Divergent Speciation is the result of the Group Selection Pressure over hundreds and thousands of generations even though it is initiated by incremental individual expressions of genetic advantage. It enters the control of Group Selection through the dynamic of mating (the
*popularization* of procreative strategy) ritual/imprinting/instinctive/and cognitive memetic behavior. After many successive generations this behavior becomes *systematized* through genetics over the larger group through social behavior. This is reflected at every level of social behavior to greater or lesser degree, whether the behavior is pack/herd/clan/tribe/culture or perhaps even *species* and *phylum.* In every case though there is an individual pressure to exploit a perceived new advantage providing access to dependent resources outside the original perceived limit of environmental access. Individuals expand the envelope and groups exploit it and after enough tie the divergent specialization produces the speciation effect where the basic genetic blueprint no longer interbreeds.
Convergent ability is dominated by the biophysics of the relationship of physiology to environment but also influenced through intra-group recognition of individual (Strict/Individual Darwinian) advantage recombinant mutation through haploidal sharing that provides the ability to *distribute recognized specific or individual advantages* and this is also a form of group selection through the *species* organization of choice for mating. How this reflects individual genes is through *attractive mating for similar self recognized characteristics. The convergence occurs because of the *synchronizing* through individual selection of commonly recognizable mutations with respect to current Immediately apparent) environmental competitive demand.
So we have two different reasons why as a consequence of time, sharing, and repetition the basic procreative strategy translates into what we see in the evolutionary record. My point is more *why* do we see what we observe and that these *consequences* are the result of a core mammalian advantage that gave an edge against extinction after the KT event; not a reason to die. Death is not a logical necessity, only the most elusive and powerful adversary of the living.
How *Life* (not just Humans) on Earth sustains itself is what we end up discussing in *non-rational* terms because it requires a level of communication, as well as empirical evidence that most are incapable of rationally processing and/or comprehending, let alone obtaining. Life has evolved in terms of *complexity* through adopting effective methods of coping with stress, the primary stress being recognized as
*death, you lose* (life).
Gaming and the pleasure reward for example of puzzle solving is probably instinctual as it may be derived of the *sense* of fairness for competition. Fairness for competition relates to probability of successful engagement or escape (fight or flight for survival). Solving puzzles anticipates *learning* to survive as a cognitive behavior of problem solving for a primal few basic resources, food, shelter, mating advantage and colonization of kind.
The last can be seen all the way to bacterial and is not *just* an accident of the proximity of birth and motile capacity it is a *consequence* of choice made and expressed at the molecular level of DNA. The Competition to Survive is a driving force but there are examples of times in which sacrifice of the individual for the group in evolution can be understood as providing a form of Group Selected advantage that make death consequential but that doesn't make it always so and for every species. Group Selection reflects the advantage that altruism strategies can (sacrifice) provide groups in terms of numerical competitive edge. But this can include the competition of any given majority against a minority.
Again the reality of mortality reduces the competition for change but that is about reality of *numbers* not a prori necessity. A primary goal of life is to continue individual genetic expression as well as the *group*, be that colony, herd, species, society, or even phyla. And perhaps, as Lovelock and other Gaians understand it, an *expression* of the unity of *Living Spirit*, the Living World Idea. This is because parasitism and symbiosis are logically the primary biological strategies for the total competition for global resources as a closed system economically (any given planet ecology). EVERY resource based relationship can be distilled into one or the other paradigm (at times both relativistically) of living demand and this includes human relationships.
Behavior in the form of extended life support is the result of group interactivity, the infamous commons, that Evolutionary biologist and many others understand as ecology, and what economists think of as market beyond a strict human paradigm.
OK this relates back to the discussion so far this way. On the list you provide Omnido:
1) Telomerase Shortening
2) Free Radical Damage
3) Glucose Browning
4) DNA distortion and mutation.
We see a reason *why* they are encountered as the result of evolutionary selection and this means that we might alter them working backward through genetics of *why* these processes evolved.
1) Telomere shortening I am suggesting was the result of the advantage of faster mutability after the KT Event and that we do not see it in reptiles because that is how mammals came to expand in the divergent diaspora faster.
However as we grew complex and long lived enough to encounter the mammalian limits of telomerization we experienced the *shortcomings* (pun) of the advantage in the form of cancer and cell apoptosis sooner than our more cold blooded competition.
Nevertheless though it hasn't yet panned out, by studying through Comparative Genetics these alternative species like tortoises, lobsters and others with the longevity advantage of growth cycling to preserve individual expression of speciation we might better understand not only how they do it but how we might alter the core dynamic of a mammalian hosts' genes to make their cell structure and function more reptilian by interfering with the cell replication process itself of the cancerous tissue.
Use the malignancy itself to define the new tissue program by doing to the entire broken gene what a virus does and usurping the replication process with the insertion of an alternative replicative method that now incorporates the strategy of stabilized telomere replication from reptiles.
In other words don't try to reverse mutate the human gene back to original, instead mutate the mutagenic process forward to a proven known stable strategy and let the mutation go forward with cancers ability to make telomere production for all intents and purposes unlimited.
I suggest this idea of mutating a malignancy forward into a new defined genetic program derived from specific genetic patterns that have already been proven by nature is feasible and testable in mice. You see I am suggesting the cancer is a threshold challenge and solving it could induces significantly greater longevity for formally.
2) Free Radical damage is something that trying to simply insert antioxidants into the cell has demonstrated little result. It is not the *logic* that is wrong, it is that the damage to cells continues to accumulate and more importantly accumulates destroying the mitochondria as a result.
In fact some recent studies have shown a detrimental factor from mixing too many different antioxidant agents, as if we are overloading the problem of free radical production and removal from the cell. I think of it like burning coal in a wood-stove and then the metal fatigues at the higher temperature, with the end result is that the cell is destroyed either way because the chimney clogs(inability to remove the end product of combustion) and/or the or the containment vessel for the reaction loses integrity (apoptosis).
The approach I mention above needs to be understood as addressing this aspect through the mitochondrial inclusion in the malignant process. This is an honest question:
What happens to mDNA and the actual organelles during various cancer growths?
Obviously some form of cellular energy production is still occurring or the cells wouldn't be able to continue to replicate in order to grow a tumor or metastasize.
I suspect the approach I am implying provides a parallelism of process that may allow the inclusion of a new host form of mitochondrial genetics as a part of the stabilization of the malignant mutation. This may not only be a new avenue of treating cancer but a manner of converting disadvantage to advantage.
Where I am disagreeing with your perspective Prometheus is that number, #4 may be seen as the *consequence* not the *cause*. This is more than mere semantics. I am trying to approach *genetic theorizing* as a specific *rationalization process* for evolutionary biology. Understanding that we are confusing *cause and effect* because of how we personally interpret causality is critical for new avenues to break with failed ones of past development. We are dancing around a chicken/egg dilemma IMO.
If I am correct and #4 (DNA distortion and mutation) are the *effects* not the *cause* then the first three can all be understood together as causal factors and I would add one that is not on Omnido's list, Genetic stress from direct damaging environmental present mutagens, what we experience as some, viral phages, specific toxins and *energy* (ie. radiation as wavelength and nuclear decay but perhaps in a subtle yet basic way as light and heat) forms. Damage from pathogenic disease under this model is cumulative competitive stress as a opposed to direct mutagenic disease and the evolution of *immune systems* are the result toward these competing organisms that attempt to impose a parasitic strategy on our host DNA cellular organization for co-opting resources that are distributed at the cellular level.
The stress of disease contributes to cumulative cell damage but it would be as much of a problem if the recovery didn't include exhausting the probable number of cell replicative cycles because of number one and as it happens it also contributes to the possibility by triggering healing and forcing cell replacement, when the damaged DNA can then be introduced to the host's cellular matrix.
I would make this a separate category as well of causality even though it expresses itself in all of the other three ways because it results from (consequential) one of the most basic behaviors of all lifeforms, resource acquisition. It is the desire to consume that puts all living things in harm's way when it comes to mutagenic compounds and environments.
Edited by Lazarus Long, 24 August 2004 - 02:23 PM.