Quote:
Originally Posted by livi
Yes, sleeping seems like a monumental waste of time. But I suppose, without sleeping we would die worn out at about 15 years old. I think it all has something to do with evolution..  |
You would not be worn out, but your brain would quit working. Lack of REM sleep makes you act like a paranoid schizophrenic, maybe that is not totally accurate, but it makes you crazy. Makes me think a certain cat from Wisconsin has never slept.
Dieing is part of living. Quality of life is much more important than how long it lasts, that is where the effort should be expended
Quote:
Originally Posted by sammyg2
I've often thought of death from old age like this:
Take a letter and run it through a copy machine. Then make a copy of the copy. Keep doing that until the copier runs out of toner. the last copy will undoubtedly look terrible, faded, smearted, blurry, etc. How many times can cells reproduce a certain complex string of DNA without introducing some error? Maybe death is nature's way of preventing inimaginable mutations. Maybe not.
One thing that bothers me big time is the rate at which the human race is aquiring knowledge, and the fact that our cumulative wisdom is not keeping pace. We are quickly getting too smart for our own good.
|
Something to both main points here. First is the concept of cellular senescence, which is a big part of aging. Cancer cells are immortal, as I recall. The more troubling concept is Man gaining knowledge too much more quickly than wisdom, which is of great concern to me.