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Oni2:Slaves of War/Polylectiloquy: Difference between revisions
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===Wouldn't the Daodan make the host immortal?=== | ===Wouldn't the Daodan make the host immortal?=== | ||
"Immortal" here being defined as "not experiencing natural death" rather than "totally unkillable", the question really is, Won't the amazing healing abilities of the Daodan keep a host perpetually young? To my mind, all of the following are possible: | :"Immortal" here being defined as "not experiencing natural death" rather than "totally unkillable", the question really is, Won't the amazing healing abilities of the Daodan keep a host perpetually young? To my mind, all of the following are possible: | ||
:A. The Daodan is not perfect, so it cannot make the host perfect (i.e., remove a basic flaw in the cellular processes). | :A. The Daodan is not perfect, so it cannot make the host perfect (i.e., remove a basic flaw in the cellular processes). | ||
:B. The Daodan was designed to improve an organism but not to grant it immortality. The designers may have a philosophical or cultural reason for Daodan hosts or the general populace not living forever. | :B. The Daodan was designed to improve an organism but not to grant it immortality. The designers may have a philosophical or cultural reason for Daodan hosts or the general populace not living forever. | ||
:C. The Daodan has no effect on aging because it doesn't affect the shortening of telomeres. | :C. The Daodan has no effect on aging because it doesn't affect the shortening of [[wikipedia:telomeres|telomeres]]. It can only heal the body as long as it can create new cells, but since telomere-shortening is part of the program in human DNA, the Daodan will eventually run out of the physical means to keep the body going, regardless of how much energy the Daodan can access. | ||
:D. The Daodan shortens the host lifespan because it forces rapid cell doubling. More frequent cell division accelerates the aging process. | :D. The Daodan actually shortens the host lifespan because it forces rapid cell doubling. More frequent cell division accelerates the aging process. | ||
:The fact is, the "aging problem" seems to be really complex; scientists can't agree on whether we die because our cells are programmed that way or because of accumulated environmental damage. Certainly the whole telomere-shortening issue is not considered to be a fundamental law of life. There are life forms that don't even use telomeres (simple ones), and some of the ones that do seem to be able to keep their telomeres from shrinking. One species of bird may even lengthen its telomeres over time. | |||
:Then you have the infamous [[wikipedia:HeLa|HeLa]] cell line, taken from the cancerous tissue of a woman who died 60 years ago. HeLa cells are immortal (and frighteningly adaptable). Just to drive the point home, these are <u>human</u> cells, dividing without end, because they fully restore their telomeres with every division. However, this is because they are a cancer, not a viable life form. It could be that complex life forms just aren't able to live forever because of some trade-offs we're not familiar with. But scientists generally agree that there is no known reason why our bodies cannot keep going indefinitely, on a mechanical level. | |||
:Perhaps more importantly, aging may be a much more holistic problem than a simple matter of stopping telomeres from getting shorter. Scientists have not even demonstrated that aging is <u>caused</u> by shortening of telomeres. It's also hard to tell whether longer telomeres leads to less incidents of cancer, or more incidents! However, for our purposes, we can simply say that the Daodan is like cancer that only keeps on improving you. It's just magic that way, or [[wikipedia:Clarke%27s_three_laws|sufficiently advanced technology]], anyway. The open question is still whether the Daodan can, or was designed to, stop aging. | |||
:Finally, an intriguing counterpoint is that of neurons. Our brain cells are actually immortal, and not in the sense of HeLa being immortal because it never stops dividing. Neurons <u>don't divide at all</u>. You still have the same cells in your brain that you did when you were young. To be exact, neurons stop being produced in adulthood, so after that point, what you got is what you got. Except there's an exception there too -- the hippocampus and olfactory bulbs continue to generate new neurons. So, even though our bodies tend to give out after 80 or so years, our brains might in fact be immortal. Can the Daodan extend this special property of the brain to our entire bodies? I suppose the answer is whatever we think leads to the most interesting story. | |||
===What would Oni 2 be about?=== | ===What would Oni 2 be about?=== | ||