Quest for Longevity

The cover story of the January 2023 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, a 35-page article titled "The Science of Living Longer and Better," explores several different approaches, both theoretical and practical, to the goal of extending the human lifespan. The genetically programmed maximum age for us seems to be around 120 years. However, very few people make it that far.

Numerous drugs enable mice to live as much as 60% longer than normal. Why don't they work on people? Why do certain animals such as naked mole rats and some bats live significantly longer, in proportion to their size, than we do? Why do Greenland sharks live at least 250 years, maybe longer? Altering a single gene in a certain species of roundworms doubles their lifespan while keeping them youthfully energetic, but we're more complicated than worms. Why do people in some societies tend to enjoy longer, healthier lives than the average? Environment? Diet? Exercise? Other lifestyle factors? Some scientists have tried promising drug therapies on themselves, with mixed results. Animal studies show life extension outcomes from severe restriction of calorie intake, but, again, such a regimen hasn't produced similar effects on human subjects. Anyway, personally, if I could lengthen my lifetime by a decade or two that way, I wouldn't bother; adding on years of semi-starvation would be no fun.

Stipulating the natural human upper age limit as about 120 years suggests that the Howard Families project in Robert Heinlein's METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN couldn't work the way the novel portrays it. By the date of the novel, the 22nd century, the typical Howard Families member lives to 150, retaining the appearance and vitality of a person in the prime of life. This situation exists before rejuvenation therapies are invented later in the story. Simply interbreeding bloodlines of naturally long-lived people couldn't extend their maximum ages past the 120-year limit if genes for such extension don't already exist. Moreover, real-life super-centenarians, however vigorous, still look their age, not so youthful they have to adopt new identities to avoid unwelcome attention. The only way the "Methuselahs" of Heinlein's novel could survive and remain young-looking to the age of 150 would be if Lazarus Long had already spread the mutated gene responsible for his apparent immortality through most of the Howard population. (Given the character of Lazarus as portrayed in the later book TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE, that hypothesis seems not unlikely.) That explanation wouldn't work for the early generations such as Lazarus's own mother and her contemporaries, though. There's no plausible way mere selective breeding for a century or so could produce human beings who live over 100 years with the appearance of well-preserved middle age.

So if we want lifespans like Heinlein's characters, we'll have to develop futuristic technologies similar to those speculated about in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article. Even so, surpassing the natural limit of 120 years would seem to require something radically beyond those techniques, maybe direct alteration of DNA—such as the hypothetical "cellular reprogramming" mentioned in the article.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Inner Lives of Animals

I recommend that you pick up a copy of the October 2022 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC if possible. You can't miss it; the cover shows a close-up of a sphinx cat. The lead article, "Minds of Their Own," explores the emotional and cognitive capacities of animals.

Not only some mammals but some birds can pass the "mirror test," recognizing their own reflections. Rats will often free another rat trapped in a plastic tube. Horses respond appropriately to positive or negative emotions as displayed by facial expressions, not only in other horses but also in humans. Sheep can recognize faces. Dolphins sometimes blow water bubbles and play with them. Some animals have been shown to react negatively to other members of their species who cheat. The NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC piece mentions other examples, including the famous dog who communicates by nosing symbols on a mat.

For many centuries, mainstream science believed animals didn't have an inner life, nothing resembling emotions or thoughts in the human sense. Famously, 17th-century philosopher Rene Descartes declared that animals were mere "automata," machines in principle similar to clockwork, although more complex. Here's an article about that theory and a contemporary of Descartes, Ralph Cudworth, who argued against it. (If you want to read this page, do so in one sitting, because the website allows only a limited number of free readings per month.):

Descartes Versus Cudworth

Cudworth, who (unlike Descartes) maintained that animals had souls, defined "soul" more broadly than Descartes. The defining characteristics of a soul, according to Cudworth, are "self-activity –- the ability of a thing to determine its own movement and action" and "subjectivity," self-awareness and the ability to experience pain or pleasure. Most of us nowadays would agree that animals, at least the "higher" species for sure, have these traits even if we attribute them to biological systems rather than immaterial entities. As the article puts it, "Cudworth noticed and emphasised the animal in the human, and more importantly, the human in the animal."

If the argument that we can't attribute "anthropomorphic" qualities to animals because we have no direct access to their minds (if any) is valid, how could we refute a similar argument about human beings? How can we know, just from their behavior and speech, that our fellow humans share the same inner experiences we have instead of being mere automata? The Marquis de Sade apparently thought we couldn't; one of his characters argues that it's fine to inflict pain on other people, since we feel our own pains and pleasures but have no proof others feel the same things. Most of us wouldn't want to embrace that philosophy, though!

Hard-line materialists might insist recently discovered resemblances between animal and human emotions and thought processes prove we are "only animals," little more than biological machines ourselves. The similarity could be considered from a less reductive angle, though. Maybe what those discoveries demonstrate is that animals, possessing inner lives somewhat analogous to our own, are in many cases closer to human than we've previously believed.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Urban Wildlife

The July 2022 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC includes an article titled "Why Cities Are Going Wild." It's about wild animals who've adjusted to living in urban areas, often by feeding on the stuff human residents discard. For instance, numerous black bears hang around in Asheville, NC, with a human population of about 95,000. I was surprised to read that coyotes have established themselves in most major cities and in all states except Hawaii. Chicago, for instance, hosts about 4,000 coyotes. Many omnivorous mammals are "changing their behaviors as they learn urban survival skills." Bears learn when it's trash pickup day. Coyotes look before crossing the street. Nobody who lives in a neighborhood with raccoons would be surprised at their talent for breaking into closed containers. Skunks also display cleverness in adapting to urban environments.

Studies have found that not only do city-dwelling wild animals behave differently from their rural and wilderness cousins, such as becoming more nocturnal to avoid people, often they also prosper in terms of gaining weight and producing more offspring. The latter phenomenon doesn't always grant long-term advantages, though; in some populations of urban bears, fewer cubs survive to maturity than in the wild.

Animals can hardly be blamed for "invading" our spaces. In many areas they were there first, and our cities and suburbs have spread to encroach on their territories. Here's an article focusing particularly on big felines in two "megacities," Los Angeles and Mumbai, where mountain lions and leopards (respectively) have learned to coexist with people:

Big Cats, Big Cities

Authorities in those cities have experimented with ways to share space with the big cats, such as building bridges for them to overcome the problem of habitat fragmentation. (I can't help visualizing a leopard reading a "Leopard Crossing" sign at the end of a bridge, even though that's obviously not how the system works.) Public education reduces human-animal clashes and promotes a live-and-let-live policy. "Both cities have learned that trying to capture, kill or relocate the cats isn’t the answer." Moving the creatures away from the urban centers doesn't help prevent conflicts, because they or others like them just move back in. One California wildlife expert points out, “It’s better to have a stable population, than one where hierarchies and territories are disrupted.”

For me, the most intriguing information in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article is that raccoons seem to be evolving greater intelligence as they're challenged by increasingly complex human efforts to deter them. People's attempts to thwart trespassing raccoons have led to an "innovation arms race." If we're "actually creating smarter animals" by giving them "increasingly difficult problems to solve," could raccoons be poised to take over the "intelligence" niche if we ever go extinct? Or maybe to share that role with us in some future post-apocalyptic reversion to a preindustrial world? After all, they already have a head start with hand-like paws. In the novel WICKED and its sequels, sapient animals live alongside the human residents of Oz (although as second-class citizens). Imagine a sapient raccoon delegation calling on a city or state government to demand equal rights.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

The October 2021 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC features a pair of lead articles about "green" power for aircraft and cars, mainly electric. The cover optimistically proclaims, "The Revolution Is Here." The issue abounds with information about the past as well as the future of electric-powered transportation. I was surprised to learn that in 1900 electric cars held over one-third of the market. Gasoline-powered internal combustion automobiles came in third, after steam (!) and electric. Then as now, the main obstacles to widespread acceptance of electric cars were battery weight and range. On the other hand, electric vehicles are quiet and emissions-free, and they have fewer moving parts to maintain. In the early twentieth century, "cheap oil and paved roads" enabled the internal combustion engine to dominate the market by the 1930s. Now auto manufacturers are embracing EVs with fresh enthusiasm, not only the big names such as Tesla, but even Volkswagen. Driving range and charging times are improving as prices decrease to become comparable to the cost of gasoline-fueled cars. Driverless, electric-powered delivery vehicles may eventually become commonplace. Meanwhile, Amazon and FedEx are switching their fleets to EVs.

This NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC's second article on the energy revolution deals with flight. Commercial airliners produce vast quantities of fossil-fuel pollution. France is considering a ban on all domestic flights to destinations that can be reached by train in less than two and a half hours. Implementing that policy, of course, would imply a passenger rail system adequate to efficiently serve the needs of the traveling public. In most of the U.S., a situation like that is an incredible fantasy. Peter Kalmus, a NASA climate scientist, insists on "the hard fact" that "we don't need to fly." What world does he live in? Most vacation travelers crossing the Atlantic or Pacific can't afford the cost of a cruise ship or the extra time off work for the round trip by sea. If you have to get to the opposite coast of the U.S. for an emergency such as a family funeral, you certainly do need to fly; you can't drive that distance in a day or two.

For large aircraft, electric power runs into the problem that a battery of adequate size would weigh as much as the plane itself. One type of clean airplane fuel being contemplated is liquid hydrogen. For small aircraft, however, electric engines can succeed. A California company named Wisk is one of several working on designs for "air taxis," self-flying, vertical-takeoff-and-landing small electric aircraft. In fact, our long-awaited flying car may soon become a reality, although not owned and operated by individual consumers (thank goodness, considering the typical level of driving skill on the roads).

Each proposed solution, naturally, carries problems of its own. But, as Isaac Asimov maintained, the solution to such difficulties isn't to give up on technology but to develop better technology. If you don't subscribe to NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, do try to pick up a copy of the October issue at the library or newsstand, especially if you're a fan and/or writer of near-future SF.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Whale Culture

Do animals have culture, defined as the customs of a particular social group? Not too long ago, established science would have answered with a firm negative. Now, however, several examples of animal behavior are widely recognized as cultural. They're not merely cases of animals imitating others whose actions they observe, but of behaviors passed from generation to generation within a group and specific to that group. For instance, there's the well-known example of macaques on Koshima Island in Japan washing sweet potatoes in a stream or the ocean before eating them. One young macaque, Imo, started this custom, and long after her death, members of that colony still practice that behavior. Among chimpanzees, some groups use purposely modified twigs to "fish" for termites, while chimps in many other bands don't. Some species of songbirds "learn dialects and transmit them across generations." Even bumblebees learn from more experienced colony members which flowers to choose.

An article in the May 2021 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, "Secrets of the Whales" (from which the above quote about birds comes), explores the cultural practices of whales and dolphins. (If you want to read this article and can't find a copy of the issue, maybe at the public library if it's no longer in stores, you can access it online only behind a paywall.) On the Pacific coast, northern and southern orcas have different greeting rituals, breaching habits, and the behavior or not of pushing "dead salmon around with their heads" (no reason given for this habit). Orcas in the two regions even vocalize with different "vocabularies." Yet in most ways the two populations are "indistinguishable," and their ranges overlap. Whale songs and other vocalizations vary from one group to another. Among humpback whales, new song arrangements that become popular spread over thousands of miles as other whales pick them up.

To traditional anthropologists, who considered culture—"the ability to socially accumulate and transfer knowledge—strictly a human affair"—the idea that animals could have culture would have "seemed blasphemous." Some biologists remain skeptical on this point. The majority, however, at least as surveyed in the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article, are inclined to attribute this capacity to at least some animal communities over a wide variety of species. Modern zoology has undercut one after another of the supposedly unique human abilities. Toolmaking, language, and now culture no longer seem the sole possession of humanity. Hard-line materialists might draw the conclusion, "See, there's nothing special about us; we're mere animals, too." I prefer to see those discoveries as evidence that many animals aren't as simply "mere animals" as we've previously believed. They may have minds, although not the same as ours, and maybe—souls? As the article points out, "Whales reside in a foreign place we're just coming to understand." We've mapped the surface of the Moon far more extensively than the bottom of the ocean. With whales, we have the opportunity to delve into the lifestyles and thought processes of "sophisticated alien beings."

Good practice for meeting alien beings from planets other than our own!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

More on Robots

If convenient, try to pick up a copy of the September 2020 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, which should still be in stores at this time. The feature article, "Meet the Robots," goes into lengthy detail about a variety of different types of robots and their functions, strengths, and limitations. The cover shows a mechanical hand delicately holding a flower. The article on the magazine's website is behind a paywall, unfortunately.

Profusely illustrated, it includes photos of robots that range from human-like to vaguely humanoid to fully non-anthropomorphic. One resembles an ambulatory egg, another a mechanical octopus. As the text points out, form follows function. Some machines would gain nothing by being shaped like people, and for some tasks the human form would actually be more of a drawback than a benefit. Some of those devices perform narrowly defined, repetitive jobs such as factory assembly, while others more closely resemble what science-fiction fans think of as "robots"—quasi-intelligent, partly autonomous machines that can make decisions among alternatives. In many cases, they don't "steal jobs" but, rather, fill positions for which employers have trouble hiring enough live workers. Robots don't get sick or tired, don't suffer from boredom, and can spare human workers from exposure to hazards. On the other hand, the loss of some kinds of jobs to automation is a real problem, to which the article devotes balanced attention. Although an increasingly automated working environment may create new jobs in the long run, people can't be retrained for those hypothetical positions overnight.

Some robots carry their "brains" within their bodies, as organic creatures do, while others take remote direction from computers (Wi-Fi efficiency permitting—now there's an intriguing plot premise, a society dependent on robots controlled by a central hive-mind AI, which blackmailers or terrorists might threaten to disable). On the most lifelike end of the scale, an animated figure called Mindar, "a metal and silicone incarnation of Kannon," a deity in Japanese Buddhism, interacts with worshipers. Mindar contains no AI, but that feature may eventually be added. American company Abyss Creations makes life-size, realistic sex dolls able to converse with customers willing to pay extra for an AI similar to Alexa or Siri. Unfortunately for people envisioning truly autonomous robot lovers, from the neck down they're still just dolls.

We're cautioned against giving today's robots too much credit. They can't match us in some respects, such as the manipulative dexterity of human hands, bipedal walking, or plain "common sense." We need to approach them with "realistic expectations" rather than thinking they "are far more capable than they really are." Still, it seems wondrous to me that already robots can pick crops, milk cows, clean and disinfect rooms (I want one of those), excavate, load cargo, make deliveries in office buildings (even asking human colleagues to operate elevators for them), take inventory, guide patients through exercise routines, arrange flowers, and "help autistic children socialize." Considering that today's handheld phones are more intelligent than our first computer was (1982), imagine what lies ahead in the near future!

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Biology and Free Will

The September issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC features a short piece titled "Why You Like What You Like." It explores the biological basis of likes and dislikes, attraction and repulsion. It cites the discovery that the Toxoplasma organism can make rats unafraid of cats and may possibly cause "increased anxiety" in humans. Other examples of biological influences on tastes and behavior include genetic links to aversion to broccoli, preferences in sexual partners, and conservative or liberal political tendencies.

The author expresses dismay at the realization that he's been wrong all this time in believing "my likes and dislikes were formed through careful deliberation and rational decision-making." The findings detailed in this article don't come as that much of a shock to me. It seems like an obvious truism that most of the time we "can't help" liking or disliking things or people. As for political, philosophical, or religious tendencies, our genes may predispose us to see the world a certain way, but surely they don't totally control our choices. The article itself acknowledges this fact, because "embedded within your genome, there are many potential versions of you." The science of epigenetics has revealed many environmental factors that influence the way genes are expressed; chemicals, protein interactions, and even the microbes living inside us can affect our DNA. Those influences still imply that we don't have the conscious control we think we do, though.

"There are biological gremlins driving every action and personality trait that you assumed were of your own volition." Again, I've never assumed my personality traits were chosen by my "own volition," and I doubt many people think that way. Personality comes as part of the start-up package. Moreover, "driving" doesn't necessarily mean "controlling." After this somewhat pessimistic summary of the evidence, the author acknowledges that very fact and assures us we aren't "destined to be slaves of our DNA." With heightened awareness of how genes and other biological factors shape our minds and behavior, we may develop more efficient ways to change the traits we consider undesirable. So he does allow room for free will. So do the scientists who maintain that consciousness itself is an illusion, by the very act of making that claim. For an illusion to exist, there must be a mind—a consciousness—to embrace that illusion.

Even at the mid-twentieth-century heyday of the "blank slate," radical malleability of human character, environment-is-destiny position, one of the primary fictional exemplars of that belief, BRAVE NEW WORLD, allows for free will. At least one character conditioned from the moment of conception to fit into Huxley's utopia of programmed happiness questions his society and its culture. Our ability as authors to write interesting stories would be severely limited if we and our readers believed our characters couldn't have any freedom of choice.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

The Wonders of Jellyfish

If possible, pick up a copy of the October NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and contemplate the dazzling photos in the article on jellyfish. Typical jellyfish (not all of which are related to each other; the general name is popularly applied to different groups of creatures) have a complicated life cycle. The adult stage, the parachute-like shape with tentacles that we're most familiar with, is called a medusa. Medusae reproduce sexually, releasing eggs and sperm into the water. The larval stage, known as planula, anchors itself on a rock or the sea bottom, where it becomes a polyp. Polyps reproduce asexually, budding off multiple clones called ephyra, which grow into new medusae.

The highly toxic Portuguese man-of-war illustrates a transitional phase between a colony of separate organisms and their union into a larger, more complex creature. What looks like an individual is "technically a colony that developed from the same embryo."

The oral arms—the tendrils that sweep food into the mouth—of some jellyfish have mouths on the streamers themselves, a feature that sounds like a model for a Lovecraftian eldritch monster.

One species has a unique, almost unbelievable ability to revert to the polyp stage and start life over when confronted by environmental stress such as near-starvation or severe injury, sort of like reincarnation. By producing clones of itself that become medusae, which in turn transform back into polyps, and repeating the cycle, it effectively never dies (at least from "natural causes") or grows old.

The Immortal Jellyfish

Understanding this process of "cell recycling," called "transdifferentiation," could make a vital contribution to stem cell research.

If an intelligent species with an alternating sexual-asexual and mobile-stationary life cycle existed on some alien planet, it would surely have a social structure very different from ours, especially if it followed the jellyfish pattern of producing myriads of offspring with every instance of sexual reproduction. Of course, such alien sapient beings couldn't be jellyfish as we know them, which have no brains. It's also hard to imagine an r-selected species, one that engenders huge numbers of fast-maturing young in hopes that some may survive, evolving intelligence. It wouldn't have the long childhood and parental care that we assume to be essential to intelligence as we know it. What about intelligence not-as-we-know-it, though? Could animals similar to jellyfish, given some sort of neural network, develop a hive mind? After all, in one phase of their life cycle, they're clones, so they might conceivably have a shared consciousness. Genetically identical "immortal jellyfish" have been discovered in widely scattered parts of the Earth. Might similar organisms on another planet belong to a worldwide group mind? If so, what would they think of us as solitary individuals?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt