Traveller and modern electronics

[sir_pudding]

Actuarial tables from 2120 on indicate that extreme sports are the primary cause of death among septagenarians.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by SteveS

As far as I can tell, yes, the Vilani are the longest lived humans.

The current understanding of aging is that it happens for a variety of reasons. One is that DNA has transcription errors with every cell division, and to smaller extent it suffers from damage in place. There are a lot of enzymes that try to correct transcription errors, but every enzyme has a metabolic cost, so organisms produce only enough of the error correction enzymes needed to keep the organism in good condition for a time period that produces the greatest number of survivors into the next generation.

When generating reproductive DNA, there are two protective mechanisms. One is the transcription error correction enzyme system. The other is the system of combining pairs of chromosomes from two separate individuals through sexual reproduction, which allows transcription errors to be overridden by the other parent's copy of a gene -- and for the occasional beneficial copy error to be preserved.

Telomeres are a genetic feature that limit the number of copies of a genome allowed. Their known beneficial effect is to cause cells that go badly wrong -- potential cancers -- to self-destruct. Their obvious adverse effect is that they limit an individual organism's lifespan. As long as the benefit of impeding cancers exceeds the harm of limiting lifespan, telomeres are an evolutionary benefit.

In human evolution, they're timed to allow a person to reproduce in young adulthood, raise the offspring to a degree of independence through older adulthood, and to be stores of group memory in old age. (The development of writing and subsequent memory storage technologies reduces the evolutionary value of old people as stores of memories.) Once an individual has been around long enough to reproduce, raise the offspring, and convey their memories to younger generations, further lifespan becomes an evolutionary disadvantage, because the individual continues to consume group resources without a balancing benefit to the genetic group.

So, what would make a human population evolutionarily benefit from great longevity? That is the Vilani puzzle.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...ellular-aging/

Found an interesting study on aging medicine and mice.

[Flyndaran]

Interesting. It seems like another innate coded for weakness like with "normal" levels of myostatin. I wonder what purpose this may have evolved for.

I assumed we were reaching our limits to what we could learn from such short lived animals with regards to our aging. Eventually, we're going to have to look at larger longer lived animals like whales.

[jason taylor]

Are people trying to lo live longer obviously trying to make the human population benefit? Anagathics would have a high demand whether or not they benefited the population.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by SteveS

So, what would make a human population evolutionarily benefit from great longevity? That is the Vilani puzzle.

I'm not up on Vilani evolutionary history* but the one bit I recall is that life on Vland requires extensive processing to be edible for humans, leading to a very important "miller" class who were the experts on that processing.

Maybe there are very long term considerations that having oldsters around for 60 years instead of 30 help with. Like a shortcut on processing that has no immediate affect on health, but over many decades allows trace toxins to build up that damage fertility.

Or there are long ecological or weather cycles that need centenarians around to tell you about the last time this happened.

*Which book is the primary source for that?

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Are people trying to lo live longer obviously trying to make the human population benefit? Anagathics would have a high demand whether or not they benefited the population.

How common are anagathics in Traveller? Is it something only the superrich get, the rich get, or everyone not desperately poor gets?

One of the things that bugs me about the Traveller setting is that anagathics are something which would be in such high demand that, over centuries of time, someone is going to figure out how to synthesize them cheaply or plantation farm the plants or animals they come from.

Is it a MGF consideration to keep society comprehensible? Another aspect of the oddly slow rate of technology advancement (by our standards)?

(You could that make that the reason all these PCs are exploring the frontier in rattletrap starships. That is the only way to get ahead in life because no one ever dies or retires back home.)

Or is it just one of the dials GMs set to suit themselves?

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

...
How common are anagathics in Traveller? Is it something only the superrich get, the rich get, or everyone not desperately poor gets?
...

GURPS Traveller: Humaniti has notes in some of the writeups that particular minor races refuse anagathics on ethical or religious grounds. The implication is that anagathics are available in sufficient quantities that such decisions actually need to be made.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

I'm not up on Vilani evolutionary history* but the one bit I recall is that life on Vland requires extensive processing to be edible for humans, leading to a very important "miller" class who were the experts on that processing.

Maybe there are very long term considerations that having oldsters around for 60 years instead of 30 help with. Like a shortcut on processing that has no immediate affect on health, but over many decades allows trace toxins to build up that damage fertility.

Or there are long ecological or weather cycles that need centenarians around to tell you about the last time this happened.

*Which book is the primary source for that?


How common are anagathics in Traveller? Is it something only the superrich get, the rich get, or everyone not desperately poor gets?

One of the things that bugs me about the Traveller setting is that anagathics are something which would be in such high demand that, over centuries of time, someone is going to figure out how to synthesize them cheaply or plantation farm the plants or animals they come from.

Is it a MGF consideration to keep society comprehensible? Another aspect of the oddly slow rate of technology advancement (by our standards)?

(You could that make that the reason all these PCs are exploring the frontier in rattletrap starships. That is the only way to get ahead in life because no one ever dies or retires back home.)

Or is it just one of the dials GMs set to suit themselves?

What I wonder is whether or not it throws a kink into aristocratic systems not previously meant to handle it. You would for instance have to build a class of emiritus nobles and give them something to do to keep them from bothering their kiddies. Though that can be a feature rather then a bug; a cushy carrot decades in the future for retirees can be built into a dynasties internal rules.

If in fact they are so expensive that only the rich get them that would certainly cause class tension.

As for the slow technological rate I would say that it does not really have to be justified. Technological breakthroughs are exceptions rather then rules, and are not made as much by those who are already milking the system well in any case.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by robkelk

GURPS Traveller: Humaniti has notes in some of the writeups that particular minor races refuse anagathics on ethical or religious grounds. The implication is that anagathics are available in sufficient quantities that such decisions actually need to be made.

"Because of the rarity and demand for anagathics, they are quite expensive, and are often unavailable at any price." Book 2 (1981 ed.), p. 45.

At Cr200,000 per monthly dose (ibid.), in a setting where a mercenary private typically makes Cr300/month (Book 4, p. 19), this is more akin to deciding to forego heart transplants or private jets than something more commonplace.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by thrash

"Because of the rarity and demand for anagathics, they are quite expensive, and are often unavailable at any price." Book 2 (1981 ed.), p. 45.

At Cr200,000 per monthly dose (ibid.), in a setting where a mercenary private typically makes Cr300/month (Book 4, p. 19), this is more akin to deciding to forego heart transplants or private jets than something more commonplace.

Wow. Looks like there really would be class tensions here with this. I guess only the superrich get access to them?

[thrash]

Yes and no. Traveller economics (as written) have some weird inconsistencies. Cr200,000 per month is a lot of money for ordinary people, but it's the same order of magnitude as the mortgage payment on a free trader (Cr154,500/month). The setting doesn't treat ship owners as the multimillionaires they really are, however, and expects them to engage in petty crime and frivolous treasure hunting.

The best way to think of anagathics is probably as a credit suck -- something for successful adventurers to spend their loot on -- and a MacGuffin to drive adventures.