5 ms·

> put the lungs into a constant state of readiness, allowing fast responses to almost any invading germ Succeeding at this would prove that our bodies have the

by zaknil 6mo ago

> put the lungs into a constant state of readiness, allowing fast responses to almost any invading germ Succeeding at this would prove that our bodies have the capacity to do that but evolution "tuned" the system differently. A corollary would be that this vaccination is probably a net negative for public health, even if nobody'd really know why.

MathMonkeyMan 6mo ago
Maybe not! Let's find out.
allreduce 6mo ago
I'm in my armchair thinking autoimmune diseases.
- OutOfHere 6mo ago
  Autoimmune diseases often are due to suboptimal vitamin D3 softgel intake (typically 4-5K IU) or suboptimal magnesium intake (300-400 mg). Bringing both to highly optimal levels should minimize the risk of development of new or worsening autoimmune diseases, although it won't revert any existing ones. Low dosing either one doesn't work in this context. Those who reject this even after reading the following 100% deserve to suffer, but worse yet, they make others suffer, often due to their conflict of interest as shills for pharma. The general commitment to truth is well below zero for those who stand to gain from its suppression. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-vitamin-d-deficiency-autoimmune-diseases.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-vitamin-d-deficiency-... https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-vitamin-d-supplements-omega-3s-decreased.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-vitamin-d-supplements... https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-magnesium-vitamin-d-ineffective.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-magnesium-vitamin-d-i...
  - ndsipa_pomu 6mo ago
    Whilst I agree that there's a lot of people with D3 deficiency (at least during winter), it's also worth being careful of taking too much D3. Typical signs of too much D/D3 are nausea, loss of appetite, more frequent urination, thirst, weakness, confusion or brain fog. It's worth being aware of that as the recommended limits for vitamin D are laughably too small, so it's common for people to take much larger amounts. I believe that 4k IU is considered a safe adult dosage.
- qsera 6mo ago
  But that just means more $$$ for the pharma, so not sure why that would bother them.
Izkata 6mo ago
Don't bat immune systems work like this? Except they end up in equilibrium instead of eliminating the viruses, which is why it's so dangerous to come into contact with them. I think almost everyone would avoid this if it meant you became deadly to your dog or cat.
- danielbln 6mo ago
  Next up: scientists are creating the everything vaccine for dogs and cats.
- latexr 6mo ago
  Fascinating. Looks like you’re right. However, disease and other stressors can disrupt that equilibrium. https://news.usask.ca/articles/research/2020/bat-super-immunity-may-explain-how-bats-carry-coronavirusesusask-study.php https://news.usask.ca/articles/research/2020/bat-super-immun... Which means bats are the Mr Burns of the animal kingdom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8
tialaramex 6mo ago
No. Evolution is not "tuning" it's just statistics at a huge scale. The high likelihood of back pain, the lack of important sensors, broken synthesis pathways, this is not a carefully tuned system, this is just blind luck plus statistics. Which means we can do better because we're purposeful.
- qsera 6mo ago
  >we can do better because we're purposeful. "Purposeful" does not help if we are mostly clueless.
  - lifeisgood99 6mo ago
    There's no wise guiding force behind evolution. It's all guesswork.
    - cassianoleal 6mo ago
      There's no guessing force behind evolution. It's just statistics at scale.
      - qsera 6mo ago
        Yea, so what is the point in this context?
    - qsera 6mo ago
      It might be guess work, but it has got a ruthless filter called natural selection and really long time to get here. So I don't see your point. It is really tuning for surviving within the constrains.
      - senordevnyc 6mo ago
        And the constraints are very different now…
xyzzy123 6mo ago
We're not really calorie constrained anymore and most humans live in much denser environments than they used to. You would expect rate of exposure, the rate of mutation / change and the rate at which new pathogens appear to be higher than in the past. Consequently, you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal for modern environments.
- qsera 6mo ago
  >We're not really calorie constrained anymore Why do you bring this up? It seems a weird hypothesis to bring up given that the parent comment did not suggest the possibility...
  - ndsipa_pomu 6mo ago
    Not the OP, but evolution will often select for less energy expenditure as most animals are calorie constrained or at least during certain times of the year (c.f. animals that hibernate to survive low calorie availability). It seems plausible to me that the immune system might be calorie intensive to be on full alert all the time. However, I suspect that having the immune system be more active will likely lead to other complications such as autoimmune disorders or even something as common as hayfever.
    - qsera 6mo ago
      An always full alert immune system won't have any lee way to address any onset of an infection, and also considering that pathogens also evolve to by pass the increased alertness, this will probably be catastrophic for the species. That is unless of course like bats, this was the result of evolution and natural selection. But bolting on like this vaccine do it, yea, going to be pretty bad.
- isodev 6mo ago
  > you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal I like the term ancestral defaults and indeed, we've come a long way since then and our biological and environmental reality is substantially different. There is this book series Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada which imagines a future where technology has advanced enough to allow one to tweak their genome as easily as we use apps on our phone today. It was a fascinating read.
Modified3019 6mo ago
In the agriculture world, application of harpin proteins (https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/registration/fs_PC-006477_31-Mar-02.pdf https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/regi...) can be used to help treat diseases by inducing a defense response. Mind you, it’s not a standalone treatment, but helps make applications of fungicides and the like far more effective. Pathogen defenses can roughly be thought of having a metabolic cost at the very least. Meaning if there’s no selection pressure (such as death) otherwise, then it often ends up being more optimal to not have a defense active until it’s needed. Problem is we have a global distribution system that is forcing organisms that have previously evolved into an equilibrium with the disease complex in their area, to encounter multiple novel threats in rapid succession. Like how aggressive species of downy and powdery mildews are now everywhere in the US. Giving plants a boost by inducing defenses early on helps them resist the onset of infection and helps treatment succeed.
gignico 6mo ago
Evolution is not a process toward better quality of life and life expectancy of individuals. As long as enough individuals can reach the age to procreate in their environment evolution is done. Evolution didn’t train our bodies to reject the diseases we already have the vaccines for neither, so your reasoning would apply to smallpox as well. And what about viruses appeared after Homo sapiens evolved (such as HIV)?
- mattmanser 6mo ago
  I don't think it works like that, from my recollection of the uni courses I did 20 years ago. Even a small advantage like 1% will quickly propagate in a population, because it's about advantage over 1,000s of generations. That this disease defence CAN be turned on, means some people would have at some point had a genetic mutation to turn it on. As the GP pointed out, therefore it must be a net negative from an evolutionary stand point. I also suspect it would be calorific consumption, as someone else said, so it might be ok. However, there are plausible other explanations. For example there are medical conditions that result from a too aggressive immune system and it could instead be reducing the chance of that occuring.
  - awakeasleep 6mo ago
    Thinking about your point- I bet we do not know if some people have it on or not. It feels like something that would have to be specifically investigated.
  - Escapado 6mo ago
    I would say you are both right in that if you have two competing variables (on-time for the defence vs calorie consumption), when the main causes of death before procreating were infectious disease and malnutrition before modern times, I would expect some equilibrium to be reached and we have not had that much time to evolve since caloric scarcity in the western world was a solved problem for large swaths of the population. If in the future we could trade a few hundred extra calories per day for a great immune system (without auto-immune side effects) we would have found a nice cheat code!
  - 6mo ago
mitchbob 6mo ago
But "false positives" could be very likely, resulting in chronic inflammation or, worse, the cytokine storms that made COVID deadly. I'm guessing there needs to be some slack in the system.
IAmBroom 6mo ago
Evolution and optimization are not at all the same. Evolutionary pressures cease when "good enough" is achieved. Able to reproduce, but succumbs to ailments quickly after? Eh, good enough.

by zaknil 6mo ago

MathMonkeyMan 6mo ago

Maybe not! Let's find out.

allreduce 6mo ago

I'm in my armchair thinking autoimmune diseases.

OutOfHere 6mo ago
Autoimmune diseases often are due to suboptimal vitamin D3 softgel intake (typically 4-5K IU) or suboptimal magnesium intake (300-400 mg). Bringing both to highly optimal levels should minimize the risk of development of new or worsening autoimmune diseases, although it won't revert any existing ones. Low dosing either one doesn't work in this context. Those who reject this even after reading the following 100% deserve to suffer, but worse yet, they make others suffer, often due to their conflict of interest as shills for pharma. The general commitment to truth is well below zero for those who stand to gain from its suppression. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-vitamin-d-deficiency-autoimmune-diseases.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-vitamin-d-deficiency-... https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-vitamin-d-supplements-omega-3s-decreased.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-vitamin-d-supplements... https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-magnesium-vitamin-d-ineffective.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-02-magnesium-vitamin-d-i...
- ndsipa_pomu 6mo ago
  Whilst I agree that there's a lot of people with D3 deficiency (at least during winter), it's also worth being careful of taking too much D3. Typical signs of too much D/D3 are nausea, loss of appetite, more frequent urination, thirst, weakness, confusion or brain fog. It's worth being aware of that as the recommended limits for vitamin D are laughably too small, so it's common for people to take much larger amounts. I believe that 4k IU is considered a safe adult dosage.
qsera 6mo ago
But that just means more $$$ for the pharma, so not sure why that would bother them.

Izkata 6mo ago

Don't bat immune systems work like this? Except they end up in equilibrium instead of eliminating the viruses, which is why it's so dangerous to come into contact with them. I think almost everyone would avoid this if it meant you became deadly to your dog or cat.

danielbln 6mo ago
Next up: scientists are creating the everything vaccine for dogs and cats.
latexr 6mo ago
Fascinating. Looks like you’re right. However, disease and other stressors can disrupt that equilibrium. https://news.usask.ca/articles/research/2020/bat-super-immunity-may-explain-how-bats-carry-coronavirusesusask-study.php https://news.usask.ca/articles/research/2020/bat-super-immun... Which means bats are the Mr Burns of the animal kingdom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0euMFAWF8

tialaramex 6mo ago

No. Evolution is not "tuning" it's just statistics at a huge scale. The high likelihood of back pain, the lack of important sensors, broken synthesis pathways, this is not a carefully tuned system, this is just blind luck plus statistics. Which means we can do better because we're purposeful.

qsera 6mo ago
>we can do better because we're purposeful. "Purposeful" does not help if we are mostly clueless.
- lifeisgood99 6mo ago
  There's no wise guiding force behind evolution. It's all guesswork.
  - cassianoleal 6mo ago
    There's no guessing force behind evolution. It's just statistics at scale.
    - qsera 6mo ago
      Yea, so what is the point in this context?
  - qsera 6mo ago
    It might be guess work, but it has got a ruthless filter called natural selection and really long time to get here. So I don't see your point. It is really tuning for surviving within the constrains.
    - senordevnyc 6mo ago
      And the constraints are very different now…

xyzzy123 6mo ago

We're not really calorie constrained anymore and most humans live in much denser environments than they used to. You would expect rate of exposure, the rate of mutation / change and the rate at which new pathogens appear to be higher than in the past. Consequently, you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal for modern environments.

qsera 6mo ago
>We're not really calorie constrained anymore Why do you bring this up? It seems a weird hypothesis to bring up given that the parent comment did not suggest the possibility...
- ndsipa_pomu 6mo ago
  Not the OP, but evolution will often select for less energy expenditure as most animals are calorie constrained or at least during certain times of the year (c.f. animals that hibernate to survive low calorie availability). It seems plausible to me that the immune system might be calorie intensive to be on full alert all the time. However, I suspect that having the immune system be more active will likely lead to other complications such as autoimmune disorders or even something as common as hayfever.
  - qsera 6mo ago
    An always full alert immune system won't have any lee way to address any onset of an infection, and also considering that pathogens also evolve to by pass the increased alertness, this will probably be catastrophic for the species. That is unless of course like bats, this was the result of evolution and natural selection. But bolting on like this vaccine do it, yea, going to be pretty bad.
isodev 6mo ago
> you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal I like the term ancestral defaults and indeed, we've come a long way since then and our biological and environmental reality is substantially different. There is this book series Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada which imagines a future where technology has advanced enough to allow one to tweak their genome as easily as we use apps on our phone today. It was a fascinating read.

Modified3019 6mo ago

In the agriculture world, application of harpin proteins (https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/registration/fs_PC-006477_31-Mar-02.pdf https://www3.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/reg_actions/regi...) can be used to help treat diseases by inducing a defense response. Mind you, it’s not a standalone treatment, but helps make applications of fungicides and the like far more effective. Pathogen defenses can roughly be thought of having a metabolic cost at the very least. Meaning if there’s no selection pressure (such as death) otherwise, then it often ends up being more optimal to not have a defense active until it’s needed. Problem is we have a global distribution system that is forcing organisms that have previously evolved into an equilibrium with the disease complex in their area, to encounter multiple novel threats in rapid succession. Like how aggressive species of downy and powdery mildews are now everywhere in the US. Giving plants a boost by inducing defenses early on helps them resist the onset of infection and helps treatment succeed.

gignico 6mo ago

Evolution is not a process toward better quality of life and life expectancy of individuals. As long as enough individuals can reach the age to procreate in their environment evolution is done. Evolution didn’t train our bodies to reject the diseases we already have the vaccines for neither, so your reasoning would apply to smallpox as well. And what about viruses appeared after Homo sapiens evolved (such as HIV)?

mattmanser 6mo ago
I don't think it works like that, from my recollection of the uni courses I did 20 years ago. Even a small advantage like 1% will quickly propagate in a population, because it's about advantage over 1,000s of generations. That this disease defence CAN be turned on, means some people would have at some point had a genetic mutation to turn it on. As the GP pointed out, therefore it must be a net negative from an evolutionary stand point. I also suspect it would be calorific consumption, as someone else said, so it might be ok. However, there are plausible other explanations. For example there are medical conditions that result from a too aggressive immune system and it could instead be reducing the chance of that occuring.
- awakeasleep 6mo ago
  Thinking about your point- I bet we do not know if some people have it on or not. It feels like something that would have to be specifically investigated.
- Escapado 6mo ago
  I would say you are both right in that if you have two competing variables (on-time for the defence vs calorie consumption), when the main causes of death before procreating were infectious disease and malnutrition before modern times, I would expect some equilibrium to be reached and we have not had that much time to evolve since caloric scarcity in the western world was a solved problem for large swaths of the population. If in the future we could trade a few hundred extra calories per day for a great immune system (without auto-immune side effects) we would have found a nice cheat code!
- 6mo ago

mitchbob 6mo ago

But "false positives" could be very likely, resulting in chronic inflammation or, worse, the cytokine storms that made COVID deadly. I'm guessing there needs to be some slack in the system.

IAmBroom 6mo ago

Evolution and optimization are not at all the same. Evolutionary pressures cease when "good enough" is achieved. Able to reproduce, but succumbs to ailments quickly after? Eh, good enough.