Non-technical language in longevity
Technical terms are for internal use among biogerontologists.
Non-technical vocabulary is acceptable for communication with journalists but not for internal use.
Compare terms like “health” and “vital signs” in medicine. There’s person’s health, population health, organ health, etc. Vital signs are a set of measurements (temperature, pulse rate, respiraton rate, blood pressure) that a population or an organ can’t have.
The distinguishing feature of non-technical language is its multi-level use: terms is used for processes at different levels of biological organization.
Another mistake it’s guarding against is protecting against fitness sign flips across levels of selections. For example, a human cell with activated TERT could be described as “immortal” and its cell line will persist indefinitely, but for a human organism TERT activation is often negative - it strips away one guardrail against tumor growth. The same intervention flips sign from positive to negative when viewed from a cell level vs. organism level.
In major evolutionary transitions framework, levels of selection can be defined by de-darwinisation thresholds. When a level has achieved de-darwinization, if it has anti-cheater adaptations that suppress the conflict within agents on the lower level in favor of greater fitness on the higher level.
| Level | Agents | Cheaters | Cheater suppression mechanisms |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Genetic | Genes | Selfish genetic elements, viruses | Epigenetic silencing, RNA interference, fair meiosis |
| 2. Cellular | Cells | Neoplasms | Unicellular bottleneck, Weismann’s barrier, immune surveillance, cell extrusion (EDAC), programmed cell death |
| 3. Organismal | Organisms, zooids | Defectors, free-riders, worker reproducers | Worker policing, kin recognition, reciprocity, guilt, shame, suicide |
| 4. Superorganismal | Colonies |