Josh Mitteldorf

Josh Mitteldorf studies evolutionary theory of aging using computer simulations. The surprising fact that our bodies are genetically programmed to age and to die offers an enormous opportunity for medical intervention. It may be that therapies to slow the progress of aging need not repair or regenerate anything, but only need to interfere with an existing program of self-destruction. Mitteldorf has taught a weekly yoga class for thirty years. He is an advocate for vigorous self care, including exercise, meditation and caloric restriction. After earning a PhD in astrophysicist, Mitteldorf moved to evolutionary biology as a primary field in 1996. He has taught at Harvard, Berkeley, Bryn Mawr, LaSalle and Temple University. He is presently affiliated with MIT as a visiting scholar. In private life, Mitteldorf is an advocate for election integrity as well as public health. He is an avid amateur musician, playing piano in chamber groups, French horn in community orchestras. His two daughters are among the first children adopted from China in the mid-1980s. Much to the surprise of evolutionary biologists, genetic experiments indicate that aging has been selected as an adaptation for its own sake. This poses a conundrum: the impact of aging on individual fitness is wholly negative, so aging must be regarded as a kind of evolutionary altruism. Unlike other forms of evolutionary altruism, aging offers benefits to the community that are weak, and not well focussed on near kin of the altruist. This makes the mechanism challenging to understand and to model. more at http://mathforum.org/~josh

The big picture

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This is how the world works.  Quantum physics can compute detailed probabilities for every microscopic event.  But half the information is missing,  and QM regards it as random. Nothing could be further from the truth.. What QM regards as random is actually governed by global mind including your mind and my mind and Jesus and … Read more

How Real Science became Fake News

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Thirty years ago, the man who taught me quantum mechanics at Harvard wrote that the suppression of debate will be the “death of science”. Perhaps he saw the shape of things to come. Today, science is being perverted for political ends to an unprecedented extent. To look for an appropriate analogy, we would have to … Read more

Biology is not physics

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You’ve found the spark that makes the sun burn bright and tracked the orbits of the distant stars. You’ve harnessed energy for planes and cars— success convinces you you’ve got it right. You think the rule of physics must be strict, yet only in the aggregate do maths apply to living things. Their single paths … Read more

Trust me. I’m a medical researcher.

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I recently wrote an April Fool piece about an imaginary drug company that invested a billion dollars in a COVID vaccine, but when they ran it through Phase 3 clinical trials it fell just short of statistical significance for effectiveness. “Shucks! Back to the drawing board.” They report the results exactly as the occurred and … Read more

Uncommon Science

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The scientific method is built on two pillars: First, the assumption of a common objective reality that separate observers can agree on. Second, the understanding of complex phenomena by isolating simple subsystems for experimental study. In a quantum world, (first) it is provably impossible to separate observer from observed. There is no such thing as … Read more