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Non-religious emergency responders/medicos of Lemmy, do you believe that something is 'missing' when looking at a corpse? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by Bluetreefrog to c/asklemmy

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Firefighter here. I was reflecting on a fatality I attended recently. My thoughts wandered to how a body looks like it is 'just matter' in a way that a living thing does not, even when sleeping. Previously I assumed this observation was just something to do with traumatic death, but this person seemed to have died peacefully and the same, 'absence' of something was obvious.

I'm not a religious person, but it made me wonder if there actually is something that 'leaves' when someone dies (beyond the obvious breathing, pulse etc).

I'm not looking for a 'my holy book says', kind of discussion here, but rather a reflection on the direct, lived experiences of people who see death regularly.

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[–] triptrapper 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm not an expert on this at all, but my understanding is that "evolutionary advantage" is a misconception. Mutations don't have a goal, and they don't always provide an advantage. Hopefully someone smarter than me can explain better.

Edit: spelling

[–] Eylrid 1 points 1 year ago

Evolution throws spaghetti at the wall and anything that sticks it keeps. Usually stuff sticks because it's useful in some way, but some stuff sticks just because of random chance.

For example if a few individuals colonize a new location, then whatever genes those founders have will be prevalent in the new population. The classic example is the deaf people on Martha's Vineyard. Some of the original settlers of the island were deaf and passed that down to their descendants.

The smaller a population is the more it's affected by random genetic drift. (It's easier for a gene to randomly spread to an entire population if the population is small.) The larger it is the more it's affected by natural selection.