For a proscriptive language, you are right. For a descriptive language, like English, you are wrong. The collective wrong definition is the correct one, and the two hold-outs to the "pure" or "original" definition are wrong. That's how language works.

Then I saw nobody post anything in the chain that indicated there were any such people. People who explain the law, as enforced, to you aren't "defending" it or asserting they think it's ok.

You should learn to make such distinctions, or you'll come off looking like the moron.

Unless they enjoy being hypocrites

It certainly seems they do. At least they are rarely punished for it such that the penalty is not a dis-incentive.

The research seems to suggest that the cells intrinsic ability to mutate developed early on in the evolution of life, certainly long before sexual reproduction.

I used reproduction as a more extreme case to illustrate the effects and didn't mean to imply it was the primary issue. The trade-offs affect almost all of life, just in different weights.

Since society wouldn't allow it to happen to humans, they'd transplant human minds into pigs, goats, etc.

"I'm hungry. Since there's nothin' in the fridge, I'm goin' out back to graze."

I can see such in reproduction-related cells, but not regular body cells because those are not passed on.

More likely cancer is simply the result of the trade-offs between efficiency versus duration. In a competitive world efficiency guarantees genetic success more than life duration. After all, the alpha male is in almost a winner-take-all role. To be the alpha male you have to have a high metabolism and an efficient metabolism (get big without having to find extra food).

This means that entropy (errors in cell division) builds up faster. There are generally two solutions to entropy: slower metabolism or error correcting mechanisms. Being slower means you'll never be able to be the alpha male, and error-correcting means you are less efficient during your prime because such mechanisms consume resources. (Some bacteria have such.)

Note how female mammals typically have lower metabolism and live longer. This is because they are not in the winner-take-all position of males.

Only because of the "devil you know" argument. It's similar to QWERTY: we can't convert until everybody else does first.

"The best way to compete with a 3rd-world country is to become one".

Nobody has a perfect crystal ball. Languages die off and you should expect them to. COBOL would be the last language I would've expected to last such a long time, but it somehow did; it's almost like Latin: people use it because it's already dead such that there are no surprises in it. There are stupid things about almost every common current language that could doom them. Plus, fads come and go.

No career is easy, especially when you are green. I tell them to do what they love, do it well, but look around and be flexible so that you have options.

Just start a company that charges $0.01 for each OSS title.

PS. Please Diecrosoft

We still use Neanderthal bones...to pound Windows 8.1.