The Centrality of Variability: How society shapes patterns of aging

Increasing variability is a hallmark of aging populations. Although demographic trends are often described in terms of average experiences, in this paper we argue that variability in the health experiences of older men and women is key to understanding aging. The variations in outcomes among older people are not merely nuisances obscuring the more salient averages and trends. The deviations from the mean are a central part of the story: the patterning of these variations reveals factors that influence health for everyone and indicates what sort of advances in healthy aging might be possible under optimal circumstances.Aging, demography

On assisted suicide

What would be the moral implications of the capacity for suicide in nonhuman animals? Humans can be helped to end their lives if they no longer find them bearable. Should captive animals not be given the same possibility

The object of grief

King’s new book is a wonderful collection of diverse anecdotes illustrating the variety of animal practices that are convincing illustrations of grief. Those who want scientific arguments for that conclusion should, however, read elsewhere

Thinking Things Through

A Photcopy of Thinking Things Through, Princeton Univeresity Press, 198

The wrong equations: a reply to Gildenhuys

Glymour (2006) claims that classical population genetic models can reliably predict short and medium run population dynamics only given information about future fitnesses those models cannot themselves predict, and that in consequence the causal, ecological models which can predict future fitnesses afford a more foundational description of natural selection than do population genetic models. This paper defends the first claim from objections offered by Gildenhuys (2011)