So I see that simpler organisms seem to have a form of biological immortality.
What evolutionary benefit does aging give organisms and why is this phenomenon global in most complex organisms?
Why did we evolve to age?
Is senescence a good thing?
boredom and ability to adapt while under a limited amount of ressources. If our ancestor from a long time ago hadn't died, there would be a lot more people.
>>8106678
the reason for aging is death from external causes .if an organism usually survives X years against predation\other shit its evolutionary pressured into being fertile within that lifespan getting to it as early and for as long as possible .
if an individual survives much longer then that usual lifespan hes in uncharted territory , the 'evolutionary shadow'. basically your ancestors didnt live this long so no natural selection was made against fuckups which occur once someone reaches this age .
this is similar to the reason older parents produce shittier kids , they had less ancestors who 'beta tested' reproduction at that age , so modern practices like having kids later in life increase chances of all sorts of fuckups .
>>8106809
so basically you can think of your genes as including all the evolutionary pressures your ancestors experienced up to the point they reproduced .
a perfect immortal man has no evolutionary advantage over a man that falls apart and dies the moment he turns 20 if both of them reproduce at 19.
this also presents a way to extend human lifespan : have kids later in life . sure you'll have shittier kids buy by having longer selection you produce people that live longer .
>>8106678
Of course it's a good thing. Even with predation in earlier mammals, populations would grow out of control, collapsing under their own size. Same for humans. You might want immortality for yourself, hell, I know I do, but the world has changed for the better because new generations are different from previous ones. Our ideas and societies evolve with those new generations.
>>8106678
It's so when our true masters arise, we won't be as much of a threat to them.
ALL HAIL THE IMMORTAL JELLYFISH
>>8106809
The issue of age related illness is a matter of bioengineering, and better treatments. Social-Darwinian evolution is too slow and cruel. Also, it’s not simply a matter of taking the defective mutations out of the gene pool; it would be about waiting for brand new mutations to occur. Mutations that would replace the genes that allow for age related illness.
There won’t be a project that artificially selects and waits for hundreds of millions of years for healthy mutations that will replace these age related illnesses—and that also stops young people from breeding. No one will sponsor (or allow) such a costly and slow project.
>>8107229
can you elaborate?
>>8107358
> No one will sponsor (or allow) such a costly and slow project.
this 'project' is going on right now . at least if you look at the population of developing countries .
and there's nothing slow or cruel about it , its going as fast as any evolutionary pressure can go in humans .
>>8107229
I back it with all my strenght
>>8106678
Immortality would stall the evolution. You need many iterations to evolve. Short lifespan means the old generation gives their place to the new, more adapted one and does not breed forever with the same genes..
Individual organism is just a vessel of genes. It becomes useless after it breeds.
The maintenance required to stave off death through decay of one particular feature costs too much in terms of resources and effectiveness loss through design changes and the actual maintenance itself, to be worth the small boost to the quality and quantity of offspring that it may cause. Or the maintenance system requires intermediary steps which are less beneficial.
Teeth are a simple example: pathways for regrowing them would compromise their mammalian function of tearing living flesh from bone or grinding down tough materials like plants, so instead many mammals just starve to death after they lose their teeth to an infection or physical wear and tear.
>>8107358
I`m talking about a eugenics program that exclusively selects the fittest of the elderly to breed. The cruelty in that is that nobody else, other than that selected few, would be allowed to breed; The slow part of it is waiting for new mutations (we`re talking about millions of years). This program does not exist. Our governments do not fund eugenics programs. Whoever is able to breed breeds.
>>8110315
nobody is talking about eugenics .
what i was saying with >>8106833
is that within humans today there exist populations which breed earlier and which breed later .IF (and how big of an IF this is cannot be overstated) this trend continues for some reason the selection pressures on these populations will be very different and will produce people which are more adapted to last longer in the late breeding population .
as for the programs and governments you speak of they are insignificant as is all current human culture\ethnicities\nations\whatever on this time scale .
also the timescale may be much faster then millions of years , millions of years is the timescale of completely new traits emerging from regular selection+mutation .
if selective pressured are strong and the genes\epigenetic factors for long lasting humans already exist within the population you can expect big changes within tens of generations , or even less for extreme selective pressure .
>>8107229
He's right
