Yup. I'm of the opinion that aging just is a "feature" of evolution. A population with aging has a significant fitness advantage over a population without aging so its not surprising that everything ages (the next generation is almost always more fit than the previous gen so the faster a population transitions to the next gen the more fit it is). But if aging just is a trait rather than some inevitable result of entropy, it leads one to be optimistic for reversing aging at least in principle.
Aging as a feature doesn't make sense to me. It seems more likely to me that immortality simply hasn't been 'cracked' yet, intelligence that could create immortality would seem more likely to evolve first than immortality itself.
You have to get so many things just right for immortality to 'work', i.e. to actually be useful in a survival context. It does no good for creatures to not age if they lose a significant amount of viability.
But real immortality in the complete reversal of aging, I think would be an immense advantage. Instead of having to teach your young over a very short period of time the tricks they need to be viable adults, creatures could super-specialize. One creature could supply all the food needed for a huge colony. They'd just get better and better at exploiting their niche and other creatures could find other niches.
I think if intelligence hadn't 'gotten there first', immortal creatures would be running the show.
Against a really clever predator, perhaps with wings? Against accident and illness? Against a change in circumstance such that those overspecialized strategies no longer work sufficiently well or at all?
Trained up by whom? All that's left of the colony's institutional knowledge on the subject of provisioning is an owl pellet's worth of tiny bones and hair.
With immortality, institutional knowledge doesn't have to go away. Everybody can know everything, and the specialist that has all the experience dies, then a new one can just be selected, and the whole colony can pick up the slack until the new specialist is experienced enough to do it all himself.
Your experience could serve as limitation to your view of the world. Younger ones without the baggage of experience, has greater chance of discovering new approaches. Due to this, population with changing generations, might be more intelligent than one without these clean slates.
Well the issue is whether a gene survives. Sometimes the individual is a good proxy for this, sometimes the population. Sometimes you just gotta consider the dynamics of a gene in a sea of other genes.
In the case of a supposed aging gene, consider that genes themselves preferentially want to exist in more fit organisms. If a gene could somehow manage this (i.e. be embodied with more fit genes), it will itself spread. But this is exactly what an aging gene does! Consider how an advantageous gene spreads through a population. This spread is a function of the number of generations that have passed. So a gene that could speed up the passing of generations will increase its own likelihood of existing in more fit organisms (increasing its own fitness), as advantageous genes within the population spread faster and are more frequently "paired up" with the aging gene. But the subpopulation with the aging gene is more fit than the subpopulation without it since the time for advantageous genes to spread is decreased, and so the aging population overtakes its counterpart.
I don't think this is correct. I've never heard of any evidence for pro-aging genes, but I have read molecular biology rebuttals against this theory (Stephen Jay Gould or perhaps textbook sources, though unfortunately I can't recall well enough to cite them).
You don't need extra genes or information to prefer organisms that age out of reproductive fitness. If advanced age during reproduction confers lower fitness, then the offspring are automatically less fit. While you could argue that there would be a competition for resources amongst the young offspring, this isn't much different than other scenarios that produce less fit or disabled offspring.
True, you don't need extra information to prefer organisms that age out of reproductive fitness, but you might need extra information to ensure a timely death. It remains to be seen whether aging is just due to entropy or that regenerative processes are programmed to stop after a certain amount of time. Programmed death confers very specific fitness advantage to one's offspring as you're no longer competing with them for resources.
The sharing of genes within a population creates a nice analogy between the population and a single organism. Programmed death for members of an organism is a standard feature of evolution. It's not implausible that such a feature exists at the level of population as well.
In many cases, it might matter much more. There are many species of animals that reproduce mostly within their own group. Group selection effects are much more pronounced in these species.
What do you mean? Sure there isn't a goal, but it's also true that some things tend to lead more success for a species and thus lead to the species with those traits dominating. Thus it's good from an evolutionary standpoint. Am I missing something?
It might seem that way, but there is actually a large caloric penalty to longer active lifespans. Birds live longer than mice because they have fewer predators but also because birds spend a lot of energy ensuring a longer lifespan. From an evolutionary perspective very old means very well adapted, so it is a useful benchmark.
Ok, I don't see how "one species dies and another lives" represents anything that is 'good'. It's just one way things could be. They could be other ways, and evolution doesn't show any preference for any of them.
What you're missing is that 'good' is defined with respect to a goal. From an evolutionary standpoint (whatever that really is), the complete extinction of all life is just one possible way things could be and it is as good as any other way things could be. From a human perspective, this is awful. As is any future where humans don't exist.
I think you've fundamentally misunderstood m3ta's comment.
You seem to have understood it as: "A species dying off very easily is sometimes a good thing for evolution." In response to this, your response is justified.
When in fact, what m3ta is saying is: "Members of a species dying very easily is sometimes an evolutionary advantage for that species." In response to this, your response is a non-sequitur.
