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Granted, sudden changes to the environment would kill off the less fit individuals. So I'll change my argument a bit: Suppose you've overcome infant mortality
by alejohausner 11y ago
Granted, sudden changes to the environment would kill off the less fit individuals. So I'll change my argument a bit:
Suppose you've overcome infant mortality, and have also solved the problem of adult mortality, so all subsequent people are immortal. Suppose moreover that young adults insist on having more than zero children (that's likely to continue, you'll agree). Now you've got a population that won't stop growing. Resources are finite, and there will be mass starvation.
What are your options in such a scenario? Should you kill off old people, kill off young people, or prevent all future babies?
Suppose you prevent all future babies. Then you end up with no more sex, no more genetic variability, and now the whole species might be susceptible to a sudden environmental change.
So my argument is that old people must die to make room for genetically-different young people. Without natural death, there will be less room for evolutionary adaptation.
- Symmetry 11y agoThe question you're asking there is one of human morality and politics rather than evolution or technological feasibility. I'll tell you what solution evolution "wants" to pick: population increase, starvation, and may the fittest win. Obviously that's not something you or I would want but it's why evolution doesn't have any problem with creatures living indefinitely.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- alejohausner 11y agoWell, I wasn't trying to make a moral argument, although I guess the way I phrased things might suggest otherwise. Heck, I just have this strong intuition that there's a countdown timer inside us, which will lead us inexorably to death. Maybe I can't argue convincingly for it, but I feel there have to be evolutionary reasons for why such a timer must exist, and the idea of making room for young organisms seemed like a fruitful way towards an explanation. So here's a last and final argument for such a countdown timer: there are no immortal species in nature. That's more of an "existence proof" than a "constructive proof", but it does strongly argue that there is a reason why death is necessary (without providing the reason, for I can't think of one that will persuade you).
- ItsDeathball 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Organisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality#Organis... There are actually a few immortal or extremely long-lived species in nature. Evolution still acts upon them because there are other selection forces at work, like not being eaten by predators.
- ewzimm 11y agoDepending on what climate change models you believe, we may already have passed the point at which we can prevent mass death due to a sufficiently large population overusing resources. The only realistic ways to deal with this problem is to get more room and resources by developing technology to send people to live on other planets or wrangle asteroids into orbit and build habitable environments on them. We're already well into this process, but the more people we have and the longer they can live, the more able we'll be to build on these technologies. Essentially, the problem is already here, and the solution is more people working on it, which preventing people from losing their ability to function would significantly contribute to.
- ap22213 11y agoI like the thought experiment. But, continuing further a little bit, if we had sufficient technology to gain practical immortality, couldn't we also engineer our species to not want to have children AND engineer enough genetic variability?