> Thus evolution tends to weed out immortal or very long-lived organisms. […] Evolution needs death to work. Hence death is built-in. The description of a pro

> Thus evolution tends to weed out immortal or very long-lived organisms. […] Evolution needs death to work. Hence death is built-in. The description of a process in the past that we refer to as evolution could be argued to have benefited from death. Mutation happens anyway. Offspring happens anyway. It does not require death. You could say that death is good because it frees resources for the younger generations—but there is a hidden assumption there: that at some point, there has been some preceding form that did have a vastly longer lifespan and it was less viable because of that. In reality, we have evolved from very, very short-lived organisms, and the trend has been upwards as benefits of those long-surviving members (wisdom, experience, etc. beyond merely bearing offspring) have given an advantage to the survival of species. … However, none of that is actually necessary for the evolution of a species in the sense of a mechanism that reacts or proacts to environmental changes—it can just as well be artificial.