8 ms·
There is no evolutionary pressure to increase the life-span of individual organisms, past a certain point. To the contrary, there might be an evolutionary bene
by Expez 9y ago
There is no evolutionary pressure to increase the life-span of individual organisms, past a certain point.
To the contrary, there might be an evolutionary benefit in having your parents die off shortly after they've done all they can to increase your, and your siblings, chance of reproducing. The reason a timely death might increase the chance of the gene-line's survival is because the parent might otherwise consume scarce resources that are better invested in the offspring.
- Capt-RogerOver 9y agoYou are not considering the value that very old individuals might contribute (and in fact do so) in many sophisticated societies with language: teaching of younger individuals and also acquiring deep complex knowledge about life, which can be simply impossible to do if they had short lives (they would just not have time to learn any of it). In many times of our history the resources weren't that scarce to begin with. Primitive tribes don't need to dig for rare metals to make their Teslas, they could survive and thrive on very abundant resources.
- RobertoG 9y agoI don't know why you are down-voted. All that evolution "care about" are genes, no individuals. That doesn't mean that sometimes big life-span of individuals can't be a good strategy for some genes. About the down-voting thing: it seems to me that if you disagree with somebody, instead of down voting, the best strategy is to answer. If you don't care enough about the comment for answering maybe you shouldn't be down-voting. In my opinion, down-voting should be use for keeping the conversation civil and on the subject at hand, or things like fighting spam, not for expressing disagreement.
- vixen99 9y agoI'm with you but what are we against so many?
- philbarr 9y agoI agree with that, and it makes sense, but unfortunately pg (Paul Graham) said years back that you CAN use downvotes to disagree on HN and so now it's law or something.
- RobertoG 9y agoReally? I was not aware of that. Then, I suppose is me who is not following the rules. It doesn't look like a rule that makes the conversation more interesting, though.