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Sounds like the bad kind of group selectionism hypothesis to me. Death bestows no fitness benefit to the individual, and is therefore not evolutionarily selecte
by powrtoch 16y ago
Sounds like the bad kind of group selectionism hypothesis to me. Death bestows no fitness benefit to the individual, and is therefore not evolutionarily selected for. Organisms don't die because evolution says they should, they die because evolution doesn't care.
- skybrian 16y agoIt's more active than that. A trait that enhances reproduction and reduces longevity will be selected for, so whenever there are engineering tradeoffs between reproduction and longevity, evolution will select in favor of reproduction.
- loewenskind 16y agoOdd then that the most advanced species have the longest gestation periods and the simplest species have the shortest.
- eru 16y agoThat's because there's no advanced and simple in evolution.
- loewenskind 16y agoMy point was that the parents comment was completely unfounded. Did humans always have super fast gestation periods and then right before we gained intelligence it suddenly took the better part of a year and produced a child that isn't self sufficient for at least a decade? When the evolution subject comes up it always seems to inspire a bunch of would-be scifi writers to come out and explain "how it all works" based on, as near as I can tell, pure fantasy.
- eru 16y agoDepends on how you interpret `reproduction' in the comment you're talking about. Reproduction trumps everything in evolution. It's everything, actually. But for that to be true you can't define it as `number of offspring born', but in a more long-term sense. And e.g. Elephants seem to have more long-term off-spring by investing more in fewer births.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoOrganisms don't evolve, populations do. Death of individuals is beneficial for most populations. For one, it's easier to build something that lasts a while and reproduces than it is to build something that lasts indefinitely. For another, as mentioned, populations with significant generational turnover bounce back faster after catastrophic environmental or other stresses (because they reproduce faster, among other dynamic effects).
- rue 16y agoEvolution is not about optimization.