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A large life-span would starve the younger generations of resources. And the younger generations are probably more crucial to the survival of the gene pool, tha

by hrjet 12y ago

A large life-span would starve the younger generations of resources. And the younger generations are probably more crucial to the survival of the gene pool, than the older generations for various reasons. One reason is that younger generations might be better adapted to the environment because of mutations. Another reason could be that the brains and bodies of older generations will eventually get saturated / tired. Keeping them alive is inefficient for the species.

VLM 12y ago
"Keeping them alive is inefficient for the species." A lot of that is based on the idea of a nuclear American 1950s family, mom dad and 2.5 kids in a house and grannie lives in Florida 1000 miles away. More likely, if I lived for 1000 years I'd spend a lot of time ensuring the economic success of my descendants by teaching programming, electronics, maybe math unless a better mathematician comes along. If this situation existed in the past, I have a GGGGG-uncle (cousin?) who was a Harvard literature prof in the early 1800s and I'm sure he would have taken a decade out of his semi-eternal life to educate me on English lit and related topics. I have some GGGG-Uncles who were in the civil war and fought in Tennessee, surely their personal experiences would have more impact than merely reading a book. This has certain economic and evolutionary effects, such that a "migrant farm harvesting laborer" not allowed to ever benefit from his own labor, would not be able to help his GGGG-grandkids in any obvious way. So some kids are going to grow up with 16 hours a day of continuous one on one academic tutoring from a team of perhaps a dozen PHD ancestors, while other kids are going to grow up basically playing video games, or at best, watching youtube videos. Its an obvious sci-fi topic to explore the nature vs nurture question. A permanent overclass would likely develop based solely on ancestry (indirectly "nature" although in practice "nurture") This is aside from obvious social interaction. Locally I know a lot of the people in my field, and a descendent going into my line of work could be financially (aka reproductively) rewarded by hanging out with me and meeting people. If I do nothing for a descendent other than socially introduce them to local hiring managers, that's still genetically a net win. Everyone else will be doing the same thing so I will have to keep up.

by hrjet 12y ago

VLM 12y ago

"Keeping them alive is inefficient for the species." A lot of that is based on the idea of a nuclear American 1950s family, mom dad and 2.5 kids in a house and grannie lives in Florida 1000 miles away. More likely, if I lived for 1000 years I'd spend a lot of time ensuring the economic success of my descendants by teaching programming, electronics, maybe math unless a better mathematician comes along. If this situation existed in the past, I have a GGGGG-uncle (cousin?) who was a Harvard literature prof in the early 1800s and I'm sure he would have taken a decade out of his semi-eternal life to educate me on English lit and related topics. I have some GGGG-Uncles who were in the civil war and fought in Tennessee, surely their personal experiences would have more impact than merely reading a book. This has certain economic and evolutionary effects, such that a "migrant farm harvesting laborer" not allowed to ever benefit from his own labor, would not be able to help his GGGG-grandkids in any obvious way. So some kids are going to grow up with 16 hours a day of continuous one on one academic tutoring from a team of perhaps a dozen PHD ancestors, while other kids are going to grow up basically playing video games, or at best, watching youtube videos. Its an obvious sci-fi topic to explore the nature vs nurture question. A permanent overclass would likely develop based solely on ancestry (indirectly "nature" although in practice "nurture") This is aside from obvious social interaction. Locally I know a lot of the people in my field, and a descendent going into my line of work could be financially (aka reproductively) rewarded by hanging out with me and meeting people. If I do nothing for a descendent other than socially introduce them to local hiring managers, that's still genetically a net win. Everyone else will be doing the same thing so I will have to keep up.