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Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by rubenbe on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @08:21AM (#16429217)
Nature has not been able to solve the problem of ageing because natural selection does not work at later age. The organism has already successfully procreated, so there is no survival of the fittest.
Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by andrewla on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @09:03AM (#16429470)
That's if you take a very narrow view of individual selection. A group of organisms collectively may have favorable selection characteristics compared to another group that dies younger, even if the death is post-reproductive age.

Bees, for example, have evolved to have very strong but non-reproducing organisms in a community. There's still selection pressure on a hive to produce stronger and longer lived workers.

As I understand it, the general mechanism involved here is usually called kin selection, and has been discussed as far back as Darwin, both as a potential problem with the theory and as a fatal defect in the Lamarckian view.

Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by gerbilly on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @09:30AM (#16429653)
>Nature has not been able to solve the problem of ageing

Nature does not have an ageing problem.

Aging and dying is a necessary condition for life to even exist.

It's only humans who have a problem with it.

Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by AnIdiotOnTheNet on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @09:50AM (#16429809)
Only humans who have a very narrow conception of self. People sacrifice themselves for family, communities, nations, and ideologies all the time.
Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by kabouseng on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @08:30AM (#16429280)
Not really, if you stay young forever you can procreate forever and "out" procreate the rest of your species that still ages.
Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by jamesrcole on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @08:48AM (#16429379)
But they're not really your competition. Their offspring, and their offspring, and so on, are. And "designs" that don't have to put resources into longer life can use them for better propagating genes.
Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by a3n on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @09:52AM (#16429819)
Might older organisms' collective life experience contribute to the success of younger organisms?

In other words, the organism's procreation could be more successful if the olds contribute to the youngs survival to reproductive age.

In other other words, you haven't really reproduced if your offspring don't reproduce.

Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by fwdpropaganda on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @08:29AM (#16429273)
Not true. Procreation is not binary. More is better (evolutionarily speaking), so there's no reason for "once you have one offspring you're evolutionarily dead." No, you could have more.
Re:Physics Makes Aging Inevitable, Not Biology (2016) by XorNot on Wednesday February 21, 2018 @08:56AM (#16429421)
On some level humans are the pinacle of the solution to survivability. We live in every biome on the planet, and are actively researching giving ourselves immortality.

We're so successful that the best strategy for a lot of other animals has been to be food or company. Cows are doing pretty well because of us.