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A comment on Ageing studies in five animals suggests how to reverse decline. Parent comment

Re:Ageing studies in five animals suggests how to reverse de... by sologoub on Thursday April 13, 2023 @03:41PM (#35561084)
Slowing down aging would also slow down evolutionary selection. As others mentioned, it’s very unclear that evolutionary selection, which optimizes for reproduction, would benefit from longevity besides what humans already have - elders living past reproductive age, helping raise following generations. The actual living humans are much more incentivized to solve the longevity problem.
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Re:Ageing studies in five animals suggests how to reverse de... by rafark on Thursday April 13, 2023 @11:21PM (#35565165)
Why would you need evolutionary selection if we’d be in total control of our species? In theory we’d be able to adapt our bodies as needed, manually.

I get it, for example, in botany where genetic diversity is crucial for the survival of a plant species.

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Re:Ageing studies in five animals suggests how to reverse de... by mr_toad on Friday April 14, 2023 @03:08AM (#35566431)
Not total control.

We could engineer away things that might eventually in some future crisis prove to be a deciding factor in our survival. We could easily engineer away genes that might have gone on to outlive us as humans, and then end up outcompeted by them. Or we could engineer ourselves into different variants, and compete with each other.

In the end you can’t second guess evolution.

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