Re: SOCIOLOGY: On Betting on Aging

From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Sat Mar 17 2001 - 11:49:30 MST


On Thursday, March 15, 2001 10:55 PM Chris Rasch crasch@openknowledge.org

wrote:

quoting Douglas J. Wagenaar Ph.D.

> Aging and limited life spans1 are nature's way of ensuring steady

> rates of mutation and varied DNA

> combinations in order for life forms to advance through evolution. If

> life forms did not die, there

> would be less of an opportunity for favorable mutations to

> promulgate.

Daniel Ust has knocked this for different reasons. I would point
out that nature is not working towards any kind of global optimum
and does everything wastefully. Anyway, if you had organisms that
could never die, they'd be *way* better than anything here!
It's not clear what's a "favorable" mutation for something
already essentially perfect.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:06:27 MST