Into the Wardrobe

Here is a link to an article from the Science Daily site:

The last section of the article is the part I'm interested in as far as discussion here on this forum, but read the whole article of course for context.

Thoughts? (my immediate thoughts were of the striking similarity to some of the conversations at Belbury and by the NICE people.)

--Stanley

Immortality--in this case, somehow preserving our minds and consciousness indefinitely in this world--sounds good on the surface. But such possibilities always make me smile wryly as I remember reading Interview With A Vampire for the first time. Anne Rice made a convincing argument that such immortality would be sheer, bloody hell.

My impression reading the article is I don't think its conclusions necessarily follow from its logic.

It may well be in physical evolutionary terms individuals don't matter, only the reproduction of genes. But he hasn't proved that there is an evolutionary advantage to higher mortality of the individuals after they reproduce, all he could prove is that there isn't necessarily an evolutionary advantage for long lived individuals after reproduction. And there is a statistical fact that goes against this idea. Men are able to reproduce for longer in their lives than women can. So if there was a big evolutionary advantage to maintaining life up through reproduction and then ending it after reproduction ceased, you would expect women to have shorter lifespans than men. But this isn't the case, the opposite is the case.