It was a selected example of the products of geriontology with regards to the behaviors of longevity in humans as they approach senescence. It was, therefore, a direct rebuttal of your hypothetical.
I don’t see how they rebut the hypothetical in question that you were responding to.
I said:
There’s also a general evolutionary issue at work here: If a species has a maximal lifespan of around L, then if there are any ways to get more reproductive fitness at a younger age that create problems sometime around or after L. So, one should expect not just one thing to go wrong as a species ages, but lots of things to go wrong. In fact, this is close to what one sees. If this problem is severe enough, it is possible that there are diseases which will show up in the very elderly that we haven’t even noticed yet because the population of such people is just too small.
You then said:
That’s a common field of topic for geriatrics-study in general. Topically reproductive fitness tends to drop to zero sometime before the age of sixty in humans. Yet, when health impediments and nutrition are eliminated as problems (1st-world-countries), women still tend to live a few years longer than men. Most conjecture on this has it that women are ‘more useful’ than men evolutionarily even at older ages: grandmas can care for the little ’uns which lets mom make the food. Etc., etc..
I don’t see how this response makes sense. It would be a response if I had been talking about evolution having certain effects post the age of reproduction. But in my comment I was talking about probable maximal age. These are not the same thing. Indeed, you seem to be just trying to argue that they aren’t. That doesn’t address my statement at all.
It would be a response if I had been talking about evolution having certain effects post the age of reproduction. But in my comment I was talking about probable maximal age.
Evolution has effects past the age of reproduction. Such as determining the probable maximal age of the organism. If there is group fitness to be contributed by an individual organism to the whole even without reproduction involved, then that individual organism’s survival is selected for—even though it itself reproducing isn’t. (This is an ancillary to kin-selection.) Average maximal lifespan of an organism is something that is determined genetically—and thus is a product of evolutionary history and ‘strategy’.
My point, however, wasn’t about evolution in this context—rather, it was about individual fitness metrics for maximal age of the human organism and, more specifically, the efforts of geriontology to uncover that data.
So yes, my statement directly addresses yours. I was specifically pointing out that the thing you were raising as a question is a field that is already well studied.
Your entire first paragraph is trivially true and doesn’t address the point at all. We’re in complete agreement that evolution can impact lifespans well beyond the reproductive age. I think that’s old enough that it is discussed at one point by Darwin although I don’t have the citation off the top of my head.
. I was specifically pointing out that the thing you were raising as a question is a field that is already well studied.
Ah, I see. now. So your point is simply that we know about this issue and that there’s been a lot of study related to it. I don’t see anywhere that would disagree with that claim. I don’t think I said anywhere in my remark anything indicating that the point about evolution pushing problems past the maximal age was at all obscure or original to me. Simply saying that it is a studied issue isn’t sufficient. You need something of the form “this is studied and has been found to be wrong”. But that’s not the case. And it is precisely not the case because there aren’t even now that many really old people. So the essential problem remains: for all we know there could be diseases that show up after around age 100 or older and we haven’t noticed them yet because the sample sizes are small. Moreover, basic evolutionary theory should give us a high prior for such diseases existing because evolution has no reason not make trade offs that benefit at some point before the approximate maximal age in the wild and would cause problems further down the line.
I don’t see how they rebut the hypothetical in question that you were responding to.
I said:
You then said:
I don’t see how this response makes sense. It would be a response if I had been talking about evolution having certain effects post the age of reproduction. But in my comment I was talking about probable maximal age. These are not the same thing. Indeed, you seem to be just trying to argue that they aren’t. That doesn’t address my statement at all.
Evolution has effects past the age of reproduction. Such as determining the probable maximal age of the organism. If there is group fitness to be contributed by an individual organism to the whole even without reproduction involved, then that individual organism’s survival is selected for—even though it itself reproducing isn’t. (This is an ancillary to kin-selection.) Average maximal lifespan of an organism is something that is determined genetically—and thus is a product of evolutionary history and ‘strategy’.
My point, however, wasn’t about evolution in this context—rather, it was about individual fitness metrics for maximal age of the human organism and, more specifically, the efforts of geriontology to uncover that data.
So yes, my statement directly addresses yours. I was specifically pointing out that the thing you were raising as a question is a field that is already well studied.
Your entire first paragraph is trivially true and doesn’t address the point at all. We’re in complete agreement that evolution can impact lifespans well beyond the reproductive age. I think that’s old enough that it is discussed at one point by Darwin although I don’t have the citation off the top of my head.
Ah, I see. now. So your point is simply that we know about this issue and that there’s been a lot of study related to it. I don’t see anywhere that would disagree with that claim. I don’t think I said anywhere in my remark anything indicating that the point about evolution pushing problems past the maximal age was at all obscure or original to me. Simply saying that it is a studied issue isn’t sufficient. You need something of the form “this is studied and has been found to be wrong”. But that’s not the case. And it is precisely not the case because there aren’t even now that many really old people. So the essential problem remains: for all we know there could be diseases that show up after around age 100 or older and we haven’t noticed them yet because the sample sizes are small. Moreover, basic evolutionary theory should give us a high prior for such diseases existing because evolution has no reason not make trade offs that benefit at some point before the approximate maximal age in the wild and would cause problems further down the line.