I’m not sure that I know enough about the biology of aging to say much about that yet. Can you explain what you’re thinking? In particular, which sub-entities are living longer than which others in the context of aging? Or am I misunderstanding you?
There are two aspects of aging that I am thinking of:
Intra-body aging. Some parts of the body might “want to” (in your sense) live longer than others because they benefit from it more than others (I’m thinking of genes that optimize fast vs. slow strategies as discussed by Scott Alexander here; my take here).
Individuals in a society might benefit more from living longer than others, e.g., members of the elite vs. people sent to war.
I’m not interesting (or knowledgable) in the biology of aging too much, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on the mechanisms according to your framework.
Hmm. It’s an interesting point. The elite certainly seem like a possible example. In an egalitarian society everyone is equally likely to be put in danger (death is the ultimate mutation!), but with power hierarchies such as between elites and everyone else, the more powerful can afford to change less, to be safer and live longer, while pushing the risks onto everyone else.
Cancer is kind of like that too. Maybe senescent cells? I need to research the aging stuff in order to have an opinion here. Really this seems like a very general description of what happens when parts of a system start placing themselves above the rest.
I’m not sure that I know enough about the biology of aging to say much about that yet. Can you explain what you’re thinking? In particular, which sub-entities are living longer than which others in the context of aging? Or am I misunderstanding you?
There are two aspects of aging that I am thinking of:
Intra-body aging. Some parts of the body might “want to” (in your sense) live longer than others because they benefit from it more than others (I’m thinking of genes that optimize fast vs. slow strategies as discussed by Scott Alexander here; my take here).
Individuals in a society might benefit more from living longer than others, e.g., members of the elite vs. people sent to war.
I’m not interesting (or knowledgable) in the biology of aging too much, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on the mechanisms according to your framework.
Hmm. It’s an interesting point. The elite certainly seem like a possible example. In an egalitarian society everyone is equally likely to be put in danger (death is the ultimate mutation!), but with power hierarchies such as between elites and everyone else, the more powerful can afford to change less, to be safer and live longer, while pushing the risks onto everyone else.
Cancer is kind of like that too. Maybe senescent cells? I need to research the aging stuff in order to have an opinion here. Really this seems like a very general description of what happens when parts of a system start placing themselves above the rest.