It suggests—pace Algernon’s law—that there is no good simple intervention.
No major evolutionary incentive to extend lifespan much beyond the point people would be likely to have died from violence or accidents or disease, so Algernon’s law shouldn’t necessarily apply here.
For humans, it should; while average mortality is high even in the Paleolithic, this is the usual infant mortality skew. If you make it to adulthood… Old kin are still kin and can be useful, even if only a little bit—selection can still act on that.
Sure to a certain point. But there’s a limit to how much extension one will get just from that. Assume for example that post infancy there’s a 2% chance of random death due to violence, disease etc. in the native environment. Then there’s about a 3/4th chance that they will survive to age 75, assuming a rough constant. Given that, there’s little evolutionary incentive to push mortality down much past that. This is of course a toy-model, but the basic point is sound.
No major evolutionary incentive to extend lifespan much beyond the point people would be likely to have died from violence or accidents or disease, so Algernon’s law shouldn’t necessarily apply here.
For humans, it should; while average mortality is high even in the Paleolithic, this is the usual infant mortality skew. If you make it to adulthood… Old kin are still kin and can be useful, even if only a little bit—selection can still act on that.
Sure to a certain point. But there’s a limit to how much extension one will get just from that. Assume for example that post infancy there’s a 2% chance of random death due to violence, disease etc. in the native environment. Then there’s about a 3/4th chance that they will survive to age 75, assuming a rough constant. Given that, there’s little evolutionary incentive to push mortality down much past that. This is of course a toy-model, but the basic point is sound.