
Information Theory and the Foundation of Life - alexwg
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170126-information-theory-and-the-foundation-of-life/
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malgorithms
> Aging, too, has conventionally been seen as a trait dictated by evolution.
> Organisms have a lifespan that creates opportunities to reproduce, the story
> goes, without inhibiting the survival prospects of offspring by the parents
> sticking around too long and competing for resources.

Can someone with more bio expertise explain this theory to me? I've heard it
said before, but it doesn't seem right to me. Some species disperse widely,
and the offspring end up far from their parents, not really competing for
resources. Wouldn't such species evolve quickly not to age, if possible?
Similarly, wouldn't it be far better for non-migrating species not to age but
instead evolve to migrate when old?

It seems intuitive to me that keeping an old body from falling apart takes
great resources / evolutionary focus, and there are diminishing returns the
further out the age. e.g.,., if a species were only 1% likely to make it to
old age T in the wild, then it would be hard to select for traits that led to
it being in good shape at that age.

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lend000
I agree; that line of thinking is only valid if aging is considered to be
"beyond the ability to reproduce." If the organisms can still reproduce at the
same rate, they are not too old to contribute to natural selection. However, a
cumulative distribution over the number of offspring created by age for a
particular fitness model will regardless overshadow reproduction in old age
with the aggressive reproductive periods during youth, and there are likely
diminished evolutionary returns for keeping an organism around longer.

On an ecosystem/gaia scale, there is also the argument that organisms that
never die will break the ecosystem by failing to return nutrients to the
nutrient cycle. However, this is not necessarily an argument against
biological immortality, as there are plenty of other ways to die (starvation,
predation, etc.)

~~~
veli_joza
To expand on your second paragraph, I would say it's not argument at all
because it implies purpose. There is nothing to stop the ecosystem from
breaking.

If there was a species that "fixed" aging and continued to reproduce, it would
be so successful it would take over and break the ecosystem. This was never
observed, not because of "purpose", but most likely because there is entropy
limit to extending lifespan (mentioned in the end of article).

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breck
If you liked this article, you'd probably also enjoy the book "The
Information", by James Gleick.

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veli_joza
Thank you for this recommendation. The book is fantastic so far.

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pjdorrell
I believe I might have been the first person to correctly analyse the
thermodynamics of evolution by natural selection:
[http://thinkinghard.com/evolution/2ndlaw.html](http://thinkinghard.com/evolution/2ndlaw.html)
(originally
[http://web.archive.org/web/19961221074218/http://www.xmissio...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961221074218/http://www.xmission.com/~gastown/dorrell/therm.htm)).

~~~
outlace
Unfortunately, people often get credit for popularizing ideas rather than
being the first to conceive of them.

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outlace
I wonder if this can also explain the variable success of different societies
and cultures. Perhaps societies in environments of greater disequilibrium will
"evolve" cultures that most efficiently model their environments and thus are
most efficient at dissipating energy and hence increasing the external global
entropy.

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pizza
I would like to see a new approach to/insights from this idea using the
Fluctuation Theorem. Maybe even in the language of David Deutsch's constructor
theory..!

(I can already hear the scorn)

