On: Ageing studies in five animals suggests how to reverse decline

[rafark]

Why would you need evolutionary selection if we’d be in total control of our species? In theory we’d be able to adapt our bodies as needed, manually.

I get it, for example, in botany where genetic diversity is crucial for the survival of a plant species.

[mr_toad → rafark]

Not total control.

We could engineer away things that might eventually in some future crisis prove to be a deciding factor in our survival. We could easily engineer away genes that might have gone on to outlive us as humans, and then end up outcompeted by them. Or we could engineer ourselves into different variants, and compete with each other.

In the end you can’t second guess evolution.