On Thursday, March 15, 2001 10:55 PM Chris Rasch crasch@openknowledge.org
wrote:
quoting Douglas J. Wagenaar Ph.D.
> Aging and limited life spans1 are nature's way of ensuring steady
> rates of mutation and varied DNA
> combinations in order for life forms to advance through evolution. If
> life forms did not die, there
> would be less of an opportunity for favorable mutations to
> promulgate.
Daniel Ust has knocked this for different reasons. I would point
out that nature is not working towards any kind of global optimum
and does everything wastefully. Anyway, if you had organisms that
could never die, they'd be *way* better than anything here!
It's not clear what's a "favorable" mutation for something
already essentially perfect.
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