I'm not sure how controversial the opinion is, but it's pretty clear to me that immortality is harmful to a species in the vast majority of cases.
Evolution is a constant processes of competition. When members of a species start living longer, the upgrading of their gene pool slows down. The older members maintain their old ideas and ways of life, and they soak up resources that crowd out the younger members.
The environment is constantly changing. Thanks to all the other organisms that are evolving, it's not enough to become the apex predator and then stagnate. Organisms are always finding a new way to take advantage of their environment, which includes the other organisms.
For this reason, I do not think that any single individual will ever be immortal, and probably not even a collective. That would require gaining control of the universe's resources in a way that guarantees they never lose it.
Decentralization is inherent to the functioning of the universe. The speed of light ensures that multiple decisions be made in parallel. Those that make the most self interested decisions will be competitive, and while that often means participating as a group, no biological group that I know of is entirely devoid of selfish behavior among its members.
Immortality is largely incompatible with evolution and competition.
>Immortality is largely incompatible with evolution and competition.
That's an incredibly good argument in favor of immortality. "Evolution" and "competition" are not gods. They do not have any moral authority over us. Our entire civilization has been built on the principle of not subjecting ourselves to Darwinian survival-selection.
That aside, you should probably go count ducks in a swamp or do some other ecological fieldwork before talking about the evolutionary fitness of organisms or ecosystems. You sound atrocious at biology.
> Our entire civilization has been built on the principle of not subjecting ourselves to Darwinian survival-selection.
I don't believe it's something you can escape. It largely boils down to the idea of infinite wants vs. finite resources. Bostrom and co. like to talk about how there's enough energy in the universe to power 10^XX human lifetimes, but I strongly don't believe that a human is going to be the ultimate lifeform. Already we can see that the average first-world human today uses substantially more energy than the average human 1000 years ago.
Unless we hit a ceiling on complexity (not currently in sight), there will always be people who want access to more energy. Since energy is finite, there will be competition between them for that energy. And that will more or less result in Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest, at least as far as some individuals/groups/organisms/species will be better at getting access to individuals as others.
I guess the other alternative is that we hit an entirely egalitarian society, but I think that's exceedingly unlikely, as it would require everybody to agree 100% to limit their energy consumption to exactly what they've been allocated, and not to try to acquire more.
> That aside, you should probably go count ducks in a swamp or do some other ecological fieldwork before talking about the evolutionary fitness of organisms or ecosystems. You sound atrocious at biology.
I appreciate the criticism, and apologize for the sloppy metaphors. Evolution thus far though has very clearly favored death as the primary means of design. Few species have remained unchanged over the past XX million years, and even fewer are theoretically capable of immortality (barring some sort of medical intervention). Most organisms have aging hardcoded into their genome.
>I strongly don't believe that a human is going to be the ultimate lifeform.
Once again, you sound atrocious at biology. Using terms like "ultimate lifeform" isn't even real biology, it's anime and video game "biology(tm)". Real-world evolution has no teleology built into it: there's no "ultimateness" to reach towards.
>Evolution thus far though has very clearly favored death as the primary means of design.
Evolution doesn't really favor anything, as such. Death happens because the Second Law of Thermodynamics makes even the most robust systems (and life is really robust, actually) break down eventually.
>I guess the other alternative is that we hit an entirely egalitarian society
So to be clear, you think an "egalitarian society" (your words) is even less likely than human immortality, despite the fact that relatively egalitarian human societies have been observed in, say, Sweden, while immortality has not.
Have you considered that you may be Ebeneezer Scrooge?
Evolution is a constant processes of competition. When members of a species start living longer, the upgrading of their gene pool slows down. The older members maintain their old ideas and ways of life, and they soak up resources that crowd out the younger members.
The environment is constantly changing. Thanks to all the other organisms that are evolving, it's not enough to become the apex predator and then stagnate. Organisms are always finding a new way to take advantage of their environment, which includes the other organisms.
For this reason, I do not think that any single individual will ever be immortal, and probably not even a collective. That would require gaining control of the universe's resources in a way that guarantees they never lose it.
Decentralization is inherent to the functioning of the universe. The speed of light ensures that multiple decisions be made in parallel. Those that make the most self interested decisions will be competitive, and while that often means participating as a group, no biological group that I know of is entirely devoid of selfish behavior among its members.
Immortality is largely incompatible with evolution and competition.