Yale Professor, "Why Has Natural Selection Never Given Us an Immortal Species?" | Joe Rogan

Here's an interesting idea. Why do we die at all? Why has natural selection never given us an immortal species? Have you ever thought about that? Yeah, yeah, I have never reached a conclusion, but I always figured you live long enough Well, especially up until recent history only long enough to recognize it was all crazy hustle That's a more philosophical I believe for a scientific answer here's here's one answer for why we're not immortal Okay, so if you think about it, why would natural selection not have created a creature that lived forever? Right not be a why why should we die? Yeah, okay. So here's the one answer It's not known for sure if this is the answer, but this is a good answer Imagine there are two different kinds of things that can kill you Intrinsic causes and extrinsic causes so things inside your body that result in you dying defects diseases and so forth or Things outside your body like accidents lightning strikes trees fall and you just die and so forth Because it's impossible to eliminate all extrinsic causes because some people are going to die from accidents It would be inefficient from the point of view of evolution to evolve to be immortal Because we would have all this capacity to be immortal We would have these bodies capable of immortality Which let's say would be evolutionarily demanding like to evolve anything like an eye or a brain or strong any any quality lactase? Right. We like we talked about earlier you you don't have lactase persistence into adulthood because it's not needed So evolution doesn't waste anything. There'd be no reason for that. So there'd be no that There would there there would be no reason the argument goes to evolve immortality because Inevitably some people would be killed eventually by accidents anyway So unless you can create a world in which there are no accidents. There are no extrinsic causes of death It would be if inefficient from an evolutionary point of view to evolve immortality. So death the reason we die naturally Some people think is that the reason we die naturally is that there are unnatural causes of death in the world Like accidents if we could eliminate the unnatural causes So that nowhere no no time ever were we ever killed by trees falling or lightning strikes or things like that Then actually over time we would evolve to live indefinitely. This is the theory It's crazy idea It is fascinating. But do you think that nature had that sort of foresight? Well, it's not a foresight, but that's how natural selection works Think about like if I have suddenly magically transformed your body at great expense to make you capable of immortality And then two days from now you're hit by a bus I've wasted all that effort But if you only done to one person you wasted that effort if you did it to other people you have the potential to create an Incredibly wise person with a thousand years of life and experience and education and learning die He also have died so everyone eventually would die from these extrinsic causes so perhaps well, no, that's that's that's the assumption in the model Yeah, if it's not perhaps if in fact there are no extrinsic if in fact There is a world in which you're never struck by lightning never hit by a bus never a tree branch, right? Then then the theory is that we would have evolved to be immortal So it's almost like the life that you live you're inevitably going to get killed by extrinsic causes Yes, and if you extend that life to a thousand years, then it's absolutely going to happen. Yes Therefore why bother that's just living in a bubble just terrified of the world on rocks Yeah, but you can't transform you can't take this theory and this model and apply it to an individual in an individual life It's about how our species evolved. It's not about how you should live your life. I mean, it's also true I don't think you should live your life afraid