Our bodies need to perform different roles as we age and mature. We’d also need different sets of skills depending on our current developmental phase. It would make sense for our brains to change too, that the developmental path of our brain is planned to make it undergo changes that’d make it more adapted to the tasks it’ll have to tackle over different developmental phases.
It’d make sense for our brain to be more fine tuned for grabbing resources from family when we’re a kid, to grow as fast as possible, then better tuned to search for sexual partners once we’re getting mature, and lastly, more fine tuned to take care of our kids once we got them.
I don’t think either that evolution would have much of a reason to cleanly engineer a stable end-state after which development just entirely stops, and leaves you with a well-adjusted, perfectly functional body or brain. That may not be a trivial task after all.
These speculations are interesting. I think it’s always worth wheeling evolutionary thought up to a problem to see what it says.
However, surveying real people in our real, modern-day world seems far more direct.
I don’t think either that evolution would have much of a reason to cleanly engineer a stable end-state after which development just entirely stops, and leaves you with a well-adjusted, perfectly functional body or brain. That may not be a trivial task after all.
Evolution is constantly making trade-offs, and (last I knew) the reason our bodies fall apart was that evolution didn’t have a strong incentive to keep them going. We last as long as we do because we take care of grandkids, maybe, and Jared Diamond suggested a reason for longevity was that an old person was a storehouse of knowledge.
You mean rationally from an evolutionary point of view? You have less to lose from a bold decision, but perhaps you have much less to gain and that predominates. As a young guy you can take off into the wilds with a young wife and another few couples. Chances might be 90% you’ll be killed, but if you do make it to the new land, you might start a whole new population of people.
I think if you look at deciduous trees of the same species, the young trees get their leaves earlier in the spring than the mature trees. I think I’ve observed that. They’re “gambling”, because a late frost could kill them. But their chances of becoming a mature tree aren’t that great anyway, and they need to grab light before their elders shade them. The older trees can afford to be conservative.
As people in our modern society, there’s some tendency to relax as you get older. Older people encourage you to dance as if no one is watching? Not sure I believe that myself, though. :-)
″...the majority of men and women do not officially report themselves as having low levels of sexual desire until they are 75 years old.[8] Many would attribute this lull to partner familiarity, alienation, or preoccupation with other non-sexual matters such as social, relational, and health concerns.[6]”
-Wikipedia
Our bodies need to perform different roles as we age and mature. We’d also need different sets of skills depending on our current developmental phase. It would make sense for our brains to change too, that the developmental path of our brain is planned to make it undergo changes that’d make it more adapted to the tasks it’ll have to tackle over different developmental phases.
It’d make sense for our brain to be more fine tuned for grabbing resources from family when we’re a kid, to grow as fast as possible, then better tuned to search for sexual partners once we’re getting mature, and lastly, more fine tuned to take care of our kids once we got them.
And if there’s a mechanism which makes our brain undergo developmental changes along a pre-planned path, then we might also expect that past the age at which we reproduce, there’d be less and less evolutionary pressure to shape that developmental trajectory.
I don’t think either that evolution would have much of a reason to cleanly engineer a stable end-state after which development just entirely stops, and leaves you with a well-adjusted, perfectly functional body or brain. That may not be a trivial task after all.
These speculations are interesting. I think it’s always worth wheeling evolutionary thought up to a problem to see what it says.
However, surveying real people in our real, modern-day world seems far more direct.
Evolution is constantly making trade-offs, and (last I knew) the reason our bodies fall apart was that evolution didn’t have a strong incentive to keep them going. We last as long as we do because we take care of grandkids, maybe, and Jared Diamond suggested a reason for longevity was that an old person was a storehouse of knowledge.
There could still be an evolutionary advantage in staying smart after you can reproduce if you can help your children and grandchildren survive.
It’s really too bad, because it seems that rationally one would become less risk-averse as one got older, as one had less and less to lose.
You mean rationally from an evolutionary point of view? You have less to lose from a bold decision, but perhaps you have much less to gain and that predominates. As a young guy you can take off into the wilds with a young wife and another few couples. Chances might be 90% you’ll be killed, but if you do make it to the new land, you might start a whole new population of people.
I think if you look at deciduous trees of the same species, the young trees get their leaves earlier in the spring than the mature trees. I think I’ve observed that. They’re “gambling”, because a late frost could kill them. But their chances of becoming a mature tree aren’t that great anyway, and they need to grab light before their elders shade them. The older trees can afford to be conservative.
As people in our modern society, there’s some tendency to relax as you get older. Older people encourage you to dance as if no one is watching? Not sure I believe that myself, though. :-)
″...the majority of men and women do not officially report themselves as having low levels of sexual desire until they are 75 years old.[8] Many would attribute this lull to partner familiarity, alienation, or preoccupation with other non-sexual matters such as social, relational, and health concerns.[6]” -Wikipedia