Post by flyingsquirrel on Nov 15, 2024 16:28:42 GMT
(This isn't a criticism or a nitpick, just a thought experiment.)
While I'm no evolutionary biologist, it seems to me that natural selection favors characteristics that help a *species* survive rather than characteristics that necessarily help any one single individual survive - i.e. the traits that enable a species to remain healthy and well-fed enough to eventually reproduce, make use of their environment, and raise capable offspring. I know that the asari tend to explore and develop their personalities over a longer period of time, but it doesn't seem like they wait until they're up to, say, 800 to have children, nor is there any biological reason why they would need or want to do that. Even a relatively young asari like Liara seems like she'd be capable of raising a child (I mean in a sense of general basic competence and maturity - I'm not trying to start a debate about Liara's character).
So is it likely that they'd evolve to live for hundreds of years after having children? I think I've heard that one reason humans don't have especially long lifetimes is that, in terms of bringing children into the world and raising them, we don't need to - at a certain point, most of us have either contributed to the propagation of the species or not, and whether we live to 60 or 80 or 100 doesn't make much difference. I know there's been speculation about transhumanism and life extension technology, but that would be artificial evolution, not natural evolution. While I'm sure the asari have highly advanced medical technology and health care, I don't think they're heavily "augmented" (to borrow a Deus Ex term), and I'm skeptical that better health care and biotechnology would be enough to keep them alive for hundreds of years longer than expected - the longer human lifespans in the MEverse (presumably also due to better tech and health care) are discussed in terms of decades, not centuries. I guess the protheans manipulated their early history to some degree, but neither Javik nor the prothean VI in ME3 said that they did some sort of genetic engineering.
Was this ever actually discussed in the lore somewhere? (Or am I just misunderstanding how evolution works?)
While I'm no evolutionary biologist, it seems to me that natural selection favors characteristics that help a *species* survive rather than characteristics that necessarily help any one single individual survive - i.e. the traits that enable a species to remain healthy and well-fed enough to eventually reproduce, make use of their environment, and raise capable offspring. I know that the asari tend to explore and develop their personalities over a longer period of time, but it doesn't seem like they wait until they're up to, say, 800 to have children, nor is there any biological reason why they would need or want to do that. Even a relatively young asari like Liara seems like she'd be capable of raising a child (I mean in a sense of general basic competence and maturity - I'm not trying to start a debate about Liara's character).
So is it likely that they'd evolve to live for hundreds of years after having children? I think I've heard that one reason humans don't have especially long lifetimes is that, in terms of bringing children into the world and raising them, we don't need to - at a certain point, most of us have either contributed to the propagation of the species or not, and whether we live to 60 or 80 or 100 doesn't make much difference. I know there's been speculation about transhumanism and life extension technology, but that would be artificial evolution, not natural evolution. While I'm sure the asari have highly advanced medical technology and health care, I don't think they're heavily "augmented" (to borrow a Deus Ex term), and I'm skeptical that better health care and biotechnology would be enough to keep them alive for hundreds of years longer than expected - the longer human lifespans in the MEverse (presumably also due to better tech and health care) are discussed in terms of decades, not centuries. I guess the protheans manipulated their early history to some degree, but neither Javik nor the prothean VI in ME3 said that they did some sort of genetic engineering.
Was this ever actually discussed in the lore somewhere? (Or am I just misunderstanding how evolution works?)
