Evolution and Aging

You are anthropomorphising evolution. Natural selection only favors individuals, not the species as a whole. Plus it's not clear if that would actually be a benefit. An organism which has survived and reproduced for hundreds of years probably has very fit genes.

Dying isn't required for evolution.It's just that after you reproduce and get your offspring on their own feet, continuing to live is optional (for evolution), so no optimizations evolved to continue life far beyond that.Evolution isn't trying to kill you, it just doesn't care about helping you beyond reproductive age.

One thought I had was that species evolved to maximize the survival of the species, not the individual organism. Once an organism is too old to reproduce or contribute to the survival of the species, it's probably better to die than becoming a burden to the rest of the members of your species. It sounds cold hearted and brutal but that's just how nature works. Maybe it is possible for an individual organism to reproduce and live forever someday but that would be very hard to achieve an

It's not really about killing maladapted. In each generation of humans more than 10% of them don't pass their genes to next generation. From the point of view of evolution it is as if they got killed young. Mate selection is way stronger mechanism of evolution then plain survival.

There is no 'better' in evolution, only 'survivor.' And if you cured aging, you would survive better. End of story.

evolution is not about adaptability of a species, it's about adaptability of individuals (it's not a centralized decision taken for the well-being of a species, but rather a consequence of individuals having more chances to pass their genes than others. The lucky ones are more adaptive).If you take 2 individuals and one dies sooner than the later, the alive one will have had more chances to pass his genes, so it's not adaptive to have mechanism to ensure our deaths.

Organisms don't evolve, populations do. Death of individuals is beneficial for most populations. For one, it's easier to build something that lasts a while and reproduces than it is to build something that lasts indefinitely. For another, as mentioned, populations with significant generational turnover bounce back faster after catastrophic environmental or other stresses (because they reproduce faster, among other dynamic effects).

This is a commonly-held misunderstanding! Natural selection doesn't stop acting once you've reproduced.Characteristics ("traits") which are potentially not helpful for direct reproductive success but have an impact on the success of the group of people you're a part of are conserved through evolution. However, the exact formulation of this idea (known as kin selection or group selection) is still quite controversial [1] among evolutionary biologists.[1]: <a href="h

Under the traditional view, the most evolutionarily advantageous individual is one that lives forever and continues to spread their genes indefinitely, producing hundreds of offspring. Why is this not what we see in practice?

To survive natural selection the gene must give the animal some reproductive advantage. I can understand that promoting longevity beyond the reproductive stage of one's life cycle affords no such benefit. But one still has to account for the fact that the lack of the gene appears to increase the survivability in the reproductive pahse as well. Something more must be going on.