I've long been a fan of this view (though i do think some aging is also essentially entropy).
Natural selection favors organisms with a lifecycle time that is optimized and not random. Some organisms will benefit from shorter lifecycle times, e.g. to adapt faster. Others will benefit from a longer one, e.g. when fitness increases with experience. At some point, if your organism is no longer contributing to the future success of the genes (not necessarily by mating, you could be an awesome orca grandma, imparting wisdom), you might as well get it our of the way. A striking example is how some octopus species waste away after giving birth.
So it shouldn't be a surprise that there is a fitness advantage to controlling this process.
That said, if we altered this program to increase lifespan, I'd expect we'd start to run into more entropy-driven aging.
Natural selection favors organisms with a lifecycle time that is optimized and not random. Some organisms will benefit from shorter lifecycle times, e.g. to adapt faster. Others will benefit from a longer one, e.g. when fitness increases with experience. At some point, if your organism is no longer contributing to the future success of the genes (not necessarily by mating, you could be an awesome orca grandma, imparting wisdom), you might as well get it our of the way. A striking example is how some octopus species waste away after giving birth.
So it shouldn't be a surprise that there is a fitness advantage to controlling this process.
That said, if we altered this program to increase lifespan, I'd expect we'd start to run into more entropy-driven aging.