[pierrec]

That's actually a very interesting question. Evolution means that out of all states that stem from the current one, the optimal one tends to endure, so the "best of all possible worlds" is indeed a pretty good way of phrasing it, if a little vague.

Staying fertile till we drop dead would be sub-optimal because germline stem cells (the "factories" that produce sperm and eggs) accumulate mutations as we age. Those mutations are useful as one of many mechanisms of evolution, but they must only occur in reasonable amounts, as they also increase the probability of nonviable offspring.

In short, protecting genetic information while still allowing evolution is a hard problem. This problem is not solved in exactly the same way by different organisms, and occurs on different time-scales.

[eurleif]

>Evolution means that out of all states that stem from the current one, the optimal one tends to endure, so the "best of all possible worlds" is indeed a pretty good way of phrasing it, if a little vague.

"Best of all possible worlds" suggests a global maximum to me. Evolution can get stuck in local maxima.

[Florin_Andrei]

> In short, protecting genetic information while still allowing evolution is a hard problem.

In some ways, it seems like this is all that life on Earth is about. A planet-size computer running for billions of years to try and come up with a good solution to this problem.

[lqdc13]

It could also be sub-optimal because there would be less time spent rearing the offspring that you do have. So they would have a lower reproductive success.