Idea: Aging is not “on purpose” — it reflects damage accumulation and selection tradeoffs (antagonistic pleiotropy) with finite investment in repair (disposable soma).
Predictions: increasing repair generally trades off with reproduction/fitness; rejuvenation is constrained by maintenance budgets; no adaptive lifespan setpoint is required.
PC: Longevity gains often trade off with infection ecology.
Classics: No intrinsic infection penalty required; tradeoffs are resource‑based. If rejuvenation under pathogen challenge shows no infection downside, that favors Classics; if penalties appear without anti‑pathogen measures, it favors PC.
PC highlights lifespan differences that track population structure (dispersal, eusociality, cohorting) — patterns Classics do not naturally predict.
Resilience / Criticality (Fedichev)
Resilience: Hazard can shift by tuning system dynamics.
Classics: Large, low‑cost hazard shifts are surprising without underlying resource tradeoffs.
Bioelectric / Morphogenetic Control (Levin)
Levin: Pattern cues can rejuvenate without large repair budgets.
Classics: Strong, low‑cost gains via pattern cues would strain damage/repair budget framing.
Longevity Bottleneck (Various Proponents)
Bottleneck: A small number of pathways dominate aging.
Classics: Diffuse damage/tradeoffs across systems; single chokepoints are unlikely to explain most aging.