[kkoncevicius]

Such arguments go both ways. For example, if aging is accumulation of damage and not programmed, then why don't we see lucky people who live 5 times longer. Also how come the patterns of aging are so similar between individuals and even between different species (wrinkly skin, grey hair, fragile bones).

[blargey]

How do you propose someone would "luck out of" the wear and tear your body undergoes just to function? It's accumulation of damage to the very systems that work to prevent and repair damage, leading all organs to accumulate the damage they would have hidden by fast repair in "youth". It's unavoidable and accelerating by definition, and that reflects what we observe in aging.

The "patterns of aging" you describe are, again, definitionally just what happens when the same organs built and functioning the same way across species undergo their respective failure modes. It makes more sense for all skins to exhibit the same signs of aging if they're all just wearing out the way "skin" does, rather than being attacked by species-specific "age limiter" processes artificially enforcing lifespan limits. Why would something like skin even need to decay at all, when it's basically unrelated to aging-related death?

[abeppu]

But aren't there a lot of processes that could drive accumulated damage that are hard to avoid (so you can't realistically get lucky)? E.g. if metabolic processes produce harmful products in low quantities that build up ... How would you possibly survive many decades without doing at least a certain amount of metabolizing food etc?

[crinkly]

Think this is a statistical thing. Your body is made of lots of cells. But one exceptional one wouldn’t outlive the whole system’s failure. You’d need a hell of a lot of cells to survive that long.