*Official* Evolution is Stupid Thread

[man]

psychologically speaking I go with our bellicose nature. we'd be a fuckload better off if we were down with one another's differences and whatnot.

[Sciolist]

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psychologically speaking I go with our bellicose nature. we'd be a fuckload better off if we were down with one another's differences and whatnot.

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Ah, but if you have a population of nice people, the best strategy is to take advantage of them, to be mean. Those things are inevitable, and we inevitably end up in a stable state. Sometimes there're several stable states, but they might not be reachable through evolution. It's down to game theory, and can't say I know a great deal about it...

[NoahSD]

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Grunching thread to say that for as much of the human body that works so well, they really [censored] up the eyes part.

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I think I've heard multiple references to this too (usually in the sense of 'wtf people talk about how the eye means we had a creator, but if so he was a [censored]') but I dont know whats so bad about the eye, enlighten me?

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My thoughts exactly. Eye seems really awesome to me.

Obviously there are some things that I think evolution did amazingly well. One that I think about really often is our ability to really think of tools as an extension of our hand. For example, when I used to go canoeing, I used to notice that when I put my paddle into the water and it got caught on some sea weed or whatever, I had a natural sense of how strong the sea weed was, how elastic, whether or not it was tangled or just grazed it, etc, just from how my paddle felt in my hand. I think that's really cool, and I have no idea how our bodies/minds are so good at that.

[Sciolist]

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what about our mouth not having enough space for all the teeth ):

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Good point. I guess the problem now is that having horrible wisdom teeth doesn't affect whether you'll be able to breed or not (or, it'll do so very little). So we'll probably never evolve these things away, unless we do it on purpose... Same with a lot of the problems we've mentioned so far.

[NoahSD]

Well presumably evolution's not doing much right now because so many of us are surviving despite "problems." But why didn't evolution take care of wisdom teeth back when it had more sway?

[catalyst]

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Well presumably evolution's not doing much right now because so many of us are surviving despite "problems." But why didn't evolution take care of wisdom teeth back when it had more sway?

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http://ask.yahoo.com/20040924.html

[pergesu]

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Debilitating pain. I twist my ankle and now it's too painful to run away from the lion chasing me? Thanks evolution, thanks a bunch. We should just have a system of green and red LED's so you can tell where something is wrong on your body.

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I'm not an expert in evading lions, but I think that'd be a reasonable time for adrenaline to kick in.

[jojobinks]

the human knee. probably the worst design of any of our body parts. at least the ear is effective, and tends to last 60 years or so. the knee is often destroyed in 20-25 years.

[Vehn]

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Grunching thread to say that for as much of the human body that works so well, they really [censored] up the eyes part.

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OMFG STOP SAYING GRUNCHING

[Analyst]

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Grunching thread to say that for as much of the human body that works so well, they really [censored] up the eyes part.

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I think I've heard multiple references to this too (usually in the sense of 'wtf people talk about how the eye means we had a creator, but if so he was a [censored]') but I dont know whats so bad about the eye, enlighten me?

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The blind spot is one example. In some animals (ex: octopus), the optic nerve approaches from the back of the eye, so no blind spot and a superior design.