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Welcome to unintelligent design. Evolution will happily incorporate an abundant resource into one biological process even if it is damaging to another. Heck,

Welcome to unintelligent design. Evolution will happily incorporate an abundant resource into one biological process even if it is damaging to another. Heck, even if it is damaging to the same process it is being incorporated into.

sametmax 8y ago
The heat we produce in oil motors is what makes them work, but it's also what destroys many components. I don't pretend life has been designed or not, but it doesn't look stupid to me: in a relative world, everything is a compromise.
- chrisper 8y ago
  >in a relative world, everything is a compromise. Modern men call it: "There is no free lunch!"
- saalweachter 8y ago
  It's far worse than the trade-offs required by physics. Evolution is short-sighted in a way that is hard to overstate. It exclusively cares about the current environment, it can only consider alternatives when they have actually been implemented, it can't look-ahead to see if a chain of changes is really desirable, and it can't even look-behind to determine if a previous design is better-suited to the current environment. A better analogy to the way evolution operates using an engine would be: imagine that you first develop an engine that runs on a pure fuel, but then for a long span of time you can only get an inferior, highly contaminated fuel that produces a corrosive acid while it burns that slowly destroys the engine from the inside. You make a few tweaks to mitigate (but not stop) the damage from the acidic residue, but then you discover that by adding an additional afterburner with a special additive, you can get an extra 8% output from the engine. But then later when the pure fuel is available again, you discover that running the engine with the afterburner on a pure fuel will make it explode in short order. It's too late to redesign the engine without the afterburner -- most of the engines currently in existence suffer from the problem -- but it's pretty easy to re-contaminate the pure fuel so that it continues to produce the acidic residue that is both destroying the engines and expected by the afterburners. Meanwhile, most people still don't want to buy a pure-fuel engine without the afterburners since they have a lower output, and you really don't need most engines to last forever anyway. That's the sort of bullshit you deal with in an evolved system.
  - apinstein 8y ago
    > Evolution is short-sighted in a way that is hard to overstate. It exclusively cares about the current environment This isn't quite accurate; while some evolutionary pressures are indeed exclusively short-term, not all are. For instance, ability of eukaryotes to have multiple alleles of individual genes combined with sexual reproduction allow populations to maintain a large diversity of alleles and genes, which have the effect of allowing large-scale "split testing" and also "alternatives" for different current environments that may appear over time.
  - gugagore 8y ago
    What else could you hope for? It seems like you'd like for evolution to have some model, so it can test old designs in the current environment, and simulate forward the current design into future environments, without needing to burn an organism and time on the test. But how could that be possible?
    - etherealG 8y ago
      By evolving intelligence that creates computers and models and does that exact simulation, and then modifies the necessary biology to apply the best scenario. Seems to me we’re well on our way there.
Erlich_Bachman 8y ago
Maybe the intelligence behind the design was to make something that works, instead of something perfect? Isn't that better, after all? (Also is there even any indication anywhere that a perfect thing is possible at all, whether be by design or a result of random chaotic process?) (again, not saying whether the design might be intelligent or not, just that the argument is not really logical concerning that).
0xcafecafe 8y ago
This and periods which are unique to humans (I think) are classic examples of evolution hackery.
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  > unique to humans It appears not - http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150420-why-do-women-have-periods http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150420-why-do-women-have-... > Apart from humans, most of the other menstruating animals are primates, the group that includes monkeys and apes as well as humans. Most monkeys living in Africa and Asia, such as rhesus macaques, menstruate. > menstruation also evolved independently in two other groups: some bats and elephant shrews. Not that any of this disproves the "evolution hackery" suggestion, mind.
  - 0xcafecafe 8y ago
    Thanks. I was not 100% on it being unique to humans but I did remember it being quite rare in nature.
chooseaname 8y ago
> Welcome to unintelligent design. Or just designed for another purpose.
lm28469 8y ago
Well, evolution doesn't care if you die at 50 from sun induced cancer or at 80 from heart failure, as long as you've pumped out offsprings capable of reproduction you succeeded. Plus nowadays with tech / medical advances evolution doesn't play the same role as 10k years ago. You can be obese, diabetic, lactose intolerant, lose a kidney and a lung and still get kids + your life expectancy will be miles ahead of our ancestors hunting antelopes with spears and pointy stones.
- tony_cannistra 8y ago
  This is a commonly-held misunderstanding! Natural selection doesn't stop acting once you've reproduced. Characteristics ("traits") which are potentially not helpful for direct reproductive success but have an impact on the success of the group of people you're a part of are conserved through evolution. However, the exact formulation of this idea (known as kin selection or group selection) is still quite controversial [1] among evolutionary biologists. [1]: https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/kin-group-selection-controversy/ https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/kin-group-selection-controversy...
  - lm28469 8y ago
    Sure, it depends at which scale you observe it. It's probably impossible to study individual traits vs "group" traits though. As I see it it's one of these problems with so many co-founding variables that we'll never agree (depending on who you listen to: fat is good/bad, carbs are good/bad, sun is good/bad, ad infinitum) My point was, something can be good at some point (vitamin D production) and turn bad in the long term (increased cancer rate), but being ultimately bad doesn't mean evolution failed.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    Yes. Otherwise there would be no reason to live as long as we do.

sametmax 8y ago

The heat we produce in oil motors is what makes them work, but it's also what destroys many components. I don't pretend life has been designed or not, but it doesn't look stupid to me: in a relative world, everything is a compromise.

chrisper 8y ago
>in a relative world, everything is a compromise. Modern men call it: "There is no free lunch!"
saalweachter 8y ago
It's far worse than the trade-offs required by physics. Evolution is short-sighted in a way that is hard to overstate. It exclusively cares about the current environment, it can only consider alternatives when they have actually been implemented, it can't look-ahead to see if a chain of changes is really desirable, and it can't even look-behind to determine if a previous design is better-suited to the current environment. A better analogy to the way evolution operates using an engine would be: imagine that you first develop an engine that runs on a pure fuel, but then for a long span of time you can only get an inferior, highly contaminated fuel that produces a corrosive acid while it burns that slowly destroys the engine from the inside. You make a few tweaks to mitigate (but not stop) the damage from the acidic residue, but then you discover that by adding an additional afterburner with a special additive, you can get an extra 8% output from the engine. But then later when the pure fuel is available again, you discover that running the engine with the afterburner on a pure fuel will make it explode in short order. It's too late to redesign the engine without the afterburner -- most of the engines currently in existence suffer from the problem -- but it's pretty easy to re-contaminate the pure fuel so that it continues to produce the acidic residue that is both destroying the engines and expected by the afterburners. Meanwhile, most people still don't want to buy a pure-fuel engine without the afterburners since they have a lower output, and you really don't need most engines to last forever anyway. That's the sort of bullshit you deal with in an evolved system.
- apinstein 8y ago
  > Evolution is short-sighted in a way that is hard to overstate. It exclusively cares about the current environment This isn't quite accurate; while some evolutionary pressures are indeed exclusively short-term, not all are. For instance, ability of eukaryotes to have multiple alleles of individual genes combined with sexual reproduction allow populations to maintain a large diversity of alleles and genes, which have the effect of allowing large-scale "split testing" and also "alternatives" for different current environments that may appear over time.
- gugagore 8y ago
  What else could you hope for? It seems like you'd like for evolution to have some model, so it can test old designs in the current environment, and simulate forward the current design into future environments, without needing to burn an organism and time on the test. But how could that be possible?
  - etherealG 8y ago
    By evolving intelligence that creates computers and models and does that exact simulation, and then modifies the necessary biology to apply the best scenario. Seems to me we’re well on our way there.

Erlich_Bachman 8y ago

Maybe the intelligence behind the design was to make something that works, instead of something perfect? Isn't that better, after all? (Also is there even any indication anywhere that a perfect thing is possible at all, whether be by design or a result of random chaotic process?) (again, not saying whether the design might be intelligent or not, just that the argument is not really logical concerning that).

0xcafecafe 8y ago

This and periods which are unique to humans (I think) are classic examples of evolution hackery.

zimpenfish 8y ago
> unique to humans It appears not - http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150420-why-do-women-have-periods http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20150420-why-do-women-have-... > Apart from humans, most of the other menstruating animals are primates, the group that includes monkeys and apes as well as humans. Most monkeys living in Africa and Asia, such as rhesus macaques, menstruate. > menstruation also evolved independently in two other groups: some bats and elephant shrews. Not that any of this disproves the "evolution hackery" suggestion, mind.
- 0xcafecafe 8y ago
  Thanks. I was not 100% on it being unique to humans but I did remember it being quite rare in nature.

chooseaname 8y ago

> Welcome to unintelligent design. Or just designed for another purpose.

lm28469 8y ago

Well, evolution doesn't care if you die at 50 from sun induced cancer or at 80 from heart failure, as long as you've pumped out offsprings capable of reproduction you succeeded. Plus nowadays with tech / medical advances evolution doesn't play the same role as 10k years ago. You can be obese, diabetic, lactose intolerant, lose a kidney and a lung and still get kids + your life expectancy will be miles ahead of our ancestors hunting antelopes with spears and pointy stones.

tony_cannistra 8y ago
This is a commonly-held misunderstanding! Natural selection doesn't stop acting once you've reproduced. Characteristics ("traits") which are potentially not helpful for direct reproductive success but have an impact on the success of the group of people you're a part of are conserved through evolution. However, the exact formulation of this idea (known as kin selection or group selection) is still quite controversial [1] among evolutionary biologists. [1]: https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/kin-group-selection-controversy/ https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/kin-group-selection-controversy...
- lm28469 8y ago
  Sure, it depends at which scale you observe it. It's probably impossible to study individual traits vs "group" traits though. As I see it it's one of these problems with so many co-founding variables that we'll never agree (depending on who you listen to: fat is good/bad, carbs are good/bad, sun is good/bad, ad infinitum) My point was, something can be good at some point (vitamin D production) and turn bad in the long term (increased cancer rate), but being ultimately bad doesn't mean evolution failed.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  Yes. Otherwise there would be no reason to live as long as we do.