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No, its definitely relevant. Hands were not designed with any specific function in mind. There was not evolutionary pressure to "throw rocks at the eye of a mam
by netizen-936824 4y ago
No, its definitely relevant. Hands were not designed with any specific function in mind. There was not evolutionary pressure to "throw rocks at the eye of a mammoth"
Did orangutans evolve hands to throw rocks at mammoths? No, they did not
The parent comment is making ridiculous claims without evidence
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-do-orangutans-eat.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-do-orangutans-eat.h...
- samatman 4y agoYou've smoothly shot right past solid ground (evolution doesn't design things) to a fairly wild claim (rock-throwing apes didn't experience evolutionary pressure to get better at throwing rocks). Orangutans aren't humans, so what are you saying, apes which don't throw rocks to kill their prey don't... throw rocks to kill their prey?
- netizen-936824 4y agoPerhaps my example is poor, but it shows that hands are not coupled to predation I'm specifically talking about the evolution of hands, humans are not the only organism with hands.
- ohwellhere 4y agoThis seems accurate to me. Like complex brains are evolutionarily fit because they can solve lots of disparate problems, hands are evolutionarily fit because they can do lots of disparate things. Of course, we do also then design violins for our specific dexterity.
- samatman 4y agoThe poster didn't say "hands", they said "your hands". Your human hands, which co-evolved with throwing things, we have abundant paleontological evidence of this and you may read as many papers on the subject as you would care to.
- netizen-936824 4y agoGot links to any of those papers?
- samatman 4y agoAre you vegan? Just curious.
- netizen-936824 4y agoNo, but I'm not sure what that has to do with the topic at hand Also unsure how that's an appropriate response to a request for citations?
- doliveira 4y agoI think you're assigning too much weight to the word itself. In informal settings, or even quasi-formal ones, it's not uncommon to use "designed" when we don't mean "literally designed".
- earth_walker 4y agoThe use of "design" in the context of the structure and capability of human bodies means precisely "literally designed" to many religious people, including many readers of HN. So I don't think it's out of place for the GP to address this.
- netizen-936824 4y agoThank you. This was exactly the point of my comment. While some readers interpret the word lightly, there are many who use it literally in the context of biology with a reference to creationism. There is no evidence for creationism