Examples of bad "design" in humans

[gumboot]

Well, maybe one day in the future someone will come up with some evidence to support string theory, but until someone does, string theory is .. not rejected as unsupported. Strange. What's how science works?

String Theory is a mathematical theory...it doesn't qualify as a scientific theory because a scientific theory has to have been tested to be "proven" (scientifically speaking) true.

There's an argument that String Theory should not be considered science at this point, and I agree.

 

[gumboot]

This is nonsense. I can make up thousands of scenarios compliant with given evidence. I like this one: the whole world, everything, including our false memories and fake historical data, was created 20 minutes ago by a God called Potzliputzli.

This is consistent with the options I gave. It would be the "to fool us" one.

 

[gumboot]

Given that humans hunt all those things regularly I will bet on the humans.

We've only been hunting them since we evolved to the point that we were outside the entire natural survival dynamic. Once you introduce things like complex weapons your stepping outside the constraints of the model.

"Bear Vs Man With Gun" and "Bear Vs Man" are not the same thing.

For what it's worth even those people that are highly experienced and knowledgeable with regards to these animals are killed by them on a regular basis. I've worked with some of the world experts in these fields.

 

[gumboot]

If that was the explanation as to the energy costs I'm not buying it. If that were the case all birds would be flightless

Huh?

 

[ponderingturtle]

We've only been hunting them since we evolved to the point that we were outside the entire natural survival dynamic. Once you introduce things like complex weapons your stepping outside the constraints of the model.

Well simple weapons where also used to hunt many of those animals.

It is kind of like wondering if a shark or bear would win in a fight. It will matter greatly if the fight is in the water or on land.

For what it's worth even those people that are highly experienced and knowledgeable with regards to these animals are killed by them on a regular basis. I've worked with some of the world experts in these fields.

Ah but they are trying to work with them, not simply kill them.

 

[quarky]

slight de-rail: Lost the link, but recently, a grizzly bear escaped from its cage and killed a tiger at a zoo.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Gumboot, you have been totaly ignoreing the point that you are picking animal specialists to compete with human generalists.

If you claim that animals are so much better then people then it should be an average arangatange running say a 5k race vs an average man.

An an average deer swiming in a 200m race with an average man.

Humans can do a remarkably broad range of activities rather well.

So find an animal that can across say swiming, jumping, running, and climbing show up humans on a regular basis.

 

[Delvo]

Well simple weapons where also used to hunt many of those animals.

For that matter, since all human populations have always had those, the basic, natural state of humans is to be armed. Demanding that the human goes into the "fight" without them is putting the human in an unnaturally diminished state, like removing the other animal's teeth and claws and drugging it to make it weak and sluggish.

 

[ponderingturtle]

slight de-rail: Lost the link, but recently, a grizzly bear escaped from its cage and killed a tiger at a zoo.

I am also reminded of this article

Although dolphins have long been celebrated for their high intelligence and for appearing to have a complex language, a team of researchers at the University of Florida reported Monday that these traits are markedly less evident on dry land.

link

 

[AWPrime]

Why are so many people here confusing sprinting with running?

 

[ponderingturtle]

For that matter, since all human populations have always had those, the basic, natural state of humans is to be armed. Demanding that the human goes into the "fight" without them is to put the human in an unnaturally diminished state, like removing the other animal's teeth and claws and drugging it to make it weak and sluggish.

Exactly humans evolved as tool users, so removing tools is negating an important part of their evolution.

And it would be fair to handycap the animals if you are handy caping the humans to such an extent.

Anatomically Modern humans seem to have been able to hunt any land predator

 

[gumboot]

What you are failing to see is that what animals could do well at say gymnastics, swiming, and track and feild events? Not do one of them better than humans, but do all of them as well as humans.

Humans are generalists, and having the ability to adapt tools and behaviors has made us the best generalists on the planet.

I agree completely. Humans are incredible for the scope of achievements we have produced.

Most animals seem to have moved into a specific niche to give them an advantage in evolution. This makes sense - if you can reduce the amount of competition you have you're more likely to survive.

Humans seem to have gone the other track and avoided fitting into any niche. The range of roles may have helped us develop a well-rounded brain which was open to learning.

Sure you can cite animals that beat humans and individual events, but how many could beat humans at more than one type of event?

I would be surprised if there's any animals that could actually beat any humans at an actual event. The Olympics is a human construct created by humans and consisting of events which are likewise human constructs. I was trying to illustrate the stupidity of such a narrow confine of performance comparison by dropping humans into specific animal environments, but everyone seems to have missed my point.

Putting that aside, I agree with your point (see above) - humans are fantastic generalists and the scope of human achievement far excels any other animal. You might find a species of animal that can do well in one or two aspects (A Gorilla might make for a good weightlifting and wrestling challenge) but you won't find an animal that covers even a fraction of the spectrum of human ability (even putting aside things like fencing and shooting that rely on mechanical manipulation of objects in accordance with stringent abstract rules).

Having said that, you'd be hard pressed to find a single human who excels at multiple disciplines either. The heavy explosive muscles of the sprinter's frame and the slender elastic muscles of the long distance runner's frame are engineered (intelligent design perhaps!) through training for a specific task.

It's somewhat dishonest to make the comparison because part of the success of human generalist ability is that the scale and stability (heh) of our societies enables individual humans to become specialists, thus variation within the species is enormous compared to other animals. That's the strength that allowed us to conquer the planet.

Just to be clear I'm not trying to deny the generalist aspect - I agree with you on that. The specialisation of individual humans has only been going on for 12,000 years or so which is nowhere near enough time for significant evolution to occur, so the basic platform allowing for that variation had to already exist. I'm just pointing out that the whole scope of performance isn't something that an individual human can achieve - our generalist body gives us the choice of multiple directions and we get to choose one. Most of us seem to be favouring the "big lazy slob" direction these days.

Like with anything, I suppose it comes down to a conflict of how you compare animal performance.

If you compare "maximum strength of X" versus "maximum strength of Y" you'll get one result. If you compare "average strength of X" with "average strength of Y" the results can be very different.

I hope most people agree that if you started comparing the ability of average humans with average animal species we wouldn't do anywhere near as well as if we compare best with best.

(And yes I'm aware that most modern western humans are utilising their physical bodies at levels pathetically below their potential)

 

[Mashuna]

Gumboot, you have been totaly ignoreing the point that you are picking animal specialists to compete with human generalists.

If you claim that animals are so much better then people then it should be an average arangatange running say a 5k race vs an average man.

An an average deer swiming in a 200m race with an average man.

Humans can do a remarkably broad range of activities rather well.

So find an animal that can across say swiming, jumping, running, and climbing show up humans on a regular basis.

It's a fair point. Mind you, I don't think I'd fancy trying to outrun, outswim or outclimb certain bear species. Jumping probably wouldn't help me that much either. . .

 

[dannagain]

anyone mentioned the vitamin c thing yet?

 

[ponderingturtle]

I agree completely. Humans are incredible for the scope of achievements we have produced.

Most animals seem to have moved into a specific niche to give them an advantage in evolution. This makes sense - if you can reduce the amount of competition you have you're more likely to survive.

Ah but this is generaly only a short term solution, as you become much more suseptable to enviromental change.

This is likely why large predators die off regularly and smaller predators become larger to fill the niche.

This is why it is not unlikely that hynenias as a group are going extinct because there are no small members of the hynenia family anymore.

I would be surprised if there's any animals that could actually beat any humans at an actual event. The Olympics is a human construct created by humans and consisting of events which are likewise human constructs. I was trying to illustrate the stupidity of such a narrow confine of performance comparison by dropping humans into specific animal environments, but everyone seems to have missed my point.

But humans have dominated many of those enviroments for a long time.

Putting that aside, I agree with your point (see above) - humans are fantastic generalists and the scope of human achievement far excels any other animal. You might find a species of animal that can do well in one or two aspects (A Gorilla might make for a good weightlifting and wrestling challenge) but you won't find an animal that covers even a fraction of the spectrum of human ability (even putting aside things like fencing and shooting that rely on mechanical manipulation of objects in accordance with stringent abstract rules).

Ah you seemed to be ignoreing that point.

Having said that, you'd be hard pressed to find a single human who excels at multiple disciplines either. The heavy explosive muscles of the sprinter's frame and the slender elastic muscles of the long distance runner's frame are engineered (intelligent design perhaps!) through training for a specific task.

Depends on what you mean by excels. Yes one person will likely not be in the olympic ratings of multiple unrelated competitions. But a human could be pretty good at a range of activities that outstrip any other animal.

You can be a pretty good swimmer, runner and climber, such that no animal will be better than the human at all three of those things, but individual humans will be better than you at any one.

This is no more relevant that saying that the same horse would not win a mile long race and a pulling competition. It is true but not particularly relevant to the general capabilities of the horse.

It's somewhat dishonest to make the comparison because part of the success of human generalist ability is that the scale and stability (heh) of our societies enables individual humans to become specialists, thus variation within the species is enormous compared to other animals. That's the strength that allowed us to conquer the planet.

I don't know about that. Variation in humans vs say variation in Canis Farmiliaris(the dog) does not seem that great. What you get is variation in tools and behaviors not so much abilities being the key.

Just to be clear I'm not trying to deny the generalist aspect - I agree with you on that. The specialisation of individual humans has only been going on for 12,000 years or so which is nowhere near enough time for significant evolution to occur, so the basic platform allowing for that variation had to already exist. I'm just pointing out that the whole scope of performance isn't something that an individual human can achieve - our generalist body gives us the choice of multiple directions and we get to choose one. Most of us seem to be favouring the "big lazy slob" direction these days.

But even out of shape people can do some things if the need to that can be remarkable in their breadth when compaired to any other animal.

If you compare "maximum strength of X" versus "maximum strength of Y" you'll get one result. If you compare "average strength of X" with "average strength of Y" the results can be very different.

No I do not agree with that by and large.

 

[ponderingturtle]

It's a fair point. Mind you, I don't think I'd fancy trying to outrun, outswim or outclimb certain bear species. Jumping probably wouldn't help me that much either. . .

What species both climbs and swims well?

As for running, well bears are much better sprinters than humans, but for running humans excell at distance running.

By and large humans are poor sprinters but good distance runners. There are numerous reasons for that(we can jog for one, giving use more flexible gates than quadropeds)

 

[ponderingturtle]

anyone mentioned the vitamin c thing yet?

No the conversation got sidetracked.

But that is a very good one.

 

[rwguinn]

Screw the quasi-intellectual discussion. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT. But it can't be any fight now. Who will volunteer to fight a bear?

Are there Texans and Eskimos imvolved?

 

[gumboot]

If you claim that animals are so much better then people

I don't... I think humans are so much better than animals. I wish people would stop throwing this strawman at me. The only thing I have ever been concerned with is the physical stability of our morphology. That's it.

The OP asked for flaws that suggest poor design. I offered our instability. A couple of posters have argued that instability can be a good thing and therefore would be an argument for good design, and I've conceded that's a valid counter argument (see my comment that Cheetahs are rather unstable to, and good runners - offering that perhaps our Sky Friend designed us to be unstable so we'd run good or something).

Other than that I've merely been trying to point out stupid comparisons - like arguing that humans must be vastly more stable than monkeys because we can perform on the parallel bars and they can't. As has been demonstrated by quite a few people here as soon as you restrict the comparison to an environment that favours one animal over the other the entire comparison becomes meaningless.

Then somehow, in the midst of all this, it's turned into a big "people are better than animals at everything" versus a "animals are better than people at everything" argument which is frankly ridiculous, and for whatever reason I've been thrown into the "animals are better than people at everything" camp whether I like it or not.

Please, people, look at the context of a person's post before you start responding. If someone's talking about a specific thing, don't start responding as if they're talking in general and overall terms. It's annoying.


NOW.

Getting back to it. I proposed that our morphology is physically unstable because it places a high center of gravity over a small supporting base. I think that's a design flaw.

I've heard one counter to this - instability isn't necessarily a bad thing if the morphology offers other benefits. I'll buy that.

So what benefits?

Well the obvious one is freedom to use our hands. I counter that with the six limb model, so I don't buy that as an obvious benefit.

Another is the running one. I counter this with other considerations for our running ability such as ability to cool our selves and breath through our mouth. Yet there's an argument for our morphology playing a role, so I'll tentatively buy that one too - I'm not totally convinced on the matter but it's enough for me to think about it a bit more.

So for now I'm happy to put my original claim on hold - having a physically unstable morphology isn't necessarily a design flaw.


Anyway, I've enjoyed this discussion.

Can't think of any more potential design flaws in humans right now.

As far as other animals go I would say a lack of gills in waterborne mammals - seems stupid to me that you'd have fish that can breathe in water and then have sea mammals that can't, yet only live in water.

Another is wings on flightless birds.

I don't know if someone has pointed out the remnants of hind limbs on whales or not but that works for me too.

 

[Freethinker]

Thanks for the info, I gues useless was not the correct word. However based on this and on Freethinker's reply regarding tonsils, I am still not convinced that either organ is 'useful' in that the function it provides is critical and/or outweighs some of its disadvantage.

Don't forget to consider that we currently live in a different environment than that for which we evolved. Even a few hundred years ago, the risks from diseases that modern medicine has rendered benign were much higher. We may have engineered our world to the point that the negatives could outweigh the positives, but that's not because these structures are useless, but because the "rules" have changed. One would assume that if these structures are ineffective there would be no selection pressure to retain them, but if they are detrimental there would be selection pressure to eliminate them.

I am also curious if there is any medical research showing that the common practice of removing these organs has had deletirous long term effects on the patients receiving the specific -ectomy. Specifically, based on the above quote, one would expect apendectomy patients to have longer recovery times from such GI maladies than the rest of the population. Has there been any research into the matter?

Google polio and tonsillectomy or tonsillectomy and leukemia. I'm not knowledgeable enough to evaluate the claims, but it appears that polio begins as a localized infection in the throat and inner ears, and there is a relationship between the presence of the tonsils and the likelihood of the polio infection advancing to its paralytic form.