Examples of bad "design" in humans

[SezMe]

I think the design of one of my appendages was way too small. Where's the intelligence in that?

Because if it was way bigger the only action it would get would be with Priscilla Palm and her five sisters.

 

[Frozenwolf150]

OK that one I have to agree with. It is right up there with soft exposed reproductive organs hanging out at just the right level for a swift knee to the family jewels. If there is a God, he has a sick twisted sense of humor, and must really laugh it up each time somebody gets a groin shot.

Pfft, of all the ones for you to explain the evolutionary reason, I would have thought you'd tackle this one as well. The male gonads need to be kept at a slightly lower temperature than average body temperature in order to allow sperm production. This is why on cold days it bunches up to draw them closer to the body, and on hot days it relaxes to let them erm-- hang loose.

Also, this is why I think it would be appropriate to greet God with a swift kick to the holy jewels. It's not meant to be hostile, in fact, far from it. Since he obviously finds it funny whenever males get nailed in the groin, it ought to be even more funny when it happens to him.

 

[rocketdodger]

Thus, the human being, if designed, is the most unstable and thus stupidest design in the entire animal kingdom (because if you're inherently unstable, you're inherently screwed).

Unless we are talking about stability in unnatural and dynamic environments, like buildings, cars, airplanes, and spacestations. In which case, the human being is far superior to any other creature on earth.

A design proponent could argue that our stability and mobility was designed knowing that one day it would be more important for us to be stable in unnatural environments than natural ones.

One could also argue that although we are inherently unstable, our body design gives us a greater ability to become stable, using our brain, than any other creature, precisely because we lack the stabilizers other creatures have. That is, nothing "gets in the way."

 

[robinson]

Pfft, of all the ones for you to explain the evolutionary reason, I would have thought you'd tackle this one as well. The male gonads need to be kept at a slightly lower temperature than average body temperature in order to allow sperm production.

I think we all know that. But I was trying to get with the program, and bitch about bad design and all.

 

[Mongrel]

Pinging off a point made earlier, food intolerances

Lactose intolerance and Coeliac disease. We found a ready and easy source of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals and a sizeable chunk of the population have reactions to them.

On a similar note why does exposing sprogs to milk or wheat increase the risk of the above but giving them a puppy reduces the risk of pet related allergies?

 

[six7s]

As distinct from all the other platypuses

Yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambrosia_beetle

(It's the bugs' old name, changed since then, but that bug is the reason why the platypus's scientific name couldn't be platypus at the time it was named, even though "platypus" SOUNDS like a scientific name.)

You learn something every year!

2008: tick

Thanks

 

[AWPrime]

OK that one I have to agree with. It is right up there with soft exposed reproductive organs hanging out at just the right level for a swift knee to the family jewels. If there is a God, he has a sick twisted sense of humor, and must really laugh it up each time somebody gets a groin shot.

Will its a trade off for better sperm quality, the higher internal temperature would reduce the quality.


But I think that we can call humans 'overly specialized' by evolution.

What could be called a flaw is the fact that humanity isn't able to adapt smoothly to the modern world.

 

[Cactus Wren]

Pinging off a point made earlier, food intolerances

Lactose intolerance and Coeliac disease. We found a ready and easy source of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals and a sizeable chunk of the population have reactions to them.

Actually that's a very neat point for evolution, as lactase persistence (what might be called "lactose tolerance") is a fairly recent evolutionary development. This mutation, which resulted in continued lactase production after weaning, was evolutionarily good for the people who had it (yummy food source) and for the cows as well (nice people to feed us and milk us), and so spread very rapidly. Lactose intolerance is still a statistical majority, though, in the world's population.

 

[quarky]

I've skimmed the thread, and see a scarcity of neurological shortcomings. We may be the smartest creature on the planet, but our system for remembering things is a jumbled mess when you examine it up close.

The fact that so many of us believe in an intelligent designer despite the wealth of knowledge to the contrary shows how defective our native reasoning abilities are.

The gift of perceiving patterns often fools us but good.

Our use of language is wonderful, but the languages themselves suffer from much ambiguity, as any JREF thread will attest (see loglan^WP for a made-up language supposedly without ambiguity... which no one can seem to learn.)

And don't even get me started on the emotions. (Or I'll get really, really angry.)

I have problems with accepting the notion that we are the top dog of evolution. Orcas certainly have some claim to 'the crown of creation' title, using a somewhat human bias. Or termites.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

A long time ago, I had an instructor with a bias towards the amazing cockroaches. He mused that they would be around long after we have destroyed ourselves. Our arrogance will be our undoing...

 

[gumboot]

Aaaah... really? I did not know that. I'd always assumed tailed apes lost the tail as they evolved into humans (hence our residual tailbone / coxyx).

They did (if by "tailed apes" you mean "tailed proto-primates" and if by "evolved into humans" you mean "evolved into "hominids"). But the four-limb model had relegated the tail to irrelevance (or at best a balancing tool) long before mammals evolved - let alone the first primates. The prehensile tail is a relatively new development.

 

[gumboot]

I have problems with accepting the notion that we are the top dog of evolution. Orcas certainly have some claim to 'the crown of creation' title, using a somewhat human bias. Or termites.

I think humans are the top dog of evolution, simply because we've managed to transcend evolution. We have essentially "won" the evolution game. Evolution is meant to be advancement of species based on natural selection - that is the impact of the natural environment on the species.

However humans are the only species on the planet that can manipulate their environment to such an extent that the impact of the natural environment on our species is irrelevant - we can survive in any environment we wish to - and indeed we can manipulate our environment to make it better suite us thus rendering evolution obsolete as a survival tool.

This has - of course - produced the problem of climate change - rather than evolution changing us based on our environment, the exact opposite is happening - our environment is changing based on us.

 

[gumboot]

Lactose intolerance and Coeliac disease. We found a ready and easy source of proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals and a sizeable chunk of the population have reactions to them.

I wonder if this is somewhat a by product of our success - one of the problems humans have is that individuals with negative features such as allergies to certain foods, etc. are able to survive due to the extensive support network that modern human society provides. As a result these negative features are passed on, where as in the "wild" they would gradually be bred out.

It would be interesting to trace the lineage of these conditions and see whether they have only appeared in large quantity in recent times.

 

[gumboot]

Unless we are talking about stability in unnatural and dynamic environments, like buildings, cars, airplanes, and spacestations. In which case, the human being is far superior to any other creature on earth.

A design proponent could argue that our stability and mobility was designed knowing that one day it would be more important for us to be stable in unnatural environments than natural ones.

The problem here is that those unnatural environments are intentionally designed with our physiology in mind. If we had been six-limbed with four legs and two arms we simply would have created an unnatural environment more suited to that physiology.

I've never come across a religious argument that attested that degree of pre-determination to God - and indeed as far as the Intelligent Design-orientated religions go, I always understood one of the fundamental cornerstones of human-God relations to be the granting of free will. Thus we must assume - even if our physical design was God's doing - that our unnatural environment is entirely our doing.

Our unnatural environment can, therefore, be seen as an effort by humans to try and compensate for the poor physiology given to us by our incompetent designer.

One could also argue that although we are inherently unstable, our body design gives us a greater ability to become stable, using our brain, than any other creature, precisely because we lack the stabilizers other creatures have. That is, nothing "gets in the way."

I'm not sure what you mean here. If you mean our physical stability, which is what I was referencing, we simply are not, and never do become, any where near as physically stable as most animals. Other domestic animals that live in our "unnatural" environment are still universally more stable in that environment than we are.

 

[six7s]

I think humans are the top dog of evolution

Please, all, excuse the following brain-fart and, if possible, point out if/how/where/etc I'm wrong... maybe in a new thread - I don't want to derail this one

Anyhoo...

I, too, think we are the current top-dogs because (?) we are (among terrestrials) most(?) adept at surviving in a range of environments

Although I don't subscribe to any gaia-style woo, it does seem to me that 'balance' is a key to the sustainability of all life on the planet

simply because we've managed to transcend evolution. We have essentially "won" the evolution game

It ain't over until the fat lady sings

To date, nothing has been around forever and I think its rather conceited for us to think we have the skills to buck that trend

If When something wipes us out , there are other species (e.g. bears and dogs) that could (quite quickly?) fill the niche(s) we currently occupy from the poles to the equator

Please do point out where my ignorance is blinding me

 

[Delvo]

Pfft, of all the ones for you to explain the evolutionary reason, I would have thought you'd tackle this one as well. The male gonads need to be kept at a slightly lower temperature than average body temperature in order to allow sperm production.

Then the design flaw is the need for the low temperatures. Why not just design the system for the production of sperm cells to be able to work at normal body temperature? (Same thing applies to the argument about the brain needing to be kept outside of the torso for the same reason.)

This mutation, which resulted in continued lactase production after weaning, was evolutionarily good for the people who had it (yummy food source) and for the cows as well (nice people to feed us and milk us), and so spread very rapidly. Lactose intolerance is still a statistical majority, though, in the world's population.

There are actually a few different alleles for it. One originated in Europe and spread a lot because it was really helpful in European cultures. A few others originated independently in Africa but didn't really catch on so much because it isn't as helpful in those cultures. (I have no information about other regions.)

But the four-limb model had relegated the tail to irrelevance (or at best a balancing tool) long before mammals evolved

I've wondered for years why tails persisted at all, and why they're so big in so many cases. Clearly "balance" doesn't explain it because we're talking about quadrupeds, and in many cases reptiles & amphibians which don't even stand up straight. Social signaling applies in many mammal and bird species but not reptiles or amphibians. At least one species of reptile can detach its tail if a predator catches the tail, but it wouldn't need to detach it if the tail hadn't been hanging out there to be caught in the first place, and it doesn't apply to other critters that can't detach theirs anyway. Protection of the local orifices & gonads would only apply to a short and thick tail, so it isn't enough to explain why most tails are so long. I haven't heard a single explanation for them which actually works.

 

[Dr. Trintignant]

The entire bipedal design itself is seriously flawed because it is inherently unstable ... A human is about as close as you could get to an animal that was designed to fall over. Thus, the human being, if designed, is the most unstable and thus stupidest design in the entire animal kingdom (because if you're inherently unstable, you're inherently screwed).

I think your reasoning is flawed. Airplanes can be designed to be dynamically stable or unstable. Unstable designs require sophisticated avionics for control, but tend to be more agile. Humans have big brains, and using a portion of the brain for stability control is cheaper than growing more legs.

Who knows; one leg might well be more optimal than two, but we'd never see that due to our evolutionary baggage.

- Dr. Trintignant

 

[gumboot]

I've wondered for years why tails persisted at all, and why they're so big in so many cases. Clearly "balance" doesn't explain it because we're talking about quadrupeds, and in many cases reptiles & amphibians which don't even stand up straight. Social signaling applies in many mammal and bird species but not reptiles or amphibians. At least one species of reptile can detach its tail if a predator catches the tail, but it wouldn't need to detach it if the tail hadn't been hanging out there to be caught in the first place, and it doesn't apply to other critters that can't detach theirs anyway. Protection of the local orifices & gonads would only apply to a short and thick tail, so it isn't enough to explain why most tails are so long. I haven't heard a single explanation for them which actually works.

I think it's a mistake to assume that evolution gets rid of things that aren't useful. It only gets rid of things if they actually actively hinder the animal's survival. Things of "neutral" benefit will remain.

For most animals, while having a tail doesn't seem much of a benefit, neither would not having one. Since the tail was there first, it stayed.

 

[Henners]

The male gonads need to be kept at a slightly lower temperature than average body temperature in order to allow sperm production.

Or perhaps the optimal sperm production temperature is a consequence of the testes being outside the body cavity, and they are outside for an entirely different reason?

The rationale used does not justify the conclusions drawn.

Some mammals have their testes comfortably within their body cavities.

Explain that.

 

[gumboot]

I think your reasoning is flawed. Airplanes can be designed to be dynamically stable or unstable. Unstable designs require sophisticated avionics for control, but tend to be more agile. Humans have big brains, and using a portion of the brain for stability control is cheaper than growing more legs.

Except that your problem here is aerodynamically unstable aircraft designs are as stable as other aircraft, once the computer compensation is taken into account. Humans are just unstable, period.

Our brains certainly manage our instability enough that we can deal with it, but we're still way behind other animals. And I can't think of what design advantage the two-feet thing gives us that can't be solved another superior way.

As for "growing" legs - we're talking intelligent design here - we wouldn't need to grow extra legs - the designer would have given us more legs in the first place.