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COMMENT PAGE FOR:
URI Feathers are one of evolution's cleverest inventions
jbuzbee wrote 11 hours 39 min ago:
One interesting fact that I recall, and that I didn't see in the
article, is that evolution in some Owls traded off silent flight for
the inability to fly when their feathers are wet. When there's an
extended period of wet weather, owl fledglings may starve because their
parents can't hunt.
tibbydudeza wrote 19 hours 44 min ago:
My wife has an African Gray parrot, it amazing sometimes to just watch
him and see something that can be traced back all the way to the
dinosaurs.
Pretty smart too - the recognize people and objects and uses
association of the words - like when my one black cat (got two but he
has white feet) enters the kitchen to check for food scraps he says
"Get out" like I would.
He has no oil gland to lube his feathers since they are a tree dwelling
species from the tropics but down feathers which break down into a fine
dust when he grooms.
jononomo wrote 22 hours 1 min ago:
Cracks me up how everyone seems to think this is the result of
randomness and not of intelligent design.
_gabe_ wrote 21 hours 7 min ago:
For real. I love how they can even call feathers the greatest
invention without ever wondering who the inventor was. You canât
claim evolution is the inventor. Evolution is a description of a
process, and anthropomorphizing it doesnât make it possible of
inventing anything. Itâs similarly funny to me looking through
these comments and seeing people marvel about the engineering and
design of things like hearts and cells. Does nobody ever think to
ask, who designed this? Who engineered this?
It would be like finding a watch someone had dropped on the ground
and being like, âWow what an amazing invention! It must have
evolved over several thousands of years until it was able to
accurately track the time!â. Or thinking that a chaotic natural
process like a tornado could somehow assemble a car if it blew
through a junkyard. Both of these are ridiculous arguments, but
thatâs what people claim evolution is like. After all, given enough
time anything is possible? Right?
Tphi wrote 37 min ago:
Voltaire : The universe embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that
this watch exists and has no watchmaker.
And Voltaire did not know about all the maths behind matter and
universe, the computer science behind DNA, the complexity of
biochemistry...
To all the engineers here : work about causality, and the power of
randmoness, be curious, do not take for granted evolution through
randmoness, it makes no sense especially for an engineer who knows
how codes work.
The idea must precede the code, and the right code can act upon the
matter. The random code without idea has absolutely no chance to
do anything valuable.
russdill wrote 19 hours 58 min ago:
Invention is searching a problem space to find novel solutions to
problems. Can you explain why such a search would require agency?
_gabe_ wrote 17 hours 15 min ago:
Thatâs not the definition of invention.
> a: something invented: such as (1): a device, contrivance, or
process originated after study and experiment (2): a product of
the imagination
especially : a false conception[0]
Studying, experimenting, and imagining all require agency.
[0]:
URI [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invention
russdill wrote 15 hours 57 min ago:
So if a process produces a device such as a bicycle without
agency, that process is simply not invention, correct?
russdill wrote 21 hours 17 min ago:
You make me sad
sharpshadow wrote 23 hours 33 min ago:
Great article, I like owls even more now. Didnât know they are that
silent.
cubefox wrote 1 day ago:
Remaining question: Are feathers better than fur?
dadjoker wrote 1 day ago:
Wow, they are so incredibly intricate, it's almost like they were
designed....
DoreenMichele wrote 1 day ago:
October 2022 a bird with the code name B6 set a new world record that
few people outside the field of ornithology noticed. Over the course of
11 days, B6, a young Bar-tailed Godwit, flew from its hatching ground
in Alaska to its wintering ground in Tasmania, covering 8,425 miles
without taking a single break...
Many factors contributed to this astonishing feat of
athleticismâmuscle power, a high metabolic rate and a physiological
tolerance for elevated cortisol levels, among other things.
Additional fun fact the article doesn't mention:
Birds sleep with only half their brain at a time when making these long
distance flights. That's why they don't doze off and fall out of the
sky.
Intralexical wrote 1 day ago:
Dolphins too. Half of their brain keeps them swimming while the other
half sleeps.
Other fun fact: Humans making long car drives also do what's called
"microsleeping". Your eyes remain open and your hands stay on the
wheel, but your brain goes unconscious for a couple seconds at a
time. Usually, you don't even noticeâ¦
iamwil wrote 1 day ago:
How did scientists figure this out? Did they attach a flying bird to
an MRI machine?
npteljes wrote 1 day ago:
EEG for one.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-wave_sle...
TheMagicHorsey wrote 1 day ago:
Great article. But I hesitate to call feathers one of evolution's
cleverest inventions. The natural world is chock full of amazing
evolved engineering from the huge (the hearts of blue whales) to the
intricate (the brains of hominids) to the diverse (the various forms of
eyes from compound to pinhole, to lensed), to the tiny (white blood
cells). Everywhere you look there are feats of engineering that would
awe anyone.
russdill wrote 21 hours 13 min ago:
I'd like to imagine if there's thousands of other worlds out there
where evolution of complex life has played out. If you brought
intelligent life from those places to Earth, what would they find
most surprising?
I think feathers would be one of those things.
nyrulez wrote 1 day ago:
I love the science of evolution in that there's no need for an
underlying model for such an invention to actually verify the science
and the possibility of it, just that such an invention is possible.
Basically anything and everything is possible with evolution and that
doesn't really feel like science to me.
npteljes wrote 1 day ago:
Indeed, evolution is basically trial and error, where the trial is
life, and the error is (untimely) death.
I'd argue that it's not science at all, because what's missing is the
coordination behind it. To me, evolution is not a product of
conscious effort, but an emergent behavior or the individuals and
systems that participate.
Taking the "science" definition from Wikipedia: "Science is a
rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in
the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world".
With evolution, testing definitely happens, but it's not a systematic
endeavor, or at least I'm not convinced that it is.
prerok wrote 1 day ago:
To me, it sounds like science at its finest.
Only what works, survives, regardless of the politics, i.e. what
others think of it.
willturman wrote 1 day ago:
> did not land, did not eat, did not drink and did not stop flapping
My understanding is that these incredible distances are achievable less
by "flapping" and more by leveraging small adjustments to harness the
incredibly powerful forces found among and between air currents and
waves as they traverse across the ocean.
For example, here is an unpowered remote control glider achieving
measured speeds of 548+! mph using nothing but natural energy harnessed
from wind and gravity. [1]
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eFD_Wj6dhk
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_soaring
etangent wrote 1 day ago:
> My understanding is that these incredible distances are achievable
less by "flapping" and more by leveraging small adjustments to
harness the incredibly powerful forces
That is not correct. This particular bird (Bar-tailed Godwit) has
never been observed to "dynamically soar" nor does it have the proper
wing shape for that type of flight. If you ever seen Godwits in the
wild, you will know why, it's a flapping only bird, they have no
other mode of flight.
Albatrosses on the other hand do employ dynamic soaring and fly even
greater distances than Godwit does (they can circumnavigate the
Southern Ocean several times) although albatrosses have additional
advantage of being able to use water for rest (Godwits cannot).
vl wrote 1 day ago:
This is interesting. Letâs say 600g Bar-tailed Godwit goes on
13500 km flight and spends very optimistic 200g of fat.
Theoretically, if fat is only used for going up, it can climb to
170km (i.e. potential energy). This means that to get to
destination in needs to glide by dropping 12.5m per km, or have
glide ratio of 80.
Best human gliders have glide ratio of 60. So Godwit still needs to
be very efficient glider, or, what is more likely also knows how to
use winds and updrafts.
etangent wrote 17 hours 56 min ago:
Godwit does not glide at all. Its wings are physically too small
to support any kind of gliding flight. It must flap constantly to
stay aloft.
vl wrote 16 hours 4 min ago:
What this calculation shows is what glide ratio Godwit must
have if it spends 1/3 of its body weight very efficiently to
gain altitude and reaches destination in completely calm air.
By the looks of it it doesnât have this glide ratio, and I
doubt it spends 1/3 of its weight only gaining altitude.
So it means that it must gain altitude and, perhaps, travel
speed by alternative means, most likely using updrafts and
riding winds.
elliottkember wrote 1 day ago:
I met that guy at a glider meetup a few months after that record.
That Transonic plane is huge. He managed to fit the 3m wingspan into
a regular car, lengthwise.
I never got out to Parker Mountain but those guys had great stories.
100G will find the weak point on your model, often explosively.
Also fun is pelicans surfing:
URI [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEFrSycTvRk
willturman wrote 1 day ago:
That pelicans surfing video is perfect - there's certainly not a
whole lot of flapping going on.
100G will find the weak point on your model
You know, just a casual glider built to withstand 10 times more
gravitational force than an F-15 and 15 times more than a Formula 1
car. Wild.
nonameiguess wrote 1 day ago:
You see this even more in the ocean. There are sharks who, being
cold-blooded, have the ability to slow their metabolism to very near
zero and simply ride a current for thousands of kilometers to
entirely different parts of the globe where feeding is better without
expending any energy to do it. It's probably why sharks have been
around so long. They can be extremely resistant to famine conditions.
Yeul wrote 1 day ago:
Doesn't clever imply a conscious designer? Not very scientific.
cushpush wrote 1 day ago:
is a feather a discovery or an invention? (am actual philosophical
inquisition)
npteljes wrote 1 day ago:
Happenstance, if you ask me.
And if we're talking philosophy, I think the feather doesn't exist at
all, so it's even harder for me to imagine that it's a product of
conscious effort. I imagine that what we humans consider feathers
have near-infinite, similar-looking predecessors, proto-feathers,
which differ so slightly from actual feathers that it's hard to say
where the non-feather featherlike skin protrusions end, and feathers
begin. What we can do of course is agree on such a line, but that
further proves to me that feather is just a human concept, and that
non-humans don't actually consciously interact with whatever we
happen to call feathers.
So, feathers just kinda happened over time.
Reptur wrote 1 day ago:
"Discovery" fits since we're just uncovering what's already there,
not creating it. "Invention" is for stuff we actually make. Unsure if
just a mistake or creationist perspective in the article.
DoreenMichele wrote 1 day ago:
Evolution.
"Survival of the fittest" doesn't mean "That gene was gorgeous like
Mr. Universe, so he won!" It means "Life threw something at a wall
and this is what stuck. It died less in the face of actual real world
conditions."
After you winnow away all the failed stuff, you have stuff that
works. Do it for millions of years and amazingly complex and elegant
stuff can emerge from the process.
xandrius wrote 1 day ago:
Discovery implies that it already existed before and it wasn't found
yet.
I'd say invention is closer but does seem to imply agency.
I think feathers are the evolution here. Something evolved into a
feather.
CSMastermind wrote 1 day ago:
There really needs to be a third term for something uncovered by a
process that otherwise would not have existed but wasn't created
with intent.
aqfamnzc wrote 1 day ago:
Emergence?
luxuryballs wrote 1 day ago:
Dinosaurs were actually Chocobo
xandrius wrote 1 day ago:
Chocobo -> Dinosaurs -> Chicken
Checks out!
Simplicitas wrote 1 day ago:
Another feature that make birds really remarkable, if not mistaken, is
that they take in oxygen when they inhale AND exhale. Feathers are
great, but a creature such as B6 still needs a lot of energy to fly for
10 days straight.
delecti wrote 1 day ago:
It's more that their respiratory system is kinda circular. When we
exhale, there's still a bit of gas in our lungs, and that reduces how
efficiently we can extract oxygen. But the oxygen extracting parts of
a bird's lungs are more like a heatsink, with air rushing past it in
a consistent direction, rather than back and forth.
KineticLensman wrote 1 day ago:
Bird lungs have separate pipes for inflow and outflow, while
mammals use the same pipe for both. Bird lungs are also relatively
rigid, and they use separate air sacks to do the pumping
xeonmc wrote 1 day ago:
So human lungs are piston engines whereas bird lungs are turbojet
engines.
Gravityloss wrote 1 day ago:
If the world warms back to the saurian sauna for a few millions of
years, maybe mammals will not be on top of the game anymore. Time to
welcome our new avian overlords. Maybe they'll evolve from crows.
They're more optimal in so many ways anyway. Too bad they won't have
coal, oil or natural gas reserves to build an early industrial
civilization on.
L_226 wrote 20 hours 39 min ago:
Excuse me - they have ample amounts of complex long-chain
hydrocarbons helpfully globally distributed on the surface by humans
(plastics).
Intralexical wrote 1 day ago:
> If the world warms back to the saurian sauna for a few millions of
years, maybe mammals will not be on top of the game anymore.
Yes! I've been saying this. Global warming seems like a given at this
point, so instead of stopping it we should try to increase oxygen
levels too and then stick Bombardier Beetle fire-breathing genes in
back-bred Hatzegopteryxes. Those beasts had wingspans over ten
meters, were apex predators, and were built like it. May as well get
some dragons to look atâ¦
> Time to welcome our new avian overlords.
Not new. Birds are theropods, same as T-Rexes. It's just a return to
form.
wongarsu wrote 1 day ago:
But getting large amounts of copper, iron and aluminum will be so
much easier with all the work we have already put into mining and
refining it. At worst you have to invent the technology to turn wood
into charcoal and charcoal into coke to get the fire hot enough to
smelt iron. But aluminum is pretty rust resistant and can be smelted
with a good wood fire, and avian species will likely prefer the
lighter metal anyway.
holoduke wrote 1 day ago:
They have microplastics. Enough to power the new society for 200
years.
bluishgreen wrote 1 day ago:
I read it as "Fathers Are One of Evolution's Cleverest Inventions".
It completely made sense. I heard some research where starting about
500K year ago humans started to pair bond as a way to prevent mom and
child mortality during and after childbirth and indeed Fathers are a
clever invention. So yea, feathers are cool - fathers too! (for more
info/reading here is a book suggestion: Eve)
SamBam wrote 1 day ago:
Really good article.
I know some of the early evolutionists wondered about the evolution of
the feather and wing, since it seems hard to evolve in a gradual way --
a little bit of a feathery flap doesn't offer any advantages if it's
not enough to glide on.
I know one of the leading theories is that they evolved to keep animals
warm, since they're also good insulators. Is this still the main
theory?
sampo wrote 1 day ago:
> it seems hard to evolve in a gradual way
There seems to be 4 different hypotheses. So there is no consensus on
this question. [1] A video about the "wing-assisted incline running"
hypothesis:
"The Origin of Flight--What Use is Half a Wing?"
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_avian_flight#Hypothe...
URI [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMuzlEQz3uo
swores wrote 1 day ago:
I have no knowledge in this area, this is purely a guess and so I am
sharing it not to inform anyone but in the hope someone who does know
can tell me if I'm wrong:
When I thought about this in the past, I assumed they evolved in sea
creatures first - where even very small flaps or mini wings/fins
could improve hydrodynamics and/or swimming control, without needing
to make a single jump from useless to being able to fly. But I've not
looked into whether that is the case.
Edit to add two quotes from a quick search:
"Thus, early feathers functioned in thermal insulation,
communication, or water repellency, but not in aerodynamics and
flight."
- [1] "Two major rival published theories are based on the roles of
feathers in insulating the body against heat loss and in providing an
aerodynamic surface for flight. However, because of the lack of
knowledge about the roles and ecological relationships of
protofeathers and of the most primitive feathers, it is not possible
to test strongly either of these theories, or others as proposed in
this symposium, against objective empirical observations to determine
which is falsified or is the most probable"
-
URI [1]: https://www.britannica.com/animal/bird-animal/The-origin-of-...
URI [2]: https://academic.oup.com/icb/article/40/4/478/101404#
jcims wrote 1 day ago:
I'd say DNA is one of evolution's cleverest inventions, buuut. xD
*ducks*
wongarsu wrote 1 day ago:
Two things can each be one of evolution's cleverest inventions
xandrius wrote 1 day ago:
So you're saying that two can be one?
2 = 1 proven?
daveguy wrote 1 day ago:
They are saying "one of" does not mean the only one.
One of my cat's eyes is blue.
One of my cat's eyes is green.
Both can be true at the same time.
hammock wrote 1 day ago:
I first thought the headline was âFathers are one of evolutions
cleverest inventionsâ. To which I agree
nyc111 wrote 1 day ago:
It may be misleading to look at only to the design of the feather.
Flight and such a long and sustained flight can only happen because of
the sophisticated programming. Evolution must be a great programmer
too.
meindnoch wrote 1 day ago:
>Evolution must be a great programmer too.
Randomly mashing the keyboard, then running the code hoping that it
doesn't crash? Not exactly what I'd have in mind when thinking of
great programmers, but to each their own.
zelphirkalt wrote 1 day ago:
One with lots and lots of time on their hand and countless trial and
error, and parallel projects.
umvi wrote 1 day ago:
> and countless trial and error
Is it countless though? Earth is "only" 4.5 billion years old with
life appearing "only" 800 million years later, which seems pretty
short for something chaotic and unorganized to self-organize into
the nearly unfathomable sophistication we have now. Of course,
humans are bad at grokking large numbers, and I might be too biased
as a God fearing man... to be clear I don't deny the realities of
evolution, but I currently tend to believe that as far as
abiogenesis/evolution goes, life was "seeded" in some way on the
planet, i.e. given a head start vs arising spontaneously from
primordial soup within 800M years. I realize that this belief
doesn't really contribute anything to the scientific discussion,
just musing that 800M years to create the initial life seed doesn't
seem that long considering we use super computers to simulate
trillion+ iterations of various models and have failed to observe
similar phenomenon in terms of self-organization without outside
influence.
CSMastermind wrote 1 day ago:
> I currently tend to believe that as far as
abiogenesis/evolution goes, life was "seeded" in some way on the
planet, i.e. given a head start vs arising spontaneously from
primordial soup within 800M years.
It really depends on what you think the seed was.
The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and we have pretty good
records of life on it and the evolutionary steps that took place
going about about 3 billion of those with reasonable evidence of
life for another billion before that (the 800 million years later
part that you reference).
So, if life got seeded onto the planet, it happened before then
and would have to have been in the form of small carbon-based
molecules.
There's some debate in the field if life evolved genetics first
or metabolism first. But the 'seed' would be the same in both
cases, it's just that the pathway to get to modern life would be
different.
The most compelling case that I'm aware of for these small
carbon-based molecules to originate somewhere other than Earth is
this paper: [1] Essentially they show that genomes have been
doubling in size on average every 350 million years or so. If
you project that math backward, you end with life starting, not
at the beginning of Earth, but at the beginning of time,
coinciding eerily with the Big Bang.
That points to a theory that carbon, water, and other elements we
thought developed later might have been created earlier in the
universe than expected. That would then point to the building
blocks for life being essentially 'seeded' everywhere in the
universe. Waiting to wake up as soon as conditions were right.
URI [1]: https://biologydirect.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186...
jeremiahbuckley wrote 1 day ago:
Excited to anticipate next-gen airplanes with slotted wingtips and
their vanes controlled by AI for optimal performance.
mhb wrote 1 day ago:
Also the new swimsuits inspired by penguin feathers.
pfdietz wrote 1 day ago:
Props for ships with knobs inspired by whale flukes.
andrelaszlo wrote 1 day ago:
> The flat, broad, flight-enabling feathers we see across most of the
wings and much of the body surface of living birds are called
pennaceous feathers. (Fun fact: these are the feathers people used to
make into quills for writing, hence the word âpen.â)
I get the author's point, I think, but the etymology of "pen" according
to wiktionary.com:
> From Middle English penne, from Anglo-Norman penne, from Old French
penne, from Latin penna (âfeatherâ), from Proto-Indo-European
péthârÌ¥ ~ pthâén- (âfeather, wingâ), from pethâ- (âto
rush, flyâ) (from which petition). Proto-Indo-European base also root
of *petra-, from which Ancient Greek ÏÏεÏÏν (pterón, âwingâ)
(whence pterodactyl), Sanskrit पतà¥à¤°à¤®à¥ (patram, âwing,
featherâ), Old Church Slavonic пеÑо (pero, âpenâ), Old Norse
fjǫðr, Old English feðer (Modern English feather);[1] note the /p/
â /f/ Germanic sound change.
So pens aren't called pens because we used pennaceous feathers, but
because they were made of feathers, period. At least that's how I get
it.
"Pennaceous feather" is a funny term too, then, meaning something like
"featherlike feather"?
busyant wrote 1 day ago:
> from Latin penna (âfeatherâ)
Also in Italian. Although I believe penna can also mean the more
modern "pen."
Penne pasta is basically plural of this.
thaumasiotes wrote 1 day ago:
> "Pennaceous feather" is a funny term too, then, meaning something
like "featherlike feather"?
I'd probably render it as more like "typical feathers" or "standard
feathers". Note that "typical feathers" and "feathery feathers" mean
the same thing, but one is perfectly normal phrasing and the other
isn't.
corpMaverick wrote 1 day ago:
In Spanish. Pen=Pluma. Feather=Pluma.
thaumasiotes wrote 1 day ago:
In Mandarin Chinese a pen is ç¬, obviously derived from the word
for a paintbrush, ç¬. Feathers don't come into it - Chinese is
traditionally written with a paintbrush - but the pattern is the
same.
gruez wrote 1 day ago:
The article has another factual error as well:
>covering 8,425 miles without taking a single break. For comparison,
there is only one commercial aircraft that can fly that far nonstop,
a Boeing 777 [...]
The Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350 have ranges exceeding that, with
ranges of up to 8,790 mi and 11,163 mi respectively, depending on the
variant. [1] [2] edit:
Turns out there's even more aircrafts that exceed that range. [3] [4]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner#Specific...
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350#Specifications
URI [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A330neo#Specifications
URI [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380#Specifications_(A3...
URI [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A340#Specifications
mec31 wrote 1 day ago:
I live outside Boston and frequently see a Newark-Singapore A350
fly over. A mind boggling distanceâ¦
082349872349872 wrote 1 day ago:
...and penknives were originally the small blades one used for
trimming pennaceous feathers into writing-pens.
gumby wrote 1 day ago:
Wow, what an interesting article, not all about feathers. Thereâs so
many genetic mysteries about skin appendages still to be uncovered e.g.
in humans, how do nails and hairs manage to grow only in one direction
(and perhaps even more remarkable, always so).
I was drawn to this side point though: the microraptor has four wings.
Not like a dragon, of course, which has to be an insect, but an
ordinary quadruped that used all four limbs to fly (compare that to
mammals with a membrane between the forelimbs and hind limbs on each
side). I imagine it must have looked like an F-35 when flying.
Seems like it turned out to be optimal to stick to two, not just for
terrestrial mobility, but due to the (bidirectional!) optimization of
the wishbone and the chest musculature. Itâs probably hard to get
enough power into the dual-mode hind limbs. Sadly the Wikipedia
article on the microraptor doesnât explore this.
Intralexical wrote 1 day ago:
> Seems like it turned out to be optimal to stick to two, not just
for terrestrial mobility, but due to the (bidirectional!)
optimization of the wishbone and the chest musculature.
If they fly through the same air as airplanes, you also lose
efficiency wherever you have wingtips (pressure below leaks above,
basically), and the rear wings can get messed up by
turbulence/vortices from the front wings if you're not careful.
TravisCooper wrote 1 day ago:
It's all designed. Top down, one mind. Designed. That's why it all
works.
Think about all the cells, and the thousands/millions of jobs they
do, in perfect coordination just in your fingers or hands.
It's all designed.
ssener2001 wrote 1 day ago:
exactly and clearly.
Stray chance, dump nature ,blind force, unconscious casuality and
the elements that without restriction are scattered in every
direction -none of these can have any part in the most
balanced,wise perspicacious, life giving ,orderly and firm deeds of
the Creator. They are used ,rather by the command will, and power
of the Glorious Doer as an apparent wil to conceal of His power.
According to the meaning of the verse:
Who has created everything in the best way,(Quran)
everything is cut out according to its innate abilities with
perfect measure and order, and put together with the finest art, in
the shortest way, the best form, the lightest manner, and most
practicable shape. Look at the clothes of birds, for example, and
the easy way they ruffle up their feathers and continuously use
them. Also, things are given bodies and dressed in forms in a wise
manner with no waste and nothing in vain; they testify to their
number to the necessary existence of an All-Wise Maker and point to
that Possessor of Absolute Power and Knowledge
jen729w wrote 1 day ago:
Itâs a shitty designer that includes cancer et. al. in the spec.
waveBidder wrote 1 day ago:
never thought I'd see a creationist on hn. Giraffe's have a nerve
that goes all the way down the neck and back up, merely because it
couldn't unwrap from a vein as giraffes evolved longer necks. No
designer would include such a needless waste of resources. If
there's a watchmaker, he's a blind idiot.
URI [1]: https://timpanogos.blog/2011/10/08/evidence-of-evolution-g...
RoyalHenOil wrote 1 day ago:
There is not some guy coordinating all our cells to grow and work
in lockstep. It's actually just a few very simple algorithms (e.g.,
cells differentiation is triggered by strength of a signal, a la
HOX genes) that have been very slowly refined over millions of
generations of evolution.
Just because the output of a system looks complicated does not mean
that the input into a system is complicated.
heresie-dabord wrote 1 day ago:
> hatching ground in Alaska to its wintering ground in Tasmania
According to simulations of plate tectonics, these two locations
would have been somewhat closer... 100m years ago.
snarfy wrote 1 day ago:
The hair on your head grows indefinitely. The hair on your arms and
legs grows to a certain length and then stops. You can shave it off,
but it grows again, but only to that same length.
How does the hair on arms and legs 'know' how long it is?
nextaccountic wrote 1 day ago:
No, both grows indefinitely, it's just that head hair takes more
time to fall off
This was just asked and answered in /r/askscience
URI [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1c6zztu/why_d...
raincom wrote 1 day ago:
What happens when arm hair get implanted on head? Do they grow like
arm hair?
jen729w wrote 1 day ago:
A friend had a skin transplant â inside thigh to foot, IIRC? it
was a long time ago â but I do recall that they told me that
the hairs come with the skin, and continue to grow as if they
were in-situ.
nektro wrote 1 day ago:
and then other parts of skin know not to grow hair at all!
throwaway5752 wrote 1 day ago:
[1] Different anagen phase durations.
URI [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp...
harshaxnim wrote 1 day ago:
Still doesnât answer - How does the follicle know that I cut my
hair and needs to grow again to that length?
ars wrote 1 day ago:
It doesn't. Hair grows for a certain amount of time - time, not
length. Then waits for a while unchanging, then falls out.
growth (3 to 6 years) -> static (2 to 3 months) -> fall out ->
rest -> start over
The maximum length of your hair is determined by how long it
stays in the growing phase, in general this phase is longer in
females than in males. And some people are naturally able to
grow longer hair than others.
In pregnant females the static time is increased, i.e. the hair
stays there without falling out. This makes their thick and
full. After delivery this changes and the hair falls out in
clumps, which is unpleasant, but it's the same hair that would
have anyway fallen out earlier, it's not extra hair falling
out.
If you cut the hair nothing changes, it still grows for as long
as it was going to originally.
That myth about cutting hair (or shaving) to make it grow
faster or whatever is not real.
incompatible wrote 1 day ago:
Interesting. I've occasionally wondered why my hair (from
scalp) can reach barely half way down my back, even after
leaving it for decades uncut, while other people (typically
women?) can grow it to the floor.
ars wrote 1 day ago:
Yup, that's exactly it.
I've always wondered if the almost universal preference for
women to have long hair is linked with their ability to
have long hair, while for males people (not you :)
typically want it short, which matches what males are able
to naturally do.
i.e. which came first? The ability for hair of a certain
length, so that's what people like, or if people like hair
a certain way so natural selection helps out.
incompatible wrote 1 day ago:
Perhaps men couldn't win so decided not to play.
tmnvix wrote 1 day ago:
This doesn't seem right. If I use clippers to trim hair on my
body, it grows back to its 'natural' length. I don't end up
with hair of various lengths. Likewise, if I shave it, I
don't end up with some stubble and some regular hairs.
I've never experienced a time where I've trimmed body hair
and had it remain the same length for a couple of months.
diath wrote 1 day ago:
> This doesn't seem right. If I use clippers to trim hair
on my body, it grows back to its 'natural' length. I don't
end up with hair of various lengths.
Are you sure? I have fairly hairy body so when I use
moisturizers it tends to stick to the hair instead of the
skin, and since I'm trying to take care of my forearm
tattoos, I trim my forearm hair on a regular basis, after a
few weeks, if I look closely, I can see some hairs being
around, say, 2cm long, whereas others are just barely
growing out.
ars wrote 1 day ago:
> I don't end up with hair of various lengths
Look closer, the hairs are random length. You have to wait
of course for them to reach natural max length, and then
you'll see a randomized mix of lengths.
If you are always clipping hair they will almost all be at
one length because > 90% of them are still growing and then
getting trimmed. The rest (a minority) have recently fallen
out and are just getting started and will be shorter.
Does that make sense?
someotherperson wrote 1 day ago:
It doesn't know. Hair cycles are constant. If you didn't cut
it, it would eventually fall out as it is replaced by another
hair. It grows to the point where the epithelial column
contracts and starts forcing it out. This is based on
environment, nutrition and genetics and varies from person to
person and is affected by everything from stress to blood flow.
You can observe this on many people by looking at hair
miniaturization of people who have MBP or similar -- the
follicle constricts in size and the resulting hair that comes
out is progressively shorter in length and diameter until the
follicle is so constricted that it no longer produces hair.
bdamm wrote 1 day ago:
There are possible physical answers; it could be lack of
inertia on the hair triggers growth. It could be that when you
rub your arm, an action as innocent as a yawn, you are also
informing the growth of hair. Could it be as simple as looking
at your hair or knowledge of shaving causes a subconscious
trigger? We already know that these high level shortcuts into
low level processes exist (Pavlov's dog anyone?)
ars wrote 1 day ago:
It's none of those. Read the sibling replies to your comment.
mkaic wrote 1 day ago:
IIUC, it doesn't. Hair grows for a certain time period, falls
out, and regrows. The follicle has no knowledge of the length
of the hair it is producing, it is simply on a grow-stop-shed
cycle with a certain period.
guerrilla wrote 1 day ago:
So hairs are actually excretions, like sweat and shit.
bee_rider wrote 1 day ago:
Whatâs the opposite of a fun fact
klyrs wrote 1 day ago:
Teeth
m463 wrote 1 day ago:
Does it drop off after a certain time period (= length)?
EasyMark wrote 1 day ago:
that would be my guess.
ghaff wrote 1 day ago:
Not always.
On two different occasions, I've had ingrown toenails that had to
have a procedure done because, once they started ingrowing, they
wouldn't stop doing so. (It's still outward growth but still.)
gumby wrote 1 day ago:
Despite the terminology, "ingrown" doesn't mean the nail grows in
the wrong direction. The lunula continuously emits keratinocytes
in a single direction; these form both the nail bed and the nail
itself.
The "ingrown" phenomenon occurs well after the nail has formed
(it's getting pushed out from the lunula end) and is due to a
combination of your toe's (hallux I assume) ideosyncratic geometry
and environmental conditions, likely, as another commenter pointed
out, how you innocently cut your nail.
Sorry for the pedantry but when I worked in drug development I used
to research the nail unit, which, it turns out, few people do.
atombender wrote 1 day ago:
The most interesting thing I've learned about nails is that
they're now thought to be part of an organ â the enthesis organ
[1], which is the tissue structures around the site where the
tendon attaches to the bone. This is relevant to
spondylarthropathies, some of which show up as nail changes many
years before enthesitis occurs.
URI [1]: https://www.enthesis.info/anatomy/enthesis_organ.html
Balgair wrote 1 day ago:
For others that have had this issue too: Cut your toe nails in a
straight line. I used to cut them in a curved line, a 'C' kind of
shape. Don't do that. Cut them in a '|' kind of shape. Yes, you'll
have a big overhang on the edges, but give your toe time to adapt.
I've had a few of these procedures too and it never really stuck
for me. Ingrown toenails kept being a problem. Then I started
cutting my toenails in the flat / straight '|' sort of way and I've
not have a problem since.
I figure it's worth a shout out to the few of you out there that
need the help. But, again, it may not work for you too.
aqfamnzc wrote 1 day ago:
Wow, amazing. Why does this work? I would think that the nail bed
has no knowledge of what the end of the nail is shaped like.
ars wrote 1 day ago:
The nail doesn't change, rather the skin by the end of your toe
does.
londons_explore wrote 1 day ago:
Ingrown toenails basically don't happen in cultures where
people don't wear shoes.
I suspect the cause is socks or shoes pushing against the skin
at the end of the toe, causing it to grow incorrectly over many
months.
An untrimmed nail pushes any sock/shoe away, solving the issue.
Kubuxu wrote 1 day ago:
It keeps the side from curling in and causing the
irritation/cut that results in what we call ingrown toenail.
djtango wrote 1 day ago:
My friend told me this like 15+ years ago. I was skeptical but it
really works. I then just use a file to take a bit of the edge
off until its a curve
tylerchilds wrote 1 day ago:
iâve had those proceduresâ super painful. iâve ended up doing
surgeries to cauterize the roots to prevent the ingrown growing
direction.
ghaff wrote 1 day ago:
Wasn't my experience FWIW. (Mostly commenting so others won't
necessarily avoid.)
Just an in-office procedure using some local anesthesia and acid
I think. The first time the whole cycle went on for months while
I was regularly going to the podiatrist because of a fairly
severe foot fracture of the same foot which may or may not have
been connected.
This last time--a good 15 years later symmetrically on the other
foot--I was pretty much just "Let's do this" after a couple times
trying to just cut the toenail.
huytersd wrote 1 day ago:
Because nails and hair are produced at a fixed site. The nail itself
is dead cells and do not grow.
gumby wrote 1 day ago:
That isn't the question (in a prior job I studied the physiology of
the nail unit). Most cells don't normally have an orientation, so
you'd think that thefollicle would push out a hair in some random
direction, sometimes towards the outside world and sometimes in the
direction of your bones.
Obviously they don't (!) but the question is how?
The nail is the same: the lunula emits these keratinocytes in only
one direction; even more weirdly it's a planar structure.
throwup238 wrote 1 day ago:
> Obviously they don't (!) but the question is how?
Don't cells "just" orient themselves using mechanotransduction
[1] or am I missing something? That's a bit hand wavey but since
cells don't form 3d structures in tissue themselves, they orient
against the extracellular matrix using mechanotransduction and
other growth factors.
The development of multicellular life was essentially cells
learning how to orient themselves into a digestive tract.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanotransduction
Hendrikto wrote 1 day ago:
Dragonflies are pretty much the best flyers among the insects, and
they have four wings. Maybe not directly comparable, but still.
gumby wrote 1 day ago:
insects are so different from vertebrates (e.g. multi compartment
bodies thanks to how they express the HOX gene) that the flying
strategies are also quite different.
At the current level of O2 in the air I don't believe that flying
insects can grow as large as even a hummingbird, much less an
eagle.
userulluipeste wrote 1 day ago:
"At the current level of O2 in the air I don't believe that
flying insects can grow as large as even a hummingbird"
This got me curious. At a quick search, I found out that there in
fact is at least a species of flying insect larger than (the
smallest) hummingbird: [1] [2] The insect grows up to 7 cm in
length whereas the bird can stay less than 6 cm at adulthood. No
information about the insect weight though (for a proper
comparison).
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauromydas_heros
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_hummingbird
meindnoch wrote 1 day ago:
Hummingirds are the best flyers among vertebrates, with only two
wings. They can hover very precisely, and they can also fly
backwards.
GuB-42 wrote 1 day ago:
Generally, all insects have four wings, but they are not always
used for flying.
Flies in particular are also among the best flyers, and yet, they
use only two of their wings for flying, the other two shrank to
became halteres, a sensory organ acting like a gyroscope.
Dragonflies may be the best fliers in the insect world thanks to
their four independently controlled wings, but flies may be the
second best, and they achieved that by losing two of their four
wings. Evolution is interesting.
marcosdumay wrote 1 day ago:
> Seems like it turned out to be optimal to stick to two
You can't conclude that. Evolution is noisy and random.
Besides, birds are not unambiguously the most optimized flying
vertebrates around.
vanderZwan wrote 1 day ago:
No, but the pterosaurs might have been, because their (likely)
quadrupedal launch implies they could optimize away all unnecessary
muscle (read: weight) from the legs, so they inherently could
optimize their body plan better.
And they also had two wings.
[0] [1] [2]
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosaur
URI [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scAp-fncp64&t=150s
URI [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TKgupAZVzE
bmitc wrote 1 day ago:
> Besides, birds are not unambiguously the most optimized flying
vertebrates around.
What is a flying vertebrate that is not a bird? Bats are all I can
think of.
DoreenMichele wrote 1 day ago:
A bat?
bmitc wrote 1 day ago:
Yea, sorry. I was editing that in before I saw your comment.
DoreenMichele wrote 1 day ago:
There's also flying squirrels, though they don't have true
flight. They have enhanced gliding to leap further.
Edit:
Oh, look: flying lizards and flying fish:
URI [1]: https://wildlifeinformer.com/flying-animals-that-are...
m463 wrote 1 day ago:
Maybe optimized for their niche.
I remember reading something about bombers maybe during ww2. I
think if fighters were chasing them, the bombers could escape
because with their large wings, they could fly high and slow and
turn inside them.
the analogy being - some birds might be set up for ground
operations and chasing prey, others living in a different ecosystem
with high altitude cruising over long distances.
marcosdumay wrote 1 day ago:
Birds are more optimized than bats in some niches (like
long-distance flight), but vertebrate evolution is very stuck
into path dependency, and they are way far from the optimum on
the things that matter for most animals like maneuverability and
acceleration.
Four-winged birds dying up can easily be a complete accident,
even more because two-winged birds were almost completely killed
once too.
freedomben wrote 1 day ago:
> You can't conclude that. Evolution is noisy and random.
You're correct that you can't conclude that evolution is
perfection/optimized, but it's also not correct to say it is
random. The genetic variation is random, but natural selection is
very much not random[1][2].
[1] [2]: See Number 7.
URI [1]: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/misconceptions-about-natura...
URI [2]: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/cat01.html
jononomo wrote 21 hours 59 min ago:
Natural Selection is not the interesting part, though. Natural
Selection is the boring part. Obviously a working system will be
selected over one that doesn't work.
The interesting question is where the working system that Natural
Selection was able to select came from in the first place.
Retric wrote 1 day ago:
Random doesnât mean all outcomes are equally likely, a coin
rarely ends up on its edge.
Thus evolution is often random between local optima. Peopleâs
organs donât represent perfect left/right symmetry but
thereâs no particular benefit for which of the two options were
chosen overall. Ie swap just which lung is smaller and you get
lots of problems, but swap everything and it all works.
graemep wrote 21 hours 20 min ago:
Local optima are also the reason you get things like the
recurrent laryngeal nerve, which runs from the brain to the
larynx going under the heart. bad enough in a human, a huge
deviation in a Giraffe or a Brontosaurus.
heresie-dabord wrote 1 day ago:
> natural selection is very much not random
Except where punctuated by (subjective) catastrophe.
But then it is not the mechanism of evolution itself that is
random.
prerok wrote 1 day ago:
Well, it's never random, is it? It's only random when all is
equal, otherwise it's biased. That's why it works.
Consider birds. There was a good article a few days back, on
why only non-toothed birds survived. Until the meteor-strike,
65M years ago, all was equal and they survived along-side.
Until they were the only survivors.
heresie-dabord wrote 1 day ago:
The asteroid that created the Chicxulub impact came from a
rather random location but had a deterministic effect given
where it struck.
And here we are, with beaked birds. ^_^
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
vcg3rd wrote 1 day ago:
Regardless, it doesn't have agency and isn't clever. Personally I
belive in a Designer, but since middle school I've been
bewildered by the way evolution is almost always presented,
outside of rigorous scientific literature, as if there is agency,
intelligence and intent behind it.
I don't have a problem with that, but materialists don't have
that luxury and use language in bad faith when do it.
bee_rider wrote 1 day ago:
Humans anthropomorphise everything, Iâm pretty sure it is how
we run general intelligence software on small pack hunting
tribal creature hardware: we model evolution as a clever
sentient trickster and speculate about how does things.
Nevermark wrote 1 day ago:
As humans we do things for teleological reasons. Meaning we can
say we did X in order to accomplish Y.
Ascribing teleological explanations to evolution is technically
wrong, since it doesnât look ahead.
However, it does something very similar. Our brains process
competing options, from plausible to nonsensical, before
selecting an action, partly in sequence (ideation), but also in
parallel (competition processing).
Evolution tries many options in parallel and sequence too.
Just by actually doing them and then selecting which of those
choices to keep repeating (better survival), and those to
forget (extinction of genes, clusters of genes, or whole
species).
So over longer time periods, it acts very teleologically. A
kind of reverse teleologic by hindsight.
The same is true for the âbrillianceâ of this teleology.
Evolution tries so many things, that it can solve very
difficult problems in very novel ways.
Is that âintelligenceâ? Our casual usage of intelligence
isnât defined precisely enough to say one way or another.
One person would say evolution is blind, and in the short run
it is. But another person might point out that evolution is
anything but blind. It is an epic version of Edisonâs lab,
where millions or billions of false solutions are continually
tried and ruled out, to find each new fitness enhancement.
It relentlessly experiments and follows the âdataâ.
On longer timescales, evolution is effectively teleological,
highly creative and very intelligent.
And all three aspects compound over time, just like human
learning and research, because evolution doesnât just find
new features, but new abstractions and modularity. Such as
flexible reusable gene systems for encoding body parts,
epigenetic reuse of features in different kinds of cells for
different purposes or triggered and ârunâ by different
conditions, nervous systems, etc.
Thus evolution âlearnedâ to speed itself up over time,
letting it more rapidly optimize larger more complex solutions.
I.e. orders of magnitude faster creation of new novel animals,
than it originally took to optimize the first cellular life,
colonies of cells, etc.
Watching evolutions first billion years would not have
suggested that the plethora of different intelligent animals,
from octopus, parrot to human, would have been remotely
possible in the time it took. Evolutionâs compounding meta
learning created brains, our âtrueâ teleology, and its
expansion into technological and economic expressions of the
pursuit of survival. All meta extensions of evolution, found by
evolution.
jononomo wrote 21 hours 47 min ago:
There are single proteins that need to "evolve" somehow, but
they need to arrive at a very particular shape, and extremely
near misses offer no feedback information and are just as
good as dead.
But the combinations of amino acid sequences they would have
to search through in order to find the correct shape is so
large that it is greater by several orders of magnitude than
the sum total number of all the organisms that have ever
lived on Earth since the beginning of time (which is about
10^40, I think).
So your claim that "evolution just tries so many billions of
options, man" just doesn't hold water.
There was a time, back during the 1960s, I'm told, when
mathematicians in the academy would openly mock evolutionary
biologists for their lack of understanding of statistics.
But then political correctness took over or something.
Nevermark wrote 17 hours 33 min ago:
> But the combinations of amino acid sequences they would
have to search through in order to find the correct shape
is so large
Evolution isn't looking for that sequence.
It is looking for any change in sequence with a positive
payoff, and in the meantime constantly diversifying
sequences with similar outcomes, creating more
opportunities for serendipity.
Every large animal is born with mutations. So we are also
quite robust to spreading the search, running multiple
experiments at a time, taking small risks with genes not
quite as good, which will get weeded out quickly when
combined with other weaker genes, but in the meantime cast
a wider net for meshing with another gene that complements
it.
So yes, in any given species with a nontrivial population,
millions or billions of genetic variations are being
explored at any point in time. We are nothing like carbon
copies of each other, differing by just a couple
checkmarks.
This is a radical speed up. Just as sexual recombinatory
reproduction is. Evolution today operates with vastly more
efficient genetic environment, structures and systems than
what early life did.
Tractable statistics do no justice to how biology works and
all the paths it searches. I am not knocking formal
statistics at all, just noting that past one or two step
events, the layered statistics of chemistry, genes, gene
clusters, epigenetics, populatoin dynamics of complex
creatures in their complex environments, etc. are not going
to be tractably modelled.
Measurable sometimes for sure, but not symbolically
characterizable or calculatable.
billforsternz wrote 1 day ago:
That's amazing. Did you just type that out or did you spend a
couple of years preparing it just in case?
Nevermark wrote 1 day ago:
That's funny. :) I just typed it out in one splat with a
few quick edits. But I spend a lot of time trying to get
clear and distilled perspectives of everything interesting.
prerok wrote 1 day ago:
I agree with the sentiment. I also heard of some books that say
stupid things like humans have not yet reached the maximum of
human evolution.
Of course we have not reached the end of our evolution. That
will exist only when we are all extinct.
As for the direction... that is something else. Maybe we will
evolve into higher intelligence, but as the Dick's story "The
Golden man" or "Idiocracy" show, is the intelligence really the
driving force of today?
mulmen wrote 1 day ago:
> is the intelligence really the driving force of today?
Yes, certainly. More than anything intelligence
differentiates us as a species.
prerok wrote 1 day ago:
I don't agree. Women, in general, don't find men attractive
because of intelligence. It's other factors more like,
whether their life is in order, they are fit, or the
classic, if they are symmetrical.
So, we are visually, materiallistically oriented. Not all,
of course, but evolution works on population size, not
exceptions. Exceptions only come into an overbearing effect
on cataclysmic events.
Retric wrote 21 hours 56 min ago:
Diminishing returns. People vastly prefer a partner who
can communicate using language over those who donât,
thatâs a huge preference for intelligence just not an
unlimited one.
Similarly most people want some level of success be that
artistic, financial, athletic, etc and success is highly
correlated with above average intelligence. 101+ IQâs
might not seem that impressive but over a long time scale
thatâs an endless treadmill.
saagarjha wrote 1 day ago:
Consider talking to more women.
TeMPOraL wrote 1 day ago:
It's not that kind of intelligence that matters. Don't
think in terms of being good at chess, poetry, or
multiplying numbers in your head. Think wheel, writing,
domestication, agriculture, petrochemical engineering,
nuclear weapons, computers, genetic engineering.
Our intelligence is what allows us to acquire and improve
new adaptations without having to change our own
genetics. We're able to change living environments and
adapt to them multiple times in a single life span, and
we went from basic language to walking on the Moon much
faster than evolution is able to make meaningful changes
through natural selection. It takes however many million
years for a species to grow fur to adapt to cold climate;
it took a spear for us to adapt by stealing other
animals' fur, and couple hundred years to figure out how
to make synthetic ones at scale. In that time, we adapted
to almost every environment on the planet.
Intelligence very much is the driving force behind
humanity.
EDIT: and we're also beating natural selection from the
other end - modern medicine allows many people to live
and reproduce, who without it would've died from genetic
diseases. We're very good at denying the "fitness"
criteria nature uses.
_carbyau_ wrote 1 day ago:
While I agree in the sense that what you say improves
human race survival vs whatever-else comes.
But evolutionary pressure also occurs within the
species and for the human race $$$ has largely
influenced demonstration of procreational traits.
Intelligence doesn't matter if you are smart but don't
have any opportunities.
The other social cues, fashion, appearance, physical
fitness, health, being "funny". Are all a lot easier if
you have $$$.
So many conversations around modern population
fertility rates have a $ component in them.
Maybe being intelligent matters more than simple
strength and coordination used to. But what kind of
intelligence?
Maybe being a sociopath such that you can bully your
way to CEO - or to a high enough level you meet some
"darwinian fitness" threshold.
But in and of itself, being able to engineer the feat
of walking on the moon didn't make all the nasa
employees inherently more desirable to partners to
procreate. Those employees maybe had attributes that
matched with desirable procreation partners and maybe
that feat brought $$$ too - but the engineering smarts
alone isn't it.
bdamm wrote 1 day ago:
While I agree with your general slant, it's not correct
to say that evolution can't act quickly. Evolution can
act, and does act, slightly faster than a single
generation. Populations change rapidly, and the
success, failure, life and death of individuals and
their guiding behaviors, change with it. The
introduction of online dating, for example, has already
caused evolutionary changes in our species. Only time
can tell if these changes are going to last. Just
because we haven't yet generally grown thumbs adapted
for interacting with iPhones doesn't mean that the more
subtle changes haven't happened.
TehShrike wrote 1 day ago:
I've observed this as well. People who believe in evolution
can't seem to stop themselves from using "intelligent design"
language to anthropomorphize evolution.
gumby wrote 1 day ago:
You might enjoy Dennettâs âThe Intentional Stanceâ for
some enlightening exploration of this metaphor, e.g. âThe
thermostat tries to keep the temperature between 67 and 69â
not only makes sense but is a useful way to think of it even
when we donât believe the thermostat has agency.
jononomo wrote 21 hours 57 min ago:
The thermostat was ultimately designed by a mind that has
objectives. That is why it tries to control the temperature.
freedomben wrote 20 hours 4 min ago:
What about the ocean? The ocean also "tries" to keep the
temperature steady.
rexer wrote 16 hours 48 min ago:
That one doesnât quite work for me. A thermostat has a
purpose: keep a temperature. An ocean doesnât really
have a purpose.
renewiltord wrote 1 day ago:
Dude, that's just the language. "Water wants to flow downhill".
It's a model, man. Everyone learns this pretty quickly. I don't
get how this position is so popular on HN/Reddit. The language
is giving you tools to model the world.
"The water doesn't want anything. It's just the laws of
gravity."
Intelligence comes from being able to efficiently compress
highly predictive models. Any computational mechanism that is
unable to do this is a low-grade intelligence. If you need the
whole thing spelled out carefully for you, you're NGMI.
graemep wrote 21 hours 18 min ago:
You can say "water flows downhill" instead.
Why not say things in the more accurate way.
throwway120385 wrote 1 day ago:
It's hard to explain an animistic force of nature to another
human without using words that imply agency. It feels like our
language and our ways of thinking are hard-wired to see
everything through that lens because we have agency. It's like
a fish trying to imagine what it's like to be outside of water.
jononomo wrote 21 hours 46 min ago:
So you believe in a "force" that creates life?
oasisaimlessly wrote 17 hours 33 min ago:
Pastor says that the four fundamental forces are necessary
and sufficient to create life.
Yeul wrote 1 day ago:
Didn't Darwin write a book that did just that?
48864w6ui wrote 1 day ago:
Bruce Lee's injunction "be like water" probably means don't
overcomplicate with agency and opposed consciousnesses, just
evolve the lagrangian (towards victory).
(Speak not of the relevant XKCD)
philosopher1234 wrote 1 day ago:
Evolution in humans, from an atheist perspective, is consistent
with the idea of a designer: humans are the designer.
Sexual selection in humans is a psychological phenomenon, and
itâs subject to all of our most hifalutin ideas.
You have an opinion about what âgodâ wants and express it
through sexual selection, thus influencing our collective
evolution in that direction.
TeMPOraL wrote 1 day ago:
Also ironically, by the time we became able to conceive of
and communicate about such ideas, natural evolution has long
stopped being the driving force behind how humans and human
groups look and grow and evolve.
RoyalHenOil wrote 1 day ago:
Evolution is still very much a driving force in humanity.
Every time a couple struggles to get pregnant, every time
birth control fails and results in an unplanned pregnancy,
every time someone decides to be child-free, every time
someone dies young, etc., etc., humanity evolves toward one
genotype over another.
If anything, I would argue that human evolution has
accelerated in the last few decades (at least in wealthy
nations where people have a lot of control over their
reproduction and enormous choice in who they marry, if they
marry at all).
stuaxo wrote 1 day ago:
But why do they want what they want, and how much agency is
there really anyway ?
cies wrote 1 day ago:
> in humans
Nails are a much older "invention of evolution" than humans: so we
have to investigate there...
> how do nails and hairs manage to grow only in one direction
Like all things evolution: nails that grow backwards to not have an
advantage (prolly a disadvantage), where nails that grow forwards
have an advantage (climbing, clawing, scratching).
moi2388 wrote 1 day ago:
Yeah thatâs not how it works. Fitness is not determined for every
single attribute.
For example, observation A might be maladaptive, but it is caused
by gene B which also causes observation C, which does provide an
advantage.
VeninVidiaVicii wrote 1 day ago:
I hear this kind of âit exists because it has to existâ thing
from non-bioscience types a lot. Essentially, this is just a
tautological statement.
bane wrote 1 day ago:
Tautologies may be unsatisfying, but there's nothing specifically
wrong with them.
VeninVidiaVicii wrote 1 day ago:
It is what it is.
morley wrote 1 day ago:
I don't read "it exists because it has to exist" in the parent's
statement. They're saying that there's an advantage one way and a
disadvantage another, and evolution favors advantages. I wouldn't
characterize a statement like that as a tautology, and I don't
think the author deserves your dig for it.
ars wrote 1 day ago:
> and evolution favors advantages
The question was how, not why.
Your answer is like saying "how does the eye focus light" and
answering "so that you can see".
VeninVidiaVicii wrote 1 day ago:
In my opinion thereâs a general fundamental misunderstanding
on the purpose of theories. I see it all the time â attempts
to explain why something is useful simply because it exists
(re: popular science evolution). There are loads of suboptimal
traits that are counterbalanced by something else.
inglor_cz wrote 1 day ago:
"nails that grow backwards to not have an advantage (prolly a
disadvantage), where nails that grow forwards have an advantage
(climbing, clawing, scratching)."
That still doesn't describe the underlying mechanism of the growth
itself.
Looking at the work of Dr. Michael Levin regarding electric
communication of cells, I tend to believe him that the main factor
in actually creating tissues in their intended, correct shape, is
incessant electric chatter among individual cells.
An interesting corollary would be that cancer = cells that don't
cooperate/communicate with their neighboring cells anymore.
RoyalHenOil wrote 1 day ago:
I can't speak about nails and hairs specifically, but directional
cell growth is common in nature.
In plants, for example, cells replicate primarily at the tip of a
bud, which allows branches to lengthen directionally rather than
grow out in all directions. The plant produces growth hormones,
which are transported upward throughout all branches until they
reach a dead end. When they reach a dead end, they stop moving
and just sit there, which causes the cells at the dead end to
have a greater exposure to these growth hormones. These cells
bathe in growth hormones for so long that they pass the
hormone-exposure threshold that triggers cell replication.
pfdietz wrote 1 day ago:
Another interesting question is how development distinguishes
left and right. As I understand it, there's a small object that
develops that has cilia in a tilted configuration. The rotation
of the cilia causes a flow of fluid to one side that is
determined by the sense (clockwise or counterclockwise) of the
cilia's rotation. That flow is sensed and sets off signals that
drive development.
Where does the rotational sense of cilia come from? From the
stereochemistry of proteins, and therefore from amino acids. The
left-vs-right handedness of the base chemistry of life is
exploited to get a macroscopic signal.
inglor_cz wrote 1 day ago:
Wow, you amazed me. That is a journey of several orders of
magnitude.
throwway120385 wrote 1 day ago:
That journey of orders of magnitude is the journey of all
life on Earth from its genesis to today.
ChrisMarshallNY wrote 1 day ago:
That's a great breakdown of feather technology. TIL...
hubrix wrote 1 day ago:
URI [1]: https://archive.is/20240416202627/https://www.scientificameric...
matrix2596 wrote 1 day ago:
archive link plz
xanny wrote 1 day ago:
Just append archive.is/ to the beginning of the url. Chances are, it
is already archived.
URI [1]: https://archive.is/https://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...
swores wrote 1 day ago:
Or save a bookmark in your browser and edit its destination to be
this Javascript bookmarklet to let you load the archive.is version
of any URL you're currently on without even needing to remember the
domain or type anything:
javascript:void(location.href='https://archive.is/?run=1&url='+enco
deURIComponent(location.href))
Or version for IA's Wayback Machine instead:
javascript:void(window.open('https://web.archive.org/web/*/'+locati
on.href))
(The archive.is one takes you to it in the same tab, while the
wayback machine one opens a new one - because personally I use the
former when I can't load a page, so don't need that tab kept open,
and use the W.M. for comparing current to old versions of the page.
But it should be fairly self-explanatory how to swap one URL with
the other if you prefer it differently.)
Or this more complicated version of the Wayback Machine one, which
if you click while on an empty tab will instead give you an alert
with a text field in which to type or paste whatever URL you want
to look up:
javascript:(function()%7Bif(location.href.indexOf('http')!=0)%7Binp
ut=prompt('URL:','https://');if(input!=null)%7Blocation.href='http:
//web.archive.org/web/*/'+input%7D%7Delse%7Blocation.href='http://w
eb.archive.org/web/*/'+location.href;%7D%7D)();
jmckib wrote 1 day ago:
Thank you, that's so convenient!
swores wrote 1 day ago:
You're welcome :)
DIR <- back to front page