Comment by coffeedrinker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by coffeedrinker | Hacker News Reader

I don't follow the creation v. evolution debate so this was new to me. I did google to see what the other side says about this and found this interesting:

"Human-designed devices, such as radios and computers, do not need to function until their assembly is complete. By contrast, living organisms must function to a high degree in order to thrive during every developmental stage from a single-cell zygote to adult. The embryo as a whole must be a fully functioning system in its specific environment during every second of its entire development. For this reason, adult anatomy can be understood only in the light of development."

http://www.icr.org/article/recurrent-laryngeal-nerve-not-evi...

I do not vouch for the science behind either article, but the concept that everything must work all the time rather than only at completion is an interesting concept that shows the difference between things I make and how I was made.

I'd disagree heartily with that quote. During development, multi-cellular organisms aren't "fully functional." They survive, but in barely functional states, in wombs, cocoons, or eggs.

Organisms do have to self-assemble though, which is pretty damn cool.

"They survive"

Since that is their primary purpose, that's pretty fully functional in my book.

Human designed devices _also_ function in this regard throughout their assembly. Varying the definition of "function" for only one side would make the argument spurious.

They are not designed to do shit, lets just keep that clear.

Now, when we say that they have to remain functional at all stages of development, we mean like unlike your car, during normal development you can't cut various control lines and reroute them.

You can remove the brakes in autocad temporarily to let you tweak something else a bit easier. Evolution cannot do the same with RLN. Removing the RLN at any stage of development constitutes a negative adaptation.

i don't see how, lets take a car for example (like mentioned). There is a thing called car only when it is fully assembled from different parts. therefore not functioning at every stage of assembly.

Also development of car is external process to car itself. Most of developments of car goes on on models. ( which are not physically the same thing )

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