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Comment by Finnucane | Hacker News Reader

In the same sense that we didn't evolve to ride around in cars, sit at desks, wear glasses, or a million other things that we do.

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Better title might be “the average bicycle isn’t designed to maximally leverage human anatomy.”

To which the answer is: so what? The market doesn’t care about efficiency that much, else clip-in pedals wouldn’t be optional.

Clip-in pedals are optional because dangerous they are. My only serious accident on a bike was when I weared SPD pedals. Unlike a helmet, clip-in pedals trade security for efficiency.

They’re not even that efficient.

I’m curious why you say that. I put clip ins on my bike and it made a world of a difference being able to pull and push while pedaling. Are there better options?

There’s no better option, it just didn’t make as much of a difference as you think it did. They add about 10 percent more power but more at the high end. If you’re pushing 500-600 watts that’s where the difference is clear.

I think the difference is worth it for amateur riders also, stability on the pedals and being able to both push and pull on your stroke should give you at least 15-20% more power. It might not benefit you in your 5Km commute to work, but it will in that 50Km weekend ride.

I don't really see it as a matter of efficiency. It's more that I never have to really think about where my feet are on the pedals. They're just always in the right spot and no extra work has to go into keeping them there.

Has anyone considered using a mag-safe like design so they would break away safely under extreme forces? Skis do this.

Lots of styles of clip do release if the force is too great or if there is any force outside of the normal (no pun intended) vector.

Mechanical efficiency is not that important when most people only ride a few miles a day, at a slow pace, dictated by traffic conditions. If you take a broader view and consider vantage point, ease of mounting, mechanical efficiency, aesthetics, convenience, weight etc, bikes are pretty damn optimal.

A vegan roommate used to get really worked up about drinking cow's milk, pointing out that humans were not evolved to do so in nature. He would say, "Can you imagine crawling under a cow to drink milk directly from the udder?"

The idea seemed to frustrate him more than the concept of humans eating meat or wearing leather shoes.

Wow, that is a thing that you do not want to do. Milk straight from the udder is full of e.g. chunks of fat. It goes through multiple steps before it is recognizable as the same stuff we buy in the store. Plus, the cow would probably step on you.

Still not sure what went through the head of the first human that tried this. If it weren't considered normal it would be so gross.

Why would it be gross? Breast milk is the first thing we drink, it's an almost perfect food. Drinking cow milk isn't very far fetched, especially when you keep cattle for meat. Seems like the most natural thing in the world frankly.

For a lot of human history (and even up to the present in some places), but certainly around the time cattle were domesticated, starvation was only ever just one bad harvest away. When last year they were deciding whether it's better to eat their own kids, let the kids eat them or just all die painfully together, drinking cow lactate was probably the least bad thing that happened to Grog and Grag this year.

What do you mean "chunks of fat"? Do you mean the fact that milk naturally separates after some time? I'm pretty sure chunks of anything in a cow's milk that is only a minute old is a serious sign of disease.

Ask basically any dairy farmer, and they will be happy to tell you they drink the milk straight from the cow. They probably have a couple of jugs in the fridge.

> Ask basically any dairy farmer, and they will be happy to tell you they drink the milk straight from the cow.

Not modern dairy farmers with cows loaded up with antibiotics, which generally all accumulate in the fat (cream). Even for organic farmers drinking unpasteurized milk would be an exception not the rule, it’s just an unnecessary health risk.

I grew up on a farm, and I milked the cows and sheep. When milk is brand new, it is not homogeneous. To get what we buy in the store it must have excess fat removed off of the top, pasteurized, and homogenized. We had a machine the size of a large water cooler with three different spouts on it to do the initial separation.

But you don't have to do any of that to actually drink that milk, get nutricients and be fine. Two of these are basically matter of preference. And "people deep in the past", whatever what it means, would want to eat fat with all its calories and all that.

And pasteurization makes it safer, but is not necessary strictly speaking. I can even still buy unpasteurized milk - but it is more expensive due to higher hygiene requirements currently. But in the past, they would just drink it (and get sick occasionally).

Nah, people in villages drink that. Fresh cows milk was considered higher quality.

> Plus, the cow would probably step on you.

Cows are pretty docile during milking. I mean, it’s not a great idea to crawl under _any_ object that size that can move unexpectedly, but if you’re in a quiet barn (to avoid the cow getting spooked) you could get away with it.

People drink raw milk all the time (and until pretty recently in history, that's the only way it really came, until that Pasteur guy figured it out).

Modern milk is homogenised to death because of squeamishness about food being biological in origin, people don't like lumps in their tea, and some people think cream bits means it's off. But within living memory, I remember cream on retail milk being quite common (and I'm sure it still is in places with local fresh milk).

True, it's not a great idea to drink raw milk due to various diseases, so you'd be better to heat treat it first, but you certainly don't have to homogenise it to drink it.

Just to add, drinking milk is pretty much only a thing of people from European descent — the gene responsible for digesting lactose can cause 3 variations: you can digest it as a baby (human milk also has it), you can digest it to around your teenage years, or you will be able to digest it afterwards as well. This variation is suspected to mutate during famines.

Did you say, we evolved to do that after we started domesticating cows?

Over 50% of people are lactose intolerant, and assuming the current timeline for agriculture is correct evolution doesn’t work that fast.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert but lactose intolerance depends on gut microbes which doesn't require evolution to change. You can alleviate symptoms of lactose intolerance with probiotics/kefir.

> lactose intolerance depends on gut microbes which doesn't require evolution to change.

I was responding to a comment that expressly said we evolved to consume milk after domesticating cows.

From what I’ve read the evolution of adult lactase was almost instant. Humans naturally produce lactase as babies, but what had to happen was to extend that production into adulthood. This is really a straightforward mutation then, what had changed was the non silencing of the gene that is already active at birth.

I am pretty sure humans evolved to use cups shrug.

We evolved to use vessels! Vessels! Not cups!

Ah, that explains why I can so rarely fit my fingers though the handle of mugs.

Not sure if my coffee gourd will go in the dishwasher or not, though.

Apparently he'd never heard of the Maasai?

Ants have cattle (aphids), they even drink the honey dew straight off the behind!

Humans didn’t evolve to be humans

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