Hacker News Reader

Comment by b65e8bee43c2ed0 | Hacker News Reader

the most straightforward example off the top of my head would be that hair follicles have no conceivable reason to react to testosterone. removing DHT receptors from them would have no adverse effect whatsoever.

View on HN

have you read the story of dr. adrian thompson's ai generated fpga ? the story goes that removing seemingly redundant components caused the circuit to fail because of second order effects. for that reason, i try to avoid sweeping statements like 'no effect whatsoever' when it comes to playing god

It's important to note that evolution is not a designer, it's just a string of random mutations over millions of years that mostly work. The human body is remarkably shit at a lot of thing, like not getting heart disease. Most animals don't develop heart disease but we do... oops.

We can also live just fine without an appendix. Literally the only thing the organ can do is suddenly develop a severe infection and kill you without surgery which has only become reliably available in the past 100 years or so. (Blah blah bacterial reservoir or whatever: that's of evidently very low value compared to sudden and painful death)

There's also no reason we shouldn't be immune to funnel web poison: cats make an enzyme which deactivates it, whereas primates don't.

There is also no reason our eyes can’t see in the dark because cats can and no reason to not to lay eggs because that’s more practical and way less dangerous (and probably painful) than giving birth directly. Also too bad that we haven’t multiple hearts for redundancy.

Ok.

So what does that means ?

Means there's room for improvement.

That would affect sexual selection, which can have consequences for the following generations, if there will be any.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com