Hacker News Reader

Comment by samrus | Hacker News Reader

Implies intelligent design

I think its rather some mutations that produced more reelin and created the most successful animal in earth's history

I'd really rather liked it if that supposedly "intelligent" designer took a bit more time at designing the urogenital tract of human males.

What's wrong with it?

Separation of functions/concerns is not great, for starters.

The testes are dangerously exposed, the plumbing is convoluted and failure-prone (and doesn’t recover well from mechanical insults).

The prostate, which serves no function outside of reproduction, lies inline with the urethra and quite consistently loses flexibility and becomes enlarged with age, causing all sorts of structural issues impacting basic urological function.

Female reproductive vs urinary anatomy is largely physiologically distinct (proximity and UTI risk notwithstanding). Though plenty of room for improvement there too — starting with endometrial tissue being far too prolific. Fun fact: endometrial tissue can migrate to the brain and cause haemorrhaging in severe cases of endometriosis.

Plenty of room for improvement across the board, I’d say!

Hey, $DEITY did its absolute best with the constraints and the requirements. But hey, can't please everyone apparently. Be happy you can relieve yourself well past the intended warranty period. The parts were designed to be easily _aftermarket_ replaceable with sufficient advances in technology, retaining the fundamental design without changes.

I'd like it if the vagus nerve didn't do a loop around my neck for no particular reason. (Giraffes would probably like that even more)

Is that a big concern? I've been pretty happy with my vagus nerve functionality until now... although I have not given it much thought to be fair.

I'm going to stick my neck out and say no.

I mean it does add like a millisecond of unnecessary delay that wouldn't be there if it took the most efficient route. It's not much, but it does add up!

mine seems ok what version are you on

Y'all get firmware updates?!

I hope we don't vibe-evoluate....

It's actually worse, but with robust unit tests.

The most successful animal by what metric?

Tetris high scores, obviously

Some of us don't spend days looking for food, don't die of cold, and survive the flu...

aaand we have Quake and Comand&Conquer - Red Alert

> aaand we have Quake and Comand&Conquer - Red Alert

Agreed, it would seem that evolutionary biology peaked in the late 90s then

As related in the documentary _The Matrix_.

The most successful at communicating their view that they are the most successful. Whether they are or not. But that means they are. By that metric.

Has another animal proposed they are more successful by a different metric?

Crickets?

You sound like you’ve never been disdainfully stared at by a cat..

Really interesting article though. I’m very hopeful AI can help work out how all these things interact.

So, the most successful at arrogance? In other words, the least successful at humility? Ironically, since humble and human share a common root. Just playing devil's advocate here, but what you propose is not a good metric to maximize.

> The most successful at communicating their view that they are the most successful

To who? Other humans?

It's seagull mating season where I am, and I don't speak seagull, but I'm pretty sure one of the things they're trying to convey to their fellow seagulls is that they're extremely successful.

Can't argue with it either. They're very much alive, which is the best you can be in this particular competition.

Corn, albeit not an animal has been pretty successful in terms of number of individuals. Their bi-pedal underlings have cleared swathes of land and take meticulous care of their well-being so they can bask in the sun undisturbed.

Until they are cut down and bombarded with micro waves by the very same bi-pedal underlings.

Mother nature hates weak things that die (that's why they get eliminated), so if we can make it to interplanetary species before killing ourselves, that would be a pretty huge sign of success. At least on mother natures benchmark.

I fail to see that, it's simply one of all other random mutations, it's just that this one has a big downstream effect of enabling other more complex mutations

Merely implies a very good fitness function.

Yes. Though according this fitness function we're not necessarily more successful than a jellyfish or a tapeworm.

Arguably much less successful since jellyfish have been around 700+ million years ands it’s not clear if humans will make it even the next couple thousand. But the jury is still out on that one

So Steely Dan documented this first?

You're positing the existence of a far more advanced lifeform than merely a clever monkey with pretensions, which then somehow created said monkeys. That's like saying that it's easy to become a millionaire, just start with a billion dollars.

That's not an explanation, you just replaced a problem with another harder one.

Intelligent mutations? How does that work?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com