Itās so weird thinking about how weāre just copying DNA. Thatās pretty much the purpose of life; replicate these strange molecules as much as possible. Consciousness is some unintended byproduct of the ācopy foreverā algorithm.
And the contents of the information being copied is basically a recepie for building a machine that can make copies of the information needed to build that machineā¦
Itās so weird thinking about how weāre just copying DNA.
Whatās more interesting to me is that weāre not just copying it. Weāre taking two strands of DNA and randomly choosing some from each strand. Some animals are clones of their parent, but most are a randomized mix from each parent. The strands are 99% the same, so to a certain extent itās just copying that molecule, but itās also trying to perfect that remaining 1%.
Instead of being a way to copy a molecule forever, itās a way to optimize that molecule. But, what is an optimal molecule? Itās a molecule that contains instructions to generate a creature that has 2 legs, 2 hands, a brain, etc.
FuckyWucky@hexbear.net
on 28 Aug 02:23
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and the whole thing is based around killing and eating one another.
no but honestly, periods are great. The feeling when all that extra blood leaves your body is amazing. Guys will never know what itās like being somewhere and sudenly feeling warmth blood running down your legs out of nowhere. Amazing. 10/10 would ome back as a woman again
I honestly donāt know any proponents of āintelligent designā who are female.
Except the Sycophantic Patriarchal TERFs who do everything their husbands tell them to do.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 04:53
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I cannot describe how much I hate this feeling. Itās probably honestly been protective because I have another reason to always use condoms, and even when Iām drunk, Iām still autistic.
fossilesque@mander.xyz
on 28 Aug 04:56
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Triggered lmao. A flood of memories just came back like
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
on 28 Aug 02:56
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I forget who but a comedian said it well. If we were intelligently designed it was the first design. Why would they ever put the amusement park right next to the sewage system?
cornshark@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 02:57
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I feel like if there ever was an advertisement park it would be perfectly placed right next to the sewage system.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
on 28 Aug 03:15
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Ha, fair. Fixed now
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de
on 28 Aug 04:56
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Same reason they mixed the vestibular system with the vision system. Do you want a different body part for every single body function? Thatād be a lot of extra weight and things to take care of.
Isnāt that just a way to average latency to match up with the other limbs? Nerve connections arenāt instantaneous like electrical wires or fiber optics.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Aug 05:04
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Your larynx isnāt really a limbā¦ But nah, its an evolutionary artefact. In primordial fish itās a straight line, but then the head moves, a neck forms, etc etc. and the nerve canāt detach and move over, so it gets longer wnd weirder.
The nerve thing bothers me. I wish to learn nothing more of it
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 28 Aug 06:35
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Bro myopia is the least stupid part of our eye design problems. Our retinas are built entirely backwards for no other reason besides evolution making a mistake and then duct taping over it too much to fix it later.
If your retina was the right way around (like cephalopod eyes) you would have:
No blind spots
Higher fidelity vision even with the same number of receptors since the nerves and blood vessels wouldnāt interfere like they do now
much lower likelihood of retinal detachment since you could attach it for real in the first place
possibility for better brightness/darkness resolution since blood supply could be greater without affecting light passage
possibility for better resolution because ganglion nerves can be packed more densely without affecting light passage
The ability to regenerate cones and rods because you could, again, ACTUALLY HAVE SUPPORT CELLS WITHOUT BLOCKING LIGHT TO THE RETINA
Our eyes are built in the stupidest way possible.
Another fun fact: retinol is regenerated by your liver. Not your eyes, not some part of your brain, not some organ near your head like your thalamus which could probably get the job done if it tried, your fucking liver. Your eyes taking a while to adjust to the dark has basically nothing to do with your eyes; itās because of the delay in adjustment by your fucking liver to produce more retinal, dump it into your vascular system and wait for it to hopefully reach your eyes. Why are we built like this?!
Edit: A few comments asked for sources on the relation between dark adaptation and liver vitamin A. So I went looking for sources. It was honestly somewhat difficult to find information, but I was able to find two different case studies showing that night blindness in patients with damaged livers. Specifically these individuals had liver damage that affected their serum Vitamin A levels. And after raising their vitamin A levels, their symptoms improved.
This study details a patient with normal day vision and no other ocular problems besides being unable to see at night.
The patient had a medical history of stage 4 non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis, which led to a malabsorption of vitamin A, as confirmed by the very low vitamin A level in the serum analysisā¦ ā¦Subjective improvement in symptoms, along with better performance on visual field, were noted after initiating oral vitamin A supplementation for 6 months.
This study details a patient with night blindness caused by low levels of vitamin A presumably due to Hepatitis C.
Case description: This case describes a 64-year-old female patient with symptomatic VAD, likely secondary to liver cirrhosis in the setting of Hepatitis C. The patient presented with night blindness and blurry vision. She was successfully managed with direct replacement of Vita-min A.
These studies do show that dark adaptation is dependent on vitamin A produced by the liver, but Iāll be the first to admit itās not exactly conclusive evidence of my initial claim that the liver must respond to dark conditions increasing retinol concentration in the blood in order for rod cells to function properly in low light conditions. That is a possible explanation for these case studies but not necessarily the only one, so take my last fun fact with a grain of salt.
We see that there is different sensory focuses. For instance many animals can smell and hear much better than humans do. Some animals have exceptionally better eyes than humans, but overall humans are very focused on vision.
Now when we look at modern inner city environments and the like. Would you think it to be actually better if our senses, particularly our eyes were that much better and delivering even more input to our brains? We already see many people that are overwhelmed in terms of their sensory input and frankly the ones that arenāt still suffer slowly from living in cities. In terms of where we are now, i donāt think it is too bad that we donāt have hawk eyes.
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 12:30
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I live with, work with, and am myself part of, the autistic population. So I gotta agree - sometimes, higher sensitivity is a real detriment.
Itās not fun being light-sensitive. Iāve had days where Iāve worn sunglasses indoors, with the lights off and curtains closed. The vast majority of my days arenāt that bad, thankfully, but it truly sucks when light causes physical eye pain and headaches. Iāve got a great eye for detail (and have been called āeagle eyeā throughout my life), which benefits me in a number of ways, but unfortunately it also means I get distracted by things others donāt notice. I canāt just āignoreā a lot of things, and when those distractions impact me disproportionately, Iām left in the frustrating situation of guiding others to see (or hear, or feel) the things that are super obvious to me - it feels like leading a child by the hand.
Iām also sensitive to touch (I canāt stand light touch, but I can detect ticks on my skin before they bite) and have the ability to hear novel speech sounds that modern science claims I shouldāve lost the ability to detect decades ago (which, okay, is a cool feature to have. But it contributes to being easily-distracted.) All in all, Iāve never known any other way of experiencing the world, but I do know that most people have difficulty understanding my atypical point of view. Which leads to me preferring the company of fellow spectrumites, and others who understand and accept sensory differences.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 28 Aug 12:53
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So this intelligent designer decided to fuck our eyes up some weird convoluted way instead of justā¦ making us see less?
I honestly hope you donāt subscribe to this unscientific garbage.
The eyes of mammals are designed in a way that they āsee lessā than for instance certain birds or reptiles.
You call this āfuck up some weird convulted wayā, when it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Thereby it is consistent with the way the visual nerve cells are designed and work together with the rest of physics and chemistry. The design is intelligent as it factors in all aspects as part of a coherent complete design. A design far too complex for any human mind to grasp in full.
Basically your question is like asking, why there is no āmagic solutionā that directly breaks the observable laws of physics. The genius of the design is in not requiring to break the observable laws of physics to achieve the desired outcome.
You say this is āunscientific garbageā when your only alternative explanation is āeverything just happened randomly and here we are.ā Neither approach, āintelligent designā nor āextremely long chain of random occurrencesā can be empirically observed and only argued logically. I find it unscientific to denounce a hypothesis as āunscientific garbageā when it cannot be falsified, while the counter hypothesis cannot be proven.
your only alternative explanation is āeverything just happened randomly and here we are.ā
Evolution is definitely not random. The mutations that show up are random, but the selection for them is very directed. If the traits give an organism the attributes to survive, it does and will pass those traits on. If not, it doesnāt. Your argument that itās all random is typical creationist nonsense.
Neither approach, āintelligent designā nor āextremely long chain of random occurrencesā can be empirically observed
Weāve observed evolution many many times. From the peppered moth to COVID and the flu, we observe evolution all the time. Itās the underlying science for all biology and none of it makes sense with out it.
Evolution is a theory that has thousands of proven data points to support it being true. And not one of those experiments has come back showing āgoddiditā. Intelligent design is unscientific garbage pulled from a book of fairy tales.
You say this is āunscientific garbageā when your only alternative explanation is "everything just happened randomly and here we are
What an absolutely absurd misstatement about what evolution is. If you actually believe this, then youāre doing yourself a massive disservice, and you really need to learn what evolution actually is before attempting to defend something that claims to be an alternative (itās not). Itās almost insultingly incorrect.
Intelligent Design, literally does not fit the criteria to be considered a scientific theory. Thatās not even a biased take, itās just fact.
and soā¦ the āintelligent designerā is, for some reason, restricted from being able to make human brains capable of withstanding the stress from having improved senses
Another fun fact: retinol is regenerated by your liver. Not your eyes, not some part of your brain, not some organ near your head like your thalamus which could probably get the job done if it tried, your fucking liver. Your eyes taking a while to adjust to the dark has basically nothing to do with your eyes; itās because of the delay in adjustment by your fucking liver to produce more retinal, dump it into your vascular system and wait for it to hopefully reach your eyes.
This is fascinating, I had no idea that there was another mechanism at play to improve low light vision other than pupil dilation
lordbritishbusiness@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 11:01
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Or that it got stuck in the figurative basement organ where a silly amount of bio-chemistry is stuck because evolution kinda shrugged a few million years ago.
Just one more reaction, bro, I promise, Iām not just making up new organic compounds for fun.
dragonfucker@lemmy.nz
on 28 Aug 09:51
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Source that retinal concentration is related to dark adaptation?
Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 11:53
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Iām not OP and Iām not an expert, but I know that the production of rhodopsin requires retinal. Rhodopsin is a light-sensitive protein our eyes use to see in low-light conditions, and is essential for our night vision. Retinal and retinol are not the same thing, but they both come from Vitamin A, and convert into each other during the visual cycle. Which means that a deficiency in Vitamin A = a deficiency in retinol, retinal, and rhodopsin, which in effect leads to night blindness.
But Iād like to know more/get a source for OPās liver connection. I know most of our retinol is stored in the liver. However, Iām having difficulty verifying their claim that the delay in night vision onset is due to it traveling from the liver to the eyes. From what I can find, the retinol ligand that produces rhodopsin already exists in mammalian eyes (and persists there as part of the aforementioned visual cycle.) So the argument that night vision takes so long because retinol needs to transfer from the liver to the eyes is suspect.
Unfortunately, search engines absolutely suck these days, and almost every article I can find is behind a fucking paywall. So Iām struggling to find information that can either confirm or deny OPās claim.
OP, please provide a source! Inquiring minds want to know more!
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 28 Aug 15:22
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Honestly, it was pretty hard for me to find a source which has made me a little skeptical of my own statements.
I was able to find two case studies in which patients with liver damage that caused them to have low levels of vitamin A exhibited night blindness. Both were treated for vitamin A deficiency and saw symptoms improve.
The strongest evidence of my original claim is the fact that one of the patients had otherwise healthy eyes and vision, only having extreme trouble seeing at night. After receiving treatment for vitamin A deficiency, her night vision improved. This suggests that dark adaptation is dependent on vitamin A in the blood which is regulated by the liver.
However, Iām now somewhat skeptical and curious myself considering these two studies were almost all I could find on this topic. If I have more time Iāll try digging deeper. For now though, Iāve edited my comment with links to the studies.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 28 Aug 15:08
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I was able to find two case studies showing direct links from vitamin A levels (and liver damage) to night blindness. Iāve edited my initial comment with the links to them.
Did you just see that other post about Cephalopod eye anatomy and write this?
I ask because you have a poor grasp over what evolution actually is when you say things like āevolution made a mistakeā. The truth is that our eyes are one of many, many layouts in the animal kingdom, itās not some binary thing like youāre making it out to be.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 28 Aug 17:11
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I actually came across this for the first time when I was doing research into the visual pathway for the purpose of trying to structure a spiking neural net more closely to human visual processing.
The Wikipedia page mentions cephalopod eyes specifically when talking about the inverted retina of vertebrates.
The vertebrate retina isĀ invertedĀ in the sense that the light-sensing cells are in the back of the retina, so that light has to pass through layers of neurons and capillaries before it reaches the photosensitive sections of the rods and cones.[5]Ā The ganglion cells, whose axons form the optic nerve, are at the front of the retina; therefore, the optic nerve must cross through the retina en route to the brain. No photoreceptors are in this region, giving rise to theĀ blind spot.[6]Ā In contrast, in theĀ cephalopodĀ retina, the photoreceptors are in front, with processing neurons and capillaries behind them. Because of this, cephalopods do not have a blind spot.
The Wikipedia page goes on to explain that our inverted retinas could be the result of evolution trying to protect color receptors by limiting their light intake, as it does appear that our glial cells do facilitate concentrating light.
However, the āpositiveā effects of the glial cells coming before the receptors could almost certainly be implemented in a non-inverted retina. So thatās the evolutionary duct tape I was mentioning.
It would be difficult to flip the retina back around (in fact since it originates as part of the brain weād kind of have to grow completely different eyes), so thatās not an option for evolution.
However, slight changes to the glial cells and vasculature of the eyes is definitely more possible. So those mutations happen and evolution optimizes them as best it can.
Evolution did well to optimize a poorly structured organ but itās still a poorly structured organ.
Can you elaborate on that first paragraph? Iām interested.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 28 Aug 23:50
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SNNs more closely resemble the function of biological neurons and are perfect for temporally changing inputs. I decided to teach myself rust at the same time I learned about these so I built one from scratch trying to mimic the results of this paper (or rather a follow up paper in which they change the inhibition pattern leading to behavior similar to a self organizing map; I canāt find the link to said paper right nowā¦).
After building that net I had some ideas about how to improve symbol recognition. This lead me down a massive rabbit hole about how vision is processed in the brain and eventually spiraled out to the function and structure of the hippocampus and now back to the neocortex where Iām currently focusing now on mimicking the behavior and structure of cortical minicolumns.
The main benefit of SNNs over ANNs is also a detriment: the neurons are meant to run in parallel. This means itās blazing fast if you have neuromorphic hardware, but itās incredibly slow and computationally intense if you try to simulate it on a typical machine with von Neumann architecture.
AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 29 Aug 22:56
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Iām an engineer with a CS minor and ADHD; this kind of research is what I do with my freetime lol.
To be fair this is kind of a shared hobby project/topic between me and my friend (who is a biophysics major now in med school).
Anyway, point is that you donāt need to have a real āpurposeā in order to be curious. I work in a robotics/medical lab at my university and my friends is trying to be a surgeon, yet weāre constantly in debates about astro and quantum physics to the point weāve gotten career physicists to weigh in on our arguments.
No relevance to our majors or our work, but super fucking interesting and full of gaps where there are more theories than facts. Plenty of room for new perspectives.
SL3wvmnas@discuss.tchncs.de
on 29 Aug 08:31
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TIL,Thank you for dumping obscure biological knowledge!
I felt the same when I found out roughly 90-99 % of serotonin (predecessor) is produced by a certain type of gut bacteria. For some reason, finding the research was (is? Havenāt checked for a few years) for some reason non-obvious and difficult.
Now that I think about it, is there a wiki or something where we can share this knowledge? Your artefact would have helped a friend a few years agoā¦
asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 07:16
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Iām sorry gotta go on a tangent rant
I was recently talking to a friend about pregnancy and it is fucking mind boggling. Organs shift, skeleton changes, and then all the crazy chemical stuff going on too.
The fact that millions of women want this and many experience it more than once is just mind boggling to me.
Eta: sorry my tangent was inspired by āchildbirth is funā but only showing the pelvis.
asteriskeverything@lemmy.world
on 29 Aug 02:39
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ā¦youāre not wrong but youāre also comparing an insect to a human woman who has the cognition to experience all the discomfort and the high mortality rates even in first world countries.
The point of the meme, is to show nature sucks. The point in this case is the crazy morphological changes animals in general (which includes humans) can go through via an extreme example of the caterpillar, not to equate a person to a caterpillar. It was poking a little fun at the fascination you and assumably many other men (and even some women) have at the changes women go through for pregnancy despite knowing about the extreme changes a caterpillar goes through usually during elementary school. Knowing that, it shouldnāt be surprising that anything could go through drastic changes for the sake of reproduction. Just because itās an insect does not mean itās not complex. Itās probably a good time to mention a tomato has more genes than a human.
But now youāre starting to turn it into not only a suffering contest, but a human superiority contest: Hyenas have cognition too and they basically give birth through a penis, along with basically having second puberty for the females. Elephants are extremely cognizant and have to go through extremely long pregnancies, on top of humans also nearly making them go extinct because of something stupid like ivory.
And since you want to make it a suffering competition, the animals win because humanity has screwed them over so badly many are going extinct on a mass scale, including the cognizant ones going through pregnancy themselves.
Instead of just making pointless suffering games on what is meme post where you can expect jokes based off the memes to occur, you can instead at least link to organizations that help women (and in my case, animals as well).
witty_username@feddit.nl
on 28 Aug 07:25
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Whatās up with the earthquake one?
napkin2020@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Aug 07:57
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Human body is worse than all the JS npm drama shit
And amazingly 7 billion of us still breathing and at least half of us think they can do better š
affenlehrer@feddit.org
on 28 Aug 14:13
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It might be intelligent design but not perfect design. I mean we build stuff with flaws too and consider ourselves intelligent.
If God or some space alien was really good with biotech and had these parts laying around the result is pretty good. Most humans function for several decades before stuff breaks. The earth is also a pretty stable ecosystem.
The Christian religion regards God as infallible. So if his designs arenāt perfect either we werenāt designed by him or he isnāt infallible, which breaks Christian doctrine.
justme@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 28 Aug 15:14
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He might be infallible, maybe just sadist. You knowā¦ Mysterious way and other stuff when one runs out of arguments
finitebanjo@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 15:22
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I also subscribe to this ideology. If there is a god, he was never on our side.
Also, anyone believing in goat herder fairytales from the year 0 should not be allowed to raise children as you donāt have the intellectual capacity to do so
Please stop as Iām unsure if youāre joking or not and my patience with idiots is gone.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 15:21
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Also, Appendicitis is when your Appendix, a vestigial organ which produces small amounts of Vitamin C, randomly explodes and kills you.
AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 23:22
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I heard itās actually fairly useful for your gut bacteria or smth like that
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 15:46
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Someone recently pointed out the bottom left one is because we can see color better with our eye design.
Are the other ones still valid?
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
on 28 Aug 16:44
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āSee color betterā is because 30+ million years ago one of our ancestors was born with a chromosomal mutation that duplicated the DNA sequence for the red/green cone cells in the retina. That individual had the same color perception as everybody else, but over millions of years the duplicated sequences were able to diverge their peak wavelength receptivities into red and green respectively, allowing better discrimination of colors in that range.
Interestingly, that individual 30+ million years ago would likely have shown characteristics similar to todayās Downās Syndrome people, due to the chromosomal duplication. Itās a prime example of why eugenics is so horrifically misguided.
Because in prehistoric humanity, without the knowledge of toothcare or ease of access to scrubbing agents, your teeth would rot out in old age(about 20), but then the wisdom teeth would grow in, and you might barely live long enough to be a withered old husk and maybe see your grandkids born(about 30). The before times were rough.
SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip
on 29 Aug 02:44
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You forgot the nose when sleeping! It produces snoring, giving your location and sleep status away to nearby predators!
Flagstaff@programming.dev
on 30 Aug 02:05
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Thatās only the fatties with sleep apnea. Survival of the fittest, nerd! /s
Oh, but you forgot that all the problems are because the first woman ate the wrong fruit. The bible says that is why pregnancy hurts. The rest of those problems? Well creation scientists have determined that sin caused those too even though the bible didnāt specify it. They know this because they need it to be the case to keep believing in their mythology.
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world
on 29 Aug 03:35
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I thought pregnancy hurts because woman number zero decides to go on top, which in return caused woman number one to eat the fruit.
Checkmate, abrahamlcturds.
scathliath@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 29 Aug 04:02
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Itās intelligent design; the divine is also just sadistic and a dick.
Underwaterbob@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Aug 10:00
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I used to argue this stuff online. I had to quit for my sanity. If anyone wants a sample of the absolute insane beliefs and the staggering amount of handwaving these people are capable of, I suggest checking out evolutionfairytale.com. They will unironically claim to be objective, then a sentence later tell you that āproper science literatureā is to be discredited because it has a pro-evolution bias. š¤£
I just took a very brief tour of that website. Apparently symbiotic relationships in nature prove evolution isnāt realā¦ sheesh. I couldnāt get past the giraffe claim that proves there was an intelligent design based on how much blood gets pumped up a giraffe neck.
RickAstleyfounddead@lemy.lol
on 29 Aug 15:07
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Hey, is myopia reversible without surgery?
Anyone knows?
Take your thumb and gently push the eye back into shape from its elongated form. Push a bit and then check if your vision improved. Repeat until the focus point is correct. Be careful not to overshoot the sweet spot.
joshchandra@midwest.social
on 30 Aug 02:04
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Done now edit your comment too. ;) I was thinking some personal experience.
RickAstleyfounddead@lemy.lol
on 30 Aug 18:59
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Wow it worked!
But now the lights went offā¦
dechnically@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Aug 15:35
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no loving god could create the shoulder joint
markovs_gun@lemmy.world
on 29 Aug 17:13
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The periods one is actually addressed by most creationists. In the book of Genesis, Eve (and consequently, all other women) is punished with the pain of childbirth for falling for the lies of the Serpent, and so most creationists view periods as part of that curse. Pretty messed up but thatās how they see it. The vagus nerve is completely nonsensical under intelligent design but makes complete sense under evolution. The biggest issue I see is why TF God made everything in the universe look exactly like itās way older than it is. The best argument I can come up with is that it was an epic prank to totally own the libs who find all of this stuff 6,000 years later. Like God is like āHah you just got pranked you stupid nerd! Thatāll teach you to be curious about all the cool shit I made!ā To believe in creationism is to believe that a huge swath of scientists across an incredibly broad set of fields are part of the largest conspiracy ever conceived of to try to discredit the Bible, or that God is an evil trickster who intentionally laid this giant trap to damn countless souls to Hell.
The nerve going down around the heart artery also applies to the giraffe. It does the exact same thing from brain to heart and around that artery the back up to the throat.
I have seen creationists holding bananas and declaring that they are the perfect size for human hands and proof of intelligent design. DUH ā¦ that banana took centuries to design and the fruit company has a patent for designing it.
threaded - newest
Evolution: bruh all that matters is that you are a horndog.
dat pelvis š«¦
Itās so weird thinking about how weāre just copying DNA. Thatās pretty much the purpose of life; replicate these strange molecules as much as possible. Consciousness is some unintended byproduct of the ācopy foreverā algorithm.
And the contents of the information being copied is basically a recepie for building a machine that can make copies of the information needed to build that machineā¦
Whatās more interesting to me is that weāre not just copying it. Weāre taking two strands of DNA and randomly choosing some from each strand. Some animals are clones of their parent, but most are a randomized mix from each parent. The strands are 99% the same, so to a certain extent itās just copying that molecule, but itās also trying to perfect that remaining 1%.
Instead of being a way to copy a molecule forever, itās a way to optimize that molecule. But, what is an optimal molecule? Itās a molecule that contains instructions to generate a creature that has 2 legs, 2 hands, a brain, etc.
and the whole thing is based around killing and eating one another.
no but honestly, periods are great. The feeling when all that extra blood leaves your body is amazing. Guys will never know what itās like being somewhere and sudenly feeling warmth blood running down your legs out of nowhere. Amazing. 10/10 would ome back as a woman again
I honestly donāt know any proponents of āintelligent designā who are female.
Except the Sycophantic Patriarchal TERFs who do everything their husbands tell them to do.
I cannot describe how much I hate this feeling. Itās probably honestly been protective because I have another reason to always use condoms, and even when Iām drunk, Iām still autistic.
Triggered lmao. A flood of memories just came back like
<img alt="" src="https://i.makeagif.com/media/3-15-2017/QyFus8.gif">
Ha, nice try. There are no women in Lemmy
I forget who but a comedian said it well. If we were intelligently designed it was the first design. Why would they ever put the amusement park right next to the sewage system?
I feel like if there ever was an advertisement park it would be perfectly placed right next to the sewage system.
Ha, fair. Fixed now
looks at Disney world
Looks at that one carnival cruise ship
Same reason they mixed the vestibular system with the vision system. Do you want a different body part for every single body function? Thatād be a lot of extra weight and things to take care of.
Plenty of animals have their excretion outlet and their food inlet in the same place.
For birds the cloaca is both for excretion and sex.
ah, the orifice of kings
George Carlin, I think.
Whatās the smart nerve taking a detour one?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve
And it does that for both humansā¦ And giraffes. Going from the brain, several meters down to the heart, then all the way back up to the larynx.
Isnāt that just a way to average latency to match up with the other limbs? Nerve connections arenāt instantaneous like electrical wires or fiber optics.
Your larynx isnāt really a limbā¦ But nah, its an evolutionary artefact. In primordial fish itās a straight line, but then the head moves, a neck forms, etc etc. and the nerve canāt detach and move over, so it gets longer wnd weirder.
Brain usually does that kind of sync on its own. Your conscious experience of reality is actually very slightly in the past because of that.
This is why itās so jarring when what happens in real life doesnāt line up with the predicted reality your brain expects! I hate that feeling :D
Recurrent laryngeal nerve
Vagus nerve
Funny they didnāt use a giraffe for that one. Itās like a few inches out of the way for humans - Itās feet for giraffes
Bro the giraffeās vagus nerve goes to their feet??
No, it is feet
Thatās what I said
No no, it is feet, as in made of feet.
But in all seriousness
For clarity I know what you mean I just love silly humour
That video is wiiiild
Thought that knee diagram was a pelvis at first glance and was wondering how that was related to sports.
Mmh, pelvis sports.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dd327124-0943-4c56-b1cd-d6ebb4900df3.gif">
Optimization was never the goal. It just has to function well enough for a sufficient portion of the species to reproduce.
Literally the evolutionary equivalent of āeh, good enoughā
<img alt="eh good enough" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9454a108-71a3-4ca7-94e3-1637587f59c8.jpeg">
Evolution is an optimisation process, just a very slow, wasteful and stupid one. It finds local optima which it usually gets stuck in.
evolution is the epitome of āgood enough, ship it!ā
Who the fuck would design ingrown nails??
Donāt forget āthe bush that tells theocratic ephebophiles that itās no longer pedophiliaā!
also the eye development, Cephalapods dont have this weakness, the blindpsot, because of different evolutionary mechanism.
Also hiccups
The nerve thing bothers me. I wish to learn nothing more of it
Bro myopia is the least stupid part of our eye design problems. Our retinas are built entirely backwards for no other reason besides evolution making a mistake and then duct taping over it too much to fix it later.
If your retina was the right way around (like cephalopod eyes) you would have:
Our eyes are built in the stupidest way possible.
Another fun fact: retinol is regenerated by your liver. Not your eyes, not some part of your brain, not some organ near your head like your thalamus which could probably get the job done if it tried, your fucking liver. Your eyes taking a while to adjust to the dark has basically nothing to do with your eyes; itās because of the delay in adjustment by your fucking liver to produce more retinal, dump it into your vascular system and wait for it to hopefully reach your eyes. Why are we built like this?!
Edit: A few comments asked for sources on the relation between dark adaptation and liver vitamin A. So I went looking for sources. It was honestly somewhat difficult to find information, but I was able to find two different case studies showing that night blindness in patients with damaged livers. Specifically these individuals had liver damage that affected their serum Vitamin A levels. And after raising their vitamin A levels, their symptoms improved.
This study details a patient with normal day vision and no other ocular problems besides being unable to see at night.
This study details a patient with night blindness caused by low levels of vitamin A presumably due to Hepatitis C.
These studies do show that dark adaptation is dependent on vitamin A produced by the liver, but Iāll be the first to admit itās not exactly conclusive evidence of my initial claim that the liver must respond to dark conditions increasing retinol concentration in the blood in order for rod cells to function properly in low light conditions. That is a possible explanation for these case studies but not necessarily the only one, so take my last fun fact with a grain of salt.
Iām reading this with my poorly designed eyes right now!
I wish we could use genetics or some interest8ng science to fix this.
Iād be down for some cybernetic eyes with better resolution and a zoom option and shit
Not just eyes.
Also, i wouldnāt consider them ācyberneticā, iād consider them āimprovedā or āupgradedā.
Maybe āaugmentedā?
Who needs augmentation? Letās just get the organ printer out and update to Mk2 Eyeball.
oh and built in wireless connection so that MaxiEyes Inc. can recommend you products based on what you see at any moment.
Does eye excercises fix myopia?
Can we have an eye transplant from an octopus please? And while we are at it, can we have a couple of tentacles too?
Nope
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/a783b4a5-fdbc-45ab-bb63-528289963856.webp">
Nope
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/a783b4a5-fdbc-45ab-bb63-528289963856.webp">
what if i promise to use the tentacles for music and not sex? i need at least four more arms to play my instrument properly by myself
Your āinstrument,ā eh? š
It it requires 13 to play properly
edit: 13 people not 13 tentacles
<img alt="right to jail meme" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/e0c7f51d-1067-4ce3-a934-1156bddbc5b7.gif">
Maybe if we eat more cephalopods, our eyes will turn into their good eyes?
Thatās how that works, right?
Thatās how you get a certain pissed-off Elder God to wake up from his dark dreaming down in the sunken ruins of Rālyehā¦
honestly that seems like the good end of the scenario weāre playing out right now
From the point of intelligent design:
We see that there is different sensory focuses. For instance many animals can smell and hear much better than humans do. Some animals have exceptionally better eyes than humans, but overall humans are very focused on vision.
Now when we look at modern inner city environments and the like. Would you think it to be actually better if our senses, particularly our eyes were that much better and delivering even more input to our brains? We already see many people that are overwhelmed in terms of their sensory input and frankly the ones that arenāt still suffer slowly from living in cities. In terms of where we are now, i donāt think it is too bad that we donāt have hawk eyes.
I live with, work with, and am myself part of, the autistic population. So I gotta agree - sometimes, higher sensitivity is a real detriment.
Itās not fun being light-sensitive. Iāve had days where Iāve worn sunglasses indoors, with the lights off and curtains closed. The vast majority of my days arenāt that bad, thankfully, but it truly sucks when light causes physical eye pain and headaches. Iāve got a great eye for detail (and have been called āeagle eyeā throughout my life), which benefits me in a number of ways, but unfortunately it also means I get distracted by things others donāt notice. I canāt just āignoreā a lot of things, and when those distractions impact me disproportionately, Iām left in the frustrating situation of guiding others to see (or hear, or feel) the things that are super obvious to me - it feels like leading a child by the hand.
Iām also sensitive to touch (I canāt stand light touch, but I can detect ticks on my skin before they bite) and have the ability to hear novel speech sounds that modern science claims I shouldāve lost the ability to detect decades ago (which, okay, is a cool feature to have. But it contributes to being easily-distracted.) All in all, Iāve never known any other way of experiencing the world, but I do know that most people have difficulty understanding my atypical point of view. Which leads to me preferring the company of fellow spectrumites, and others who understand and accept sensory differences.
So this intelligent designer decided to fuck our eyes up some weird convoluted way instead of justā¦ making us see less?
I honestly hope you donāt subscribe to this unscientific garbage.
The eyes of mammals are designed in a way that they āsee lessā than for instance certain birds or reptiles.
You call this āfuck up some weird convulted wayā, when it is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Thereby it is consistent with the way the visual nerve cells are designed and work together with the rest of physics and chemistry. The design is intelligent as it factors in all aspects as part of a coherent complete design. A design far too complex for any human mind to grasp in full.
Basically your question is like asking, why there is no āmagic solutionā that directly breaks the observable laws of physics. The genius of the design is in not requiring to break the observable laws of physics to achieve the desired outcome.
You say this is āunscientific garbageā when your only alternative explanation is āeverything just happened randomly and here we are.ā Neither approach, āintelligent designā nor āextremely long chain of random occurrencesā can be empirically observed and only argued logically. I find it unscientific to denounce a hypothesis as āunscientific garbageā when it cannot be falsified, while the counter hypothesis cannot be proven.
Evolution is definitely not random. The mutations that show up are random, but the selection for them is very directed. If the traits give an organism the attributes to survive, it does and will pass those traits on. If not, it doesnāt. Your argument that itās all random is typical creationist nonsense.
Weāve observed evolution many many times. From the peppered moth to COVID and the flu, we observe evolution all the time. Itās the underlying science for all biology and none of it makes sense with out it.
Evolution is a theory that has thousands of proven data points to support it being true. And not one of those experiments has come back showing āgoddiditā. Intelligent design is unscientific garbage pulled from a book of fairy tales.
We can observe evolution. We cannot observe if the steps are purely random.
E.g. if you mix eggs and butter and flour in a specified ratio and put it in an oven, it is not random that a cake evolves in the oven.
What an absolutely absurd misstatement about what evolution is. If you actually believe this, then youāre doing yourself a massive disservice, and you really need to learn what evolution actually is before attempting to defend something that claims to be an alternative (itās not). Itās almost insultingly incorrect.
Intelligent Design, literally does not fit the criteria to be considered a scientific theory. Thatās not even a biased take, itās just fact.
and soā¦ the āintelligent designerā is, for some reason, restricted from being able to make human brains capable of withstanding the stress from having improved senses
I think you are missing the point that the limits are intended.
This is fascinating, I had no idea that there was another mechanism at play to improve low light vision other than pupil dilation
Or that it got stuck in the figurative basement organ where a silly amount of bio-chemistry is stuck because evolution kinda shrugged a few million years ago.
Just one more reaction, bro, I promise, Iām not just making up new organic compounds for fun.
Source that retinal concentration is related to dark adaptation?
Iām not OP and Iām not an expert, but I know that the production of rhodopsin requires retinal. Rhodopsin is a light-sensitive protein our eyes use to see in low-light conditions, and is essential for our night vision. Retinal and retinol are not the same thing, but they both come from Vitamin A, and convert into each other during the visual cycle. Which means that a deficiency in Vitamin A = a deficiency in retinol, retinal, and rhodopsin, which in effect leads to night blindness.
But Iād like to know more/get a source for OPās liver connection. I know most of our retinol is stored in the liver. However, Iām having difficulty verifying their claim that the delay in night vision onset is due to it traveling from the liver to the eyes. From what I can find, the retinol ligand that produces rhodopsin already exists in mammalian eyes (and persists there as part of the aforementioned visual cycle.) So the argument that night vision takes so long because retinol needs to transfer from the liver to the eyes is suspect.
Unfortunately, search engines absolutely suck these days, and almost every article I can find is behind a fucking paywall. So Iām struggling to find information that can either confirm or deny OPās claim.
OP, please provide a source! Inquiring minds want to know more!
Honestly, it was pretty hard for me to find a source which has made me a little skeptical of my own statements.
I was able to find two case studies in which patients with liver damage that caused them to have low levels of vitamin A exhibited night blindness. Both were treated for vitamin A deficiency and saw symptoms improve.
The strongest evidence of my original claim is the fact that one of the patients had otherwise healthy eyes and vision, only having extreme trouble seeing at night. After receiving treatment for vitamin A deficiency, her night vision improved. This suggests that dark adaptation is dependent on vitamin A in the blood which is regulated by the liver.
However, Iām now somewhat skeptical and curious myself considering these two studies were almost all I could find on this topic. If I have more time Iāll try digging deeper. For now though, Iāve edited my comment with links to the studies.
I was able to find two case studies showing direct links from vitamin A levels (and liver damage) to night blindness. Iāve edited my initial comment with the links to them.
Did you just see that other post about Cephalopod eye anatomy and write this?
I ask because you have a poor grasp over what evolution actually is when you say things like āevolution made a mistakeā. The truth is that our eyes are one of many, many layouts in the animal kingdom, itās not some binary thing like youāre making it out to be.
I actually came across this for the first time when I was doing research into the visual pathway for the purpose of trying to structure a spiking neural net more closely to human visual processing.
The Wikipedia page mentions cephalopod eyes specifically when talking about the inverted retina of vertebrates.
The Wikipedia page goes on to explain that our inverted retinas could be the result of evolution trying to protect color receptors by limiting their light intake, as it does appear that our glial cells do facilitate concentrating light.
However, the āpositiveā effects of the glial cells coming before the receptors could almost certainly be implemented in a non-inverted retina. So thatās the evolutionary duct tape I was mentioning.
It would be difficult to flip the retina back around (in fact since it originates as part of the brain weād kind of have to grow completely different eyes), so thatās not an option for evolution.
However, slight changes to the glial cells and vasculature of the eyes is definitely more possible. So those mutations happen and evolution optimizes them as best it can.
Evolution did well to optimize a poorly structured organ but itās still a poorly structured organ.
Can you elaborate on that first paragraph? Iām interested.
SNNs more closely resemble the function of biological neurons and are perfect for temporally changing inputs. I decided to teach myself rust at the same time I learned about these so I built one from scratch trying to mimic the results of this paper (or rather a follow up paper in which they change the inhibition pattern leading to behavior similar to a self organizing map; I canāt find the link to said paper right nowā¦).
After building that net I had some ideas about how to improve symbol recognition. This lead me down a massive rabbit hole about how vision is processed in the brain and eventually spiraled out to the function and structure of the hippocampus and now back to the neocortex where Iām currently focusing now on mimicking the behavior and structure of cortical minicolumns.
The main benefit of SNNs over ANNs is also a detriment: the neurons are meant to run in parallel. This means itās blazing fast if you have neuromorphic hardware, but itās incredibly slow and computationally intense if you try to simulate it on a typical machine with von Neumann architecture.
Whatās the purpose of this research?
Iām an engineer with a CS minor and ADHD; this kind of research is what I do with my freetime lol.
To be fair this is kind of a shared hobby project/topic between me and my friend (who is a biophysics major now in med school).
Anyway, point is that you donāt need to have a real āpurposeā in order to be curious. I work in a robotics/medical lab at my university and my friends is trying to be a surgeon, yet weāre constantly in debates about astro and quantum physics to the point weāve gotten career physicists to weigh in on our arguments.
No relevance to our majors or our work, but super fucking interesting and full of gaps where there are more theories than facts. Plenty of room for new perspectives.
Normalize doing research for fun!
Are you doing a postdoc? Masters?
TIL,Thank you for dumping obscure biological knowledge!
I felt the same when I found out roughly 90-99 % of serotonin (predecessor) is produced by a certain type of gut bacteria. For some reason, finding the research was (is? Havenāt checked for a few years) for some reason non-obvious and difficult.
Now that I think about it, is there a wiki or something where we can share this knowledge? Your artefact would have helped a friend a few years agoā¦
.
Iām sorry gotta go on a tangent rant I was recently talking to a friend about pregnancy and it is fucking mind boggling. Organs shift, skeleton changes, and then all the crazy chemical stuff going on too.
The fact that millions of women want this and many experience it more than once is just mind boggling to me.
Eta: sorry my tangent was inspired by āchildbirth is funā but only showing the pelvis.
Wait till you hear about caterpillars.
Evolution is one hell of a drug
ā¦youāre not wrong but youāre also comparing an insect to a human woman who has the cognition to experience all the discomfort and the high mortality rates even in first world countries.
The point of the meme, is to show nature sucks. The point in this case is the crazy morphological changes animals in general (which includes humans) can go through via an extreme example of the caterpillar, not to equate a person to a caterpillar. It was poking a little fun at the fascination you and assumably many other men (and even some women) have at the changes women go through for pregnancy despite knowing about the extreme changes a caterpillar goes through usually during elementary school. Knowing that, it shouldnāt be surprising that anything could go through drastic changes for the sake of reproduction. Just because itās an insect does not mean itās not complex. Itās probably a good time to mention a tomato has more genes than a human.
But now youāre starting to turn it into not only a suffering contest, but a human superiority contest: Hyenas have cognition too and they basically give birth through a penis, along with basically having second puberty for the females. Elephants are extremely cognizant and have to go through extremely long pregnancies, on top of humans also nearly making them go extinct because of something stupid like ivory.
And since you want to make it a suffering competition, the animals win because humanity has screwed them over so badly many are going extinct on a mass scale, including the cognizant ones going through pregnancy themselves.
Instead of just making pointless suffering games on what is meme post where you can expect jokes based off the memes to occur, you can instead at least link to organizations that help women (and in my case, animals as well).
Whatās up with the earthquake one?
Human body is worse than all the JS npm drama shit
This D&D alignment chart is weirdā¦
Yeah, I donāt think Iād put wisdom teeth in lawful good personally.
Yeah, best case scenario it would be chaotic neutral
I was thinking chaotic good, because at least they try to help in a way.
Where is Doctor Pangloss when you need him?
Perfect, mustve been made by an omnipotent being.
And amazingly 7 billion of us still breathing and at least half of us think they can do better š
It might be intelligent design but not perfect design. I mean we build stuff with flaws too and consider ourselves intelligent.
If God or some space alien was really good with biotech and had these parts laying around the result is pretty good. Most humans function for several decades before stuff breaks. The earth is also a pretty stable ecosystem.
Both much better than we could build.
The Christian religion regards God as infallible. So if his designs arenāt perfect either we werenāt designed by him or he isnāt infallible, which breaks Christian doctrine.
He might be infallible, maybe just sadist. You knowā¦ Mysterious way and other stuff when one runs out of arguments
I also subscribe to this ideology. If there is a god, he was never on our side.
Christian doctrine breaks Christian doctrine
Also, anyone believing in goat herder fairytales from the year 0 should not be allowed to raise children as you donāt have the intellectual capacity to do so
No, it is not intelligent design.
Please stop as Iām unsure if youāre joking or not and my patience with idiots is gone.
Also, Appendicitis is when your Appendix, a vestigial organ which produces small amounts of Vitamin C, randomly explodes and kills you.
I heard itās actually fairly useful for your gut bacteria or smth like that
Someone recently pointed out the bottom left one is because we can see color better with our eye design.
Are the other ones still valid?
āSee color betterā is because 30+ million years ago one of our ancestors was born with a chromosomal mutation that duplicated the DNA sequence for the red/green cone cells in the retina. That individual had the same color perception as everybody else, but over millions of years the duplicated sequences were able to diverge their peak wavelength receptivities into red and green respectively, allowing better discrimination of colors in that range.
Interestingly, that individual 30+ million years ago would likely have shown characteristics similar to todayās Downās Syndrome people, due to the chromosomal duplication. Itās a prime example of why eugenics is so horrifically misguided.
As as a homocidal charismatic global suicide?
My patella tracking is off and Iām furious about it.
Wisdom teeth were amazing to have back when dental care didnāt exist and our teeth fell out from decay or injuries.
Why?
Because in prehistoric humanity, without the knowledge of toothcare or ease of access to scrubbing agents, your teeth would rot out in old age(about 20), but then the wisdom teeth would grow in, and you might barely live long enough to be a withered old husk and maybe see your grandkids born(about 30). The before times were rough.
You forgot the nose when sleeping! It produces snoring, giving your location and sleep status away to nearby predators!
Thatās only the fatties with sleep apnea. Survival of the fittest, nerd! /s
Oh, but you forgot that all the problems are because the first woman ate the wrong fruit. The bible says that is why pregnancy hurts. The rest of those problems? Well creation scientists have determined that sin caused those too even though the bible didnāt specify it. They know this because they need it to be the case to keep believing in their mythology.
I thought pregnancy hurts because woman number zero decides to go on top, which in return caused woman number one to eat the fruit.
Checkmate, abrahamlcturds.
Itās intelligent design; the divine is also just sadistic and a dick.
I used to argue this stuff online. I had to quit for my sanity. If anyone wants a sample of the absolute insane beliefs and the staggering amount of handwaving these people are capable of, I suggest checking out evolutionfairytale.com. They will unironically claim to be objective, then a sentence later tell you that āproper science literatureā is to be discredited because it has a pro-evolution bias. š¤£
I just took a very brief tour of that website. Apparently symbiotic relationships in nature prove evolution isnāt realā¦ sheesh. I couldnāt get past the giraffe claim that proves there was an intelligent design based on how much blood gets pumped up a giraffe neck.
Hey, is myopia reversible without surgery? Anyone knows?
Take your thumb and gently push the eye back into shape from its elongated form. Push a bit and then check if your vision improved. Repeat until the focus point is correct. Be careful not to overshoot the sweet spot.
Hey AI, you rock!
Done now edit your comment too. ;) I was thinking some personal experience.
Wow it worked! But now the lights went offā¦
no loving god could create the shoulder joint
The periods one is actually addressed by most creationists. In the book of Genesis, Eve (and consequently, all other women) is punished with the pain of childbirth for falling for the lies of the Serpent, and so most creationists view periods as part of that curse. Pretty messed up but thatās how they see it. The vagus nerve is completely nonsensical under intelligent design but makes complete sense under evolution. The biggest issue I see is why TF God made everything in the universe look exactly like itās way older than it is. The best argument I can come up with is that it was an epic prank to totally own the libs who find all of this stuff 6,000 years later. Like God is like āHah you just got pranked you stupid nerd! Thatāll teach you to be curious about all the cool shit I made!ā To believe in creationism is to believe that a huge swath of scientists across an incredibly broad set of fields are part of the largest conspiracy ever conceived of to try to discredit the Bible, or that God is an evil trickster who intentionally laid this giant trap to damn countless souls to Hell.
The nerve going down around the heart artery also applies to the giraffe. It does the exact same thing from brain to heart and around that artery the back up to the throat.
I have seen creationists holding bananas and declaring that they are the perfect size for human hands and proof of intelligent design. DUH ā¦ that banana took centuries to design and the fruit company has a patent for designing it.
I loved learning about the laryngeal nerve in giraffes from the video by Richard Dawkins. I think the PBS show Your Inner Fish covered it too.
Edit: I may be wrong about Your Inner Fish referencing the laryngeal nerve, but Iām currently re-watching it anyway.
Rabbitsā digestive systems are so inefficient they have to eat their own shit to get enough nutrients.