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Originally Posted by Keith  The universe isn't obligated to cater to our humanocentric wants (well, unless the Subjective Reality crowd are correct, anyway). |
Firstly, I'm not very interested in Subjective Reality and I don't believe in it.
I don't know. Maybe I'm half-believing in a "living" Universe - one that is constantly moving and flowing and evolving and most importantly, caring.
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Originally Posted by Keith Natural selection is a process of ongoing tweaks and local optimisations. It achieves the 'good enough' result, rather than the perfect one.
People often have this idea of 'evolutionary progress' (frequently seeing humanity as the 'pinnacle of evolution'). But natural selection is actually just making it up as it goes along in response to whatever's going on at the time. It's experimenting.
An example is the human blind spot. We have that because our optic nerve 'cable' is routed across part of the retina. Really dumb for a deliberate design, but a good illustration of nature working with what it had at the time to achieve a 'good enough' result (Octopi, incidentally have their nerve cable in a much more sensible place and have no blind spot).
Human childbirth is as dangerous as it is as a side-effect of our upright posture. The trend towards two-legged walking resulted in hip bones that are better suited for locomotion, but less suited for childbirth. |
I'm not a big fan of evolution. It seems very crude to me. And how can random mutations be a "progress" anyway? More like a series of lucky accidents.
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Originally Posted by Keith Yes, it does indeed suck. But life isn't fair. Be glad we're not one of the species where the female devours the male during conception! |
Yes, indeed I should be more grateful.
But sayings like "life just isn't fair, get used to it" I just cannot stomach, for whatever reason that is.