- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
Humans evolved to pay close attention to danger, but today that instinct is being overwhelmed by an endless supply of bad news from around the world. Researchers say the answer isn’t to stop following current events—it’s to build healthier habits around how, when, and where we get our news.
Iteratively designed by evolution to maximize survival, I guess
Yeah, so you could easily say we evolved to, or our brains evolved to… And so on
I just took issue with the very literal interpretation of the phrase “not designed for” and I couldn’t hold my tongue
well, my fingers, I guess
No, in fact that is still teleological.
Is it? I’d guess ‘to evolve to do smth’ doesn’t necessarily need to be teleological. IIRC the verb ‘evolve’ means the fittest getting randomly selected, no?
I think I understand where you’re coming from but I think it’s fundamentally different to ‘being designed with a specific goal in mind’
Don’t mind me, I had a prof who was uptight about it. I am sure it would only matter for formal or technical writing, like a scientific paper.
Oh I don’t mind. I just thought it an interesting question. I would like to know your prof’s reasoning for his insistence.
Because that would mean that ‘evolve’ can also be used teleologically, imho.
Evolved into or evolved with may reduce the implication of an intention.
Yeah I dunno about design as much as iterative adaptations over incomprehensibly large periods of time.
Evolution did as much design as my socks design themselves to stay in their drawer. Evolution doesn’t design, it works with what it has and nothing else. It doesn’t even optimize because optimization requires choosing between options with intent. Evolution has zero intentions. Evolution creates un-“optimized” things that go extinct all the time, but it’s not because it “failed” at designing because that implies it “tried” to design, but because it’s not a designer, it can’t design. No design made fish have legs. No design gave elephants their tusks and no design gave flies their wings. Evolution won’t ‘design’ new vertebrae segments, but they still might happen—it just won’t be because of any design.
Natural selection is actually technically an optimisation algorithm. Its just a kind of crappy one that only ever finds local maximas because it can’t traverse valleys (the thing just dies). So we end up with optical receptors on the wrong side of our retina. Ooof.
Neanderthals evolved to traverse valleys just fine
I don’t mean literal valleys.
And see where that got them!