Because these are good questions, I'll answer some;
Physically weak
Humans are incredible long distance runners. We did a lot of hunting by "Chase it until it collapses"
9 months/15 years
Our brains take a loooooong time to mature, but it's worth it. We can plan ahead without relying on survival instincts, and we keep making amazing discoveries like fire and clothes
Great long distance walkers too. With some adaptation time, about anyone can walk about 30 km a day, for weeks. For proof, the tens of thousands of people of all fitness levels walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage every year.
Proud to say I accomplished that! My dad trained a fair bit. I did like 1 10km walk the week before we started, and I finished the 800kms with no real dramas, except the first day which was a massive climb. After 5-6 days my body was totally accustomed to the task at hand.
(Super irrelevant to the post but it was an awesome experience and I would advocate anyone to undertake it, regardless of your thoughts on religion. I am not religious but did find it spiritual in a way. I did it about 6 years ago and still think about it every week.)
Started with Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles? Yeah, it's a bit silly to start with the biggest climb of the way, but I know many people do to start from France.
>developes precise eyes
>doesn't know where to put the blood vessels
>"fuck it, we'll put them in front of the receptors"
>blood vessels always visible
>"we'll fix it in post"
>actually works out
>MFW they have to add a blind spot for vessel/nerve management
Which, incidentally is about as much intelligence as it takes to "make a difference". Anon is here assuming you need an engineering degree to outsurvive a moose, when all it takes is "hey, if put bad potato underground many good potato come up later".
You make it sound like discovering agriculture is child's play. It probably was the brightest minds of the day who figured stuff like that out. It was revolutionary. The entire society had to be redesigned around growing enough good potato to get through a winter.
Sure, but it doesn't take as much to keep doing it as it does to figure it out the first time, and both are way beyond moose level.
Plus you don't have to be great at it. We sucked at figuring out why you can't just keep doing underground potato in the same place forever and our first few millenia of attempts to solve it were mostly just throwing random crap in there with potato.
You're really over estimating agriculture as a technology tree. It takes pretty much no thought to notice that the trash pile tends to grow the things you put in the trash pile, and from there it's experimentation on what in the trash pile of food makes more food (realistically medicinal herbs) grow.
Agriculture was developed at least a few thousand years before stationary settlement.
Once you see that evolution is like the laziest worker ever that wants to do nothing all day but needs the money, and natural selection as the boss that doesn't give a shit and just gives him tasks and only cares if they are done. You will understand why things are the way they are.
"Why is the mop so moldy and disgusting?" Well because natural selection told evolution to mop the floors every day but never said to clean the mop, and the cleaning products are good enough to clean even when the mop is moldy, so there is no need to care about the moldiness of the mop.
We spec'd for stamina, which turned out to be a hard counter to the current meta. We also have a flexible diet, fine motor control, excellent heat regulation, intricate vocalizations, and arguably best-in-class intelligence (although neanderthals did have larger brains, and other apes have better working memory).
But we are suffering from our success really. We were able to dominate even with an unoptimized build. So we have things like an appendix and other vestigial structures. Our spines are serviceable for bipedalism but are prone to developing issues and stress points. And our teeth don't last nearly as long as much of the rest of our body without frequent external maintenance. And our young take a very long time to develop, to the point the actual birth happens basically as late as possible without being a guaranteed death sentence for the mother rather than when the child is ready for the world. Also, humans have a tremendously high ratio of penis to total body mass among primates, making you wonder what kind of freak was behind our character creation.
I think thats a thesis that hasn't been properly peer reviewed (though it does have some clinical evidence), which is to say its not widely accepted as a reason for it to exist (but that that may be changing).
Female specimen bleeds once a month and is plagued by hormonal fuckery that makes life unbearable at times. Emotional regulation: hahaha fuck you. Physical discomfort: yessir. Terrible pain from cramps, hormonal migraines and other such hormone related pains: amazing. Acne, oily hair, skin, smelly sweat and bloatedness when hormones go brrrrr: cool.
Vag-hole too small to squeeze out baby head and will often rip open. If unlucky, female specimen will bleed to death after giving birth, leaving baby without protection and food source.
Female specimen only has a very small window to procreate and is most fertile when her brain is the least developed post puberty. When her brain is finally catching up in maturity, her body is starting to regress in fertility and getting pregnant is now a risk to her and the baby. Is somehow blamed and often punished for her biology literally fucking with her from the age of 9 to menopause.
I would fucking love if my biggest problem was that my reproductive organs were dangling between my legs and got a bit hot once in awhile.
Adam was made from clay. Eve was made from Adam's rib and had the audacity to eat some goofy apple. As punishment, all women were doomed to be in horrible pain during childbirth and since they were made from Adam's rib, they are also a man's property. Religion is so kind to us, lol.
That's one of the many reasons why I am a bigger fan of science. It makes more sense and is impartial. If anything, the laws of nature is brutally indifferent to who or what you are and will fuck you over or bless you at random. I can deal with that.
I would fucking love if my biggest problem was that my reproductive organs were dangling between my legs and got a bit hot once in awhile.
i mean, men are historically pre-disposed to dying earlier than women. Though i wonder if that actually changes at all going back historically, so at least you have that?
There's a lot of good, but the devs def screwed up with the whole shared breathing / eating tubing. But at least the playing ground is partially even, with other species also at risk of randomly dying from the simple act of food intake.
The most screwed up one is the octopus, for some reason that brains are below their mouths so the esophagus goes through their brain. If they eat something too big they can give themselves a concussion.
Humans are great. We're also shit about some things. We're working on it. It remains to be seen whether we'll get our stuff together before we wreck the planet thoroughly enough that it can't support us in this current paradise mode, but it's not because we are incapable. Our failures are failures of spirit, self-government and self-control, and good values, not failures of "fitness" or that this layout hasn't been successful at getting us this far.
'What a piece of work is a man! How Noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In Action, how like an Angel, in apprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?'
The OP kinda used bad faith arguments, so everyone is pointing out ways that humans excel. They have a good point however. Humans are not superior. We are not the best species. Just about every animal, insect, or parasite can kill us or seriously harm us. Our bodies are not resilient, and have about a thousand built in flaws. Our 'intelligence' just creates new dangers that kill us.
Humans are great in many ways, but we do not sit at the top of everything. We are great at what we do and that's it.
Edit: A lot of people aren't too happy with me talking about the human race in the light I did. The point of the comment was not to say humans are trash and weak. It's to say that we excel at many things, but we are still way behind other animals in many other ways. There is no one species that is the best. They all excel in many different and special ways. We aren't the best species.
A group of fit humans who know what they're doing can kill any animal on earth with sharp sticks.
This includes things like whales and woolly mammoths, which we hunted to near extinction or complete extinction using pointy sticks. Keep in mind that these animals were not only thousands of times stronger than a human, but the environments in which they lived were also completely alien to the one we evolved in. The ocean and the taiga can kill an unprepared human in just a few minutes simply by them existing in it, while the native animals are perfectly adapted to live there.
And despite all that we went onto their home turf and killed them all with pointy sticks.
Right now, I have an infection that I'm toughing out without antibiotics. It's going away. I tanked a cat playing rough, my palms under some angles can downright stop a scratch. I drank 5 shots of rakija. I have been burned, stabbed, electrocuted, what more do you want?!?
To be more specific, I pushed a nail into a socket as a kid, and a few other instances I got electrocuted. I got stabbed with a pencil right through the mole on my back by my sister, I set a box on fire at work, and put it out with my hand.
I ran into this metal pipe that serves as a shutter, I don't know what it's called, and the impact bent the pipe. I walked it off and continued working.
To be able to tank venoms like the mongoose or the honey badger. To be able to rarely get sick such as sharks or bats. Thick keratin skin or shells, such as the pangolin or armadillo. Being able to survive great falls, such as most small mammals and insects. Being able to regrow limbs such as some reptiles.
I'm not saying that humans are weak and fragile like glass. We can tank a lot of stuff. Most animals can tank a lot more.
Our big evolution trait is massive brain, adapting to our environment, and language. Aside from our nutty long distance stamina, and being able to throw, our bodies are NOT what makes us 'superior'.
Have you ever observed crows? They're very intelligent according to a lot of studies. If you observe them for some time, you'll notice how the intelligence gives them an edge. Basically, crows will try and steal from every other species around. Mostly food, but also other stuff they deem useful.
Now, with that knowledge, observe humans. The early humans also stole stuff from every other species. You could also argue that the most successful humans (in terms of wealth) also tend to steal everything, but that's beside the point, just view those as lagging in terms of evolution.
No species is the "best." Some are the best in certain aspects. Ours is the ability to manipulate our environment, which is also a double edged sword as we're now killing ourselves with climate change.
Because these are good questions, I'll answer some;
Humans are incredible long distance runners. We did a lot of hunting by "Chase it until it collapses"
Our brains take a loooooong time to mature, but it's worth it. We can plan ahead without relying on survival instincts, and we keep making amazing discoveries like fire and clothes
We're basically horror movie tropes
I miss r/HFY
And while dogs have been bred to be subservient, Cats CHOSE to associate with us, the little psychos.
Idk about domesticating part
This means prehistoric humans persistence-hunting wolves is canonical to the crazyness2400verse.
It puts the lotion on (?)
Great long distance walkers too. With some adaptation time, about anyone can walk about 30 km a day, for weeks. For proof, the tens of thousands of people of all fitness levels walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage every year.
Proud to say I accomplished that! My dad trained a fair bit. I did like 1 10km walk the week before we started, and I finished the 800kms with no real dramas, except the first day which was a massive climb. After 5-6 days my body was totally accustomed to the task at hand.
(Super irrelevant to the post but it was an awesome experience and I would advocate anyone to undertake it, regardless of your thoughts on religion. I am not religious but did find it spiritual in a way. I did it about 6 years ago and still think about it every week.)
Started with Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Roncesvalles? Yeah, it's a bit silly to start with the biggest climb of the way, but I know many people do to start from France.
No I cannot, never again!
You know you want to start a new way.
Weren't designed at all in in fact.
People think of evolution as needing A+ to pass, when C- is enough.
Heck, D- is. "Did it live long enough to produce offspring? Good enough!"
I tough you need a minimum grade of C- to pass
D- has always meant barely passing to me. You got more than 50%! Depends on who's doing the grading.
It depends on the school.
>developes precise eyes
>doesn't know where to put the blood vessels
>"fuck it, we'll put them in front of the receptors"
>blood vessels always visible
>"we'll fix it in post"
>actually works out
>MFW they have to add a blind spot for vessel/nerve management
You mean running the wires in front of the screen isn't the best design??
You mean image sensor, not screen?
I suppose camera would be a closer equivalent, yeah. Although the "display" is our eyes themselves, so they both kinda work.
i mean, semantically if the world is the "screen" the optical nerve is the "image sensor" and the wires are the nerves/blood vessels.
It checks out.
Flexing on those other loser species with my opposable thumbs and ability throw stones
Which, incidentally is about as much intelligence as it takes to "make a difference". Anon is here assuming you need an engineering degree to outsurvive a moose, when all it takes is "hey, if put bad potato underground many good potato come up later".
You make it sound like discovering agriculture is child's play. It probably was the brightest minds of the day who figured stuff like that out. It was revolutionary. The entire society had to be redesigned around growing enough good potato to get through a winter.
Sure, but it doesn't take as much to keep doing it as it does to figure it out the first time, and both are way beyond moose level.
Plus you don't have to be great at it. We sucked at figuring out why you can't just keep doing underground potato in the same place forever and our first few millenia of attempts to solve it were mostly just throwing random crap in there with potato.
the funny thing behind agriculture, is that the vast majority of modern foods we eat are selectively bred over the entire course of agrarian history.
Most of these grown foods today, simply didn't exist.
THAT was the the true genius.
You're really over estimating agriculture as a technology tree. It takes pretty much no thought to notice that the trash pile tends to grow the things you put in the trash pile, and from there it's experimentation on what in the trash pile of food makes more food (realistically medicinal herbs) grow.
Agriculture was developed at least a few thousand years before stationary settlement.
opposable thumbs to throw stones, big brain to throw shade
Also, this whole sweating system is actually very efficient water based cooling. Most land species don't have anything that's even close.
Once you see that evolution is like the laziest worker ever that wants to do nothing all day but needs the money, and natural selection as the boss that doesn't give a shit and just gives him tasks and only cares if they are done. You will understand why things are the way they are.
"Why is the mop so moldy and disgusting?" Well because natural selection told evolution to mop the floors every day but never said to clean the mop, and the cleaning products are good enough to clean even when the mop is moldy, so there is no need to care about the moldiness of the mop.
Why did you mind go to moldy mops?
Bad experience?
Idk, just a good example since the mold can be thought of as mutations that are not wanted but don't interfere with the survival of the species.
We spec'd for stamina, which turned out to be a hard counter to the current meta. We also have a flexible diet, fine motor control, excellent heat regulation, intricate vocalizations, and arguably best-in-class intelligence (although neanderthals did have larger brains, and other apes have better working memory).
But we are suffering from our success really. We were able to dominate even with an unoptimized build. So we have things like an appendix and other vestigial structures. Our spines are serviceable for bipedalism but are prone to developing issues and stress points. And our teeth don't last nearly as long as much of the rest of our body without frequent external maintenance. And our young take a very long time to develop, to the point the actual birth happens basically as late as possible without being a guaranteed death sentence for the mother rather than when the child is ready for the world. Also, humans have a tremendously high ratio of penis to total body mass among primates, making you wonder what kind of freak was behind our character creation.
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere the appendix actually functions as backup storage for gut microbes.
I think thats a thesis that hasn't been properly peer reviewed (though it does have some clinical evidence), which is to say its not widely accepted as a reason for it to exist (but that that may be changing).
Interesting, thank you for clarifying.
...mother fucker... we were built buy a fucking neckbeard incel...weren't we?
Female specimen bleeds once a month and is plagued by hormonal fuckery that makes life unbearable at times. Emotional regulation: hahaha fuck you. Physical discomfort: yessir. Terrible pain from cramps, hormonal migraines and other such hormone related pains: amazing. Acne, oily hair, skin, smelly sweat and bloatedness when hormones go brrrrr: cool.
Vag-hole too small to squeeze out baby head and will often rip open. If unlucky, female specimen will bleed to death after giving birth, leaving baby without protection and food source. Female specimen only has a very small window to procreate and is most fertile when her brain is the least developed post puberty. When her brain is finally catching up in maturity, her body is starting to regress in fertility and getting pregnant is now a risk to her and the baby. Is somehow blamed and often punished for her biology literally fucking with her from the age of 9 to menopause.
I would fucking love if my biggest problem was that my reproductive organs were dangling between my legs and got a bit hot once in awhile.
Oh yeah, if god shaped us with clay or something, why the fuck did he make women like that???
Adam was made from clay. Eve was made from Adam's rib and had the audacity to eat some goofy apple. As punishment, all women were doomed to be in horrible pain during childbirth and since they were made from Adam's rib, they are also a man's property. Religion is so kind to us, lol.
That's one of the many reasons why I am a bigger fan of science. It makes more sense and is impartial. If anything, the laws of nature is brutally indifferent to who or what you are and will fuck you over or bless you at random. I can deal with that.
One of my favorite bits in that story is that rib is a mistranslation of baculum.
Lol penis bone.
i mean, men are historically pre-disposed to dying earlier than women. Though i wonder if that actually changes at all going back historically, so at least you have that?
Amon is under the impression that humans are designed, so they're not in the smarter half of humanity
Omits that critical oxygen intake system overlaps with food intake system that can clog causing death. No redundancy on oxygen intake.
Lots of evidence for not-so-intelligent design.
evolution would just call you a bozo and say it's a skill issue. So maybe it was intentional, because it would be funny.
There's a lot of good, but the devs def screwed up with the whole shared breathing / eating tubing. But at least the playing ground is partially even, with other species also at risk of randomly dying from the simple act of food intake.
The most screwed up one is the octopus, for some reason that brains are below their mouths so the esophagus goes through their brain. If they eat something too big they can give themselves a concussion.
That sounds so stupid, I absolutely believe it.
Dawkins showing a giraffe's nerve going all the way down the neck and back up again. ending about 5cm from where it started.
That's a very British documentary as well isn't it.
Lets just get a dead giraffe and cut it open in order to demonstrate something
That would never happen in the US there'd be too many complaints.
…..what
Maybe in like the 50s lol
Best fact of the day!
What a great argument against intelligent design and a resounding endorsement of Evolutionary Theory.
IYou can say that ID is Bout making something "good enough" in the same way evolution doesn't select for perfection.
(I am not s creationist. There are plenty of other reasons to reject it.)
Doesn't have to be good, just has to be good enough
Technology my dudes 🤙 if you remove our understanding of electricity and fire we go back to the stone age in less than a year.
Humans are great. We're also shit about some things. We're working on it. It remains to be seen whether we'll get our stuff together before we wreck the planet thoroughly enough that it can't support us in this current paradise mode, but it's not because we are incapable. Our failures are failures of spirit, self-government and self-control, and good values, not failures of "fitness" or that this layout hasn't been successful at getting us this far.
'What a piece of work is a man! How Noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In Action, how like an Angel, in apprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?'
Anon is a fucking retard
Nona is a drater
Tools.
Reading this bunch of modern true-believers confidently preach the dogma of the hour (evolution yes! design no!) is nauseating.
The OP kinda used bad faith arguments, so everyone is pointing out ways that humans excel. They have a good point however. Humans are not superior. We are not the best species. Just about every animal, insect, or parasite can kill us or seriously harm us. Our bodies are not resilient, and have about a thousand built in flaws. Our 'intelligence' just creates new dangers that kill us.
Humans are great in many ways, but we do not sit at the top of everything. We are great at what we do and that's it.
Edit: A lot of people aren't too happy with me talking about the human race in the light I did. The point of the comment was not to say humans are trash and weak. It's to say that we excel at many things, but we are still way behind other animals in many other ways. There is no one species that is the best. They all excel in many different and special ways. We aren't the best species.
Having an all purpose massive brain does make it easier to cover for our weaknesses so they might not be that obvious at first glance.
A group of fit humans who know what they're doing can kill any animal on earth with sharp sticks.
This includes things like whales and woolly mammoths, which we hunted to near extinction or complete extinction using pointy sticks. Keep in mind that these animals were not only thousands of times stronger than a human, but the environments in which they lived were also completely alien to the one we evolved in. The ocean and the taiga can kill an unprepared human in just a few minutes simply by them existing in it, while the native animals are perfectly adapted to live there.
And despite all that we went onto their home turf and killed them all with pointy sticks.
We're great at what we do, it's true.
That's despite all of our weaknesses. And there's a lot of them.
Right now, I have an infection that I'm toughing out without antibiotics. It's going away. I tanked a cat playing rough, my palms under some angles can downright stop a scratch. I drank 5 shots of rakija. I have been burned, stabbed, electrocuted, what more do you want?!?
Christ, that cat was playing rough! :o
The cat in the hat does not hold back
Damn cat, never getting a cat from planet Vegeta again!
Don't bother with Space Australia either.
To be more specific, I pushed a nail into a socket as a kid, and a few other instances I got electrocuted. I got stabbed with a pencil right through the mole on my back by my sister, I set a box on fire at work, and put it out with my hand.
I ran into this metal pipe that serves as a shutter, I don't know what it's called, and the impact bent the pipe. I walked it off and continued working.
To be able to tank venoms like the mongoose or the honey badger. To be able to rarely get sick such as sharks or bats. Thick keratin skin or shells, such as the pangolin or armadillo. Being able to survive great falls, such as most small mammals and insects. Being able to regrow limbs such as some reptiles.
I'm not saying that humans are weak and fragile like glass. We can tank a lot of stuff. Most animals can tank a lot more.
Our big evolution trait is massive brain, adapting to our environment, and language. Aside from our nutty long distance stamina, and being able to throw, our bodies are NOT what makes us 'superior'.
Have you ever observed crows? They're very intelligent according to a lot of studies. If you observe them for some time, you'll notice how the intelligence gives them an edge. Basically, crows will try and steal from every other species around. Mostly food, but also other stuff they deem useful.
Now, with that knowledge, observe humans. The early humans also stole stuff from every other species. You could also argue that the most successful humans (in terms of wealth) also tend to steal everything, but that's beside the point, just view those as lagging in terms of evolution.
Just because we have some weakness and are not superhuman doesn't mean we don't excel.
That was the entire point I made.
No species is the "best." Some are the best in certain aspects. Ours is the ability to manipulate our environment, which is also a double edged sword as we're now killing ourselves with climate change.