

Is the human body structure best suited to their intelligent brain? - frade33

In other words, could there be any kind of other body structure that could have helped even more the intelligent brain we have. Of course taking into the Aesthetics too.
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nicholas73
The brain is our most expensive organ, requiring massive calories and
qualities protein/fat sources. In addition, it takes decade(s) to fully
mature. In nature, that is a ridiculous reproduction disadvantage.

The only way that can evolve is through tools and social cohesion. For a small
mammal to evolve to tackle on bigger game and thus more efficient protein
sources, it either needs these things or adapt its body. Unfortunately,
adapting your body is expensive as well. The only positive feedback loop is
through tools and social behavior.

Wolves are intelligent animals as well. Probably as smart as toddlers. They
are very social creatures that take on much bigger game. But they don't have
hands.

From using tools, primates were able to streamline their body mass and reduce
apparatus needed to digest vegetation. Thus, from the point of view of
efficiency, I think the human body is very optimized for an intelligent brain.

It's not the only way it can happen, but it's very probable (at least to
evolve from existing animals).

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brudgers
My dogs, descendants of wolves, don't have hands. They do however have access
to hands. They have access to a shelter that was created with tools. They ride
to the vet in an automobile when they have healthcare needs.

They lay on the couch while I'm working to produce what can be transformed
into protein for them. It's a pretty efficient and pretty safe strategy
evolved in a few tens of thousands of years.

There was a comedic bit about dogs in New York City: If an alien saw two
creatures of a different species and one was picking up the other's poop,
which would it deduce was in charge?

The great-chain-of-being is the product of revelation not scientific method.

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brudgers
The human body is suited to the human brain to some degree. The human brain
has human intelligence. While the discussion of intelligence in general and
not just the human type is an exercise in anthropomorphism, there is no
deductive basis for any claim that the human brain is intelligent in an
absolute sense.

We can turn the ontological argument on its head. I can conceive of an
omniscient and omnipotent intelligence, therefore human intelligence is very
low on the absolute scale of intelligence and calling it intelligent may be
misleading.

Going further, the question "How is a human with a different sort of body
still a human?" hints at an assumption of mind-body dualism. Radical
Skepticism aside, is a disembodied brain still a human?

I guess Aesthetics with a capital \\#a were thrown into the mix to make the
question less trivial?

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debacle
Evolution never creates the best, only the good enough. Nature is not an
engineer - her only method is trial and error.

~~~
vog
It really depends on what you mean by "best".

When seen on a biochemical level, evolution creates highly optimized stuff on
"hardware" as well as "software" level. (Also, it is quite telling that it is
often impossible to distinguish between those.)

When interpreting this as hardware/circuit/software design, the "code"
produced by evolution is by far not the cleanest or nicest or best
understandable. It is more the kind of code that you see in mature projects,
decades old, where the simple algorithms have been optimized more and more,
making them harder to undestand, but still correct, robust and with better
performance.

Interestingly, even the best engineers need lots of trial and error to finally
come up with these algorithms. Maybe their optimization is more targeted than
evolution's, but engineers also have almost no time for their experiments
(when seen on the scale of evolution's time.)

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yuashizuki
Our hands are the most important part, it gives us alot of ability to build
tools.Its highly complex and only humans posses this, its one of natures
marvels. So i dont know about other parts but the the hand and the fingurs
have to be the same.

~~~
mrfusion
And walking upright so we can use our hands.

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vog
I belive this should be labeled "Ask HN: ..." so the title doesn't lead to
wrong expectations.

