I don’t remember the show (or even if it was a show) but a guy went to the doctor to complain about his back pain. Doctor said that it might clear up in several thousand years. Confused, the patient asks for clarification. Basically, humans went bipedal too soon, and our spines weren’t made to be upright for so long at a time. The doctor’s analogy was that we “turned a clothesline into a flagpole”.
Louie, whatever anyone feels about its creator it’s still a great show.
Disappointingly great, honestly. I’d recommend it to everyone if not for the sexual harassment.
The human body is a wonder of completely random chance, but a complete and utter failure of any kind of system. Anyone who isn’t a transhumanist is a total jobbernowl, in my humble opinion.
we have organs that only exist to kill us, our mouths are completely fucked, our bodies will just stop making vitally important chemicals, it’s stupidly common for our bodies to kill themselves because it freaks out at perfectly benign things, our super special brains take very stupid shortcuts, and of course the bones. A biologist could probably go on for hours about the failures of evolution, but i am not a biologist.
i’m incredibly salty about how our “only air please” tubes are connected to “everything goes through that” tubes, like what the fuck
Don’t forget that our spine would prefer having us walk on all fours
But our hips were like, “nah fuck that. I’m up now.”
Paired with arms and legs that super don’t appreciate that past adolescence.
Supposedly, that little hack is what lets us talk.
No, that just lets us talk out of the same hole we put other things into. The talking mechanism could be connected to just the air hole. And as a bonus, we could talk while eating and drinking.
But you see it isn’t a failure, in fact it’s literally the most successful yet. Evolutionary adaptations don’t come about because they make life comfortable they make it so one can live long enough to make babies, everything else is just a bonus
Which is why the whole thing kinda starts to break down once a species reaches a point where the specimens can survive after they can no longer produce offspring. Like humans.
There’s multiple examples of the same thing in other species. Typically it’s a social animal where passing on accumulated knowledge is a survival strategy. Whales are one example, I’d have to look up the others.
Like I said, a bonus
And penises have some magnificent garbage wiring, leading into all sorts of fun stuff you wouldn’t wish on your enemy. Evolution is just a giant brute force mechanism. An LLM of biology, if you will.
We should have flaccid teeth that only get hard when we are hungry and see food
It would have cost you nothing not to promote the concept of tooth boners.
brb I need to brush my teeth for the 4th time today
Brushing too much can be a bad thing, especially if you use too much pressure.
Thanks, I hate it.
Imagine having to vividly imagine eating a bacon cheeseburger in order to floss or brush. No thank you.
Just stick your finger between your flaccid teeth and give them a good rub. No biggie.
I agree with the sentiment, but trans-humanism as a concept has to fight uphill in all directions to not wind up as repackaged eugenics.
To improve upon the human form in a way that serves future generations is a path fraught with ethical problems. How does one value a change or augmentation to human form as an improvement? Who gets to improve or be improved? What happens when the technology or treatments are too resource intensive or expensive for everyone? What keeps the rich and powerful from hoarding all the life-extending improvements from the rest?
At the very minimum, supplying something like an inject-able gene therapy to the masses must be conducted at a global scale - far greater than what it took to eradicate smallpox. Anything less, and we’re picking winners and losers, and slide down the slippery ethical slope.
At the very minimum, supplying something like an inject-able gene therapy to the masses must be conducted at a global scale - far greater than what it took to eradicate smallpox.
New covid conspiracy theory right there
What’s wrong with our mouths?
@kraftpudding @shani66 teeth and gum problems, the ability to get brain freeze or literal saliva stones
Our teeth don’t fit correctly either, nor are they really suited enough to the environment to last as long as we live.
They usually fit fine as long as you’re eating a proper diet. You know, lots of veggies and unprocessed food.
No, they last longer that way, but the human mouth is too small for our teeth, that’s why a lot of us have to get our wisdom teeth removed
It’s a tight fit, that’s for sure. I guess it’s more of what you consider to be too small for optimal mouth health and whatnot. Most animals have gaps but we don’t. It would certainly help to have some. Generally, having a better diet does help with tooth arrangement, though. The position of your teeth are influenced by the stresses you put on them. If you’re eating a lot of soft, processed food the stresses the teeth place on each other starts be become a bigger factor in their positioning. If you’re eating a proper amount of “tough” food, chewing helps keep them in proper alignment.
Mine were growing in sideways well before they erupted. Diet had nothing to do with that, just a shorter jaw than our distant ancestors.
Tonsil stones? I haven’t had the displeasure but from what I’ve read, it clearly goes in the “we can do better than this” category.
Being a transhumanist is foolish. Just skip the middleman and make better robots to completely take over our species.
Well… robots wouldn’t be sentient, so there would be no point. And I would argue making sentient robots is morally wrong.
I would argue NOT making sentient robots is morally wrong.
It’s the reason we have so many birth complications. Why do you think we are the only animal on the planet that is bipedal all the time? It’s actually really mind bending how we survived and thrived
Technically…birds are bipedal all the time. They went about it very differently though.
Birds have optimized for minimum weight tho, so they can afford to only have 2 limbs supporting the entire body
Have you seen their legs though? They dont look sufficient at all, especially taller birds which stand in the water often have insanely thin legs
Keep in mind that most of the bird’s visible body volume is just fluff
Birds like egrets and herons rarely weigh more than a few pounds. Even the red-crowned crane, a five foot tall bird, caps out at about twenty pounds. An average nine-month-old human weighs that but is only a foot and a half tall. Flighted birds are crazy light.
Wow, that is indeed crazy. I knew birds were light, but that’s still impressive
They’re also dinosaurs, so definitely not mammals.
haha got me there should have said mammals
We are just too stubborn to die out.
Figured out the one trick Nature didn’t want you know - evolution can be circumvented by sheer ignorant willpower.
Not only we’re the only bipedal mammal, we have the biggest head relative to our body out of any animal. That combination is just not a good time for anyone involved
Don’t get me started on knees
Wrists are also surprisingly weak.
And arms are heavy
There’s vomit on his sweater already
Mom’s spaghetti
He’s nervous but on the surface he looks calm and ready
My dad had to get one replaced. That was a sucky year for him.
No shit. Humans started walking on two legs, suddenly giving birth is fucking atrocious. That was natural selection at work and we should have taken the hint.
I had bad carpal tunnel. I still do, but it was worse.
They do a test where they use some crazy BDSM shit and shock your arms to measure the response in your nerves (which indicates compression) and then they do a needle thing to measure the movement of your muscles.
The sick fucks said that second one would be “unpleasant” but it was like my hand was on fire the whole time.
If your fingers get tingly, get wrist splints for sleeping. That’s it
I got my hand issues checked out way too late. Turns out I had REALLY bad carpal tunnel. My only treatment option at that point was surgery. I could hardly use my hands for 5 months before the surgery. Both hands got the ligament in the palms snipped and now everything is pretty good.
If your hands hurt and/or feel weird and/or don’t work right, see a fuckin doctor. Don’t wait like my dumb ass did lmao.
I didn’t find nerve conduction studies too bad but by that time I’d spent 18 months feeling like I was holding my arms over a fire so a different unpleasant sensation was basically like a cool towel on sunburn :p
Also I’m a like please-skin-me-a-little masochist, so maybe it is bdsm shit :p
“please-skin-me-a-little” is sort of the kind of shit that damn needle felt like.
“Pinch” in doctor-speak means, this is going to hurt like a bitch.
If a doctor actually used the word “unpleasant” I think I’d start crying proactively.
That’s why I treat mine like the garbage it is.
Oh it’s trash skeletal system alright. Talk to any physiotherapist about knees, shoulders, and what shoes are doing to our arches.
What are shoes doing to our arches?
I am not a doctor or licensed physiotherapist.
In general, shoes can compress the toes together which distorts one’s literal footprint. This causes the great toe to bend inward enough to partially or even fully collapse the arch. People that are barefoot most of the time do not have this problem, and their great toe is in line with the bones behind it. Basically since it’s not a thumb, it’s really not supposed to be bent inward.
We also do goofy things like walk with heel strikes instead of on our toes when using shoes. It’s why some runners have a bad time with shin splints and require shoes with a ton of heel padding - you’re really not built to do that.
Do Shoes Alter the Form and Function of Your Feet?
So called “bunion spacers” and toe spacers help restore proper great toe positioning which in turn can restore the arch. I was diagnosed with fallen arches, and stumbled into this by accident. My PB for deadlift is now 265lbs, and have had zero arch pain or related issues for years. The trick is to purchase a shoe with a wide toe-box to accommodate the wider toe-end of your footprint when wearing the spacers.
Walking barefoot all the time is also bad for our legs and feet, but in different ways. Because we made our ground too hard and we aren’t allowed to sit down often enough.
The human body isn’t perfect, but it’s not helped by doing long stretches of a single activity.
So it’s more “stupid agriculture, pulling us away from the nomadic hunter-gatherer life we’re built for”?
Chasing an animal to exhaustion involves a lot of running, which really fucks up your knees. Especially with uneven surfaces and primitive shoes.
I think the human body really is just a product of “good enough”.
It’s not really skeletal it’s muscular.
Anyone with sciatica could have told you this
carpél
Where’s our adaptive evolution?!?!
That’s… why we’re here
Why don’t I have an L shaped neck yet?
Can’t wait for my brain to be transferred into cloud! Be gone, mortal flesh!
This is cephalopod propaganda!
Cephaloprodpogranda!