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questionasker  2yr ago (text post)   1656 thread views

To What Extent are Humans Optimized?

To what extent are humans optimized? Compared to the most efficient method of land mobility (that still retains all the same functionality e.g. ability to climb stairs) how efficient are human legs? Compared to the most efficient way to take in their respective types of data, how efficient are human eyes, ears, etc?

Most importantly, compared to the most efficient way to do the types of calculations it does, how efficient are human brains/neurons etc.? Obviously, digital computers are much more efficient at the types of computations they do. With semiconductors as an obvious counterexample, we can be fairly certain that any digital computation human brains do is not even close to the theoretical maximum efficiency it could have. But I've heard some say that human brains might use certain types of analog computation at least in part. Is it possible that the analog parts of human brains are even e.g. 10 percent as efficient as a maximally efficient version of computational substrate designed for a similar purpose?

Obviously, all the answers to this will probably be well within the realm of conjecture. Unless, that is, anyone actually does have some sort of publication going into detail about this type of thing, but I doubt it. I'd still like to see what this community cares to predict about this subject/offer as conjecture.

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Humans aren’t the best of anything, compared to other animals, except brainpower.

Our ability to throw objects is unmatched in the animal kingdom, and it's not even close.

Major League Baseball is insanely human. The pitcher has to hurl a fist-sized ball into a static cuboid space from far away at a blazing speed, batter has to start moving the bat to intersect that cuboid and hit the ball before he can even see its path, basing his movement on his 20/20 vision’s and brain’s optimized estimation of the pitcher’s movements. Runners and fielders have to run upwards of 15 MPH at a moment’s notice and stop on a dime. And the umpires have to observe all of this and catch anything which breaks a single rule out of an entire book’s worth of rules.

I think humans excel at heat dissipation and efficiency of locomotion

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