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questionasker  2yr ago (text post)   1498 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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TierZoo is an entertaining youtube channel that pretends animals are like classes in a video game and rates their stats. He thinks pretty highly of humans. I recommend his videos in general.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ImYu9dJM4kQ

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BJzJtm7OfdQ

I think humans, outside of the more recent brain areas that have had relatively little time to evolve, are generally pretty optimized. Not perfectly, but our(and every animal's) biology is really quite impressive. Just look at how few improvements you can make to humans by adding prosthetics. Glasses can improve our vision, but other than that, even if you're a billionaire, you aren't really able to improve upon the human body beyond what biology already gives you.

The knees and lower spine of humans are famously frail for the load they have to support -- a consequence of remolding our body for erect bipedalism in a relatively short time.

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