They just reached top possible performance for their specific niche. They’re basically perfect, so there is little need for evolution to change anything - random selection keeps selecting the same traits for millions of years because those are the ones that work and manage to get them to reproduce.
I like to think of it as having maxed out one specific talent tree for that environment.
That’s not actually necessarily true. Even if we adopt this “top possible performance” thing, which isn’t how organisms work, you can’t guarantee their current set of traits would be this optimal maximum.
Evolution can only work with traits already present, or small additions or deletions. It can’t jump around. Meaning, for instance, perhaps a crocodile capable of shooting a literal stream of acid would be even more optimized for this environment - but such a trait can’t appear out of thin air, and the necessary stepping stones won’t be selected.
Sounds like machine learning with a very small learning rate. You will most likely end up in a local minimum ie. no acid shooting (it would be cool and terrifying)
They might also be more succesfull if they can put sticks and stones together to eventually create a military industrial complex in order to hunt prey using a 50 Caliber machine gun.
I had the absolute displeasure of taking some classes with med students at a well known university in the US. I’ve got to say medical education in the states is completely fucked, if you have a propensity towards depression or suicidal thoughts medical school will push you further into it. Medical training for docs needs to be completely redone in the states and the fact that the abusive cycle continues because that’s what they did when they were high on coke is giga awful. I knew of 3 people who killed themselves at my schools med school 1 of which was my friend. I can not warn you enough to consider anything else
Years ago I was trying to get into med school. But I didn’t think I could so I stopped trying at the end and pursued a different route. One of the reasons I didn’t go was I was afraid I would kill myself if I went. In the back of my mind I’ve always been a bit disappointed with myself that I didn’t try hard enough to get in, but this sort of cements my reasoning for not going.
It doesn’t help that the whole curriculum was designed by a coke snorting hyper-workaholic.
The whole idea of 12 hour shifts for any critical function, let alone medical personnel, of all people, is batshit insane. The idea of people working off of no sleep and total exhaustion where the slightest mistake kills someone…?? And what “work-life balance?” Seems like medical folks aren’t allowed to have that.
Agreed, but id rather hang out with the botanists and field ecologists anyway. I chose biology as a major precisely because the biologists were chill. The geologists drank too much and the engineers seemed uncreative. People who love and appreciate biology are my people.
If you’re not already watching crime pays but botany doesn’t on youtube you should start. It’s just 30+ minute videos of a profane botanist from Chicago running around nature and pointing out cool plants and complaining about society
Thanks for the recommendation. I looked him up and to my surprise the first video that showed up was of him here in Brazil walking in the middle of absolute nowhere talking nonstop about every single plant he finds on the ground. I am hooked.
I only found him recently but he has really accelerated a path I was already on to becoming more conscious about plants and the role they play in our environment. I’m now in the planning phase of converting about 1.5 acres of lawn into native prairie and starting to manage some woods that I own so they’re more beneficial to wildlife.
A meme accurately representing my plant morphology teacher screaming at me because I couldn’t see if the god forsaken ovary was inferior or superior would not make me laugh, it would make me cry.
Wow, that’s awesome. I’ve been thinking a lot about the scale of the universe and how cyclical it is.
Take a scaled out view of our solar system and then compare it to a molecules composition (the atom or group of atoms surrounded by protons and neutrons) and the similarities are just uncanny.
Like this image, what’s to say that we aren’t just part of a molecule making up the chemical composition of something far larger than ourselves. An ant has no concept of the vast empty space between the United States and Europe, we know that is the case between solar systems but our actual understanding of our relationship in space is limited.
P.S. look at the patterns of discharge of electricity in wood/paper/stone and then look at the patterns of the Grand Canyon. They’re the same! And the Grand Canyon is the only formation we have that exhibits this quality, which makes it extra interesting.
Take a scaled out view of our solar system and then compare it to a molecules composition (the atom or group of atoms surrounded by protons and neutrons) and the similarities are just uncanny.
Nah, the planetary model of the atom is outdated. The quantum model doesn’t look very much like a solar system.
For legal reasosns, the following is a dramatization of events.
I feel this in my goddamn BONES because the thing vents at 135 FREAKING DECIBELS and I’m TRAPPED 2 METERS from it trying to measure out 0.0000023 mg of a temperature-sensitive metal complex in the glove box that I spent the last 2 weeks trying to make and POUND SAND EHS WITH YOUR PENCIL-PUSHING SCOPE-CREPT DEPARTMENT POLICIES I WILL WEAR HEARING PROTECTION WHERE I DAMN WELL PLEASE! WHAT’S THAT? I WON’T HEAR IF SOMETHING “GOES WRONG”? IS THAT SO? GEE, I HADN’T CONSIDERED THAT! LET ME CHECK IF REGULAR EXPOSURE TO THE LABORED MUSINGS OF SATAN’S FROSTY ANUS COULD POSSIBLY AFFECT MY ABILITY TO HEAR THINGS “GOING WRONG”!
While I’m at it, A CERTAIN LIQUID AIR COMPANY OUGHT TO FEEL ASHAMED FOR NOT DITCHING THEIR JANKY OLD DEFECTIVE DEWARS, DON’T YOU DARE TRY TO BLAME IT ON ME LEAVING THE PRESSURE BUILDER ON, FIRST THING I CHECK
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