On 11/6/2013 6:57 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote:
*From:*everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On
Behalf Of *LizR
*Sent:* Wednesday, November 06, 2013 6:18 PM
*To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com
*Subject:* Re: Our Demon-Haunted World
On 7 November 2013 14:39, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>>
wrote:
There's a continuum of behavior which at the extreme absence of empathy we call
psychopathy or sociopathy. But that doesn't mean more empathy is better. Sometimes
it's good to be hard hearted. Should we have been nicer to the Neanderthals?
>>We'll never know. But we do know we evolved to cope with a world that is very far
removed from the one we have. Is there any reason to believe evolution got everything
right? We've already made changes to other aspects of our being, both physically and
psychologically. But certain aspects of our behaviour still seem to be stuck in a
distant past when life was almost always nasty, brutish and short.
Evolution sometimes saddles life forms with burdensome defects -- for example almost all
animals can synthesize their own vitamin C; we lost this;
Which may have been an advantage where it was easily found in food.
Human's also have ridiculously thin walled arteries -- compared to most other animal
species.
What's your reference for that? I've heard that pulmonary arteries have on average
thinner walls - but you don't get strokes in your lungs.
In fact strokes are very rare in most species because their circulatory systems are
superior in this regard to ours.
So why do humans live so much longer than other mammals, even much larger
mammals.
Evolution is a mixed bag and we got what we got -- both good and bad; the evolutionary
benefits of an opposable thumb, enlarged forebrain, linguistic abilities etc. far
outweighed the defects our evolutionary roulette wheel spit out and we have succeeded in
covering this planet with members of our species.
Yeah, evolution doesn't aim for perfection, just 'good enough'.
Brent
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