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   hypolite (hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 06:23:46 JST hypolite
   So you have a hole in your body, right? It's used to breathe in and out. But wait, it's also used to eat and drink, but you should never do both at the same time! Fortunately, there's a nifty switcher between the esophagus and the trachea. Of course sometimes it fails, leading to extremely uncomfortable fits of cough and possibly death.
   
   But wait, you have another couple of holes! These are made for breathing too, but you should never ever attempt to eat or drink from them. Oh and they merge with the main hole before the switch as well.
   
   Whoever coined the term "intelligent" design should be slapped across the face.
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     Darth Tiktaalik (darth_tiktaalik@mastodon.lol)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 08:03:15 JST Darth Tiktaalik

     in reply to

     @hypolite

     The term "intelligent design" is a dishonest attempt to disguise biblical literalism as a scientific viewpoint. They didn't cover their tracks all that well:

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People

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     hypolite (hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 08:05:50 JST hypolite

     in reply to

     • CapritiaJH
     @patriciajhawkins "Good enough"? This is survivor bias talking!
     
     As an aside, I am also baffled by the level on complexity reached by human life, but "intelligent"? Pah!
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     CapritiaJH (patriciajhawkins@mastodon.art)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 08:05:52 JST CapritiaJH

     in reply to

     @hypolite Seems like good enough design though? Billions of us have managed to survive quite a number of years without choking to death on our own spittle. I'm an atheist -- and I'm astounded and awed by what matter just tumbling around the universe buffeted by physics has managed to come up with.

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     hypolite (hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 09:21:12 JST hypolite

     in reply to

     • CapritiaJH
     @patriciajhawkins I do think I’m as qualified as anyone else to judge because there is no mysterious designer with hidden intent I could be ignorant of and therefore wrong about my judgement.
     
     Evolution is a blunt design instrument, very likely to settle for local maximas, with no overarching goals. This is also why its production feels both alien and amazing to us goal-oriented individuals because we get lost in the “why?”, a question that plays absolutely no part in a process which time scale also dwarfs us.
     
     However my original post was mostly a jab at religious people trying to appropriate scientific lingo in absence of actual evidence. Please don’t take it too seriously.
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     CapritiaJH (patriciajhawkins@mastodon.art)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 09:21:13 JST CapritiaJH

     in reply to

     @hypolite Well, it's also how evolution works.

     ...interesting to contemplate a life form considering itself and its kind, only to snort *intelligent*? Pah!" I mean, if not, are you qualified to judge?

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     hypolite (hypolite@friendica.mrpetovan.com)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 09:45:47 JST hypolite

     in reply to

     • CapritiaJH
     @patriciajhawkins This is a vast question, but on the whole I don't think we are very intelligent. In the lapse of a geological sneeze, we have managed to make our environment much worse four ourselves than how we found it, and that's even going into the massive economic inequalities that makes the wants of the few fulfilled by the misery of many.
     
     We are able to reason, mostly to reason away structural problems, but intelligent? Doubtful.
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     CapritiaJH (patriciajhawkins@mastodon.art)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 09:45:48 JST CapritiaJH

     in reply to

     @hypolite Heck, I'm not taking this seriously; just entertained by the circularity. Are we intelligent? We think so. Is the system that produced us somehow or other intelligent? We think not --so we're intelligent beings produced by billions of years of unintelligent processes. But what does that imply about our intelligence? Though put that way, eh, no reason that intelligence can't emerge from primordial muck. But does leave me meditating: what IS intelligence?

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     heluecht (heluecht@pirati.ca)'s status on Wednesday, 18-Jan-2023 22:13:08 JST heluecht

     in reply to
     @hypolite I also want to refer to the recurrent laryngeal nerve, that is often cited as evidence of evolution, since it doesn't make sense to route a nerve nearly 5 meters through the body of a giraffe instead of taking the direct path of some centimeters:
     en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurren…
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