Ah, a badly designed system! But why is it badly designed? Which of the following possibilities are likely suspects?
(from my new article on the origins of failure in bodies and machines.)

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

@ncse.bsky.social has fought advocates for ignorance and antiscience for decades. Its work is more important than ever now, as the threat of a new dark age looms ever larger. I have written about objectivity being selected against, but I never dreamed there would be organized opposition to science.

Antonis Rokas is organizing the 10th annual meeting of the @evmed.bsky.social International Society for Evolution, Medicine , and Public Health meeting at Vanderbilt where he directs the University’s Evolutionary Studies Initiative. bsky.app/profile/evol...

I am a psychiatrist.

I am skeptical about claims that autism rates are climbing fast, and even more skeptical that there are specific environmental causes. But someone needs to educate geneticists who think that the high heritability of a trait means that environmental factors are unimportant. @medscape.com

Myopia is an example. It is rare in cultures where people live mostly outdoors and reading is rare, but in modern societies it is common and the variation in risk results mostly from genetic variation.
@evmed.bsky.social @ibg.colorado.edu @genetics-gsa.bsky.social @autismsocietync.bsky.social

Design failures like this are everywhere. They need to be studied systematically. academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

Failure to recognize that bodies are not machines causes serious problems...Thinking that genes and emotions each have specific functions is a fundamental misunderstanding
Much more in the article.
randolphnesse.com/articles/emo...
@bioengineergm.bsky.social
@evmedf.bsky.social randolphnesse.com

The structure of complexity in organic systems is fundamentally different from that in machines.The components of bodies often have blurry boundaries and many functions. Their networks are far different from anything an engineer would design. 2/3 @humbehevosoc.bsky.social @tricem.bsky.social

Instead of trying to solve such problems, I am now asking what aspects of evolved human minds make us unable to resolve them. Perhaps a more tractable problem.
5/5 @awaisaftab.bsky.social @evmed.bsky.social @carlbergstrom.com