Why birds do not fall while sleeping

When I was younger, I was fascinated by evolution, especially the intricacies of how things just work. This fascination also explains why many people believe in the intelligent design theory.

However, witnessing the rapid evolution of AI with just a few hundred GPUs, enough data, and power, I no longer wonder what a billion years of feedback loops and randomness can achieve.

The fascination with “intelligent design” is cherry-picking. The is no shortage of “unintelligent design” in the natural world.

Take humans, for example. You can block your trachea and die through the simple act of eating. An intelligent (and omniscient) designer could have avoided that by better designing our overall our overall structure.

Or take the fact or ear bones are modified jaw bones. Or if you believe in intelligent design, ask why our intelligent designer thought it wise to link our jaw to our ears so that it’s hard to hear things when you’re chewing.

When you notice these flaws you are seeing it in very very short term. What we are today is what eventually worked for a million years. The design you see today is the way it is because it had to be robust enough (including those problems) to survive to this day.

The examples you quote do look like a problem today, but I think they must have worked to some benefit to bring us here.

Yes, you’re describing evolution.

I am. I am also saying you can not design us any better than what we are today. You can't look into next billion years. Whatever becomes of us at the point will the best design at that point. The optimal design you are suggesting has zero guarantees to keep working.

If anything, your optimal design is just another mutation that may or may not survive time.