[extropy-chat] why the vertebrate eye might not be suboptimal after all

[Damien Broderick]

At 02:44 PM 7/7/2006 -0700, Stuart wrote:

>If ID were correct, you would think that humans would have the best 
>eyes of all.

Drat, nobody seems to take my point. It's got nothing to do with 
*intelligent* design, only with locally and sequentially optimized 
design. If you find scads of cases of similar designs that work well 
enough until offspring have offsprung, maybe some of the apparent 
deficits have unsuspected advantages--as with antagonistic pleitropy. 
(But I agree that the trouble with a racheting selection system is 
that often you can't get there from here *purely by darwinnowed 
mutation*, so critters perforce make the best of it. Hence, my 
friend's astute comparison with the Hubble's optics.)

Damien Broderick