(no subject)
our immune systems are simply amazing (except for mine because it has quit working)
an even better statement is that our bodies and our brains are built iwth with amazing ability to learn in response to a changing (even changing cultural) environment
so we have an immune system that is built to fight the flu and colds and polio and gangrene and stuff like flesh eating bacteria. But those things haven't always been around.
Our immune systems are also built to handle viruses that haven't yet evolved.
Because of evolution we're trained to think that our bodies will simply learn from the environment. There will be a new virus, our body will try to fight it, it will try something else, and osmething else, until it is successful. (or random mutations in a population will allow the progeny to carry the one right antibody)
but instead what happens is we have this whole repertoire of antibodies that in combination with each other can deal with just about anything.
Instead of evolving antibodies for new things what we evolved instead was a set of "molecular computations" (sort of like making the puzzle pieces so that there are discrete, varying ways for molecules to fit together) and when these molecular computations combine they can handle an infinite number of conditions than any single combination on its own. Our bodies then sort of prune these combinations down based on feedback from teh environment and get a few systems with an underlying common core.
But here's a cool quote that compares this process, of infinite possiblity and then pruning to music and aesthetics:
"our minds are endowed with universal computations for creating and judging art, music, and morally relevant actions. depending on where we are born, we will find atonal music pleasing or disgusting, and infanticide obligatory or abhorrent. the common or universal core is, for music, a set of rules for combining together notes to alter our emotions, and for morality, a different set of rules for combining the causes and consequences of action to alter our permissibility judgements.
There is not only cultural variation but environmental variation over evolutionary time. What may be good for us today may not be good for us tomorrow."
an even better statement is that our bodies and our brains are built iwth with amazing ability to learn in response to a changing (even changing cultural) environment
so we have an immune system that is built to fight the flu and colds and polio and gangrene and stuff like flesh eating bacteria. But those things haven't always been around.
Our immune systems are also built to handle viruses that haven't yet evolved.
Because of evolution we're trained to think that our bodies will simply learn from the environment. There will be a new virus, our body will try to fight it, it will try something else, and osmething else, until it is successful. (or random mutations in a population will allow the progeny to carry the one right antibody)
but instead what happens is we have this whole repertoire of antibodies that in combination with each other can deal with just about anything.
Instead of evolving antibodies for new things what we evolved instead was a set of "molecular computations" (sort of like making the puzzle pieces so that there are discrete, varying ways for molecules to fit together) and when these molecular computations combine they can handle an infinite number of conditions than any single combination on its own. Our bodies then sort of prune these combinations down based on feedback from teh environment and get a few systems with an underlying common core.
But here's a cool quote that compares this process, of infinite possiblity and then pruning to music and aesthetics:
"our minds are endowed with universal computations for creating and judging art, music, and morally relevant actions. depending on where we are born, we will find atonal music pleasing or disgusting, and infanticide obligatory or abhorrent. the common or universal core is, for music, a set of rules for combining together notes to alter our emotions, and for morality, a different set of rules for combining the causes and consequences of action to alter our permissibility judgements.
There is not only cultural variation but environmental variation over evolutionary time. What may be good for us today may not be good for us tomorrow."