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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Those deep structure may be active, but reading was never in their design documentation. Our brains evolved to what they are today long before reading was a thing. The fact that we read so well is probably a hacked-together scheme tying together structures meant for pattern recognition and speech.

I see reading much like swimming. None of us can swim without practice, as none of us can read. The scary thing is that even the best of us can only swim about as well as the average dog. So pity us on the day we find a creature actually designed for reading.

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There's an excellent book [1] that explores the neurological aspects of language. TLDR: language evolved to be efficient for our existing brain structures—our brains did not evolve to be good at language.

1: https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Brain-New-Science-Read/dp/014...

> structures meant for

"Meant"? Nothing in your body or brain is "meant" for anything. There is no "meaning", or "intention", for starters. And the brain is nothing if not adaptable. If your brain is "meant" to be anything, it's versatile.

There are parts of the brain meant for specific tasks. It isn't a homogeneous mass of neurons. The bit that is working the eyes atm was designed (via evolution) to work the eyes. As was the bit that takes the message from the eyes and ups the heart rate when a lion appears in your field of view. There is certainly some flexibility, but the basic task layout is a layout, not a random allocation.

>The bit that is working the eyes atm was designed (via evolution) to work the eyes.

Evolution is a random process, there is no designing, there's no goals.

(1) Evolution is not random. Mutation may be random, but feature selection is based on a rule.

(2) There is a goal: species survival.

(3) The only rule is that whatever aids (2) is a rule for purposes of (1).

Species survival? Gene reproduction you mean. The organism is simply a way for the gene to propagate itself.

Check out Dawkins' The Selfish Gene.

I disagree with Dawkins. If genes were the unit for evolution, we wouldn't exists. We would all just be bacteria spewing out copies of genes, with the planet buried in a pile of tiny protein chains. Genes are the servants of the species. They are a tool used by species to pass on traits, or even to acquire traits from other species. Genes are inert absent a species using them.

that suggests that once born, an individual could have all of their genes removed, and be perfectly fine, other than not being able to pass on traits to a new individual.

Yes. Genes and DNA are not the same thing. DNA is a means of recording and passing along genes. And alien organism that doesn't use our system of DNA/RNA could still possess genes. So it is theoretically possible to remove all manifestations of genes and have the organism continue to function.

This is not very far fetched. Much of our DNA is used for a short time during development and then effectively turns off for the rest of our life. Taking that DNA away might go unnoticed.

You know exactly what he meant. You are using the word design in a different way than him.

There's absolutely a part of the brain that specializes processing visual information, just as there are organs throughout the rest of your body that specialize with other different tasks.

I think pretty much everything in your body is specialized and is "meant" for something. No matter how hard you try, you're not going to get your heart to replace your pancreas or kidneys. And you can't replace your lungs with brain tissue. Sure, doctors can transplant a toe to replace a thumb or a heart blood vessel with a vein from a leg with great success, but it's doing pretty much the same function, just in a different place.

As a whole, humans are quite adaptable to their environment, but specific body parts tend to be specialized.

you can't replace your lungs with brain tissue

No, but the brain can replace brain tissue for one task with brain tissue for another task. It's called neuroplasticity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity#Treatment_of_b...

I agree with the GP, if there's one characterization that applies to the brain, it's "versatile".

meaning is a nice convention to signify that something works well for some use case.

like, you didn't intend to type anything, it was just a series random processes that resulted in some text, but by convention, it's nice to say that you meant to write something.

> I see reading much like swimming. None of us can swim without practice, as none of us can read.

Newborn babies can swim, obviously with no practice. In fact isn't it a classic example of an instinctive human behaviour?

Newborns can't swim in the sense that they stay afloat. A baby will drown if dropped in water.

They do have some reflexes related to swimming, in that they will hold their breath and work their feet, but those reflexes disappear with time and have to be re-learned.

It's fair to say that swimming is a learned practice.

>> ... will hold their breath and work their feet.

Imho that isn't related to swimming. That's them trying to keep their heads above water by standing up, hopefully in relatively shallow water. Even with drowning adults, they don't so much try to swim as try to grasp onto something.

Compare dogs. They have a swimming instinct dedicated to movement. Dogs don't tread. They move forwards. We flail around trying to climb out of the water. They are trying to get to shore. That has to be some sort of evolutionary relic speaking to very different ancestral environments.

Polar bears instincts accommodate both treading water and swimming within moments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scFiRRTU5jg

> Our brains evolved to what they are today long before reading was a thing.

You could be on a poster for "evolution stops at the neck".

Obviously, our brains did not evolve to what they are today long before reading was a thing, because that happened before today. There was no point at which brains stopped evolving.

>> There was no point at which brains stopped evolving.

Evolution operates on a different timescale. For all intents and purposes, our physical structure hasn't evolved since reading became widespread in the population perhaps a couple hundred years ago.

More like five thousand years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A#Chronology and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumerian_script#History

Charitably, reading was not "widespread in the population" at that time. sandworm101's comment shows a pretty appalling understanding of evolution -- the selective pressure for reading ability exists as soon as anyone can benefit from learning to read, not when everyone is required to try -- but a somewhat better understanding of history.

Very high literacy rates within endogamous subpopulations go back much farther than a couple hundred years, though.

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