There are just so few optimal solutions to the same problem.
It’s also why we should always try to copy nature when it comes to technology.
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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We should always look to nature, yes. A lot of aerodynamic designs seem to look a lot like the world's fastest birds. Trees really do seem to optimize for capturing solar energy in an easily encoded blueprint.
But also there are a few areas where we should recognize the limits of scope of the solutions nature has provided, or recognize the path dependency in how evolution might optimize for a particular pathway that no longer should continue to pose a restriction (the giraffe's recurrent laryngeal nerve, for example).
We're allowed to mix and match. Just gotta be careful and recognize just how powerful billions of years of evolution is, as an optimization method.
A lot of aerodynamic designs seem to look a lot like the world's fastest birds.
Coral are trees.
Trees are coral. Dead wood/dead limestone, wrapped over with living tissue.
Coral trees are make of rock wood and each leaf is it's own organism.
everything in nature has analagous structures. if you don't see them you're either looking too close or too far and you need to shift your perspective. a coral reef is a forest and the corals are the trees.
This is lemmy. It's not like we need a special time
Nah, it's a routine.
Me too, thanks. If I'm not making a total ass of myself, you need to get me to a hospital because something is wrong
I think its even wilder to think about that sharks existed prior to trees
Sharks also existed prior to Saturn's rings
And Taylor Swift, but not Liza Minelli (she is eternal)
And dinosaurs existed for ~160 million years before grasses. runs to cross-reference all my illustrated childhood books' dinosaur species extinction timelines and the presence of grass!!
There's also anteaters
There are anteaters! Well done!
Big if true
About dog-sized actually.
Depends on the dog
Small if false
Medium if ambiguous
Asymmetric if uncertain
It is worth noting – as someone who's reasonably knowledgeable about arguably the main example, king crabs – that carcinisation is really interesting, but I think some people took the meme semi-unironically as this especially widespread example of convergent evolution.
In reality, it's confined to some members of the true crabs' sister infraorder, Anomura. Which is still super cool, but even the faintest notion that crabs are some singularly ideal ~~male body~~ body form is just a runaway shitpost.
the faintest notion that crabs are some singularly ideal ~~male body~~ body form is just a runaway shitpost.
What about that sounds like something I wouldn't want to start a cult about?
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Why couldn't they just have called it "crabinization?"
Because they spent years in education and feel it gave them the duty to name things in latinish or greekish ways
The disease cancer could also have been called crab because it was make for the crab-like shape of tumours
sounds like getting lice.
Orson Scott Card was right*.
*About one particular thing.
angry, well I'm not sure whether my morality gland, my hedonism gland, or my good writing gland is more offended but whichever it is it's making angry noises
In Speaker for the Dead?
Yes, piggy.
I tried to go on past this one but I stopped at the fourth. I couldn't. You're observantly meaning in your description of limited precision.
Orion by Ben Nova was a bit more precise to what we see happening here.
Haven’t read Orion. Arborification?
Orson Scott Card is a curious cat. He seems quite intelligent and open-minded until we get to his homophobia. It would be irresponsible not to speculate…
If you want to see philosophers duke it out, read Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series alongside Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy.
is cosmic trigger also okay? I don't think I have it in me to read all of Illuminatus! but I have read about 1.5 books of cosmic trigger
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or become a supernatural angel.
Fun fact: that's a human in the original.
I thoughts snakes are all related?
So the meme isn't about Snakes but limbless lizards that look like snakes
I might be misunderstanding but isn't that how this works? As I understand it carcinisation doesn't actually turn for example lobsters into crabs, it just makes them crab-shaped
Exactly. The meme doesn't say that they turn into crabs but uses the correct term of carcinisation. Tree is a term about morphology, nothing to do with clades. So snakes is the odd one out because it does describe a monophonic group. Lizards don't turn into snakes, they just look like them.
That’s how I’m reading it at least.
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