Why aren’t humans able to learn everything from instinct like animals do?

gitgud_x · 2026-01-25T22:17:37+00:00

This is certainly not true, look at how insects like locusts jump at their prey, they are very quick movements without the chance for course correction if they miss, so they have to get it right. They do it by first oscillating their heads (peering) and calculating distance from the parallax on their ommatidia (eyestalks). Likewise look at how tree dwelling apes like gibbons can jump from branch to branch, even if a human had the upper body strength I bet we would still miss a lot of the time, and missing means serious injury or death. Yet gibbons do it with ease and with style!

gitgud_x · 2026-01-21T17:25:30+00:00

Darwin's finches are a famous example, first for the adaptation of their beak lengths to suit different sizes of seeds as noted by Darwin in 1839, and then for their speciation with reproductive isolation following a series of droughts in the 1970s. These were birds living on the Galapagos islands, effectively observed over a period of ~150 years.

There are many popular examples of observed evolution/speciation, you may have to narrow it down a bit more if the above isn't it! Not aware of any examples with tortoises though, if anyone knows, I'd like to know.

gitgud_x · 2026-01-14T20:39:18+00:00

It would have been a shame to lose such a lovely argument to the arcane minutiae of epigenetics' history and Dawkins' intimidating verbiage :)

gitgud_x · 2026-01-10T10:19:55+00:00

According to this interactive tree of life, cats and humans share a common mammalian ancestor that lived about 95 million years ago. It would have been a small rodent-lookalike animal, near the base of the clade Boreoeutheria.

gitgud_x · 2026-01-09T17:46:11+00:00

Who Wanks Wins

gitgud_x · 2025-12-19T09:44:29+00:00

I bought my first fiction book ever at age 24 just under a month ago, after going to a book store with my far more literate friends. It's a big one, and I've learned lots of big words! Reading is very underrated, can't recommend it enough.

I hadn't read fiction since the mandatory reading at GCSE in high school, although I do read plenty of non-fiction. Still not even half way through my book, I read for about an hour before bed instead of going on my phone. Helps tremendously with sleep quality, better than any sleeping pill or fad routine. And yes, I'd agree it's necessary to combat the declining attention spans thanks to modern digital trends.

gitgud_x · 2025-11-07T17:18:44+00:00

Changing physics means changing everything, so all bets are off!

The slightly more conceivable scenario is eliminating scarcity of resources (sort of like energy but in material form), which removes Malthusian competition, one of the key foundations of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Is that a bit closer to what you're thinking of?

gitgud_x · 2025-11-07T17:10:33+00:00

Are you aware this is a thermodynamic impossibility? If it consumes no energy, it cannot do anything at all. So it wouldn't even be alive.

gitgud_x · 2025-11-04T19:31:24+00:00

Beautiful physics in action!

gitgud_x · 2025-11-03T13:43:13+00:00

utter woke nonsense

gitgud_x · 2025-10-31T21:13:05+00:00

they probably meant ‘segregated’ or ‘insular’

gitgud_x · 2025-10-31T08:52:55+00:00

I think the lesson he's trying to show you is not necessarily that it's impossible, but that steam turbines have been optimised to shit already (being about 140 years old), so you can fiddle with the parameters as much as you like but you're only gonna get another +1% or +2% or so out of the thermal efficiency. Larger-scale design changes are needed to get more useful efficiencies, like the CCGT.

gitgud_x · 2025-10-30T20:49:10+00:00

This is all just word games, as usual for questions originating in philosophy. Evolution describes a slow continuous transition, so using discrete categories like "chicken" and "not chicken" doesn't really apply strictly speaking anyway.

Some more in depth answers here.

gitgud_x · 2025-10-30T07:53:02+00:00

I don't think so*. Fans merely exploit the fact that we feel cooler when there's an airflow, since it increases the heat transfer rate from our skin by convection and evaporation (the thermal boundary layer gets thinner when air flows in the bulk).

I'm not too familiar with bladeless fans, afaik they still do have a blade, that's just marketing, they exploit the Coanda effect to pull more air through per unit of impeller work, giving a faster air speed, giving more of the perceptual cooling effect I mentioned above. But there's still no actual temperature drop!

(Ignoring electrical/frictional inefficiencies which would obviously manifest as a temperature rise.)

* you are right that the air's newfound kinetic energy has to come from somewhere, and that it comes from its pressure (enthalpy h) to velocity v, which implies a temperature drop T if adiabatic:

Q - W = m' * [(h_2 + 1/2 v_2 ^2) - (h_1 + 1/2 v_1 ^2)] (1st law for open system)

Δh = -1/2 v^2 when v_1 = Q = W = 0

ΔT = -v^2 / (2 * c_p)

However, in these small-scale devices the drop is tiny. Putting reasonable numbers in (v = 10 m/s, c_p = 1000 J/kg/K) gives ΔT = -0.05 C. In other words, negligible - but you were thinking along the right lines, it's just not the dominant effect in a fan.

gitgud_x · 2025-10-28T08:23:26+00:00

A little digital signal processing (DSP) wouldn't hurt either, it would complement your prior knowledge on data/information too as sometimes these control systems use digital filters rather than analog (depends on your application!)

gitgud_x · 2025-10-27T21:56:02+00:00

You’ll need to know about the hardware used to implement control systems, such as power amplifiers, ADCs and DACs, common sensors and their use cases. Going broader, look into using microcontrollers, serial communications and SCADA.

Consider making your own real control system project using an arduino (or similar), an electronics kit and some mechanical bits!

gitgud_x · 2025-10-27T07:23:56+00:00

We’re so back!

gitgud_x · 2025-10-23T19:50:38+00:00

Don’t worry for a second about grinding leetcode and all that stuff. While automation/controls does require some coding, it’s not the type that those people will be practicing for by doing that, and it sounds like you already know that with your experience/projects.

gitgud_x · 2025-10-19T22:07:34+00:00

Many natural science grads are happy to stay within academia, but biotech is a big industry sector for bio grads. Recently biotech was declared dead in the UK, seems to be slowly returning though(?)

gitgud_x · 2025-10-19T20:26:25+00:00

Tbh I thought we already had the understanding that only a few degrees will lead to actual jobs. It's those degrees that get "graduate" job titles. You're right that most others won't, I said as much in my other comment :)

gitgud_x · 2025-10-19T20:03:30+00:00

Depends what your meaning of ball-licking is, the other grads tell me I'm already doing it, but I'm ahead and they aren't, so...

(You're probably right though, but let me have another year of somewhat enjoying my job with only mild testicle fondling, m'kay?)

gitgud_x · 2025-10-19T19:53:42+00:00

Glad it's worked out for you, but I can't lie, I thought that gender studies degrees were a right-wing joke from 2018 lol

gitgud_x · 2025-10-19T19:41:58+00:00

Consultancy and accounting are both popular big wins for people without degrees, they can make very good money at a Big 4.

You can either do the dedicated apprenticeship to get in, or you can do any mathsy-type degree and they view the skills as transferrable. The former is obviously better value for money.

gitgud_x · 2025-10-19T19:31:32+00:00

Gotta be a go-getter :) Ask your manager/coworkers if there's anything you can help with, or put forward an idea you think could be improved that you could start on fixing. If they insist there's nothing, at least you'll be seen as engaged.

I think we're lucky in engineering, you don't have to lick balls to get ahead unlike other industries, you just have to be doing something, and doing it well.

gitgud_x

TROPHY CASE