Oolon Colluphid

Once again I've been browsing my textbooks, this time an older one, The Chordates by R McNeill Alexander, 1981. And I think I've found another bit of unintelligent design: unnecessarily convoluted at least; perhaps a blatantly poorer design than one that the creator already knew of and used elsewhere.

But this one may be a bit controversial, because we're so familiar with it and think it's a good bit of 'design'. So, your communal thoughts please...

The poor design: mammalian milk...
Alexander goes on to describe experiments measuring energy input in cattle and so on. It turns out that milk production is a more efficient process than growth (yeah, so?), and that milk is also highly digestible: "Thus 42 J fed as milk provides 40 J metabolizable energy." But...
However...
So if I'm reading this right -- which is where you nice folks come in -- it seems as if milk is a waste of the energy taken by the mother as food... but it doesn't matter (evolutionarily) because the young can grow just as well -- note, not better, only 'just as well' -- as if they took their food directly. Which makes it unnecessarily complicated, and so not Good Design (TM). Why can't baby mammals be fed like, say, baby birds are?

(My evolutionary guess would be that we placentals evolved from monotreme-like and then marsupial-like ancestors ("-like", that is, in their reproductive method, not that we were once kangaroos ), where the transition to vivipary (live birth rather than eggs -- can we use the term for non-snakes?) went via very undeveloped offspring that really couldn't eat grown-up food. Problem is, they'd have to have fed on something in the millions of years while sweat glands were turning into mammary glands... anyone know about the evolutionary pathway of all this?)

But there's more. Alexander continues by saying that "Very large quantities of energy may be used in milk production. [...] The cow must eat more than twice as much as if it were not producing milk." (Twice as much adult-sized portions get eaten, yet what's being fed isn't two adults, but one plus babies. It may be an efficient process, but not that bloody efficient! )

And, "[...] Pregnancy requires much less additional energy than lactation, both in cows and in Bank voles." So it is far easier, energy-wise, to grow a baby in a womb than it is to feed the bugger once it's out.

So, poor design. But how poor? Over-convoluted, wasteful, or downright stupid? What about this system could not be better (more simply and economically) catered for by the bird-chick method?

Cheers, Oolon

Rhaedas

Not sure if this is applicable across the board for mammals, but for humans, milk (added: mother's milk...cow's milk is strictly nutrition, questionably less healthy, and I think is bad for new infants) provides more than just straight nourishment. Antibodies for one, to help in resistance to diseases as the immune system grows.

But while that's a good usage, a better design would have been to make the immune system fully functional from birth. Again, like many things, this may be a human thing, since other animals are much more self-sufficient after birth.

beastmaster

How can we evaluate whether or not this is poor design unless we first understand what the design criteria are?

For example, an SUV is poorly designed for fuel-efficiency. But that doesn't mean that SUVs aren't "intelligently designed." After all, fuel-efficiency isn't a predominating design criterion in the minds of SUV manufacturers or consumers.

Maybe the Creator just likes big boobies -- energy efficiency of lactation be damned. Or maybe the Creator likes to give his creation little flaws as challenges or hurdles or to give every animal a fighting chance in the struggle of life. Or maybe lactation may be poor design at an individual level, but excellent design at a population or species level.

Or maybe the Creator is imperfect. ID is not inconsistent with a sub-omnipotent deity.

I think that, at the end of the day, the problem with ID is that it is inherently unfalsifiable because it makes no coherent predictions on what would be intelligent vs. unintelligent design. It's just "I know it when I see it" folk-science.

Although it is fun to consider examples of "poor design," I don't think it directly tackles the glaring flaw in ID "theory."

wdog

nonbiologist observation here, maybe storage should be a consideration. for example bear cubs feed all winter on the milk in the den while the mother stays put. I don't know if milk is an efficient storage medium or not but the the fact that the infant requires constant intake should be considered. the creator could have simply made infants able to hunt from day 1 though... or better yet, able to store their own food, like tadpoles.

lpetrich

I think that milk is more of a workaround than a truly bad design.

It's very convenient to digest and it has high nutritional value -- which cannot be said of many other foods. So the energy necessary to make milk is a reasonable price to pay for assisting one's babies with high-quality food.

A better example of a design blunder would be the wrong-way wiring and the blind spot in vertebrate eyes.

lpetrich

There are also designs that are OK in one context but not in another, like designs that do not scale very well.

The arthropod body plan is a good example. It is difficult for arthropods to grow very large, because they have to shed their skeletons as they grow. However, vertebrates don't have that difficulty, because their skeletons are continuously present. And some vertebrates have grown very large.

Oolon Colluphid

Good point. But of course, as you say, the system could be better working from birth.

But then, pathogens tend to change over time (evolve? ), so it is undoubtedly useful for the infant to receive the latest virus- (and bacteria- etc) protection software from its mother. But couldn't these be transferred in the womb? Plenty of opportunity there. (Yes, I’m aware that there’s problems in the womb too, with the danger of the foetus being attacked by the mother’s immune system. But given the level of complexity going on in there, the designer of that ought to be able to find a way around it!)

And of course, we're talking immune systems primed against... what? Surely not the stuff that the creator made too? Why go to the trouble of making an immune system directly to counteract the stuff that you’ve made?

Hey, is that worth a separate point?

Cheers, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

Ah, jolly good, a surrogate creationist!
Like asking, what’s milk for? I think we’ve about got that one pegged.
What’s an SUV? Some sort of big Vehicle, I guess. Okay...
True, but irrelevant. Whatever an SUV is, I suppose it’s prime purpose is to move something big, heavy, or lots of something around. Therefore there’s a trade-off with fuel consumption: in order to achieve its goal, lots of fuel has to be used.

So what, then, is the overarching goal of producing milk? That is, what about it means that it is some sort of compromise -- “well I could design mammalian young to feed directly, but that’s not the point of milk”...? If the principal function of milk is not feeding infants, and so it’s a compromise, perhaps you could say what it is for?
Blue-footed boobies? Nah, he had them lat their eggs on bare rock, yet waste time and energy collecting nesting materials that are not used anyway.

But breasts aren’t required, just nipples and appropriate tissues. A lactating dog, or chimp, may be a bit swollen, but won’t have big tits. So to rephrase, maybe the creator just wanted to do it that way, and don’t bother to ask why.
But individual level is all that counts. If something is a disadvantage, it won’t get passed on. If disadvantages could spread through a population, we wouldn’t observe the ‘microevolution’ that even creationists agree with.
Yes it is. What I propose is not omnipotence, just sufficient potency to account for all the really good ‘designs’ in nature.

An intelligent designer is claimed. This has to mean one at least as clever as we humans. Therefore if we mere humans can see suboptimal designs, it means that the creator screwed up, and is therefore not as intelligent as us even. Such a creator could not therefore be responsible for all the clever stuff in nature.

And to claim, as creationists do and as you’ve suggested above, that we simply don’t know what the creator was up to, that we can’t know the mind of god, completely undermines the design argument. For, how are we to see good design and know it?

The crux is that ‘good designs’ are promoted as evidence of a creator. But how do we tell good designs? Well it’s usually because they fit into what we would normally think of as good design: well fitted to its purpose, efficient, and so on. Think aerodynamic wings; think eyes.

But, these same criteria by which we judge good design also reveal poor designs. If we cannot see the latter for lack of understanding, then neither can we judge the former. So the whole design argument collapses.

“It’s not poor design.”
“Why not?”
“Because we don’t know what god intended.”
“So we don’t know what god intended when he made a dolphin torpedo-shaped then either.”
“He wanted them to be efficient swimmers.”
“How do you know?”

IDists are caught out by their own criteria. Any further attempts at justification are ad hoc.
Yes and no. It does make one blatant prediction, or rather claim: that complex stuff needed a designer, one of great intelligence. Hence, ‘Intelligent Design’, yeah? And an intelligent designer, one capable of making flagella and inner ear balancing systems and brains, should not blatantly cock up as often as he in fact did in nature. So in that regard, it is perfectly refutable, and refuted.

But I agree, there is a considerable amount of the ‘wow!’ factor involved, and Argument from Personal Incredulity.

And you’re right, he might just be fucking with our heads, or trying to level the playing field (the playing field he made ). But those arguments are indeed irrefutable. And they are ad hoc, they just say that ‘it is because it is because it is’. Which amounts to ‘because I say so’.
Well, I maintain that it does. An intelligent designer should not produce stupid designs.

Cheers, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

Thanks wdog, best points yet!
Well millk is made fresh rather than stored -- in this case it's converted from the mother's stores of fat and whathaveyou -- but I take your point. There probably are advantages to that.

But if that's the case, then the bird method of keeping infants fed is actually the suboptimal one, and so that's the thing no intelligent designer should have made!

And anyway, 'storage' may be relevant for hibernating bears, but not for many other mammals -- cattle, say. If each 'kind' were made separately, some mammals might make milk eg bears, while others such as antelope might be able to feed directly.
Yup. Those are other more straightforward (ie more 'optimal') designs. I imagine the former applies to snakes, lizards etc, and the latter -- giving the infant enough fat to survive until its first autonomous feed -- shouldn't be a problem, as an alternative to the energy put into making milk!

The crucial point here is that milk is a way of keeping an infant fed even if the mother isn't feeding all the time herself. So, good design. Therefore all the animals that do it other ways are the suboptimal ones!

Cheers, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

Fair enough, as far as it goes. It applies mostly to herbivores with their atrocious diet. But not to carnivores: they could feed directly from the start... but don't. And don't forget who it was allegedly designed the diets!
But then, again, if milk is so great, why do only mammals do it?
Thanks, but that's already on the list

Cheers, Oolon