Talk:QWERTY effect

Removed biology example

I fail to see how the example that was removed is conceivably an argument for or against Intelligent Design. The only possible argument I can make is the use of the word design in quotes. That Intelligent Design itself makes provision for micro-evolution (last I heard anyways) seems to counteract even this idea, and the removal seems overzealous and only serves to reduce the information content of the article.

Of course, a better wording of the example is probably an even better idea.

Intelmole 04:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

This is the original text that I removed: In biology, the weakness of the human spine, and the insensitivity of the human eye compared to other animals could be said to suffer from this effect. In these cases, there is a clear improvement possible in the "design" of the system, but this cannot occur because it would involve several steps performed in sequence which would produce less efficient systems (leaving the interim persons with disadvantages compared to others and so causing this phenotype to be removed from the population by any present competition for resources), the end effect of which being that the path to this design would likely never happen.

Regardless of my views on ID, I don't think these are good examples of the QWERTY effect, which is defined in the aricle as "(usually anachronistic) solution to a problem where logically superior alternatives apparently exist". When it comes to keyboard layouts there are alternatives available and we can choose between them; there is no choice in biology. Tocharianne 01:01, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Saying that "there are no choices in biology" ignores biodiversity - there are PLENTY of different choices. Logically superior examples do exist - a dog can see better in the dark because their vision is better adapted to this. So you would think that, for equal cost in terms of maintenance and energy demands, the human eye would move towards this (or an equivalent design) through millennia of evolution. One reason it doesn't is that a series of intermediary steps must be performed, which would lead any individual making this transition less able to transfer those characteristics, and thus few children born through any individual go on to procreate, thus eventually the transitional design is removed from the population. Sounds like a perfect example of the effect to me - switching doesn't work for an individual, therefore it is not adopted by the community. 82.45.87.151 03:14, 4 April 2007 (UTC)