[icanhackit]

Nature is advanced technology. Look at the trillions of micro-machines that operate inside of us - we're full of nano-bots. Obviously I'm taking liberty with the terms machines and bots, but ever since I started thinking about nature as technology it's made me appreciate even the dullest looking moss, a tiny ant carrying a crumb or weeds sprouting between cracks in the pavement.

If anything, the smaller an organism, the more it can take advantage of Van der Waals force, static, bioelectromagnetics.

Slightly related to the article, I watched a jumping spider crawling on my bench jump off the edge and curve its trajectory to land on my stainless steel dishwasher which was to the right of its initial jumping arc - I wonder if it was able to use the hairs on its body to create a static response or even as control surfaces.

[bamboozled]

It's all relative, so many people claim "Nature is too slow" and "We need to kick nature in the throat with AI because evolution is too slow."

[emptysongglass]

We have spines that expire far before we do, knees that make most enterprise design-by-committee solutions look simple in comparison, and a passage where the food and air goes through.

We also have heads so big they often cause pregnancy complications and hips that don't go wide enough for those heads to pass through (you can attack this problem from either side).

I guess the cherry on top is incompatible long-/short-term mating preferences that lead to devastating consequences for ourselves and our kids.

Nature might be advanced technology but wow it sure makes suboptimal choices and often. You can retort saying nature doesn't have mind but then you probably shouldn't call it advanced tech which ipso facto requires purpose & plan.

[kibwen]

> Nature might be advanced technology but wow it sure makes suboptimal choices and often.

When it comes to suboptimal choices based only on path dependence and institutional intertia, nature has nothing on humanity's computing infrastructure. :P

[jimmaswell]

One of the worst is the human shoulder. Sneeze wrong and you've got an impingement and a tear.