The Dodo Problem (Evolution)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Friday, December 03, 2010, 19:42 (5102 days ago) @ dhw

The dodo may not have been any more necessary to human life than the carpet and furniture in your home. But you still have carpet and furniture don't you? Even if you KNOW that you are going to have to throw that carpet out in a few years when its time is past. When a carpenter builds a house, he will often create supports for walls and rafters that he KNOWS he is going to have to tear down later. But for that particular moment, they serve a purpose. When you build larger buildings, boats, or pretty much anything off the ground, you build scaffolding that you KNOW you are going to have to tear down later. Is it wasteful for the carpenter, or the architect, or the shipwright to do these things? Were they less important to the final product because they were temporary? -
In my humble opinion, we are as ultimately ignorant of things as the UI would have to be ultimately knowledgeable. Every year we find things that we *thought* were irrelevant, pointless, useless, replaceable or otherwise unnecessary to be vital to our existence. Normally, we only figure this out once we have nearly destroyed them, but..better late than never. Bird shit is vital to our existence as a human race. So the nightingale sings a beautiful tune. It also spreads seeds around the world. Whale corpses are vital to our existence as a race. These graceful and majestic creatures with their mysterious language provide food for nearly every layer of the ocean(which in turn sustains our atmosphere and feeds us). Our own dead and decomposing bodies and our own fecal matter is vital to our existence as a human race as it returns to the soil and nourishes it so that new life can emerge(I find it an appalling shame that we try and stop this process via embalming and caskets and all that). And right now your computer is ultimately being powered by the rotted remains of an animal that lived millions of years ago. -I can not tell you what the purpose of the Dodo was. I am sure that there was a purpose though, even if it was only as a crunchy snack for something more important.