So I'm lying on the physiotherapy table this morning and the therapist asks me to stretch and I tell her I can't do that coz my back hurts. So she digs her fingers into my ribcage and says "does it hurt here?". Then she jabs me again and says "or is it here?" As I quipped "yeah, well, that's one way of solving the pain," I was reminded of the joke "the beatings will continue till morale improves".
She tells me to stretch again. My brain commands my muscles to move. But my muscles just lay there sending a cold blank stare back to my brain. So she asks again, and my brain asks again, and my muscles are all like "Are you new here, brain? Do you not know that this is not how we roll. In fact we never wanna roll at all."
And at that moment a realisation dawned on me. That there are multiple brains and multiple power centers in our bodies. And some of those decision centers are incredibly stupid. For example, we have an immune system that we are constantly tricking into doing simple shit.
Our brains have the capacity to communicate and innovate and observe. Our brains invented mRNA vaccines. Then we must shove those vaccines into our bloodstream so our immune systems can learn. I mean, how damn stupid is the immune system? I'm watching what the Covid virus looks like on TV. Its got spikes. My brain sees that. But my brain can't just communicate with my immune system and tell it to learn and deal with this shit. Nope. My brain has to walk my ass to the hospital and get literal fake dead virus protein and RNA pumped into my blood for the immune system to get a clue on things.
Which brings me to our DNA, that other set of "brains" in our body that keeps doing it's own thing even when it's damaging to us. Like hello, cancer is now one of the leading causes of death because DNA will keep mega replicating itself even after its gone bad. But my brain can't just request some of my DNA to stand down when the time comes. Nope. We need to literally get chemotherapy or surgery to take our bad DNA out.
My immune system is so stupid, it thinks my bones are attacking me. So I have to take drugs to keep my immune system from attacking and literally calcifying my ass.
(Later this week I have an MRI of my butt to see how much my autoimmune disease has messed up my butt bones. Yeah, this attempt at humour turned into a rant rather quickly.)
So at what point do we evolve enough that the various systems within our body talk to each other and, just, get along? Right now our bodies are like a distributed system design nightmare - as if a bunch of Dev teams that refuse to communicate with each other just cobbled together a bunch of disparate systems, and the whole thing just sort of moves in the general direction that the user wants.
She tells me to stretch again. My brain commands my muscles to move. But my muscles just lay there sending a cold blank stare back to my brain. So she asks again, and my brain asks again, and my muscles are all like "Are you new here, brain? Do you not know that this is not how we roll. In fact we never wanna roll at all."
And at that moment a realisation dawned on me. That there are multiple brains and multiple power centers in our bodies. And some of those decision centers are incredibly stupid. For example, we have an immune system that we are constantly tricking into doing simple shit.
Our brains have the capacity to communicate and innovate and observe. Our brains invented mRNA vaccines. Then we must shove those vaccines into our bloodstream so our immune systems can learn. I mean, how damn stupid is the immune system? I'm watching what the Covid virus looks like on TV. Its got spikes. My brain sees that. But my brain can't just communicate with my immune system and tell it to learn and deal with this shit. Nope. My brain has to walk my ass to the hospital and get literal fake dead virus protein and RNA pumped into my blood for the immune system to get a clue on things.
Which brings me to our DNA, that other set of "brains" in our body that keeps doing it's own thing even when it's damaging to us. Like hello, cancer is now one of the leading causes of death because DNA will keep mega replicating itself even after its gone bad. But my brain can't just request some of my DNA to stand down when the time comes. Nope. We need to literally get chemotherapy or surgery to take our bad DNA out.
My immune system is so stupid, it thinks my bones are attacking me. So I have to take drugs to keep my immune system from attacking and literally calcifying my ass.
(Later this week I have an MRI of my butt to see how much my autoimmune disease has messed up my butt bones. Yeah, this attempt at humour turned into a rant rather quickly.)
So at what point do we evolve enough that the various systems within our body talk to each other and, just, get along? Right now our bodies are like a distributed system design nightmare - as if a bunch of Dev teams that refuse to communicate with each other just cobbled together a bunch of disparate systems, and the whole thing just sort of moves in the general direction that the user wants.