What are some small things we should change about the human body?
Ripping off a post I just saw in the Isaac Arthur subreddit. Imagining we work out the technical ability. Examples they suggested were:
Ability to regrow lost teeth
*if teeth are in a regular position.
Just as long as I don't grow my wisdom teeth back. I don't want to have to have those removed again.
Had one lower molar pulled recently 🥹
Body hair is now opt-in
Ability to go to sleep when sleep should be gone to.
Or the ability to forgo sleep indefinitely. I've got too much shit I want to do and too little time.
Let's apply RPG sleep rules.
You can go for weeks without sleep, but when you do sleep, you awaken fully healed.
Got a feeling this would lead to 16 hour work days. And fuuuuuuuck that.
Nothing beats the feeling of waking up after a good sleep.
How about, you only need naps and you always wake up feeling refreshed.
AND ONLY DREAM ABOUT PUPPIES AND SUNSHINE!
RFC, pull request to add git.
Reasoning: Having a built-in versioning system would allow humans to rollback roll back undesirable changes and advancements could be made more easily
please comment or downvote if this is a bad idea
Bug ticket: you wanted 'roll back', there, two words.
much appreciated +1,
fixed the PR
Let's put a cap on how much excess energy the body can store as fat. Sure, some amount is fine and has a number of uses, but just let me poop some excess calories out. I'd only need more if I were to hibernate.
Thinking on it, I want to hibernate too, please.
While we're at it from animals, how about upping some of our regeneration? Teeth don't regrow? Naw, constant regen please. I get too big of a cut and I get a scar? Let's let everything regrow from being lost if you can survive without it. Also why doesn't the brain heal? Most important part of the body and each crack's there for life. Let me get my serotonin back already, slacker.
Also what's with this getting assigned a gender thing? You don't even get to know what it means before you have one! And then we build society as if this coin flip was the seed to the tree of life. Let people choose and switch naturally, please and thank you.
Just one universal blood type please
Hair and nails not constantly growing
Your body not over reacting to things (allergies and auto immune)
So you want hair and nails to grow consciously?
Like if I want to grow my hair out, I need to actively concentrate on it for a year? Or can I grunt out a moustache like a cartoon? Both are problematic.
Right? Im very cool with rhe whole balding thing but for fuck sake can I not be Chewbacca walking carpet from the neck down?
No more biting down on my tongue or cheeks when eating. Most annoying glitch ever.
Omg yes this absolutely. I eat to nourish myself and survive and am punished randomly by self-inflicted mouth wound that lasts for days/weeks => evolutionary failure at its finest.
Insult to injury when the food is actually something healthy like a salad instead of fries.
Good day, are you talking about urine sewage system and/or anal intercourse?
I disagree - one hole for everything. Just imagine how many less medical clinics you need to go to.
Yes, I'm American.
The spine
FIX THE SPINE
Just out of sheer curiosity, are there diagrams of what a redesigned spine might look like?
Yeah, upgrade the spinal column with a duranium/cordonite alloy, similar to data.
This should be #1
Being able to shoot lasers from my tits would be cool.
as if women didnt have enough of a problem with people grabbing them and going pew pew, pewpewpew before!
Like, Cyclops lasers or cat toy lasers?
The cyclops kind.
You can already shoot FOOD from them! That's pretty damn impressive.
But yeah, lasers would be cool.
is this only for boobhavers, or anyone with nipples?
The breathing hole and the eating hole are separated
More holes, you say?
Everyone gets really thick necks.
Very short mating season. The amount of people is too god damned high.
Or just have a built in birth control switch that has zero side effects. Of course, it would have to be entirely controlled by the individual so as not to turn into some dystopian population control mechanism.
Pon farr!
OK, but only if it's like May or June. No one needs that shit in February.
No more cancer please.
We should not get our adult teeth at 7 then no more ever. We need at least one more set.
I don't think balding is useful, agree that could go.
Fertility should be manageable without using all the devices, hormones, etc. Like it should be a positive choice not a default state we have to harm ourselves to avoid. And I don't think we need menopause either. Just turn on fertility only to get pregnant.
(ETA- I also think sexually transmitted diseases should not exist at all, they seem like religious fundamentalist biological warfare, but not sure what change in a human body could accomplish this and leave the pleasure intact. )
We should not get our adult teeth at 7 then no more ever. We need at least one more set.
Just be a shark at this point
Fix our spine and knees
Kidney stones, gallstones, whatever the fuck the body does of "Lets build a rock inside the body that can fuck us up" needs to stop.
Manual/deliberate sperm/egg production.
Manual/deliberate control over fat creation and storage.
Manual/deliberate control over fat creation and storage.
Monkey's paw on this one is that you'd end up having some pretty fantastic explosive diarrhea as the bacteria chow down on your energy loaded waste.
I accept these terms
Fair trade.
Nah, that's just with stuff like alli. What your guts absorb goes into your blood stream, you'd piss it out if your liver doesn't process it into fat... For reasons we don't fully understand, our gut microbiome stays in our gut.
If you mess with absorption, that happens... If you mess with the fat creation pathways, you just pee out sugars that would've been turned into fat
Manual/deliberate sperm/egg production.
I'm not an evolutionary biology expert, but my armchair thought process says that this trait might not survive the evolutionary pressure. The burden of child rearing is quite high (specially these days).
Oh totally. Absolutely would decimate the human population on earth. And that wouldn't be a bad thing if it meant people only had kids they could actually take care of.
I have one: ingrown nails and nail infections can go fuck themselves.
I have had FIVE consecutive toe infections in the last 18 months or so. I'm so done with it lol.
But on a broader scale, some people die or lose limbs from stuff like this, so it'd be nice if that didn't happen anymore.
I had a problem with this, just got the nail removed, it was best decision I've ever made.
Thanks for the advice! I have an appointment in a week to do just that :)
The ability not to pee myself every time I sneeze, run or jump after giving birth vaginally would be pretty nice. Even without doing any physical therapy.
Jam the kids head in your pee hole like a cork. Problem solved.
Or just after gaining weight. ☹️
Appetite is 100% linked to calories needed. You still enjoy food, but the moment you swallow enough calories for whatever you did since the last time you ate, you have zero appetite and anything put in front of you loses all appeal.
Terrible for survival situations, great for modern life where an abundance of food is a bigger problem than a scarcity.
Yes, but with a tweak.
Being able to tell how much food you need in advance would be better, so that instead of thinking that you're really hungry and piling your plate, you only buy or prepare as much food as you need. That would cut down on food waste too.
Maybe it could be based on the average daily calories used each day over the past month to replenish exactly what's been used plus predict ahead until the next meal time?
My appetite is at least 90% based on calories needed, since I was around 25, I 'm over 50 now. My kids laugh at me when I sometimes say I'm still full 6 hours after eating, but sometimes I am. Or eat, then eat ten minutes later. And usually I stay at the same weight unless intentionally bulking or cutting.
One exception - I lose appetite when stressed, and rarely but but sometimes have anxiety around eating still. But most of the time, my appetite just follows my calorie expenditure. Can't be the only person like that, it seems a normal state?
Definetly periods, stupid design and incredibly rare in mamals anyway.
Also, a change of our metabolism, our current way to deal with excess energy is outdated. And maybe make us resistant to cancers, that shit sucks.
Tonsils are obsolete, also:
Hmm I don't think we're anywhere close to v1, were like, at best, v0.6 Alpha lmfao
Better foreign body-own body recognition by immune system. No more auto-immune, no allergies, MS, Lupus.
This. The list of medical issues that would go away if the immune system were properly tuned is enormous. But since it isn't, it errs on the side of attack to keep us alive... and in the process sometimes kills us or just makes us miserable.
No more accidentally biting my tongue or the inside of my cheek while eating. Sometimes I'm just excited for some good food and it just gets completely ruined :(
Appendix not coming from the factory is a big one. A slightly better immune system that can get through the blood/brain barrier and kill rabies/amoebas, and other brain infections like TB (without shredding brain tissue) too. If a virus like rabies gets past that barrier, you are 1 0 0 % B O N E D as your immune system is largely locked out.
Wider uterus/vagina too. Human babies have massive heads that don't fit through too well. It's like an orange on a toothpick. Making a smaller baby could be a possibility, but survivability would potentially go down.
For very tall people: a larger and stronger heart organ. A second one acting like a smaller turbo would also help. Heh. Failover cluster hearts. You'd probably have to have stronger veins and tissues as a result though.
this. i cant believe their still shipping that deprecated piece of bloat to production.
I'd correct the "birth canal through the pelvis" issue. That's just bad cable management.
Doesn't your appendix actually do something, unlike your spleen?
Your spleen is the dude who watches the watchmen.
A lot of great ideas here, but also sinus are such a terrible design. Please no more sinuses.
I don't care about balding (and I have been since 20s). Just a healthy body reset every decade or two/whenever necessary. Get the metabolic rate up, clean up all the junk from the environment that has polluted the DNA and reduced the telomere lengths (whatever the correlation/causation there). Just a "take the body to the shop" type of repair possible. A chance to live for centuries.
Have you read the Commonwealth Saga by Peter F. Hamilton, by any chance?
No more fucking hemorrhoids!
being a hermaphrodite would be pretty dope
I just finished The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin and am utterly moved. She realized an alternate humanity so clearly
Sword fight! Loser gets preganenant.
Wha-... Uh... Hmm...... Yeah... Yeah, OK... Ok, yeah I'm in.
Gonna hard pass on the entirety of having a female reproductive system. More trouble than it's worth imo.
Body hair should have multiple sliders like a video game avatar. Wanna be furry all over like a Persian cat or a poodle? No problem. Want to be smooth as a dolphin? Also no problem.
shoulder-mounted laser guns
Pelvises that can accommodate both upright walking AND the size of human brains without, you know, killing the humans during birth.
Back to monke
Advance to crab
crab people crab people
Ability to regrow lost teeth and no more wisdom teeth.
So you both want to do away with replacement teeth and also have replacement teeth. Huh.
Ever think that wisdom teeth were supposed to be the replacements from back when our life expectancy was like 30?
There's research that suggests exactly that...
Balls should be behind a thick bone. Essentially not so temperature dependant to facilitate this.
Mine are....
Just have them where the ovaries are, since they came from the same proto organ anyway.
very poor choice of words...
Everyone has perfect mechanical health always.
My spine thanks you
replaceable parts, clorophyll, and maybe double jumps
Convert pinky fingers to Second Thumbs
That would be....weird 😳
i'll take a double-thumb righthand, a tentacle left arm, and tank tread legs, please and thank you
replaceable parts
I'm a twin. Guess who can donate a kidney my clone won't then reject? Even without drugs.
I think the solution here is an own-grown organ bank: kidney, pancreas, a lung; whatever. Sign me up!
I'm pretty sure the major things that need to change are in the brain. Predeliction for violence and hate, addiction to controversy and toxins, and whatever makes people stupid enough to support facists.
That would require a significant remodeling of the neo-cortex. Pattern seeking got us out of the stone ages, but it is killing us in the modern era.
Endogenous vitamin d(3) production regardless of light exposure and vit c production
I think our lack of vitamin C production is a feature and not a bug because we basically can't eat too much of it. But animals that produce it like rats can get cancer from eating too much.
I'd much rather produce B12 than C
Iirc there are some reptiles with two sets of eyelids on each eye, the inner one being transparent, so they can close just the one while under water or in like dusty/windy conditions, but still be able to see.
Humans need in on that action.
Optimised learning throughout our entire life. Better focus and improved memory to take in knowledge more effectively
Reduce max fingernail length pls
Suggestion: Each comment should be reposted to !monkeyspaw@sopuli.xyz , or that community should be invited to respond here...
Boobs just stay full and up, despite aging, breastfeeding, etc. if we are going to have periods, at least make them painless. Cells just shut down cancer every single time it starts, making it obsolete. You wouldn’t get out of breath at the top of a staircase/big hill if there’s anyone nearby.
You wouldn’t get out of breath at the top of a staircase/big hill if there’s anyone nearby.
Instructions unclear - new energy vampire mode unlocked
we need more micro-plastics in us
Our bodies need some trace metals, problem is it can't differentiate between metals it needs and metals that will kill it. "Hell yeah, delicious zinc" as it noms down on lead instead of pooping it out.
Improve the birthing process so you don't have to rotate just to fit on the way out. Either make babies smaller or vaginas bigger (in which case penises would have to compensate I guess)
in which case penises would have to compensate I guess
Brother, if you're penetrating the cervix, you are doing it wrong.
That's not what Hentai taught me /s
That one's entirely of our own doing! By having better healthcare, people who wouldn't be able to survive childbirth naturally are spreading their genes which leads to childbirths being harder and harder with every generation.
U got a sauce for that? My instincts are telling me that we don't evolve or mutate that fast lol.
The ability to breathe underwater - or if that is too much of an upgrade to ask for, the ability to hold your breath for much longer periods of time so that we could spend significant time underwater.
Especially seeing as the planet's surface is over two thirds water!
proper joint for knees and elbows
How about we perfect the joints we've got by having ankles which don't just give way if you stand on a funny shaped rock or similar?
Basically the only joints we got that are good are the hips and shoulders. The rest of the joint are what evolution could do (so far) with the bag of bones from fish flippers.
Just make us all shape shifters so we can do whatever we want.
No age related ball sag.
I did that while getting on my bike once, very pain.
I'd add a tail.
Deactivate-able hair follicles
Like chromatophores so you can have hair where you want and not where you don't. Maybe it just takes a long time to transition 🤔
Choose your puberty
Let me just say that if God was a city planner, he would not put a playground next to a sewage system
"You're about as useful as an asshole on my elbow."
This phrase has always befuddled me because the elbow would be more convenient a location for an asshole.
Salad bars would be a lot less common.
as a gay bottom, my sewage system is sometimes my playground
Arguably God is a city planner, and that is how he laid it out...
No nearsightedness/farsightedness
No arched noses
Everyone can breathe through their noses silently
No pectus carinatum/excavatum
Digestive tract hits limit on sugar digested and rejects the rest
No loosening of sensitive hair follicles; make every scalp hair difficult to remove/fall out
Yeah, the slow and painful deterioration of aging Couid get right the hell out.
Baby teeth last longer. What's this bullshit about your first set of teeth lasts 5 to 10 years, then you're supposed to make it 60+ on the only other set you get? I'd make baby teeth last about 20 years.
I feel like I've already shit enough in my life.
Once every 3 days…
If that page loaded for me, what could I expect to see on it?
Complete body function control. Like no more emergency shits, you can time the bowel movements and just go once every 36 hours.
Also the reservoir guys have when we stand up pissing. How bout we don't have 20ml piss left in the urethra when we retract the penis?
Would complete immunity to radiation be a small change?
Would it actually be detrimental in the long run?
Pros: No more cancer
Cons: No more natural evolution
Change that double helix into a quadruple one for extra redundancy, making it harder for it to gain irreparable damage. Also, make it a loop rather than a straight line so the ends don't get shorter with each replication. And remove that dementia bug that has a greater chance of showing up the longer run time is
Sounds good. Not sure this counts as a minor change...
If the body couls generate muscle without needing to excersize first that'd be cool. But I guess that's why steroids were invented and those have some side effects
The ability to turn off some senses temporarily
better concentration and more logical thinking.
i hate how i put people into boxes all the time.
plus make them lie for personal gain less.
They would.
Maybe body odor could be an opt-in? For, like, sexy times between men who like that kind of thing...
I want a cancer ray for people I don't like
you might be the only person who added weapons. That's incredible, if this was reddit, cancer ray would have been post 3 or 4, max.
Tbf I stole the idea from that clip from the Harley Quinn TV show (I think that's what it was at least)
god has left the chat
Stop aging at 20
I'd like extra thumbs please
For this one there's actually technology in development right now.
Better repairing, see Deadpool. Cancer, missing limbs, teeth, w/e.
I'd like to make bodily functions a bit less gross.
I think they are fairly well-designed. You have to be able to expel solids and liquids somehow, otherwise they'd build up inside you, and you might die if they couldn't be digested or sweated out. I guess they could be combined, like birds. But I don't think that would make it less 'gross' in a non-quantifiable way. Sweating is also a pretty effective way of cooling down. Other methods such as large ears as radiators, thin blood vessels on the forearms that must be licked to aid in heat transfer, and panting all have their downsides.
If you think about it, tailpipes on cars and vapor pipes on AC and heatpumps and furnaces are basically the same thing as our digestive system.
The only thing that could really be redesigned is to have them be much more efficient, like some animals, which can pull a lot more water and nutrients out of byproducts. That, and the ability to extract stuff like heavy metals, microplastics, and forever chemicals, which get stuck and can't always leave.
Waste does not have to leave residue behind and stink. We ought to be able to extract more nutrients from digestion, and we could probably make an implant to carbonize waste, compress it into pellets, and even wrap it in a biodegradable capsule before disposal. I do like your point of dealing with hazardous materials.
Hmm. This reminds me of those experiments where they got the rat a button to get a dopamine hit and the rat just kept pounding on it
neck
That is already a thing.
7% of all men will orgasm instantly if a firm pressure is applied to the back of the neck where the spine connects to the skull during sex. only 2% of women have that same biological feature.
Remove taste buds. Whole species have been threatened due to that.
I'm not sure I follow... Like we wouldn't kill animals if they didn't taste so good?
Some of them at least. Some diets are improvised out of necessity, but then again, we also have restaurants, which are not a necessity. If one animal is plentiful and does the trick, we shouldn't have to go to a restaurant to eat an exotic animal that isn't plentiful.
Dual opposable thumbs, now we can grab and open the water bottle with one hand!
Poop out the front and only when feeling sad about the future
I'd feel sad about the future every time I thought about having to poop out the front.
Buy play doh extruders
For your front butt
A utility panel with usb ports, hard reset button, xd card slot, s-video port, etc, could be very useful.
Maybe installed on a butt cheek or back of a calf?
In all seriousness, a spinal realignment feature. Something that resets the joints & muscles in your back to factory default.
Add ability to see what color magenta actually is.
The color out of space...
it's...something between blue and red (and a little bit green)
Is there a difference between magenta and purple?
Very much so.
dual redundancy for every organ, and the ability for a damaged or removed organ to grow back.
chef's kiss perfect list.
Redesign the spine for vertical use. Don't put the eating and breathing tubes on either side of the same flap.
Yes, food hole and air hole should be separate