Ice cream and condoms didn't exist in the ancestral environment; using them as criticism of evolution is like using a screwdriver to pound nails and then blaming it for being a poorly designed hammer.
No, it is precisely the point. I am cleverer than a hammer. Evolution is dumb enough to have gone ahead and created its usurper. Evolution really will go ahead and evolve itself to irrelevance. By the time it figures out that the current state of it's cleverest creations isn't one where they optimise their response to future selective pressures it'll be too late. We'll have solved the relevant cooperation problem or we'll have messed up evolution's existing creations and resources beyond all recognition.
The backward retina may be an interesting case in point here: I've seen an article (years ago, don't remember the link) claiming it makes maintenance easier; an important advantage if so, considering that unlike your cell phone camera, this is a piece of hardware that has to operate without replacement for a timescale on the order of a century. I don't know whether it's a good trade-off on balance, but even if it's not the optimal design, it might still make the retina a relevant example of something that actually makes more sense than it would seem at first glance.
I consider that an example of human cleverness. If there is one thing we are good at it is creating arguments for things that are caused by something completely irrelevant. Take that Urist McHatedRival!
/ "Evolution is dumb enough to have gone ahead and created its usurper. Evolution really will go ahead and evolve itself to irrelevance. "
Not every possible set of genes or every possible consciousness can be expressed, but (barring annihilation) there will be some subset expressed. And there will be some historical path that got us there, and reasons why certain traits exist while others do not. So I fail to see how evolution can ever be irrelevant. Perhaps nerd/early adopter traits will be selected rather than the historical bigger/stronger/...
You are probably familiar with Hanlon’s Razor, the adage that you should never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. In Bayesian terms, stupidity is sufficiently abundant that even fairly strong evidence of harmful intent can’t overcome the base rate. However, there is something of a converse, which to my knowledge doesn’t have an eponymous name. In honor of a recent post by Mark Dominus, I propose Dominus’ Razor: Never attribute to complete stupidity what can adequately be explained by ordinary stupidity and a good reason.
Dominus, well-known as a Perl programmer, found that astonishingly bad code looks better (if still bad) after hearing the reasons for its development. For instance, one program passed data between functions by writing it to a temporary file, only to read it back again. It turns out the programmer did this for debugging purposes, an admirable goal, even if done in non-standard ways.
The Razor is one more explanation for the frequent failure of other-optimization. People and institutions usually have some reason for doing what they do, even if they’ve since forgotten or never knew in the first place. “Evolution is cleverer than you are” (Orgel’s Second Rule) and “Free markets are cleverer than you are” are two related rules of thumb. Something that looks obviously stupid was probably implemented to meet some non-obvious need or constraint.
In the end, this is another way of saying to not expect short inferential distances. Based on personal observation, this community does a good job anticipating inferential jumps when playing the role of the sender, but not quite as well when acting as the receiver. Even if someone is wrong, be careful not to dismiss them entirely.