All of this reinforces my belief that nearly everything is conscious and aware, we differ in a capabilities and resolution but we are all more similar than we are different.
Growing up on a farm taught me that animals are absolutely able to think and learn. Not in the same way as humans, but I'm fully convinced there are degrees of consciousness.
Watching new calves play in spring meadows is one of the most purely joyful things you can ever see. They have best friends and will avoid playing with other calves until their friend comes to play with them.
Animals also grieve and mourn their dead, much like we do.
They are fellow sentient beings capable of experiencing pleasure, pain, fear, and forming social bonds. It's a lot of why I take issue with anthropocentrism, and think factory farming is an absolute tragedy. It's the industrialized denial of a meaningful life and one of the biggest examples of human cruelty.
I want to live, and think others do too- so Life must have some kind of Greater Meaning. Yet, almost everything else seems to prove the opposite based on how fragile life is, and how little things change when one is lost.
That's a very pessimistic was to view things, I think.
We're only given one chance; rich, poor, all of us. One shot. You have to try to do the best with what you have.
Nothing changes when you have a big loss, only if you let nothing change. My grandpa died at 102. He and Grandma raised me and were my rocks throughout my entire life. Grandma died when I was a teenager, and I only used that to become more sad and selfish (like a teenager). Looking back, the choices I made would've made her sad for me. When Grandpa died, I chose to use his memory to do good things. Now I volunteer with multiple organizations related to aging farmers. I gather stray old people from the area for weekend and holiday get togethers.
Things changed, and my life improved because of my response to loss. The memories are hard, but they're made easier in a community of people who can share them with me.
See, I never swore off beef, even with that. I took it as a reason to make sure they live their best lives, and to do my best to ensure that their deaths are as quick and painless as possible. I understand the hypocrisy or whatever that might be, but beef has kept my family out of bankruptcy when full time job income has not. I do apologize and thank every animal, for whatever that's worth. It doesn't feel great, but such is life.
Do you still live on a farm on in a city? Here in the suburbs, something is making animals "less smart". Every neighborhood has signs about missing pets. I suspect it also affects people too. Why get a pet when everyone is too busy to take care of it?
I love bees and ants, but I love bees the most. I would recommend people to study the behavior of bees and ants. Additionally, honey, propolis, etc. are super healthy, and we can thank bees for that.
Well, kind of. :D Wasps do not produce honey, they just collect nectar and sugary substances for immediate consumption, and propolis is specifically a bee product made from tree resins.
That said, wasps are still quite intelligent for insects with regarding to spatial memory, individual recognition, learning, problem-solving, and social cognition. In fact, their intelligence is comparable to honeybees in many respects.
Contrary to popular belief, wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment. :)
> wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment.
Can confirm.
I had a yellow jacket infestation in my kitchen wall this fall. Every day I'd wake up to dozens of bees flying around my kitchen. But they didn't care about me, all they cared about was getting outside.
I probably killed 200-300 yellow jackets with a fly swatter over the course of 2 weeks. Somehow I wasn't stung once.
There’s something like four thousand species of bees native to North America [1], so while there are lots of reasons to be unenthusiastic about honey bees [2], that still leaves lots of room for bee related enthusiasm :)
European honeybees do not behave the same way as their native solitary counterparts. They gather honey by visiting every flower on a plant, then moving to the next plant. Native bees OTOH visit only one or two flowers per plant. So if imported honeybees outcompete natives (and studies show they do), it very much affects the viability of monoecious plants, which experience a drop in genetic diversity. I don't want to find out the long-term results of that experiment.
I don't think that's a reason to eradicate honeybees in the US or anything like that, but it does point to a misplaced focus on "just" solving colony collapse disorder while ignoring the plight of the native pollinators.
If you don't keep bees, or if you do but have a large enough property, you could put up a bee hotel. They can be bought or constructed pretty easily, and you'll get to see a wide variety of who's around your area!
I am no expert at all in this topic! So please take this with a grain of salt. I just have the feeling (maybe wrongly) that the love and focus for bees is having detrimental/ unwanted effects on the ecosystem.
My love for bees is more about their behavior (similar to how I find ants fascinating), and their "products" that is honey, propolis, beeswax, and so on. I am simply fascinated by their behaviors, and propolis is very healthy!
If you are referring to what I asked: "What are those adversarial effects, what other pollinators, and how does it hurt the ecosystem more than it helps?", then all I have to say about it is that I am just genuinely curious.
Why won’t you let „the ecosystem“ decide that on its own ? It’s much older than you and you are not its lega guardian. If the ecosystem (of which we are a part) decides it wants more honey bees than that’s what it shall get.
But then again, since as you argue (rightfully so!) that I’m also part of the ecosystem: me caring and expressing doubts is actually working as the ecosystem.
The same reason you bandage a stab wound instead of letting the body decide what it wants.
It doesn't want anything or have the ability to choose its responses to changes. Which is exactly why we are the legal guardians of natural ecosystems, by the way - have you not heard of lands and waters protected from certain human activities? The fact that we don't currently stop ourselves from propogating honeybees into ecosystems that can't fit them is not an indication of anything except our failures.
Maybe it is the same level of consciousness but different physical limitations? Simply imagine being locked in in an insect body with different perception and abilities, and a wiped memory.
Observing animals' behavior (in the wild and through experiments like the one here) and studying how their brains work to see that they often have the same kind of mental features as us (including whichever you'd classify as consciousness) - just at varying degrees of sophistication.
Some would argue that "consciousness" is something non-physical that has no impact on the physical world, and so is not physically detectable or responsible for any behavior, but I feel then it inherently cannot be whatever we mean by "consciousness" that we're directly aware of and talking about in the physical world (because that itself is a physical impact).
I promise this isn’t a trap, it’s just my curiosity as a “flexitarian”. What (mostly) keeps me from eating animals is my mind wandering sometimes when making a protein choice about how they ended up there, wherever I am, not by choice.
By "tastier" do you mean more physically pleasurable because you could ensure the animal's good health, ethically preferable because you could ensure a (mostly) good life, emotionally enjoyable because you can fondly remember interacting with them, or something else?
>>You can’t avoid the reality that’s your life depends on something else dying. Either plant insect or animal
There are more nuanced ways of thinking about this. A good example is Jainism's version of vegetarianism which requires paying attention to what one consumes.
"Jains make considerable efforts not to injure plants in everyday life as far as possible. Jains accept such violence only in as much as it is indispensable for human survival, and there are special instructions for preventing unnecessary violence against plants."
Chickens are very intelligent, it just happens that most people ever see chickens in overcrowded small spaces where they behave idiotically. So would you if you would be in the same situation.
I kept chickens for 15 years (mostly free-roaming in my backyard, unless there was a fox lurking, so not in overcrowded small spaces) and I disagree. To me they seemed pretty stupid, and pretty mean to one another
Three and four are both non-zero numbers. Zero constitutes the absence of value. Therefore, three and four are of the same value.
You see the problem here, right? I'm not saying that fungi have not be recorded as having potential intelligent thought. I am saying that in no world is their capability for intelligence remotely comparable to that of a creature with a fully functioning brain, especially a bird. Having the ability to react to your environment does not make you AS or more intelligent than other things that can also do that...
EDIT: I'm using intelligence and consciousness interchangeably here when I don't necessarily mean to, but my point stands.
Thinking of smart bugs, check out the portia (aka jumping) spider. They plan multi-step, out of sight detours to ambush prey, and demonstrate impulse control. They have specialized hunting techniques for different menu items, one such is mimicking specific prey items stuck on a web to lure various types of spiders out.
Insect wise, bees have to take the cake. Symbolic communication and counting, and now time. This all tracks for something that needs to share the location of food with the colony.
Interesting you mention jumping spiders, I just saw a rather interesting video talking about exactly this and includes some interviews with scientists involved in some of these experiments [1]. One interesting fact I learned is that they have a sense of numeracy, and can distinguish between one, two and three-or-more objects.
When I think of insects, I see them as tiny microcontrollers. In my head bees have a little shift register to measure time.
While ants have control over each limb, they mostly move by rotating two tripods one at a time. It's like they turn on an output for three legs, turn off the output, and then turn on the output for the other three legs.
Ants can walk backward, though, so perhaps it is more like a half-bridge rectifier with multiple channels.
I don't know much about insects, but spiders at least seem to be much more than mere automatons. The way jumping spiders are aware of their environment makes them feel much closer to a dog than to a microcontroller.
I read a paper long ago (so there's no chance of my recalling the source!) and one of the takeaways was that in a cockroach one of the neural ganglia basically had a binary "run!" mode that was flipped on instantly if sense nerves very close to it were triggered. So when researchers tapped or blew air on the rears of the roaches the roach in question would sprint away, its powerful legs being efficiently driven at full tilt by this little sprinting circuit without needing any input or interaction from the more complex main brain. Imagine getting used to that effect! "Ahhh! Why am I suddenly running and where am I going to steer this runaway body?"
Humans have that too. Startle response, withdrawing from pain (hot stove), blink response upon incoming object - all these happen without involving the higher brainstem at all. I think some of them barely even connect with the brain.
I’m curious if this experiment actually tests for time perception at all or if it’s a very different effect that we attribute as being actual experience of time.
this might be more of "it's hard to find a behavioral experiment that proves you're using time" rather than "it's hard to find an animal that uses time"
Yes, it means it’s the first insects we know of with this ability. It of course has no bearing on whether other insects can and we simply don’t know yet.
I was unable to find the paper. I'm still wondering, if it is a cross-over experiment, as:
> The circles were in different positions at each room in the maze, but the bees still learned over varying amounts of time to fly toward the short flash of light associated with the sweet food.
Do not state, if the light suddenly changed in the rooms. If not, other factors might come into place.
To clarify, the CNN article asserts that this is the "first [discovered] evidence" that bees possess this capability, not that bees are the first insect to have ever developed this capacity, as the headline may suggest.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say flashing lights are a stimulus bees have never seen before. Branches, leaves etc swing in the wind and oscillate letting sunlight through at intervals this causing the perception of flashing lights.
Professional nerds in silicon valley and beyond might consider whether they can help, and how.
My understanding from long conversations with a beekeeper who has lost millions of bees, including entire colonies remote from agricultural and residential pesticides and artificial colony technology (which are some of the hypothesized causes blamed) is there is a mix of a) pathogens, and b) global supply chain homogeny distributing the pathogens mixed into various agricultural products eg mulch and soil, and c) environmental factors to include possibly RF which have been observed to destroy previously healthy colonies very quickly and then also scramble or interfere with the colony division/expansion process where a queen starts over. To include in some cases the queens apparently getting lost and/or leading astray their entire swarm of minion bees during the fragile process of relocating. This getting lost is apparently a new puzzling phenomenon.
Anyway, it would be bad if large fragile ecosystems upon which many species including ours depend, were deprived of key pollinators. There is probably some very smart insightful person or team here on HN who could help and profit from helping on a global scale.
I have an automated feeder which will open when their collar is near, but is time limited. Each cat has a different allotment so that they don't get chonky.
They walk up to it and wait a few seconds. If it doesn't open, they go off and do something else and try again later. They don't sit there and try to pull the machine apart.
This could be explained by hunger levels, though, and knowing that they are used to eating whenever they feel like that.
That's interesting, given that scientists don't even know what the "time" is. But if that study helps finding those answers, I guess it is just fine to continue the push.
I don't think we should be surprised by this. A creature that needs to operate its body in 3d environment, perform complex manipulations with objects, participate in social interactions, probably use some sort of planning to optimise pollen harvesting activities has very good chances to be acquainted with the concept of time in one way or another.
What is indeed fascinating is how scientists invent all these experiments
There should be a name for the tendency to of humans to discount the depth and sophistication of the subjective experience of animals. From insects to primates, it is so prevalent.
I don't think it's an innate tendency, but rather an aspect of some cultures. For instance, I have heard that the people native to orangutan ranges traditionally considered them to be a sort of people, at least in a way, and I've read that when Carthaginian explorers first encountered gorillas they though they were a peculiar tribe of primitive people.
This video made me change my approach to consuming animals - I realized that just because animals are dumber than humans doesn't mean they don't have real, meaningful life experiences. And I'd be a dick to deprive them of those experiences.
There's also some hypocrisy in us wanting hyper intelligent AI to have compassion for humans and the human experience even though we're dumber than it, but us not doing the same for animals.
There's this popular notion that humans are fundamentally different beings to everything else, which I believe is just a form of narcissism.
If intelligence is used to navigate the world, then it is derived FROM the world, and your role is to be able to use those facts in your mind to change the world.
I'm sure a wolf is as, or more, intelligent at surviving in the wild, with the tools it has, than your average suburban adult.
Wolves understand distance, time, sun-time light levels, resource economy, body-energy economy, they know prey behaviors, complex hunting tactics, the basics of sound transmission, they know about self security, seeking adequate shelter, they know the basics about fall damage and how that may relate to height/weight, they know how to step when running, they know momentum, etc
They absolutely do calculate a very very basic physics and animal psychology.
Because, essentially, beings know/are intelligent about the things related to their survival. They have to be, its their existence.
Therefore I speculate bees may know more about time than even this article suggests. And probably as well as sound transmission and perception and maybe even air pressure due to flying being such an important role for them. Maybe they also have a basic space-time vulnerability conception. They for sure have excellent home etiquette and social awareness.
Im sure having a tiny brain doesnt eliminate the basic physics processing capacity that all beings need, maybe it just makes it shallower.
* the vast majority (including me) are not really very intelligent. We have a lot of "state" that's transferred from generation to generation. Once in a while, a very small percentage of people make advances and they filter through society and improves (or maybe just changes) the state. We collectively gives humans credit for these improvements but it's not the species but those specific people who created that jump in capabilities.
* this notion of inherited pride or inherited achievement is very common. This leads to being proud of membership in a group (country, religion, tribe, corporation, university etc.) and also of instinctively rejecting ideas put forth by others (e.g. see the amount of derision vegetarians and especially vegans attract).
* achievement/progress is also time-scale dependent. While we get smug about our progress, if it ends up destroying the one planet we have, it will be incredibly stupid. Humans fundamentally are not capable of thinking long-term.
Everything around me was not made by me. I don't even understand how I would potentially make most of these from scratch without using machines made by other people or knowledge acquired over time (see first bullet above). Within the framework provided to me, I can convince myself to reason and act but the framework itself is my operating system. Of course, I like to think I am intelligent and reasoning but it's all in a box. I feel this describes almost everyone I know except for a few outstanding scientists I have worked with.
"Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand." - K. Marx
This world knowledge is built upon piece by piece, the conceptual tools of the past create the conceptual tools of the future, that line is drawn through books and projected through minds, again onto books. This whole society depends deeply on cohesion and cultural continuation.
Our intellectual thread is the cultural knowledge and technological progress itself, its not even down to great individuals alone. I think believing in great individuals is a product of a sort of personality-fetishism (though individuals can do great things, if that makes sense).
This fetishism or mystification of the person who contributes I view as a product of an old frame of thinking which is called philosophical liberalism. This framework does this because it posits that all peoples exist under equal social value (political, legal and economical), thus people who contribute more must have a greater capacity that is innate and unexplainable or untraceable; inherent. Its a widespread philosophical frame of thought that does not consider the conditions of the individual.
We most see this employed with rich people. We hear they are truly great, savvy, exceptional individuals, when in reality a lot of the times the explanation for the vast majority of the rich is that they had rich parents. Where would you be if your parents owned an emerald mine? or Where would you be if your parents gave you a small loan of a million dollars?
In the same vein this human progress that we encounter, which seems to be carried on the backs of the Newtons and Einsteins of the world, is in fact a steady drip-feed of collective human knowledge that gets compiled and analyzed, made consistent and expounded upon by a few persons every certain amount of time. No lesser of a feat, mind you, the work is still there. I am not minimizing these persons, but contextualizing them.
[Insert the "on shoulders of giants" quote here]. Is a great example of humility and awareness by a visionary.
One thing I find impressive at times is the vast amount of German intellectuals throughout history, which upon looking at history can be explained by their colonial exploits leading to greater national wealth, leisure, and cultural amplification. This is often the case with Europe and the USA as well.
So there is a chance that we are all base-level intelligence, since we are all essentially the same species. What changes that is access to the cultural wealth of information, and not only access to this cultural wealth of information but a CULTURE OF ACCESS to that wealth of info. A level of social development around you that enables you.
People would rather immediately jump to physiological and even genetic explanations of intelligence rather than look at the social context of the individuals involved. This is because of the flaws of philosophical liberalism at contextualizing and actually scientifically looking at the world around us.
Again: there's a good chance that we are all just base level intelligence. What we know is actually different between us is the preparation and economic/social context of the individuals.
this is such an amazing discovery, with hundreds of thousands of insect species left to determine there time processing abilities, which of course could never be atributed to the basic ability to navigate, it is the work for so many indispensible scientific institutions to take on this essential groundbreaking work
Dr. Mark Powell: How do you know right from wrong?
Prot: Every being in the universe knows right from wrong, Mark.
Dr. Mark Powell: Suppose someone did do something wrong? Committed murder or rape, how would you punish them?
Prot: Let me tell you something, Mark. You humans, most of you, subscribe to this policy of eye for an eye, a life for a life. This is known through the universe for its stupidity. Even your Buddha and your Christ had quite a different vision but nobody's paid much attention to them not even the Buddhists or the Christians. You humans. Sometimes it's hard to imagine how you have made it this far.
We are learning so many wonderful things about Bees!
They can count https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21222227
Bees play https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33369572 https://www.science.org/content/article/are-these-bumble-bee...
All of this reinforces my belief that nearly everything is conscious and aware, we differ in a capabilities and resolution but we are all more similar than we are different.
Spider Cognition: How Tiny Brains Do Mighty Things https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46003146
Growing up on a farm taught me that animals are absolutely able to think and learn. Not in the same way as humans, but I'm fully convinced there are degrees of consciousness.
Watching new calves play in spring meadows is one of the most purely joyful things you can ever see. They have best friends and will avoid playing with other calves until their friend comes to play with them.
Animals also grieve and mourn their dead, much like we do.
They are fellow sentient beings capable of experiencing pleasure, pain, fear, and forming social bonds. It's a lot of why I take issue with anthropocentrism, and think factory farming is an absolute tragedy. It's the industrialized denial of a meaningful life and one of the biggest examples of human cruelty.
I want to live, and think others do too- so Life must have some kind of Greater Meaning. Yet, almost everything else seems to prove the opposite based on how fragile life is, and how little things change when one is lost.
That's a very pessimistic was to view things, I think.
We're only given one chance; rich, poor, all of us. One shot. You have to try to do the best with what you have.
Nothing changes when you have a big loss, only if you let nothing change. My grandpa died at 102. He and Grandma raised me and were my rocks throughout my entire life. Grandma died when I was a teenager, and I only used that to become more sad and selfish (like a teenager). Looking back, the choices I made would've made her sad for me. When Grandpa died, I chose to use his memory to do good things. Now I volunteer with multiple organizations related to aging farmers. I gather stray old people from the area for weekend and holiday get togethers.
Things changed, and my life improved because of my response to loss. The memories are hard, but they're made easier in a community of people who can share them with me.
I think the point is, can a farm animal do this?
> When Grandpa died, I chose to use his memory to do good things. Now I volunteer with multiple organizations related to aging farmers.
If this is what gives life meaning in the universe, you can’t deny that we’re snuffing it out at an industrial scale.
> Yet, almost everything else seems to prove the opposite based on how fragile life is, and how little things change when one is lost.
What a sad way to view things
Thanks for this memory. I had similar experience watching spring lambs and swore off mutton/lamb/etc same day.
See, I never swore off beef, even with that. I took it as a reason to make sure they live their best lives, and to do my best to ensure that their deaths are as quick and painless as possible. I understand the hypocrisy or whatever that might be, but beef has kept my family out of bankruptcy when full time job income has not. I do apologize and thank every animal, for whatever that's worth. It doesn't feel great, but such is life.
I swore off lamb after trying to make a couple lamb stews. It is clearly an acquired taste if that.
Or that cows can quickly determine when an electric fence isn’t working and rampage a winter feed paddock in an hour.
Do you still live on a farm on in a city? Here in the suburbs, something is making animals "less smart". Every neighborhood has signs about missing pets. I suspect it also affects people too. Why get a pet when everyone is too busy to take care of it?
Maybe they run away exactly because they are smart.
There’s a part of me that speculates that the kashrut laws are meant to rule out eating the most intelligent animals (pigs, cetaceans, cephalopods).
Interesting! I'd never thought of that.
Still, though... bivalves?
I think shellfish was more unambiguously a food safety thing
> degrees of consciousness
Societal dogma aside, I think this probably applies to all critters, including within species, including us.
I love bees and ants, but I love bees the most. I would recommend people to study the behavior of bees and ants. Additionally, honey, propolis, etc. are super healthy, and we can thank bees for that.
Agreed! Bees are my favorite social insect (we share a love of hexagons, for one thing) and they seem to be especially intelligent.
The hexagon is the best-agon
This thread is awesome.
I had a miniature war with some wasps staking a claim on my porch
Let me say, wasps are incredibly endurant creatures. I have much respect for them.
Their architecture though... I have the remnants of their enclave. It is so stable and uniform and cozy.
I wish wasps were friends.
Yellowjackets can go to hell though.
Well, kind of. :D Wasps do not produce honey, they just collect nectar and sugary substances for immediate consumption, and propolis is specifically a bee product made from tree resins.
That said, wasps are still quite intelligent for insects with regarding to spatial memory, individual recognition, learning, problem-solving, and social cognition. In fact, their intelligence is comparable to honeybees in many respects.
Contrary to popular belief, wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment. :)
> wasps are not mindless aggressors, their defensive behavior is calculated based on threat assessment.
Can confirm.
I had a yellow jacket infestation in my kitchen wall this fall. Every day I'd wake up to dozens of bees flying around my kitchen. But they didn't care about me, all they cared about was getting outside.
I probably killed 200-300 yellow jackets with a fly swatter over the course of 2 weeks. Somehow I wasn't stung once.
Not that I want to curb your enthusiasm for bees, but…
I recently read that honey bees in particular get the most attention from humans lately, so they are kept in high numbers.
This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps.
There’s something like four thousand species of bees native to North America [1], so while there are lots of reasons to be unenthusiastic about honey bees [2], that still leaves lots of room for bee related enthusiasm :)
[1] https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-role-native-bees-united-state...
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-...
I‘d give it a chance. After all it can’t be any worse than Seinfeld for Bees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Movie
Why would what you said curb my enthusiasm for bees though?
Can you provide me more specifics on this by the way?
> This has some adversarial effect on other pollinators, which hurts ecosystems more than it helps.
What are those adversarial effects, what other pollinators, and how does it hurt the ecosystem more than it helps?
I do not mind bees having kept in higher numbers, and beekeepers can do it anywhere without affecting the ecosystem, I believe.
European honeybees do not behave the same way as their native solitary counterparts. They gather honey by visiting every flower on a plant, then moving to the next plant. Native bees OTOH visit only one or two flowers per plant. So if imported honeybees outcompete natives (and studies show they do), it very much affects the viability of monoecious plants, which experience a drop in genetic diversity. I don't want to find out the long-term results of that experiment.
I don't think that's a reason to eradicate honeybees in the US or anything like that, but it does point to a misplaced focus on "just" solving colony collapse disorder while ignoring the plight of the native pollinators.
If you don't keep bees, or if you do but have a large enough property, you could put up a bee hotel. They can be bought or constructed pretty easily, and you'll get to see a wide variety of who's around your area!
https://bugguide.net/node/view/475348
I am no expert at all in this topic! So please take this with a grain of salt. I just have the feeling (maybe wrongly) that the love and focus for bees is having detrimental/ unwanted effects on the ecosystem.
Here some more articles / discussions:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44505552
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44792207
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35668879
My love for bees is more about their behavior (similar to how I find ants fascinating), and their "products" that is honey, propolis, beeswax, and so on. I am simply fascinated by their behaviors, and propolis is very healthy!
I have always been enamored with "social" insects like bees, wasps, and ants. I _loved_ SimAnt as a child.
It also blows my mind that I utterly balk at eating insects but bee vomit is totally cool.
Oh my, I just looked for a screenshot of SimAnt. I remember this game, too! I have played it for some time, too. :)
You can play it in a browser: https://archive.org/details/msdos_SimAnt_-_The_Electronic_An...
Oh cool! I am doing the tutorial and it told me to click on "MAP" which I did, and then nothing happened. :( Any ideas?
Did it say to click on map or Window menu -> map?
https://i.imgur.com/LbCx8jQ.png
Window menu -> MAP, so I assumed it was "MAP". Where is the "Window menu" exactly?
It's at the top of the game window: https://i.imgur.com/xqh2rrY.png
Oh, that! Thank you!
that read like "source please" then "sauce is yummy"
I am not sure what you are trying to imply.
If you are referring to what I asked: "What are those adversarial effects, what other pollinators, and how does it hurt the ecosystem more than it helps?", then all I have to say about it is that I am just genuinely curious.
Why won’t you let „the ecosystem“ decide that on its own ? It’s much older than you and you are not its lega guardian. If the ecosystem (of which we are a part) decides it wants more honey bees than that’s what it shall get.
I guess it’s a fair point.
But then again, since as you argue (rightfully so!) that I’m also part of the ecosystem: me caring and expressing doubts is actually working as the ecosystem.
That’s how I’m being (virtually) a part of it.
The idea that ecosystems naturally balance themselves is a pervasive myth.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/balan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_nature
>It’s much older than you and you are not its legal guardian.
A fair few cultures believe they are. NZ recognises the Whanganui River as having legal personhood.
The same reason you bandage a stab wound instead of letting the body decide what it wants.
It doesn't want anything or have the ability to choose its responses to changes. Which is exactly why we are the legal guardians of natural ecosystems, by the way - have you not heard of lands and waters protected from certain human activities? The fact that we don't currently stop ourselves from propogating honeybees into ecosystems that can't fit them is not an indication of anything except our failures.
If we're a part of the ecosystem, then deciding to be honey bees' legal guardian _is_ the ecosystem deciding that on its own, no?
Yes exactly, doing nothing or doing something is the same.
We are part of the ecosystem. So any discussion we’re having is also part of being and operating in the ecosystem…
What is your definition of “conscious” here? Like it has thoughts and feelings?
Consciousness is a spectrum.
Maybe it is the same level of consciousness but different physical limitations? Simply imagine being locked in in an insect body with different perception and abilities, and a wiped memory.
Even if that were true, how could you possibly know it?
Observing animals' behavior (in the wild and through experiments like the one here) and studying how their brains work to see that they often have the same kind of mental features as us (including whichever you'd classify as consciousness) - just at varying degrees of sophistication.
Some would argue that "consciousness" is something non-physical that has no impact on the physical world, and so is not physically detectable or responsible for any behavior, but I feel then it inherently cannot be whatever we mean by "consciousness" that we're directly aware of and talking about in the physical world (because that itself is a physical impact).
... with insects on the low side, humans are mid, and dogs are top
I promise this isn’t a trap, it’s just my curiosity as a “flexitarian”. What (mostly) keeps me from eating animals is my mind wandering sometimes when making a protein choice about how they ended up there, wherever I am, not by choice.
Are you vegan?
Goats are just as tasty if you raised them, IMO. Maybe even tastier.
By "tastier" do you mean more physically pleasurable because you could ensure the animal's good health, ethically preferable because you could ensure a (mostly) good life, emotionally enjoyable because you can fondly remember interacting with them, or something else?
You can’t avoid the reality that’s your life depends on something else dying. Either plant insect or animal
How and why you draw the line on what is acceptable to kill is mostly arbitrary
I’d argue a mushroom or a bee are more “conscious” than most chickens
>>You can’t avoid the reality that’s your life depends on something else dying. Either plant insect or animal
There are more nuanced ways of thinking about this. A good example is Jainism's version of vegetarianism which requires paying attention to what one consumes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism
"Jains make considerable efforts not to injure plants in everyday life as far as possible. Jains accept such violence only in as much as it is indispensable for human survival, and there are special instructions for preventing unnecessary violence against plants."
Chickens are very intelligent, it just happens that most people ever see chickens in overcrowded small spaces where they behave idiotically. So would you if you would be in the same situation.
I kept chickens for 15 years (mostly free-roaming in my backyard, unless there was a fox lurking, so not in overcrowded small spaces) and I disagree. To me they seemed pretty stupid, and pretty mean to one another
I kept chickens for a while and it was very clear that they'd be more than happy to eat us if able to.
You think that a mushroom is more capable of intelligent thought and emotion driven decisions than a chicken?
lmao
Maybe you should learn about what a mushroom is
Three and four are both non-zero numbers. Zero constitutes the absence of value. Therefore, three and four are of the same value.
You see the problem here, right? I'm not saying that fungi have not be recorded as having potential intelligent thought. I am saying that in no world is their capability for intelligence remotely comparable to that of a creature with a fully functioning brain, especially a bird. Having the ability to react to your environment does not make you AS or more intelligent than other things that can also do that...
EDIT: I'm using intelligence and consciousness interchangeably here when I don't necessarily mean to, but my point stands.
I remember reading somewhere that bees have the highest cognitive abilities of all insects
Thinking of smart bugs, check out the portia (aka jumping) spider. They plan multi-step, out of sight detours to ambush prey, and demonstrate impulse control. They have specialized hunting techniques for different menu items, one such is mimicking specific prey items stuck on a web to lure various types of spiders out.
Insect wise, bees have to take the cake. Symbolic communication and counting, and now time. This all tracks for something that needs to share the location of food with the colony.
Nature sure is neat.
Interesting you mention jumping spiders, I just saw a rather interesting video talking about exactly this and includes some interviews with scientists involved in some of these experiments [1]. One interesting fact I learned is that they have a sense of numeracy, and can distinguish between one, two and three-or-more objects.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QF6kaOAuYg
When I think of insects, I see them as tiny microcontrollers. In my head bees have a little shift register to measure time.
While ants have control over each limb, they mostly move by rotating two tripods one at a time. It's like they turn on an output for three legs, turn off the output, and then turn on the output for the other three legs.
Ants can walk backward, though, so perhaps it is more like a half-bridge rectifier with multiple channels.
They're like little organic ICs.
I don't know much about insects, but spiders at least seem to be much more than mere automatons. The way jumping spiders are aware of their environment makes them feel much closer to a dog than to a microcontroller.
They have more peripherals, sram, and flash space.
Working in embedded gave me a lot of respect for insects. They can fit so much raw function into a body that's smaller than most standalone ICs.
Just imagine how cool would it be to have programmable bees.
It's the power-to-weight ratio that is really mind boggling. Those creatures are strong!
Black Mirror did an episode on programmable bees. S3E6
That would make an interesting game.
I read a paper long ago (so there's no chance of my recalling the source!) and one of the takeaways was that in a cockroach one of the neural ganglia basically had a binary "run!" mode that was flipped on instantly if sense nerves very close to it were triggered. So when researchers tapped or blew air on the rears of the roaches the roach in question would sprint away, its powerful legs being efficiently driven at full tilt by this little sprinting circuit without needing any input or interaction from the more complex main brain. Imagine getting used to that effect! "Ahhh! Why am I suddenly running and where am I going to steer this runaway body?"
That is so cool.
> "Ahhh! Why am I suddenly running and where am I going to steer this runaway body?"
I wonder if it's tied to the optical sensors to steer toward darker places.
Humans have that too. Startle response, withdrawing from pain (hot stove), blink response upon incoming object - all these happen without involving the higher brainstem at all. I think some of them barely even connect with the brain.
Isn't this part of the comment thread basically about reflexes?
Different scientist and different set of experiments, but a much more fun and educational video of bees + time:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xlGuBT5GT10
It’s interesting that Hellen Keller describes her experience, before language acquisition as timeless, no perception of time at all.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814
I’m curious if this experiment actually tests for time perception at all or if it’s a very different effect that we attribute as being actual experience of time.
https://youtube.com/shorts/xlGuBT5GT10?si=1oH7LTicJut143sC
> Scientists now know that bees can process time, a first in insects
We have no idea what other insects can do this or when they got the ability. Sounds more like a first in Scientists. (tongue somewhat in cheek)
this might be more of "it's hard to find a behavioral experiment that proves you're using time" rather than "it's hard to find an animal that uses time"
Yes, it means it’s the first insects we know of with this ability. It of course has no bearing on whether other insects can and we simply don’t know yet.
I imagine we could predict fairly well if we assume perception of time is a requirement for complex return-to-base type navigation.
I was unable to find the paper. I'm still wondering, if it is a cross-over experiment, as:
> The circles were in different positions at each room in the maze, but the bees still learned over varying amounts of time to fly toward the short flash of light associated with the sweet food.
Do not state, if the light suddenly changed in the rooms. If not, other factors might come into place.
Here is what would appear to be the paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41218757/
To clarify, the CNN article asserts that this is the "first [discovered] evidence" that bees possess this capability, not that bees are the first insect to have ever developed this capacity, as the headline may suggest.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to say flashing lights are a stimulus bees have never seen before. Branches, leaves etc swing in the wind and oscillate letting sunlight through at intervals this causing the perception of flashing lights.
Lots of bees are dying suddenly, for multiple reasons. Here is a (sensationalized) summary:
https://youtu.be/qWsBZbnt_4A?si=3AcS7IdGT41gF598
Professional nerds in silicon valley and beyond might consider whether they can help, and how.
My understanding from long conversations with a beekeeper who has lost millions of bees, including entire colonies remote from agricultural and residential pesticides and artificial colony technology (which are some of the hypothesized causes blamed) is there is a mix of a) pathogens, and b) global supply chain homogeny distributing the pathogens mixed into various agricultural products eg mulch and soil, and c) environmental factors to include possibly RF which have been observed to destroy previously healthy colonies very quickly and then also scramble or interfere with the colony division/expansion process where a queen starts over. To include in some cases the queens apparently getting lost and/or leading astray their entire swarm of minion bees during the fragile process of relocating. This getting lost is apparently a new puzzling phenomenon.
Anyway, it would be bad if large fragile ecosystems upon which many species including ours depend, were deprived of key pollinators. There is probably some very smart insightful person or team here on HN who could help and profit from helping on a global scale.
Edit. Typos
Professional nerds are already working on the problem of helping bees pollinate. Their solutions are not that popular yet. https://www.beevt.com/
More professional nerds should be working on keeping bees healthy, but that's probably outside the purview of tech nerds.
Cats know to wait too. So they must have some concept of time.
I have an automated feeder which will open when their collar is near, but is time limited. Each cat has a different allotment so that they don't get chonky.
They walk up to it and wait a few seconds. If it doesn't open, they go off and do something else and try again later. They don't sit there and try to pull the machine apart.
This could be explained by hunger levels, though, and knowing that they are used to eating whenever they feel like that.
Yep, we have a timed feeder; they go to it a few minutes before it dispenses and ten stare at it; never at another time.
Cats perceive time as a fourth spacial dimension.
That's interesting, given that scientists don't even know what the "time" is. But if that study helps finding those answers, I guess it is just fine to continue the push.
I don't think we should be surprised by this. A creature that needs to operate its body in 3d environment, perform complex manipulations with objects, participate in social interactions, probably use some sort of planning to optimise pollen harvesting activities has very good chances to be acquainted with the concept of time in one way or another.
What is indeed fascinating is how scientists invent all these experiments
Bees, buh.
We’ve known about the early bird since Ben Franklin’s day.
There should be a name for the tendency to of humans to discount the depth and sophistication of the subjective experience of animals. From insects to primates, it is so prevalent.
I don't think it's an innate tendency, but rather an aspect of some cultures. For instance, I have heard that the people native to orangutan ranges traditionally considered them to be a sort of people, at least in a way, and I've read that when Carthaginian explorers first encountered gorillas they though they were a peculiar tribe of primitive people.
I highly recommend Robert Fuller on Youtube for anyone who wants to better understand the shared experiences between humans and animals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kQb-badp1s
This video made me change my approach to consuming animals - I realized that just because animals are dumber than humans doesn't mean they don't have real, meaningful life experiences. And I'd be a dick to deprive them of those experiences.
There's also some hypocrisy in us wanting hyper intelligent AI to have compassion for humans and the human experience even though we're dumber than it, but us not doing the same for animals.
A bunch of anecdotal evidence follows:
There's this popular notion that humans are fundamentally different beings to everything else, which I believe is just a form of narcissism.
If intelligence is used to navigate the world, then it is derived FROM the world, and your role is to be able to use those facts in your mind to change the world.
I'm sure a wolf is as, or more, intelligent at surviving in the wild, with the tools it has, than your average suburban adult.
Wolves understand distance, time, sun-time light levels, resource economy, body-energy economy, they know prey behaviors, complex hunting tactics, the basics of sound transmission, they know about self security, seeking adequate shelter, they know the basics about fall damage and how that may relate to height/weight, they know how to step when running, they know momentum, etc
They absolutely do calculate a very very basic physics and animal psychology.
Because, essentially, beings know/are intelligent about the things related to their survival. They have to be, its their existence.
Therefore I speculate bees may know more about time than even this article suggests. And probably as well as sound transmission and perception and maybe even air pressure due to flying being such an important role for them. Maybe they also have a basic space-time vulnerability conception. They for sure have excellent home etiquette and social awareness.
Im sure having a tiny brain doesnt eliminate the basic physics processing capacity that all beings need, maybe it just makes it shallower.
In the same vein, I always wondered if
* the vast majority (including me) are not really very intelligent. We have a lot of "state" that's transferred from generation to generation. Once in a while, a very small percentage of people make advances and they filter through society and improves (or maybe just changes) the state. We collectively gives humans credit for these improvements but it's not the species but those specific people who created that jump in capabilities.
* this notion of inherited pride or inherited achievement is very common. This leads to being proud of membership in a group (country, religion, tribe, corporation, university etc.) and also of instinctively rejecting ideas put forth by others (e.g. see the amount of derision vegetarians and especially vegans attract).
* achievement/progress is also time-scale dependent. While we get smug about our progress, if it ends up destroying the one planet we have, it will be incredibly stupid. Humans fundamentally are not capable of thinking long-term.
Everything around me was not made by me. I don't even understand how I would potentially make most of these from scratch without using machines made by other people or knowledge acquired over time (see first bullet above). Within the framework provided to me, I can convince myself to reason and act but the framework itself is my operating system. Of course, I like to think I am intelligent and reasoning but it's all in a box. I feel this describes almost everyone I know except for a few outstanding scientists I have worked with.
I dig what you're saying...
I have to quote one of my favorite thinkers here:
"Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand." - K. Marx
This world knowledge is built upon piece by piece, the conceptual tools of the past create the conceptual tools of the future, that line is drawn through books and projected through minds, again onto books. This whole society depends deeply on cohesion and cultural continuation.
Our intellectual thread is the cultural knowledge and technological progress itself, its not even down to great individuals alone. I think believing in great individuals is a product of a sort of personality-fetishism (though individuals can do great things, if that makes sense).
This fetishism or mystification of the person who contributes I view as a product of an old frame of thinking which is called philosophical liberalism. This framework does this because it posits that all peoples exist under equal social value (political, legal and economical), thus people who contribute more must have a greater capacity that is innate and unexplainable or untraceable; inherent. Its a widespread philosophical frame of thought that does not consider the conditions of the individual.
We most see this employed with rich people. We hear they are truly great, savvy, exceptional individuals, when in reality a lot of the times the explanation for the vast majority of the rich is that they had rich parents. Where would you be if your parents owned an emerald mine? or Where would you be if your parents gave you a small loan of a million dollars?
In the same vein this human progress that we encounter, which seems to be carried on the backs of the Newtons and Einsteins of the world, is in fact a steady drip-feed of collective human knowledge that gets compiled and analyzed, made consistent and expounded upon by a few persons every certain amount of time. No lesser of a feat, mind you, the work is still there. I am not minimizing these persons, but contextualizing them.
[Insert the "on shoulders of giants" quote here]. Is a great example of humility and awareness by a visionary.
One thing I find impressive at times is the vast amount of German intellectuals throughout history, which upon looking at history can be explained by their colonial exploits leading to greater national wealth, leisure, and cultural amplification. This is often the case with Europe and the USA as well.
So there is a chance that we are all base-level intelligence, since we are all essentially the same species. What changes that is access to the cultural wealth of information, and not only access to this cultural wealth of information but a CULTURE OF ACCESS to that wealth of info. A level of social development around you that enables you.
People would rather immediately jump to physiological and even genetic explanations of intelligence rather than look at the social context of the individuals involved. This is because of the flaws of philosophical liberalism at contextualizing and actually scientifically looking at the world around us.
Again: there's a good chance that we are all just base level intelligence. What we know is actually different between us is the preparation and economic/social context of the individuals.
this is such an amazing discovery, with hundreds of thousands of insect species left to determine there time processing abilities, which of course could never be atributed to the basic ability to navigate, it is the work for so many indispensible scientific institutions to take on this essential groundbreaking work
Imagine what the bees have been thinking of humans all this time - treating them like they can't process time.
Dr. Mark Powell: How do you know right from wrong?
Prot: Every being in the universe knows right from wrong, Mark.
Dr. Mark Powell: Suppose someone did do something wrong? Committed murder or rape, how would you punish them?
Prot: Let me tell you something, Mark. You humans, most of you, subscribe to this policy of eye for an eye, a life for a life. This is known through the universe for its stupidity. Even your Buddha and your Christ had quite a different vision but nobody's paid much attention to them not even the Buddhists or the Christians. You humans. Sometimes it's hard to imagine how you have made it this far.