Heuristics. Lots of them.
How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
41–50 of 143 posts
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe something along the lines of "our brains would overheat" - there's a small temperature window in which proteins won't denature, it takes k T log 2 joules to erase one bit of information (Landauer's principle), and our brain uses around 20 Watts of power. Maybe tin foil hats make good heatsinks.. Interestingly enough there is some evidence that the Gibbs free energy of ketone metabolism is more thermodynamically…
Doesn't that imply that people who live in hotter climates have...how can I put this politely?...a disadvantage when it comes to the stability of their brains? I would assume that the brain has a certain amount of redundancy, but has this ever been researched: How hot can it get before people start getting noticeably "stupider"?
Wouldn't they not get noticeably stupider, because the observer would be getting just as stupid?
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe something along the lines of "our brains would overheat" - there's a small temperature window in which proteins won't denature, it takes k T log 2 joules to erase one bit of information (Landauer's principle), and our brain uses around 20 Watts of power. Maybe tin foil hats make good heatsinks.. Interestingly enough there is some evidence that the Gibbs free energy of ketone metabolism is more thermodynamically…
Doesn't that imply that people who live in hotter climates have...how can I put this politely?...a disadvantage when it comes to the stability of their brains? I would assume that the brain has a certain amount of redundancy, but has this ever been researched: How hot can it get before people start getting noticeably "stupider"?
Don't worry you're not being racist, humans of all ethnicities are made of the same proteins after all. And getting too cold will affect brain function too.
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Portia spiders are also referenced in Peter Watts' Echopraxia. (Some spoilers could be inferred from thinking about this too hard while reading the novel.)
Yep! Watts' novels are how I first heard about Portia. I can't wait for the third in the trilogy. In general, I love a good novel with a bibliography.
For people who don't believe that spiders can be cute:
https://adlayasanimals.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/u2byv.jpg
Also, I got interested and tried to find some documentation on Portia Labiata after reading Watts' book, and there's very, very little, but what he says appears to be true. They do have telescopic eyes with vibrating retinas. They do spend ages painstakingly scanning a scene before moving. They are absurdly intelligent for insects. I don't know if Watts' suggestion that they timeshare pattern-matching areas of their brains is true, but it seems plausible.
Here's a good article: http://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_spider%20minds.ht...
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#45"With just a few hundred or thousand neurons, you can easily recognise perhaps a hundred faces". It makes me think we are missing something when creating arificial neural networks which needs much more neurons to achieve only this specific task. Maybe artificial neurons are too simplified models compared to biological ones, maybe our training process could be much more efficient?
If I had to guess: neural networks have to operate on pixel data whereas real neurons don't. Brains and eyes have evolved in tandem. Perhaps what makes them so efficient is that the eyes handle some of the processing as a consequence of their physical shape and characteristics. Look at the eyes of bees. Very different from our own (and from the cameras we build) and perhaps very specialized to the limited set of task…
The neurons in the eyes pre-process a huge amount of information converting data from about 126M rods and cones to 1M ganglion cells - a pretty amazing amount of data compression.
Ref: https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Thinking-Kaufmann-Interactive-...
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#46"With just a few hundred or thousand neurons, you can easily recognise perhaps a hundred faces". It makes me think we are missing something when creating arificial neural networks which needs much more neurons to achieve only this specific task. Maybe artificial neurons are too simplified models compared to biological ones, maybe our training process could be much more efficient?
Maybe it's the difference between digital and analog?
Consider a vinyl record and record player. It's super simple - a long groove with smooth bumps and a needle that slides in the groove. Recording and playback via analog methods are super simple.
Compare that to a compact disk or MP3 file and the complexity required to encode, store, and playback the sound.
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep! Watts' novels are how I first heard about Portia. I can't wait for the third in the trilogy. In general, I love a good novel with a bibliography.
For people who don't believe that spiders can be cute: https://adlayasanimals.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/u2byv.jpg Also, I got interested and tried to find some documentation on Portia Labiata after reading Watts' book, and there's very, very little, but what he says appears to be true. They do have telescopic eyes with vibrating retinas. They do spend ages painstakingly scanning a scene before moving. They are absu…
If you're afraid of spiders, I would suggest not clicking on that link. I was hoping for cute, but that is just a very large closeup of a spider, and it definitely just hit the fear instinct.
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#48Highly relevant is the Portia genus of spiders ([0], [1]) and apparently other related jumping spiders ([2]). One of my favorite excerpts from [1]: > Harland says Portia’s eyesight is the place to start. Jumping spiders already have excellent vision and Portia’s is ten times as good, making it sharper than most mammals. However being so small, there is a trade-off in that Portia can only focus its eyes on a tiny spot…
Portia spiders are also referenced in Peter Watts' Echopraxia. (Some spoilers could be inferred from thinking about this too hard while reading the novel.)
Some spoilers could be inferred from thinking about this too hard while reading the novel
Not.. if you don't say that...
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#49Eusocial insects like honeybees, some wasps, and ants take this even one step further by combining the extraordinary but limited powers of one individual insect to make highly-complex decisions with the coordinated input from thousands or millions of individuals. It's often stated that after humans, these eusocial insects are the most advanced life form on earth. After studying, for example, the fascinating voting process of how honeybees choose a new home during swarming, I am in full agreement.
Re: How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I had to guess: neural networks have to operate on pixel data whereas real neurons don't. Brains and eyes have evolved in tandem. Perhaps what makes them so efficient is that the eyes handle some of the processing as a consequence of their physical shape and characteristics. Look at the eyes of bees. Very different from our own (and from the cameras we build) and perhaps very specialized to the limited set of task…
The neurons in the eyes pre-process a huge amount of information converting data from about 126M rods and cones to 1M ganglion cells - a pretty amazing amount of data compression. Ref: https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Thinking-Kaufmann-Interactive-...
From my limited understanding, CNNs seem to approximate this functionality in image processing tasks, where the convolution layers are akin to the retina extracting info (lines, shapes, etc) and compression (kernel striding and pooling), while the later fully-connected neural network works for categorization or whatnot.
That probably doesn't answer the question of how a bee's eyes work, though.
???