How insects like bumblebees do so much with tiny brains

Post by tom_wilde » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 10:52 AM UTC

lawpoop wrote: post #116

davidwihl wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I guess that's true for mammalian eyes, but what about insect eyes? If the bumble brain only hold 200k neurons, how many do their eyes have on board?

Post by pc86 » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 1:42 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #67

ehsanu1 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The condescension isn't too helpful here unfortunately (is it ever?). You could have made your initial response a bit less condescending by saying something like: The comment mentions "Landauer's principle", which provides some explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer's_principle Here as well, you could have made your comment better if you just omitted this part: "which you'd find if you'd attempt to read…

What do you find condescending in pointing that the clear sentence with enough information was edited of its most important part and that presented as "unclear"? The way he quoted the comment, it's not even visible that "the comment mentions" like you suggest. He kept the formula of the principle and only edited its very name out. Which is a direct name of the entry in Wikipedia. What do you find condescending when t…

Post by d0lph » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:07 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #37

joshmarlow wrote: post #30

Highly 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.)

Post by giardini » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #63

cr0sh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of Minsky's criticisms came before current and modern implementations of neural networks, using extremely large datasets and large GPU processing. I'm not saying his criticisms are invalid - and certainly should not be tossed aside! We are in the very early stages of another "AI Spring" - I have the inkling of an opinion that if we are to advanced further in the GAI direction, it will be by applying these same k…

They did come before our current datasets and processing power, but those were very predictable trends back then. I think the biggest flaw in his criticisms were that they were mathematically focused on very simple neural topologies. And while larger datasets and better processing power would have helped all ML methods, NNs have benefitted from the combination of external advances combined with very significant topol…

Post by jly » Wed, Jan 25, 2017, 7:01 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #87

jly wrote: post #49

Eusocial 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 pr…

Bees, ants, and (I think) other hive living insects share ~75% of their DNA with their hive mates. This makes it reasonable to think of the hive as one individual! Just like we are made of individual cells and organs, an ant hill is made up of individual ants. That the parts can move separately is a fairly superficial difference.