Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests • Hacker News Board

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#211

Post by dlkf » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

itpainsmetosay wrote: post #209

dlkf wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Most neural network architectures have fewer "neurons" than 10^5. Maybe the word you are looking for is "parameters" That's a fair point, I shouldn't have said "typically." But some of the larger models probably have that many linear filters. > 2. A neuron in the brain and a neuron in a neural network are totally different things. There are certainly disanalogies between biological neurons and neurons in a vanil…

I entirely disagree. The onus of proof is on you to explain how a highly idealized ANN has the same expressivity as a fly's wetware. Just because neural networks are tech's Zeitgeist, doesn't make them the perfect explanation for all physical phenomena. Fifty years ago there were people equating thought and consciousness with artificial intelligence programs; and 200 years before it was the watchmaker's clockwork hol…

> The onus of proof is on you to explain how a highly idealized ANN has the same expressivity as a fly's wetware.

I've made an argument - it's essentially a functionalist one. The intelligent things insects do - object detection, maze navigation - are all things that ANNs are really good at.

To put things in perspective: the reason that I don't think that ANNs are anywhere near as expressive as the human brain is that there are countless behaviours that humans perform that ANNs simply can't - generalizing to novel viewpoints in vision, for example. (Or if you want to go whole hog, natural language understanding.)

AFAICT The same is not true of insects. To dissuade me, you'd have to specify an insect behaviour that ANNs are fundamentally unequipped to perform. I'm not an entomologist so I'm totally open to the possibility that there is one. I also imagine there is significant neural diversity within the insect kingdom - presumably some bugs are smarter than others, and maybe some of the bigger-brained ones can do stuff that would necessitate an explanation that invokes consciousness. But you have to tell me what it is.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#212

Post by cgriswald » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #208

cgriswald wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying if a doorbell is made of atoms, we've made atoms a useless term. A doorbell either has consciousness or it does not have consciousness. (I might agree that if a doorbell has agency we might be making agency a useless term.) Consciousness as we understand it is defined in an ineffable way. We have individual experiences which we call 'consciousness' which roughly coincides with our subjective experi…

"atoms" isn't a useless term, but describing real-world observable objects as "atomic" is useless. In the same way we can talk about a spectrum and study of consciousness, but if the definition is to sense and respond to stimulus then the yes/no of "conscious" is always yes and therefore useless. I'm not sure what you mean by "prove it". A doorbell very clearly responds to a stimulus. ...if you mean the definition of…

You're conflating the definition with the correlated properties.

> if the definition is to sense and respond to stimulus then the yes/no of "conscious" is always yes and therefore useless.

This isn't the definition. This is a hypothetical cause. The cause might be anything; we don't know (yet?) what objective indicators there might be of subjective experience.

Consider seeing. In order for a thing (be it robot, animal, or human) to see, it must possess some type of sensory organ and a method to interpret the signals from that organ. So, to test for the ability to see, we can look for those things. We can be pretty sure that fish can see, because they possess eyes, brains, and respond to visual stimuli. That doesn't mean the properties has_sight_organ and has_brain are seeing.

In the same way that physical matter is all made of atoms (loosely; let's not be pedantic), we might find that all things possess consciousness. We might not. But in neither case is the term made useless. Sure, if we find that to be the case, then describing a thing as conscious or not becomes similar to describing an object as atomic. But then we're just moving goalposts.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#213

Post by lone_haxx0r » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 8:14 PM UTC

monort wrote: post #62

root_axis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it? A computer has no nervous system or self preservation biology that would make use of pain signals.

We are talking about pain, not a pain signal. Decrementing register can be a pain signal, but it can't produce feeling of pain (qualia). If humans can be simulated on a Turing machine, we can't feel that definition of pain too.

If we make a robot sufficiently similar to us, it would indeed feel pain (qualia). The real question is: Where is the complexity/similarity treshold?

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#214

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 9:14 PM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #137

cdolan wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised abortion has not been mentioned yet. Regardless of your stance on the topic, I wonder if this type of information (insects feel pain) could mean a developing child can also feel pain when it is aborted?

I'm simply not seeing how you made a connection between insects and aborted babies

[deleted]

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#215

Post by hackinthebochs » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #203

hackinthebochs wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Withdraw reflex also doesn't preclude learning. We see learning in all sorts of reflex arcs that get over-triggered and thus become downregulated. So the fact that the fly "learned" to be more sensitive to noxious stimuli does not rule out a reflex mechanism at play in its behavior.

Down regulated withdrawal reflex is the opposite of avoidance behavior. It’s effectively increasing an organism’s tolerance for putting it’s limb in fire. So, no what you’re describing does not mean learning to avoid stimulus. Learned avoidance behavior really requires a negative perception not just a neutral reflexive one.

I'm not sure why you're giving my comments such an obtuse reading. My example was to show how learning can happen in a reflex network, thus undermining your claim that learning indicates conscious experience.

The issue here is regarding the capabilities of a reflex network. I have established that learning can happen in such networks, as shown by common examples. You have not established that learning avoidance behaviors requires conscious networks.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#216

Post by hackinthebochs » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 9:33 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #204

hackinthebochs wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>by following the same behaviours that they would if they felt pain This is taking the claim I made too far. My point was that reacting to noxious stimuli does not a priori require the conscious experience of pain (which includes a suffering component). When it comes to analyzing sets of possible behaviors, that provides more evidence with which to decide between nociception and pain. I do think that most "animals" (…

>> My point was that reacting to noxious stimuli does not a priori require the conscious experience of pain (which includes a suffering component). Like Retric says, this leaves open the question of how noxious stimuli (thanks) lead to avoidance behaviours, if they are not unpleasant. My explanation is that the unpleasant sensation of pain makes the animal try and avoid the stimulus that causes the pain. What is the…

>this leaves open the question of how noxious stimuli (thanks) lead to avoidance behaviours, if they are not unpleasant.

It triggers networks that are designed to cause avoidance behaviors, for example the withdraw reflex[1]. Reflex networks do not require any conscious experience of the stimuli that triggers the specific action.

>why most animals but not insects? What is different about insects?

The size of the set of possible unique behaviors, complexity of brain, existence of higher order brain processes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_reflex

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#217

Post by dang » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

jacobush wrote: post #90

I didn't realise the impact until I remembered how common circumcision is in the US.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20432819.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#218

Post by dang » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

Bob995 wrote: post #105

Can dead insects feel pain? Also, who the f is flagging my every post and downwoting me to the point of shadow ban?

Users are flagging your comments because they haven't been substantive. Would you mind reading the site guidelines and fixing that?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#219

Post by Retric » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #215

Retric wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Down regulated withdrawal reflex is the opposite of avoidance behavior. It’s effectively increasing an organism’s tolerance for putting it’s limb in fire. So, no what you’re describing does not mean learning to avoid stimulus. Learned avoidance behavior really requires a negative perception not just a neutral reflexive one.

I'm not sure why you're giving my comments such an obtuse reading. My example was to show how learning can happen in a reflex network, thus undermining your claim that learning indicates conscious experience. The issue here is regarding the capabilities of a reflex network. I have established that learning can happen in such networks, as shown by common examples. You have not established that learning avoidance behav…

Because you don’t seem to understand the difference between learning avoidance and reducing sensitivity. (If you notice my first comment I specifically referred to learned avoidance not simply any kind of learning.)

Reflexive behavior is a predefined response to a stimulus over some predefined limit and thus on it’s own it’s reactive not predictive. In a purely neutral context there is no reason to increase the response based on the external stimulus.

Avoidance requires the ability to predict before a negative response occurs. Without the negative association there is no impetus to increase avoidance.

Aka, don’t put your hand in fire is inherently different than how quickly you remove your hand from fire.

PS: Reducing sensitivity with exposure is a rather different thing as it helps deal with edge cases. At a meta level, strong constant uncontrollable spasms is extremely unlikely to be an ideal response to a given stimulus.

Re: Insects feel persistent pain after injury, evidence suggests

#220

Post by hackinthebochs » Sun, Jul 14, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #219

hackinthebochs wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're giving my comments such an obtuse reading. My example was to show how learning can happen in a reflex network, thus undermining your claim that learning indicates conscious experience. The issue here is regarding the capabilities of a reflex network. I have established that learning can happen in such networks, as shown by common examples. You have not established that learning avoidance behav…

Because you don’t seem to understand the difference between learning avoidance and reducing sensitivity. (If you notice my first comment I specifically referred to learned avoidance not simply any kind of learning.) Reflexive behavior is a predefined response to a stimulus over some predefined limit and thus on it’s own it’s reactive not predictive. In a purely neutral context there is no reason to increase the respo…

I see the distinction you're going for, but ultimately it doesn't work.

>Avoidance requires the ability to predict before a negative response occurs

The article discusses the mechanism by which the "avoidance behavior" they describe is learned. It mentions that the downregulation of inhibitory neurons causes heightened sensitivity to stimuli. But downregulation of inhibitory neurons is the same species of process involved in desensitizaion of reflex arcs, i.e. make a certain set of neurons require a higher threshold for activation. Your assumption that "avoidance behavior" requires something beyond reflex activation doesn't follow.

And lets be clear, all learning is predictive. A reflex being upregulated or downregulated is a mechanism of prediction by which an organism's response is modified to more closely correlate with the environment. What you seem to be going for when you use prediction is an organism's mental model of the environment that is detailed enough to associate certain states with negative valence, and behavior planning to avoid entering into such states. In organisms with that level of processing, I agree that an experience of pain is required. But it doesn't follow that any behavior that can be described as predictive requires such mental models.