Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 159 posts

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#11

Post by rland »

anonytrary wrote: post #2

> Ants use the rate at which they meet and smell other ants, or the chemicals deposited by other ants, to decide what to do next. A neuron uses the rate at which it is stimulated by other neurons to decide whether to fire. In both cases, memory arises from changes in how ants or neurons connect and stimulate each other. Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with e…

>Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be said about networks of neurons.

The same can be said of human organizations, too. Organizations have distinct behaviors ("company culture" comes to mind) which can be totally out of the control of individuals, if the org is big/complex enough.

God I love ants so much. Such a philosophically interesting creature.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#12

Post by arnoooooo »

I recommend looking up Donald Hoffman's theory of conscious agents.

He proposes that all sentient beings are networks of conscious agents, the simplest conscious agent being binary (it has a world, and can only act in two ways).

Any composition of conscious agents is itself a conscious agent.

Interestingly, "the world" of each conscious agent might be only other conscious agents.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#13

Post by lopmotr »

The safe existence of corporations suggests to me that the popular fear of AGI taking over and destroying humans is unrealistic. Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#14

Post by ragebol »

zzo38computer wrote: post #5

I think something similar has been suggested in the book called Godel,Escher,Bach.

Was thinking the same thing, that is the character 'Aunt Hillary', which is an ant hill. In the Dutch translation (which I read years ago) she's called 'Myra Hoop'. Funny how those translation still make sense, same as in the Harry Potter universe where the names even have to be anagrams.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#15

Post by hansbo »

anonytrary wrote: post #2

> Ants use the rate at which they meet and smell other ants, or the chemicals deposited by other ants, to decide what to do next. A neuron uses the rate at which it is stimulated by other neurons to decide whether to fire. In both cases, memory arises from changes in how ants or neurons connect and stimulate each other. Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with e…

> Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be said about networks of neurons. Interesting to think of an ant colony as the sum of oscillations of signals.

Indeed. I've long thought that an ant colony should be seen as a single individual, rather than a group. One part which can procreate, like the reproductive system. Another which can fight off invaders, like white blood cells, or perhaps muscles. The anthill, in turn, is like a body; constructed by the cells and neurons, and protecting the system as a whole.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#16

Post by iRobbery »

jakear wrote: post #7
anonytrary wrote: post #2

> Ants use the rate at which they meet and smell other ants, or the chemicals deposited by other ants, to decide what to do next. A neuron uses the rate at which it is stimulated by other neurons to decide whether to fire. In both cases, memory arises from changes in how ants or neurons connect and stimulate each other. Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with e…

Even more surprising for me is that the queen can live 30+ years.

to my surprise i still watch this youtube channel after seeing a video by accident

https://www.youtube.com/user/AntsCanada

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#18

Post by pure-awesome »

hansbo wrote: post #15
anonytrary wrote: post #2

> Ants use the rate at which they meet and smell other ants, or the chemicals deposited by other ants, to decide what to do next. A neuron uses the rate at which it is stimulated by other neurons to decide whether to fire. In both cases, memory arises from changes in how ants or neurons connect and stimulate each other. Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with e…

> Main takeaway, very interesting analogy. Ant colonies are great examples of complex systems with emergent large-scale behavior. Indeed the same could be said about networks of neurons. Interesting to think of an ant colony as the sum of oscillations of signals. Indeed. I've long thought that an ant colony should be seen as a single individual, rather than a group. One part which can procreate, like the reproductive…

This point is made in the book "The Soul of the White Ant" by Eugène Marais, and is perhaps the primary thesis of the book.

It is a fascinating book, and I can recommend reading it, though having been published in 1925, it is possible some of the information is out-of-date.

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-White-Ant-Complete-Unabridged/dp...

"White Ant" actually refers to termites, though the same principles apply. The book was originally published in Afrikaans. According to Wikipedia:

> [The book] was plagiarised by Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck, who published La Vie des Termites (translated into English as The Life of Termites or The Life of White Ants), an entomological book,[3] in what has been called "a classic example of academic plagiarism" by University of London's professor of biology, David Bignell.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Marais#Theft_of_hi...

Following reference [4] led to this page which I unfortunately don't have the time to read in its entirety right now, but from a skim seems to have some interesting further information on termites:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070915005006/http://www.biolog...

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#19

Post by salawat »

lopmotr wrote: post #13

The safe existence of corporations suggests to me that the popular fear of AGI taking over and destroying humans is unrealistic. Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences. They do become a dangerous threat to humans if left unchecked but we've developed systems to keep them under control.

>Corporations are like giant powerful AGI machines with the single purpose of making money for their shareholders no matter the consequences.

That is patently wrong. A corporation exists to distribute risk, and acommplish a task, ideally in a way that creates value for backers, but it is not a given that all profit creating avenues of behavior are desired or worth the egregious cost in negative externalities, or even that a corporation must generate profit.

And unfortunately those control mechanisms you mention seem to be failing with alarming regularity due to regulatory capture.

Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)

#20

Post by chrisco255 »

iRobbery wrote: post #16
jakear wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more surprising for me is that the queen can live 30+ years.

to my surprise i still watch this youtube channel after seeing a video by accident https://www.youtube.com/user/AntsCanada

I can't believe how popular that channel is. 3.2 million subscribers...for ant videos!
Post reply on HN