Doesn't Hofstadter have a rap about ant colony consciousness?
An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
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Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
#22> 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…
I was going to say you can also look at a country like this, with roads as veins, military as white blood cells, scientists/universities for brains, etc.
But my theory falls apart with the reproduction system. We don't really reproduce other 'countries'. While with ant colonies, a single entity produces all the "cells", and also all the "embryos" to start their own ant colonies.
In that sense an ant colony uses asexual reproduction if looked at as a whole.
Thanks for the new insights! :)
Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
#23I 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.
This notion of the 'self' is "standard" in Dharmic traditions, and has been for over two millennia.
Then again it remains very fashionable to steal ancient ideas from East and market them as "brand new" genius inventions of Westerners. The amount of uncited plagiarism that occurs in this manner is quite simply astonishing.
Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
#24Reminds me of the "Tradition is smarter than you are" article that was posted here a few days ago. http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2018/08/tradition-is-smar...
Great book, highly recommended. Another review of it:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/06/04/book-review-the-secret...
Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
#25For a few years now I am wondering if ant colonies do something like portfolio optimizing, as in how many ants to send to which food location, depending on risk and reward. I'd guess they do. But I haven't figured out a way to prove/show that yet.
Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
#26I 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.
It's not an accident: Hofstadter and the translators put a lot of work into preserving the wordplay across translations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach#Tra...
Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
#27> 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…
I think many worker ants live two years or more, a queen can live 15-30 years, depending on species and luck.
The difference in the contact between ants and between neurons is that it's not the same ants that contact each other.
A larger pool of workers also means the colony is less likely to suffer catastrophic setbacks. For example when they send a good portion of the pool to a promising food source and then those get washed away, fall prey or whatever.
Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
#28Earlier 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 got over his way of story telling eventually. ;-)
But yes, he does great work...
Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
#29The 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 would make more sense if not for the fact that corporations routinely put profit over morals.
Re: An ant colony has memories its individual members don’t have (2019)
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