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Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#31

Post by moralestapia »

ddingus wrote: post #30
moralestapia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some resources you'd like to share around this? Would love to read about it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/universe-conscious-ncna... I have seen this idea pop up a few times and find it intriguing. I have read much better, but struggle to find links right now. That said, this backgrounder / brief type piece should point you to the rabbit hole. To me, in the most general sense, it's similar to the idea of the universe being cyclic, rather than having some definitive beginning and or en…

Thank you, I always had some thoughts in this direction, but never read about it somewhere else (never put time into it).

I definitely think there's a lot more beyond what we are able to sense or even grasp (if that's the appropriate word); in a similar fashion to these sort of Flatland examples, about how 2D beings are unable to grasp our 3D world, perhaps only slices of it at a time ...

What if consciousness is (or lives in) some sort of different dimension that we only get a glimpse of. What if, on that higher dimension, consciousness behaves like matter, has a definite structure, etc...

Ammazing stuff to think about.

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#32

Post by hungryforcodes »

snidane wrote: post #20
jcims wrote: post #7

With a few minutes of googling the only reference i can find says that Tardigrades have approximately 200 neurons in their brains [1] and their dry weight is on the order of one microgram [2]. They also have a lower count of synaptic connections (from the same paper): >Thus, miniaturisation of the tardigrade nervous system is achieved largely by reducing cell numbers, neuropil branches and the number of synaptic conn…

200 neurons, yet still more AI complete than any concocted deep learning attempt with way more of so called "neurons".

A 'neuron' might be a kind of the biological equivalent to the CPU or microcontroller.

So saying that the Tardigrade has 200 CPUs sounds pretty good, actually.

If you build a drone for example with 200 CPUs, you'd expect it to be pretty capable I'd imagine, including some form of AI or machine learning.

And it seems to me neurons by default are machine learning "CPU"s...

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#33

Post by ddingus »

moralestapia wrote: post #31
ddingus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/universe-conscious-ncna... I have seen this idea pop up a few times and find it intriguing. I have read much better, but struggle to find links right now. That said, this backgrounder / brief type piece should point you to the rabbit hole. To me, in the most general sense, it's similar to the idea of the universe being cyclic, rather than having some definitive beginning and or en…

Thank you, I always had some thoughts in this direction, but never read about it somewhere else (never put time into it). I definitely think there's a lot more beyond what we are able to sense or even grasp (if that's the appropriate word); in a similar fashion to these sort of Flatland examples, about how 2D beings are unable to grasp our 3D world, perhaps only slices of it at a time ... What if consciousness is (or…

I agree! Perhaps one of us stumbles on a new branch of understanding one day.

Have fun.

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#34

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

jcims wrote: post #7

With a few minutes of googling the only reference i can find says that Tardigrades have approximately 200 neurons in their brains [1] and their dry weight is on the order of one microgram [2]. They also have a lower count of synaptic connections (from the same paper): >Thus, miniaturisation of the tardigrade nervous system is achieved largely by reducing cell numbers, neuropil branches and the number of synaptic conn…

The amoeba has zero neurons, and yet it can hunt prey and can reproduce sexually.

Our understanding of intelligence is so laughably primitive that it is "not even wrong".

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#35

Post by malloryerik »

moralestapia wrote: post #29
ddingus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they are a case for this idea of the universe itself being conscious and beings tap into that via neurological mechanisms we do not understand well. It may be a base level of complexity / capability is needed to tap into the "field of consciousness", which could explain bees, these things, and other seemingly too small living systems doing more than their apparent weight class would indicate is possible.

Do you have some resources you'd like to share around this? Would love to read about it.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/

And for a fun magazine read: https://www.noemamag.com/the-conscious-universe/

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#36

Post by mburee »

hungryforcodes wrote: post #32
snidane wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

200 neurons, yet still more AI complete than any concocted deep learning attempt with way more of so called "neurons".

A 'neuron' might be a kind of the biological equivalent to the CPU or microcontroller. So saying that the Tardigrade has 200 CPUs sounds pretty good, actually. If you build a drone for example with 200 CPUs, you'd expect it to be pretty capable I'd imagine, including some form of AI or machine learning. And it seems to me neurons by default are machine learning "CPU"s...

Really depends, doesn't it? 200x something like a attiny13 is still kind of useless in that regard

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#37

Post by hungryforcodes »

mburee wrote: post #36
hungryforcodes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 'neuron' might be a kind of the biological equivalent to the CPU or microcontroller. So saying that the Tardigrade has 200 CPUs sounds pretty good, actually. If you build a drone for example with 200 CPUs, you'd expect it to be pretty capable I'd imagine, including some form of AI or machine learning. And it seems to me neurons by default are machine learning "CPU"s...

Really depends, doesn't it? 200x something like a attiny13 is still kind of useless in that regard

I've never tried to build a Tardigrade with 200 attiny's, so I'm not quite sure....ESP32s with 8MB of PSRAM on the other hand....would it be enough?

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#38

Post by jakear »

tiahura wrote: post #4

“The team was surprised to note that the water bears did not have distinct gaits for each speed, like horses as they transition from a walk to a gallop. Rather, their locomotion closely resembled that of insects and arthropods, scurrying along faster and faster with no change to the basic step pattern.” So they expected them to walk like horses and not insects? That seems odd.

Probably not as easy to secure additional funding/headlines when the tagline is “tardigrades move in the simplest conceivable manner, much like other simple creatures”.

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#39

Post by davidkuennen »

"A more recent preprint published this month on the physics arXiv claims—controversially, it must be said—that frozen tardigrades can achieve a state of "temporary quantum entanglement" when incorporated into a superconducting qubit (quantum computing's basic unit of information), and then be revived again."

It's amazing what those little creatures are going through since we discovered them.

Re: Tardigrades walk like insects 500k times their size

#40

Post by Emma_Goldman »

Razengan wrote: post #22
jcims wrote: post #7

With a few minutes of googling the only reference i can find says that Tardigrades have approximately 200 neurons in their brains [1] and their dry weight is on the order of one microgram [2]. They also have a lower count of synaptic connections (from the same paper): >Thus, miniaturisation of the tardigrade nervous system is achieved largely by reducing cell numbers, neuropil branches and the number of synaptic conn…

What says our consciousness is not just a long form electro-chemical reaction of deeply nested feedback loops programmed into millions of base pairs?

The basis for believing this is the inference that because the physical world insofar as we have knowledge of it obeys physicalist principles, so must the human mind.

But we can't really claim to know based on our investigation of the mind itself. If we entertain theories of consciousness like dualism, monism or emergentism, it seems unlikely that we have the categories of understanding and analysis to decisively confirm or deny them.

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