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Bumble bees play, according to new research

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Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#41

Post by steve_adams_86 »

ilkke wrote: post #32
scoofy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating consciousness with intelligence. The two are not the same. One is the experience of qualia, and the ability to hold preferences. The other is the behaviors associated with making predictions and intentionally manipulating the world to achieve tasks. We have a hyper-intelligent chess engines that cannot be argued to be conscious. We also have small mammalian minds, like Koalas, that are dumb as a bri…

I am not entirely prepared to accept that koalas have small mammalian minds

I realized recently there’s no evidence that they don’t, but a wealth of evidence that they do.

I watch animals very closely now and I see more all the time that they are just like me in most ways. I suppose I used to watch them as a person who eats them, and my comfort with doing so depended on not seeing them as conscious creatures like me. Now that I don’t eat them, it’s as though there are more similarities than there are differences.

I suspect if animals could speak, we’d realize they’re remarkably similar to us. This probably sounds ridiculous to many people, and would have to me once too.

A key part of this is not that I’m elevating animals’ conscience to that of humans so much as lowering humans’. We tend to think we’re exceptional, but I think our exception is probably just intelligence. The rest, I don’t know, I suspect we’re all very much alike.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#43

Post by standardUser »

csallen wrote: post #13

> …insects… are a million miles from the mindless, unfeeling creatures they are traditionally believed to be. Is it truly a common belief that insects are mindless and unfeeling? I would imagine the vast majority of people, when polled, would guess that insects have some form of consciousness and feeling. Of course, that doesn't stop people from squashing or swatting them when they get in the way. In fact, it hasn't…

I honestly view insects as largely robotic, performing a limited set of specific tasks over and over without requiring any learning. Some of those tasks are immensely complex! But they do them with the determination of an automaton and with, presumably, fixed programming dictating the behaviors (since they require no teaching whatsoever for hunting or nesting or breeding or child-rearing, unlike other more 'advanced' animals).

So no, I never considered insects to be "feeling" creatures. But research like this can certainly change my mind!

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#44

Post by brnaftr361 »

scoofy wrote: post #26
brnaftr361 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the framework of the evolutionary dogma as I know it, this behavior wouldn't make sense. It comes at the expense of energy and time, yielding no benefit, and thus is a net detriment and should therefore be bred out of the species with the one exception being some sort of higher process like emotional gratification. At least I can't imagine any sort of logical pattern where this improve…

I mean, I'm no expert, but I think this position is more than a bit rigid. We know that evolutionary development probabilistically yields maximized efficiency, but we also know there is plenty of room for drift and it can be a bit random. E.g. anti-fragile behaviors likely yield the best outcomes, even if they are less efficient, because the ultimate evolutionary failure is extinction (not death). Highly regular, eff…

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I can recall several instances having arguments in my head when someone totally oversteps the probabilistic nature of evolution - those people were my professors.

As to antifragile behaviors, I don't know that I agree completely. For instance there's a pretty considerable difference in strategies we observe with r (antifragile) and K (fragile) selection. But also hyper-specific species, for instance the famed Darwin's Hawkmoth: a moth previously unknown but predicted to exist by Darwin who posited that the pitcher flower with a narrow neck necessarily had some animal evolved to correspond to its adaptive strategies. That to me reads as the precise opposite of antifragility, an exclusive dependence would be fragile, and yet monophagy (very fragile)/oligophagy (fragile) is fairly common, and omnivorism (antifragile) is not. Though I suppose you could point to, in some instance, antifragile outcomes over the long run the sum risk for some of these organisms I intuit, outweigh the benefits of antifragile strategies.

There are some interesting and definitively antifragile, some of the niche partitioning strategies are really quite ingenious.

I would indicate the most antifragile creature is the human (literally real-time evolution), our wont towards ecosystem engineering may actually be our downfall. I've actually thought for some while a golden mean exists in antifragility, and too much investment in that direction leads to insensitivity to critical structural weaknesses through a couple of different pathways.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#45

Post by puzzledobserver »

abfan1127 wrote: post #6
he11ow wrote: post #5

Paying it forward: An article by David Graeber I first saw here, where he argues the utilitarian evolutionary view (every action witnessed in animals is there to somehow increase changes of survival) is a relic of the industrial revolution. Instead, he says, playing is a key feature of life. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-hav...

what says play doesn't increase the chance of survival?

I might be misunderstanding Graeber, but I thought his point was that by viewing play through the calculus of evolution and survival probabilities, scientists have not paid as much attention to the fact that play is fun.

How did animals come to play? Because it allows them to explore their environment and increases their evolutionary fitness. Why do animals continue to play? Because they enjoy it.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#46

Post by Retric »

scoofy wrote: post #22
throwaway3838g wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could imagine that human’s would appear unconscious to a hyper intelligent alien species. Perhaps it’s all relative.

You're conflating consciousness with intelligence. The two are not the same. One is the experience of qualia, and the ability to hold preferences. The other is the behaviors associated with making predictions and intentionally manipulating the world to achieve tasks. We have a hyper-intelligent chess engines that cannot be argued to be conscious. We also have small mammalian minds, like Koalas, that are dumb as a bri…

Some level of intelligence is a prerequisite for experience of qualia.

A rock for example is below that threshold. The question then becomes what exactly is the minim level of perception we are willing to accept. Individual cells respond to their environment indirectly, that’s enough to qualify IMO but I accept people would disagree.

Which just illiterates people don’t generally use philosophical definitions directly. What they mean by qualia isn’t subjective conscious experience, it’s something else which they can’t actually describe that just so happens to conform exactly to their preconceived notions.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#47

Post by sodapopcan »

cad1 wrote: post #3

There used to be a bumble bee that, I was convinced, would come around to play with my dog, a Labrador. It was entertaining to watch. When the dog was outside the bumble bee would hover near his face to get his attention. Once he noticed the bee he would growl, jump, and bite at the bee but not in an aggressive manor. It was in his playful tone, the same as when I played with him and his toys. Every time he lunged at…

At an old apartment there were some bumble bees that lived in my neighbour's fence (or at least that's what it seemed like) and every time I'd sit outside, they' come out and fly around all chill. Nothing aggressive ever, they'd just fly in front of me and sometimes I watched them and otherwise I'd just sit and work. I don't know what my point is anymore... bumble bees!

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#48

Post by stevenwoo »

comfypotato wrote: post #17
nescioquid wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The researches adduce from those five findings that ball-rolling holds hedonic value for bumble bees. One of those findings was that ball-rolling is "intrinsically rewarding" to a bee. Isn't this what you call "begging the question"? It's hedonic because it is intrinsically rewarding. The article ends with the quote: "We are producing ever-increasing amounts of evidence backing up the need to do all we can to protect…

Begging the question is when you conclude one of your assumptions. “That it’s intrinsically rewarding” is a finding not an assumption. The study was definitely influenced by the popular notion of saving the bees, but that’s not a problem! I’d rather read about bees having fun than any other insect! I hope others feel the same and a friendlier sentiment towards bees (because of the study, a little bit) helps the whole…

A professor from the same university (don't see his name listed for this study) wrote a book about bees https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9780691236247/the-mi..., here's an article about it. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/16/bees-are...

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#49

Post by scoofy »

Retric wrote: post #46
scoofy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating consciousness with intelligence. The two are not the same. One is the experience of qualia, and the ability to hold preferences. The other is the behaviors associated with making predictions and intentionally manipulating the world to achieve tasks. We have a hyper-intelligent chess engines that cannot be argued to be conscious. We also have small mammalian minds, like Koalas, that are dumb as a bri…

Some level of intelligence is a prerequisite for experience of qualia. A rock for example is below that threshold. The question then becomes what exactly is the minim level of perception we are willing to accept. Individual cells respond to their environment indirectly, that’s enough to qualify IMO but I accept people would disagree. Which just illiterates people don’t generally use philosophical definitions directly…

The ideas is if you had some, theoretical, mechanical computer built of stone (something trivially producible), if we believe that any artificial intelligences can be sentient, then it would be trivial to extend this to create a sentient, but essentially just a complex stone object.

Re: Bumble bees play, according to new research

#50

Post by silisili »

throwanem wrote: post #37
silisili wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure it wasn't a male carpenter bee? That's pretty standard(annoying) behavior for them.

They have no stingers and, if you hold still, so will they. Fascinating to watch, although one did once try to crawl into my ear.

Yep. I hate all flying insects as they make me tense up like some fight or flight response... probably from being stung by hornets a billion times as a kid.

That said, I learned to tolerate the carpenter bees on my deck because they'd bonk all the wasps away.

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