I wonder what ant basic training is like…
Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
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Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#22The "ant algorithm" has been used for a long time to solve "shortest path" type problems, it's not really intelligence just evolved behavior. Granted there is probably a fuzzy line between the two at some point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization_algori...
I once mentioned using ACO to a former (mostly dumb, non-technical) manager and was nearly laughed out of the room. Her misapprehension was that to solve the particular problem at hand, which I think was some routing issue for support crews in a utility company, that we'd use actual ants!
Anthill Inside
Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once mentioned using ACO to a former (mostly dumb, non-technical) manager and was nearly laughed out of the room. Her misapprehension was that to solve the particular problem at hand, which I think was some routing issue for support crews in a utility company, that we'd use actual ants!
Anthill Inside
Out Of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.
Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#24If you find this cool, you might find some other ant behaviors cool! I tried compiling the best I could find here - https://www.reddit.com/r/anterestingasfuck I'm also trying to program a digital ant farm: https://ant.care/ (code: https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants/ ) I really want to figure out how to have ants form bridges/towers to navigate gaps. It's on the roadmap for long-term goals, but there's a lot more to…
> I'm also trying to program a digital ant farm: https://ant.care/ (code: https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants/ ) this is really cool!
Hey thanks! :) Just my lil pet project, heh.
Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#25So a brain is "just" a bunch of neurons communicating, and while no single neuron is intelligent, the whole is intelligent. And ants exhibit somewhat intelligent behaviour as a whole, while none of them are themselves something we consider intelligent.
I think this is super interesting and we can go completely off the rails taking this to its logical extremes. Like, the entire planet earth is an intelligence that arises from all interactions between all living things on the planet. In this sense, the speed of thought must be considered extremely slow, with even the most minute decision taking decades if not centuries.
There is a theory of consciences (using theory very lightly) that says that conscience is an inherent property of the universe (like gravity) and that any and all systems has conscience. Most of these are not recognizable by conscience humans (although we all seem to agree that we have a sub-conscience, so we are open to the concept of different types of consciences).
"Waking up: a guide to spirituality without religion" has a good chapter on this, where he starts with how people who've had their corpus callosum cut, and through experiments we can see that the two halves work independent, but the person is unaware of this. Their experience is still one conscience, even though their do things or know things that is not apparent to the conscience that outsiders generally would communicate to. He then goes on to argue how there can be multiple consciences that are unaware that they are "trapped" and not in complete control.
The author is not the only one to bring out this argument, but I thought it was well put in that book.
I really like this theory, while at the same time considering pretty far out.
Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#26So a brain is "just" a bunch of neurons communicating, and while no single neuron is intelligent, the whole is intelligent. And ants exhibit somewhat intelligent behaviour as a whole, while none of them are themselves something we consider intelligent. I think this is super interesting and we can go completely off the rails taking this to its logical extremes. Like, the entire planet earth is an intelligence that ari…
Conscious/consciousness.
I like the thought experiment though!
Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#27What is this—an army for ants?
Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#28So a brain is "just" a bunch of neurons communicating, and while no single neuron is intelligent, the whole is intelligent. And ants exhibit somewhat intelligent behaviour as a whole, while none of them are themselves something we consider intelligent. I think this is super interesting and we can go completely off the rails taking this to its logical extremes. Like, the entire planet earth is an intelligence that ari…
Conscious/consciousness. I like the thought experiment though!
Thanks for doing the dirty ;) Conscience conscious aha
Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#29The "ant algorithm" has been used for a long time to solve "shortest path" type problems, it's not really intelligence just evolved behavior. Granted there is probably a fuzzy line between the two at some point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_colony_optimization_algori...
What's this—an algorithm of ants?
Re: Army ants use collective intelligence to build bridges
#30So a brain is "just" a bunch of neurons communicating, and while no single neuron is intelligent, the whole is intelligent. And ants exhibit somewhat intelligent behaviour as a whole, while none of them are themselves something we consider intelligent. I think this is super interesting and we can go completely off the rails taking this to its logical extremes. Like, the entire planet earth is an intelligence that ari…
And going the other direction: I don't expect my individual brain cells to feel conscious, but if they do, they're probably not aware that they also together form consciousness.
The fact that the universe exists is pretty weird; that it is (at least partially) self-aware is either far more strange, or completely... natural. Perhaps even inevitable for sufficiently complex closed systems with stabilizing forces.
Thanks for the book recommendation.