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Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

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Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#121

Post by elevaet »

Apocryphon wrote: post #109
elevaet wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're conflating your own phobia up with something more fundamental. I've certainly never found them even a little bit frightening. I've definitely felt like "someone's home" but it's probably the big eyes bias.

I would not characterize it as phobia, so much as I find them disgusting for some reason, dirty and unclean.

It's just your conditioning. If you look at it from another angle you can see that they are actually harmless and clean. And even playful amd cute if you goof around with them a bit.

Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#122

Post by Apocryphon »

elevaet wrote: post #121
Apocryphon wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not characterize it as phobia, so much as I find them disgusting for some reason, dirty and unclean.

It's just your conditioning. If you look at it from another angle you can see that they are actually harmless and clean. And even playful amd cute if you goof around with them a bit.

Maybe it's about being grossed out by cobwebs.

Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#123

Post by rukuu001 »

shoo wrote: post #71

previously: science fiction author Peter Watts' 2009 post musing about spider intelligence vs Turing machines: https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem... > Here's the thumbnail sketch: we have here a spider who eats other spiders, who changes her foraging strategy on the fly, who resorts to trial and error techniques to lure prey into range. She will brave a full frontal assault against prey carr…

Also see Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky for more smart-spider science fiction

Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#124

Post by huppeldepup »

tsimionescu wrote: post #120
dinkleberg wrote: post #27

One of the craziest things to me when looking at a jumping spider is the unbelievable size and mass difference between us. An 80kg person is ~6,000,000x heavier than the average jumping spider. Whereas a blue whale is only like 2,000-3,000x heavier than that 80kg person (if I'm doing my math right). They are obviously tiny, but I wouldn't have imagined what titans we must be from their perspective.

A thought I've sometimes had is that if we had evolved to be as tiny as something like these spiders, but still at our current level of intelligence and society, chimps or elephants or whales would still be almost insurmountable threats to us even with today's level of technology. It'd take entire nations years of effort to build a gun or rocket that could even hurt something that much bigger than us.

Which is why animals at that scale develop techniques of very rapid flight instead of brute fight. That and poison. We would probably pour the resources into genetic engineering and biological warfare.

Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#125

Post by zabzonk »

jongjong wrote: post #105

I was bitten by a jumping spider when I was a child. I used to play with them, never had a problem and then one day for no reason, I got bitten.

i do not believe it is possible to be bitten by a jumping spider (and most other spiders) - they are just too small.

Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#126

Post by zabzonk »

Apocryphon wrote: post #122
elevaet wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just your conditioning. If you look at it from another angle you can see that they are actually harmless and clean. And even playful amd cute if you goof around with them a bit.

Maybe it's about being grossed out by cobwebs.

which jumping spiders don't do

Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#127

Post by emsimot »

ianstormtaylor wrote: post #25

This is really interesting research. It’s fascinating to hear about how these experiments are designed in the first place. If anyone is interested in this topic, I highly, highly recommend the book “Ways of Being” by James Bridle. [0] It covers such a diverse range of ideas about intelligence, including neural network–style intelligences, that I think pretty much everyone would find something of interest. One of the…

Douglas Adams was right, the mice are experimenting on us

Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#128

Post by McBeige »

rukuu001 wrote: post #123
shoo wrote: post #71

previously: science fiction author Peter Watts' 2009 post musing about spider intelligence vs Turing machines: https://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem... > Here's the thumbnail sketch: we have here a spider who eats other spiders, who changes her foraging strategy on the fly, who resorts to trial and error techniques to lure prey into range. She will brave a full frontal assault against prey carr…

Also see Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky for more smart-spider science fiction

It keeps getting recommended on HN - should there be a book club?

Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders

#130

Post by paulmooreparks »

Jumping spiders are quite common here in Singapore, and occasionally one will wander across my monitor while I'm working. If I move the mouse cursor in a circle around it, it will turn and follow the cursor. Amazing little things. Generally, I have an irrational fear of spiders, but for some reason these little guys get a pass from me. They're fascinating.
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