Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I mean, we're nerds and it's a good sci-fi book.
Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
141–150 of 197 posts
Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
#142previously: 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…
Do checkout Blindsight because is great, but the Portia reference is actually from the sequel Echopraxia (a good book, but inferior to Blindsight; I mostly remember it for the Portia reference).
Blindsight. One of the most interesting sci-fi stories I found impossible to get into and enjoy due to the author's dense and obtuse prose. I have a squirrel brain, so maybe it's just me.
I just wish one day someone will be able to turn it in a video game or a movie so I can understand how alien those aliens really are.
Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
#143One 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.
I wonder if anyone has calculated a range of body sizes which maximise intelligence and the ability to exploit resources of their planet.
Could a spider-sized human intelligence build a rocket to go to the moon? Would it have been easier to develop our civilization if we had been as large as a whale?
Maybe the universe is teeming with life a little too large or too small to build an ultra-technologic culture, or space travel. Imagine how long it would have taken us just to explore the Earth if we had been spider-sized, with spider legs and spider eyes.
Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
#144The misunderstood spider meme from 2013 comes to mind. Gosh, is that long ago: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/misunderstood-spider
Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
#145The misunderstood spider meme from 2013 comes to mind. Gosh, is that long ago: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/misunderstood-spider
Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's great, but if I ever see a jumping spider in my house then I will not hesitate to murder it in cold blood.
I think you are trying to come off as like, cute or funny or ironic or something. But I think this attitude is impoverished. Unless you live in a place that has spiders which are particularly dangerous to humans or pets, most spiders are just another little bug that has no interest in harming you. Over the last ten years I went from smashing every bug I saw in my house to taking a moment to carefully scoop it up with…
I'm with you, except for Pantry Moths. After having to throw away basically my whole food storage, every Pantry Moth is now killed on sight, no exception, no mercy. I think they gave me a mild form of PTSD (half joking).
But yeah, other bugs get carried away. And I also don't touch cobwebs. I'm actually really scared of spiders, but I know that they'll not hurt me and provide kind of a service, so I'm fine if they hang around.
Wasps are another exception. Immediate kill, no patience for these fuckers. Bees are fine, of course, way less aggressive. I know that wasps are useful as well, but I don't feel like handling them when they decide to visit my apartment.
Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's great, but if I ever see a jumping spider in my house then I will not hesitate to murder it in cold blood.
Exposure therapy can help squashing irrational fears, which is what I would suggest in the case of small creatures triggering a fear response.
I'm unbelievably scared of syringes and especially giving blood samples. To the point where I get hot and feel sick when people around me talk about it.
Don't even want to imagine what exposure therapy would be like for this :D
Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
#148Do yall ever think there could be more practical uses for research money than doing IQ tests on jumping spiders? These results could well be made up. After all, you'd hate to be the guy who spends years studying spiders just to conclude that they're about as stupid as everyone thinks they are.
> Do yall ever think there could be more practical uses for research money than doing IQ tests on jumping spiders?
Actually, I wish we allocated more money to biology and understanding the living rather than bullshit technology that literally is destroying the world (which is an observable fact).
> These results could well be made up.
Sure, but in terms of priority about "made up" results, I would first look at all those damn startups that literally make up results in order to get VC money.
Re: Researchers find signs of intelligence among jumping spiders
#149One 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.
"You have your orders, colonel. Launch the nukes."
"Sir. I will follow any legal order, but I will not countenance the destruction of the entire shrub."