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Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

neuroquantology.com

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Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#21

Post by [deleted] »

swannodette wrote: post #20
yummyfajitas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm a (former) mathematical physicist. My main source for that particular paragraph is a math bio textbook I used in grad school (standard yellow book), combined with attendance at a huge number of math bio seminars [1]. However, if you want a source for the general statement that a lot of systems biology works out to ODEs, I'll point you to some general models which form the basis for most work in mathematical n…

Sure. But the point here is that your simply presenting another theory , possibly as far-fetched as the one presented in the original article.

[deleted]

Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#22

Post by yummyfajitas »

swannodette wrote: post #20
yummyfajitas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm a (former) mathematical physicist. My main source for that particular paragraph is a math bio textbook I used in grad school (standard yellow book), combined with attendance at a huge number of math bio seminars [1]. However, if you want a source for the general statement that a lot of systems biology works out to ODEs, I'll point you to some general models which form the basis for most work in mathematical n…

Sure. But the point here is that your simply presenting another theory , possibly as far-fetched as the one presented in the original article.

Of course it's a theory. That's why I described as the "the occams razor explanation" rather than "a proven fact".

Facts:

BNN's are stochastic ODE solvers. Most biological behaviors like the honeybee dance are guided by a BNN interacting with bee hormones (also described by ODEs), etc. (Generally established fact.)

A particularly simple and elegant ODE based on flag manifolds describes the honeybee dance to a good approximation (Shipman's contribution).

My theory:

The particular BNN (which is not yet mapped, AFAIK) guiding the honeybee dance reduces to a solver of Shipman's ODE, or some approximation thereof.

Whether that is "as far-fetched" as bees detecting symmetries of wavefunctions, I leave that up to the reader.

Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#23

Post by jerf »

swannodette wrote: post #16
jerf wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An "analog computer" is what a neuron is , or, if you prefer, an analog computing element. And yes, neural nets can do some varieties of them, see http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2... for one example (consult Google for many more, '"ordinary differential equation" neuron' just goes on and on) and while that may be computational neurons, real neurons are not less powerful. This is not such a…

Whether artificial neural nets can approximate ODE's and whether neural networks in nature actually do this is not clear. Biology citations please. EDIT: To the reply. None of those papers state that evolution causes naturally occurring neural networks to become ODE solvers.

You're badly missing the point. A neuron is not an ODE solver in the sense that you feed it some sort of mathematical specification of the ODE and it sits there and performs algebraic manipulations until there is some solution that pops out in the form of IEEE 754 floating point numbers. Neurons aren't Mathematica. A set of neurons is the ODE solver. If there is a set of ODEs that describes some neural system in terms of the solution to the ODE, then the neural system profoundly is an ODE solver.

You're now asking for a demonstration of something that can't exist because having already demonstrated a reasonable isomorphism between some ODEs and some neural nets, there isn't another layer of some sort of "REALLY REAL isomorphism", that is only a product of human cognition and the failures it has thereof. (I mean that in general, not specific to one person, humans in general are surprisingly good at creating distinctions where there shouldn't be.) A system is what it does. If the activities of some set of neurons can be accurately described as a solution to an ODE, then it is an ODE solver. If the activities of a set of neurons can be accurately modeled by a clock function, then the neurons are a clock corresponding to that function. If the activities of a set of neurons can be accurately described as an edge-detection algorithm, then the neurons are edge detectors. (Both of my other examples here are real too, by the way, I didn't just make them up for didactic purposes.)

Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#25

Post by swannodette »

jerf wrote: post #23
swannodette wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether artificial neural nets can approximate ODE's and whether neural networks in nature actually do this is not clear. Biology citations please. EDIT: To the reply. None of those papers state that evolution causes naturally occurring neural networks to become ODE solvers.

You're badly missing the point. A neuron is not an ODE solver in the sense that you feed it some sort of mathematical specification of the ODE and it sits there and performs algebraic manipulations until there is some solution that pops out in the form of IEEE 754 floating point numbers. Neurons aren't Mathematica. A set of neurons is the ODE solver. If there is a set of ODEs that describes some neural system in term…

I didn't miss that point, and I didn't say neuron. What set of neurons in a bee's brain is the ODE solver? Can we provide our own inputs and experimentally show that that specific set of neurons actually occurring in nature do what is described?

Again, all we have is a theory with no more evidence than the original article. Models that match our observations in the world are our means to reason about the world. But they are not the world, this why our models constantly to change or have to be refined.

In fact the cited papers below are quite clear about that.

This paper is illuminating on the usefulness and limitations of the H-H model: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12392930

Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#26

Post by yummyfajitas »

swannodette wrote: post #25
jerf wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're badly missing the point. A neuron is not an ODE solver in the sense that you feed it some sort of mathematical specification of the ODE and it sits there and performs algebraic manipulations until there is some solution that pops out in the form of IEEE 754 floating point numbers. Neurons aren't Mathematica. A set of neurons is the ODE solver. If there is a set of ODEs that describes some neural system in term…

I didn't miss that point, and I didn't say neuron. What set of neurons in a bee's brain is the ODE solver? Can we provide our own inputs and experimentally show that that specific set of neurons actually occurring in nature do what is described? Again, all we have is a theory with no more evidence than the original article. Models that match our observations in the world are our means to reason about the world. But t…

What set of neurons in a bee's brain is the ODE solver?

I didn't claim to have evidence for my theory. All I claimed is that it was simpler and more plausible than Shipman's.

Look, if you flick a switch on the wall, and a light goes on, the simplest explanation is that some configuration of electrical wires inside the wall caused the production of light from an electrically powered light bulb. You can postulate all sorts of other exotic mechanisms, e.g. levers snapping the glass in a chemical light. But the "occams razor explanation" (which is all I attempted to provide) is electricity in wires.

Same thing with bee behavior - you should postulate some configuration of neurons with behavior modeled by an ODE solver long before you invoke quantum field theory.

Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#27

Post by swannodette »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #8

I'll repost my comment from the last version of this article, since I don't think any new developments have invalidated it. This connection to QFT is almost surely nonsense. The flag manifold in question comes from matrix groups; basically, consider some subset of 3x3 matrices which satisfy a certain property. I.e., certain types of transformations of a 3d space. While the space of 3x3 matrices has 3x3=9 dimensions,…

Consider the complexity of bee brains, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...

The scientist is quite clear that the QFT connection is largely speculative. However, you've hazarded making the same kind of "nonsense" association that you are critiquing regardless of how much more "plausible" or "simpler" you think it is.

Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#28

Post by boneheadmed »

Having a background in biology with an interest in physics and extra-dimensionality, I found this article very intriguing. I immediately thought of the mathematicians who developed the theory of prions (the likely causative agent of Creutzfeldt_Jakob Disease otherwise know as Mad Cow Disease) being a protein only transmissible infection even before it was though to be biologically plausible.

Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#29

Post by Sukotto »

This:

   I wasn't looking for a connection between bees and the
   flag manifold," she says. "I was just doing my research.
   The curves were nothing special in themselves, except
   that the dance patterns kept emerging.
reminds me of that great quote from Issac Asimov:

  The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
  the one that heralds new discoveries,
  is not 'Eureka!' I found it!
  but '... That's funny ...

Re: Honeybees are found to interact with Quantum fields

#30

Post by antipaganda »

swannodette wrote: post #20
yummyfajitas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm a (former) mathematical physicist. My main source for that particular paragraph is a math bio textbook I used in grad school (standard yellow book), combined with attendance at a huge number of math bio seminars [1]. However, if you want a source for the general statement that a lot of systems biology works out to ODEs, I'll point you to some general models which form the basis for most work in mathematical n…

Sure. But the point here is that your simply presenting another theory , possibly as far-fetched as the one presented in the original article.

ahahaha. The idea that bee brains contain a structure known to exist already in many other types of brain is equivalent to bees being able to use virtual particles for computation?

That's crazy talk, and you know it.

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