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Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

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Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#51

Post by stouset »

_1tem wrote: post #43

I don't understand why any "why" question in evolutionary biology is ever satisfied with a "survival of the fittest" truism. Any evolutionary explanation you give me is also falsified by the existence of another species with a different/opposite trait. Whatever explanation you give for a bee's barbed stinger is falsified by the wasp's non-barbed one. Also doesn't answer other questions, such as why didn't bees evolve…

> Why do species survive? Because they did, and because the objective of life is to survive. But why?

In evolutionary biology, that definitionally is the ultimate answer. One species survived, another didn’t. Sometimes that’s because the adaptation helped them outcompete, sometimes it’s because they were already competitive and this preexisting disadvantage from an earlier round didn’t hurt enough to matter. We can try to find intuitive explanations past that which feel satisfying but it’s always going to be a rough approximation.

Let’s use chess as an analogy. Allow an engine to analyze a position and tell us the best path forward. But why did it choose that line? We can (and do) come up with explanations that help us fit a move into our understanding of the game: moving this pawn allows that knight to occupy a better spot where it can exert its influence on the rest of the board, or whatever. But that’s merely a convenient simplification for our gut understanding. It’s not really the actual answer. The ultimate “why” is “because it produces the best possible eventual outcome no matter the response”.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#52

Post by ec109685 »

lysace wrote: post #35

A random bee sting in class was the straw that broke my back in a mid 90s multivariable calculus lecture at a Swedish university where I was studying CS/EE. It lead to me dropping out. Went to a local internet/web software startup instead and a whole new world opened up. Yes, I had been behind. I'm doing OK now :)

The gate keeping of all that calculus for a CS degree is silly. Wasn’t the strongest at math, so grinned and bared but don’t really have a grasp of it anymore, and it would have been a shame to not have graduated with a CS degree because of it.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#53

Post by HPsquared »

RangerScience wrote: post #47
_1tem wrote: post #43

I don't understand why any "why" question in evolutionary biology is ever satisfied with a "survival of the fittest" truism. Any evolutionary explanation you give me is also falsified by the existence of another species with a different/opposite trait. Whatever explanation you give for a bee's barbed stinger is falsified by the wasp's non-barbed one. Also doesn't answer other questions, such as why didn't bees evolve…

Survival of the fittest is the flawed quote, usually used by those with supremacist conceptual frameworks (that there can be an objective “better”, etc). This shows up a lot in fiction, where the quote is used as justification for cruelty, atrocities, and the like. IMHO, the much better quote is: > It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most…

I'm very tickled by the lack of attention to detail here. The article does present that quote, yes, but it's preceded by the sentence:

"None of the fake soundbites is more insidious than the first:"

i.e. it's a fake quote

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#54

Post by [deleted] »

lysace wrote: post #35

A random bee sting in class was the straw that broke my back in a mid 90s multivariable calculus lecture at a Swedish university where I was studying CS/EE. It lead to me dropping out. Went to a local internet/web software startup instead and a whole new world opened up. Yes, I had been behind. I'm doing OK now :)

[deleted]

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#55

Post by calvinmorrison »

ec109685 wrote: post #52
lysace wrote: post #35

A random bee sting in class was the straw that broke my back in a mid 90s multivariable calculus lecture at a Swedish university where I was studying CS/EE. It lead to me dropping out. Went to a local internet/web software startup instead and a whole new world opened up. Yes, I had been behind. I'm doing OK now :)

The gate keeping of all that calculus for a CS degree is silly. Wasn’t the strongest at math, so grinned and bared but don’t really have a grasp of it anymore, and it would have been a shame to not have graduated with a CS degree because of it.

I dropped CS for calc 2

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#56

Post by alt227 »

Salgat wrote: post #26
pfdietz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s because ultimately the species survives, not the individuals. No, this is wrong. "Survival of the species" isn't a basis for selection. It will not lead to a gene becoming more prevalent in a population of interbreeding individuals. Bees sacrifice themselves because they share genes with the queen; genes that are involved in this sacrifice increase their relative abundance in the bee gene pool by increasing th…

That's not entirely true. For example, being gay is hypothesized to give an evolutionary advantage because you can provide care for your sibling's children, who share their dna with you. Same goes for early menopause. That can extend to small villages where individuals may give up their own resources for a greater survival chance of their kin within the collective.

Pre 1800, the average life expectancy was aged between 20-40 [1]. I think the menopause is something that was experienced by extremely few people until after then.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#57

Post by jstanley »

sedatk wrote: post #46
_1tem wrote: post #43

I don't understand why any "why" question in evolutionary biology is ever satisfied with a "survival of the fittest" truism. Any evolutionary explanation you give me is also falsified by the existence of another species with a different/opposite trait. Whatever explanation you give for a bee's barbed stinger is falsified by the wasp's non-barbed one. Also doesn't answer other questions, such as why didn't bees evolve…

Wasps and bees have different ecological constraints with different risks involved. There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Evolution doesn’t have any goals or agenda. That’s why whales still have vestigial hip bones despite…

I think this is a perfect example of what your parent comment is talking about, being:

> unprovable, unfalsifiable, and have the same circular logic as bad religion.

You said:

> There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive.

Sure, there's no contradiction, but this is totally circular reasoning that could be used to prove anything.

The connection graph between "They survive because they're the fittest" and "They must be the fittest because they survive" is just a circle disconnected from all other knowledge.

Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality.[0]

But with this circular understanding of natural selection, you could be given a description of absolutely any conceivable configuration of organism and your response would be the same: "they must be the fittest, because they survive, because only the fittest survive" and you haven't gained any understanding at all.

There will never be a contradiction, because the argument is disconnected from any larger system of reasoning that could plausibly contradict it.

"Hey, there is a random monkey in the Amazon that has 3 hoops on its head and a big hole through its abdomen, isn't that weird? Why are they like that?"

"Ah, the hoops and the holes are required for Fitness. Only the Fittest survive, you know. So if they have 3 hoops on their heads and big holes in their abdomens, that is what makes them Fittest. Amen."

"Why aren't other monkeys like that then?"

"Other monkeys don't need hoops and holes for Fitness. Otherwise they too would have hoops and holes. :)"

A better understanding of natural selection would be confused about the hoops and the holes, and that confusion would correlate with either the random monkey species actually not existing, or the model being wrong.

As regards the bees: there probably is a reason that dying when stinging confers Fitness. But we should find out what that reason is, rather than state "Fitness because Survival" and feel like we've answered the question.

[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5JDkW4MYXit2CquLs/your-stren...

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#58

Post by hightrix »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #55
ec109685 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gate keeping of all that calculus for a CS degree is silly. Wasn’t the strongest at math, so grinned and bared but don’t really have a grasp of it anymore, and it would have been a shame to not have graduated with a CS degree because of it.

I dropped CS for calc 2

Same. And now I’m 15 years into my software engineering career and the only regret I have is that I didn’t spend more time with linear algebra.

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#59

Post by WalterBright »

derektank wrote: post #27
WalterBright wrote: post #17

Why do humans live long enough to be grandparents? It's because grandparents take care of the grandkids while the parents work.

I find the grandparents hypothesis compelling at first glance but it sort of begs the question, why don't we live indefinitely in the first place? There are obvious answers, we make tradeoffs to improve performance early in life at the expense of long term function, but it doesn't seem like the reproductive benefits of caring for a grandchild that only shares a 1/4 of your DNA necessarily tips the scales of selection…

why don't we live indefinitely in the first place?

1. need to make room for the young, ecosystems are not unlimited

2. we accumulate parasites and diseases as we live. Dying kills them off, too

3. much slower evolution, implying losing ground compared with quickly evolving competitors

Re: Why do bees die when they sting you? (2021)

#60

Post by [deleted] »

jahewson wrote: post #39
asingnh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are homosexuality and early menopause genetic conditions?

Everything that makes us human is constrained by the possibilities offered by our genes. Epigenetics, development, and environment are downstream of that. It is our genes that allow for sexual reproduction in the first place and why we’re attracted to other humans and not, say, trees.

[deleted]
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