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What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

mrdbourke.com

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Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

#61

Post by rhn_mk1 »

mcny wrote: post #52
kurthr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important point. I also see it when people talk about drones vs workers vs Queen in a hive. All of the other bees really are effectively arms of the Queen. The Queen lives 1-3years before another queen takes over, while the rest of the bees live 7 weeks. She mates once, but her drones are just a bunch of flying sexual organs than can mate with multiple outside queens several seasons each year. She can stin…

> Some fraction may not go through the normal cycle, but it can't be many. Maybe it is because I just saw an animated video on cancer (I’ll find the link when I get home) on YouTube but then so are we thinking of a bee hive as one individual? Like in the video, they talk about how cancer cells refuse to die when something bad happens like they are supposed to… So this is going to sound cheesy but now I have to wonder…

The Earth ecosystem is made of living beings. Why would they be compared to cancer cells? It sounds more reasonable to me to compare them to worker bees.

Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

#62

Post by breck »

Abimelex wrote: post #51
neilk wrote: post #8

I couldn't find any other reference to this rogue bee thing (except other inspirational essays). Wikipedia's entry on the waggle dance seems to suggest that bees often don't make use of the information in the dance. It's not some rare maverick bees per se. It's more that the information may not be important given the season or climate or presence of competition for the food. So it can be adaptive to ignore it. https:…

It's interesting, that even in a community like HN, almost nobody seems to ask for the scientific reference here. Might have something to do with confirmation bias? Or is there such a thing like sounds-interesting-AF-bias?

On CorporateNews the version of the article going around talks about how 98% of rogue bees don't find a better flower patch and die starving and alone. ;)

Your point is a great one. Most information in our world is of extremely low quality. That's what happens when attention is incentivized, not teaching.

Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

#63

Post by jddj »

mcny wrote: post #52
kurthr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an important point. I also see it when people talk about drones vs workers vs Queen in a hive. All of the other bees really are effectively arms of the Queen. The Queen lives 1-3years before another queen takes over, while the rest of the bees live 7 weeks. She mates once, but her drones are just a bunch of flying sexual organs than can mate with multiple outside queens several seasons each year. She can stin…

> Some fraction may not go through the normal cycle, but it can't be many. Maybe it is because I just saw an animated video on cancer (I’ll find the link when I get home) on YouTube but then so are we thinking of a bee hive as one individual? Like in the video, they talk about how cancer cells refuse to die when something bad happens like they are supposed to… So this is going to sound cheesy but now I have to wonder…

Certain insect colonies typically make good "individual" analogues due to certain roles being infertile and so the genetic lineage actually working in units that are larger than a single bee.

If you think about it, the way we define an individual is a bit blurry anyway - think of those plants and creatures which produce more "individuals" by letting pieces break off and float down the river to take root elsewhere, or reproduce asexually to produce clones. Aphids, for example, on the same plant are commonly clones.

So you can cling tight to the individual as being the thing that is delineated by a mixing of genes in sexual reproduction and have things still make some sense. But if you let that slide and zoom out then indeed life as we know it is just one branching, breaking, mutating organism.

Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

#65

Post by giantg2 »

aeturnum wrote: post #17

I think there's a trap people fall into where they want to talk about stochastic processes that are facilitated by group dynamics using individualist language: > Knowing this, it might be worth ignoring the waggle dance of those around you every so often. Some bees being predisposed through biology or chemical messaging to ignore information is fundamentally different from an individual deciding to ignore messaging.…

"definitely a different thing!"

Is it in all cases though? People with stuff like oppositional defiant disorder might be predisposed to act that way through biology.

Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

#67

Post by bee_rider »

zentropia wrote: post #46
SeanAnderson wrote: post #43

The whole "opt out of expected group-think behavior" reminds me of a paper regarding the tunneling and movement behavior of ants: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/science/ants-worker-idlen... The gist of it is that 30% of studied ants do 70% of the work in digging tunnels. Other ants come in, see that it is too crowded, and don't try to force their way in in an effort to prove they're working hard to the other ants…

Worker ants are all sister and they don't reproduce, so no problem letting others do the hard work.

I think the “letting others do the hard work” makes it easy to interpret your comment as somehow very negative.

The reproductive success of an ant hill is determined at the hill level, so the ants have no evolutionary incentive for selfishness at all.

Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

#68

Post by hollander »

tikkun wrote: post #47

I love finding useful strategies and tactics from nature, and applying them in my life and work. Another example: Redundancy. We have two lungs, two nostrils, etc. Anything that I'm stressed about breaking or not having enough of, if it's practical to get a second one, I do, that way the stress is gone. Not always practical, but great when it is. A helpful way to remember it: 3 is 2, 2 is 1, and 1 is none.

You have no heart, sir!

Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

#69

Post by hollander »

amelius wrote: post #39

> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw

Which doesn't apply here. The rogue bee does not adapt the world to himself, just goes out exploring without a plan.

Re: What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)

#70

Post by partiallypro »

Taywee wrote: post #20
samstave wrote: post #12

Should call it the "Cramer Model" (tl;dr - one of the most touted folks in US Finance is a guy named Jim Cramer - he has been wrong on a vast majority of his financial recommendations to the point that he is a litmus on finance whereby if you do the opposite of any of his recommendation, you win)

Interestingly close to a Seinfeld episode plot for a guy named "Cramer".

It was George, not Kramer.
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