Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

mrdbourke.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 148 posts

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

#81

Post by SeanAnderson »

jasmer wrote: post #72
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…

That's some heavy handed humanization of ants attitudes there. "in in an effort to prove they're working hard to the other ants" "all ants to be comfortable allowing some of their ant peers to work less" Or maybe on some instinctive level they realize they just literally cannot work in the crowd and wait until they can and that's that.

It was intentional! :) After all, the title of the post we're commenting on is contrasting human behavior to bees.

No, I don't believe ants are actually acting with intelligent, social behavior in an attempt to win over their fellow ants. They're just little statistical robots searching for optimality.

That said, there have been times that I've been frustrated when I feel I am working harder than my peers and, in those moments, it's been easy for me to feel justified by looking at what's optimal for me rather than extrapolating to what's optimal for the greater good. I thought adding a little anthropomorphism to my descriptors would be a gentle way of helping others reflect on similar situations.

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

#83

Post by aeturnum »

codetrotter wrote: post #59
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.…

> Some bees being predisposed through biology or chemical messaging to ignore information is fundamentally different from an individual deciding to ignore messaging Why can’t it be that people who are prone to ignore messaging also do so because of biological predisposition? Brain chemistry!

It could be - but that's not what the author was invoking! They were talking about how having a subset of the population that doesn't follow the trends is essential for keeping up the health of the hive. It's wrong to say that "any bee could ignore the directions" - part of the system that only a small subset does. So if you want to transpose this into advice that you suggest to individuals (as the author did) - you should also suggest some notion of how an individual might detect when too many people are "following directions." Otherwise you're just advocating for following your personal inclinations - which may also be a fine thing to do - but was not what the author was saying bees do.

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

#84

Post by aeturnum »

giantg2 wrote: post #65
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.

Sure - but the part I quoted is urging people to consider that they themselves might choose not to "follow the swarm" as it were. I think you could use this example to argue that a lot of the diversity in how human brains work (autism, adhd, oppositional defiant disorder like you said) should be viewed as a strength and a source of alternative and interesting viewpoints that are grounded in biological difference we should honor and recognize. But - people in those situations don't chose how their brains work.

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

#85

Post by smugma »

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?

Except that someone did question it and look up Wikipedia, a trusted source of sorts. And this thread about questioning sources is near the top of the whole thread.

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

#86

Post by jldugger »

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?

I was gonna for citations too, fwiw, but found this comment and upvoted it instead.

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

#87

Post by kens »

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:…

I think your skepticism is warranted; the "rogue bees" seem to be an inspirational essay thing, rather than a scientific thing. The closest I could find was a study that the waggle dance usually had errors of 10–15°. These errors are pretty big when you're foraging, but these errors turned out to be beneficial for finding new food sources. It may be that these "sloppy bees" turned into rogue bees in the storytelling. Coincidentally, the earliest reference to rogue bees that I could find is 2014, same year as the Nature paper. The rogue bees seem to be popularized by Rory Sutherland's 2020 book "Alchemy" and TED talks.

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep04175.pdf?proof=t

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

#88

Post by eep_social »

kurthr wrote: post #34
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.…

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…

Worker bees die when they sting mammals because mammal skin retains the barbed stinger tip. However, workers are not inherently one-shot stingers in all cases.

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

#89

Post by sclarisse »

neilk wrote: post #77
Abimelex wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, let's give people a break. It sounded plausible. We've all heard of the story of the waggle dance, often in grade school, in a simplified form. TIL 3-2-1 Contact lied to me. That said, I don't believe that computer programmers are, as a group, significantly more skeptical than other professions. Like most people we muddle along with generalizations, lore, and myth.

> TIL 3-2-1 Contact lied to me.

Unthinkable! Why, next thing I suppose you’ll impugn Mathnet for fibbing.

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

#90

Post by wzdd »

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:…

Also, consider a hive in which all foraging bees exclusively followed waggle dances. Pretty obviously they would eventually all end up going to the same place and the hive would run out of food. Therefore it makes sense that at least some bees should ignore the waggle dance at least some of the time. But it doesn't have to be the same bees each time, and the article doesn't present any evidence that it is.
Post reply on HN