RE: The primary question of our time: Is Mind Brain?
September 5, 2011 at 5:32 pm
(This post was last modified: September 5, 2011 at 5:55 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
The simplest way to explain "Hive Mind" is to use ants. Birds and fish flock or school, which is a migratory behavior, not nearly the same things as a "Hive Mind". Bees are more elaborate because of their directional dance. So I think I'll go with the ants for now, unless we have reason to delve any further.
Ants communicate by pheromones. They exhibit organized behavior, but how? There is no ant that flies overhead directing the others as to where to go or what to do. The "Queen" is an egg laying machine, but she is usually very much removed from the rest of the colony and in no way in control of the hive. Ants appear to have a set of standard operating procedures based on colony size and composition. Lets say that an ant is out and about in the world, how does he decide what to do? Well, he does whatever he was doing to begin with, for starters. He will encounter other ants also engaging in some activity or another, and these ants will make their activity known by those pheromones we mentioned. Now, for purposes of explanation, lets say that an ant expects to find 4 of 10 ants gathering food. He communicates with 3 ants who are gathering food. All is well. The 4th, is protecting the colony. Our intrepid ant will now stop what he is doing and become a forager. Every ant is doing this all at once. Interacting, abandoning and resuming activities. If there were only a few ants this wouldn't work, it would be a confused mess. This is why colonies must maintain a certain population or die. It takes all of them communicating with each other (and frequently) to produce organized behavior. There are exceptions to this, such as when a chemical trail is so strong that the ant simply abandons what he is doing and everyone hops aboard (cake on the ground). From these simple interactions ants produce some interesting results. From hive construction and layout to the act of "burying the dead" (admittedly in the midden heap with other trash, but that's more than most) This is what we observe. It obviously works for the ants. Ants are a wonderful example of how simple rules can create a self sustaining system, such as is the case in Conway's Game of Life. Now, is this suitable, or is there some mechanism at work we aren't seeing? A sort of "Soul" or "Communal Consciousness" of the ant colony? Maybe, but until we find evidence of that we'll go with what we see, and what works for the ants. You can test this yourself btw, ants are very easy to keep. This is a very very paired down explanation of how ants organize, I'd be willing to talk agricultural pests with you until the cows come home, but I think this works well enough for now.
You keep bringing up the quote, to which I've already responded. If you're going to continue asking questions and demanding answers while giving none in return, this will be a frustrating conversation for both sides. Is it surprising to you that I would disagree with a "giant in the field"? What authority does his status as a scientist confer to the statement that he made? I stand by my original response.
Regarding "It conferred an advantage". Firstly, do you have a different theory as to why some traits are present, or survive, and others do not? Lets call any given sequence of genes a trait for now.
Lets make three basic categories of traits
Confer Advantage
Confer Nothing
Confer Disadvantage
Now, any given trait will fall into one of these (sometimes more, evolution appears to be very specific to situation). Over a long period of time, and life has been going on for awhile, we would expect those traits that are successful to confer an advantage. In fact, we can observe the physical expression of these traits in many cases and see that they actually do. We can look at traits which are not successful, such as the that which produced either the teeth, or general size of Smilodon. This was once an advantage, we see that in the fossil record, but at some point it became a disadvantage. That species is now in the dustbin. So, when someone speculates that a trait must confer an advantage, they are basing that off of the prevalence of the trait, and observations of what happens when traits fail to confer any benefit (or indeed succeed in producing a disadvantage), extinction. There are many that are as of yet not understood and appear to be neutral. Hopefully you'll forgive me for couching this in common language, I could link you to a much more technical description of evolution by (insert theory here) if you like.
Now, there's a lot there in your post, and I originally wrote up a little rush job to respond. But why? You could do these subjects justice by creating a thread for them individually. It might also be useful to note that stumping an atheist or a materialist won't provide any evidence at all for your position. You must do that yourself.
(I was just perusing your link to the western buddhist review............
)
Ants communicate by pheromones. They exhibit organized behavior, but how? There is no ant that flies overhead directing the others as to where to go or what to do. The "Queen" is an egg laying machine, but she is usually very much removed from the rest of the colony and in no way in control of the hive. Ants appear to have a set of standard operating procedures based on colony size and composition. Lets say that an ant is out and about in the world, how does he decide what to do? Well, he does whatever he was doing to begin with, for starters. He will encounter other ants also engaging in some activity or another, and these ants will make their activity known by those pheromones we mentioned. Now, for purposes of explanation, lets say that an ant expects to find 4 of 10 ants gathering food. He communicates with 3 ants who are gathering food. All is well. The 4th, is protecting the colony. Our intrepid ant will now stop what he is doing and become a forager. Every ant is doing this all at once. Interacting, abandoning and resuming activities. If there were only a few ants this wouldn't work, it would be a confused mess. This is why colonies must maintain a certain population or die. It takes all of them communicating with each other (and frequently) to produce organized behavior. There are exceptions to this, such as when a chemical trail is so strong that the ant simply abandons what he is doing and everyone hops aboard (cake on the ground). From these simple interactions ants produce some interesting results. From hive construction and layout to the act of "burying the dead" (admittedly in the midden heap with other trash, but that's more than most) This is what we observe. It obviously works for the ants. Ants are a wonderful example of how simple rules can create a self sustaining system, such as is the case in Conway's Game of Life. Now, is this suitable, or is there some mechanism at work we aren't seeing? A sort of "Soul" or "Communal Consciousness" of the ant colony? Maybe, but until we find evidence of that we'll go with what we see, and what works for the ants. You can test this yourself btw, ants are very easy to keep. This is a very very paired down explanation of how ants organize, I'd be willing to talk agricultural pests with you until the cows come home, but I think this works well enough for now.
You keep bringing up the quote, to which I've already responded. If you're going to continue asking questions and demanding answers while giving none in return, this will be a frustrating conversation for both sides. Is it surprising to you that I would disagree with a "giant in the field"? What authority does his status as a scientist confer to the statement that he made? I stand by my original response.
Regarding "It conferred an advantage". Firstly, do you have a different theory as to why some traits are present, or survive, and others do not? Lets call any given sequence of genes a trait for now.
Lets make three basic categories of traits
Confer Advantage
Confer Nothing
Confer Disadvantage
Now, any given trait will fall into one of these (sometimes more, evolution appears to be very specific to situation). Over a long period of time, and life has been going on for awhile, we would expect those traits that are successful to confer an advantage. In fact, we can observe the physical expression of these traits in many cases and see that they actually do. We can look at traits which are not successful, such as the that which produced either the teeth, or general size of Smilodon. This was once an advantage, we see that in the fossil record, but at some point it became a disadvantage. That species is now in the dustbin. So, when someone speculates that a trait must confer an advantage, they are basing that off of the prevalence of the trait, and observations of what happens when traits fail to confer any benefit (or indeed succeed in producing a disadvantage), extinction. There are many that are as of yet not understood and appear to be neutral. Hopefully you'll forgive me for couching this in common language, I could link you to a much more technical description of evolution by (insert theory here) if you like.
Now, there's a lot there in your post, and I originally wrote up a little rush job to respond. But why? You could do these subjects justice by creating a thread for them individually. It might also be useful to note that stumping an atheist or a materialist won't provide any evidence at all for your position. You must do that yourself.
(I was just perusing your link to the western buddhist review............
)
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