[extropy-chat] RE: Re: Intelligent Designand IrriducibleComplexity
Hara Ra
harara at sbcglobal.net
Mon Oct 4 17:40:16 UTC 2004
I have read "The Ants" by EO Wilson and it is clear that an ant colony
adapts to its environment only in modifying the timing of the various roles
an individual ant selects ("Assigned to" is overly telelogical and ant
colonies run on scent.) and the ratios of the castes which except for the
sexual forms are determined by how the larvae are fed by the workers. The
worker's stages are, once in adult form:
1. Nursery - feeding and cleaning larvae, moving pupae
2. Queen feeding and egg removal (usually mixed in with Nursery)
3. General nest - building passages, tending fungi if leaf cutters,
weaving leaves if weaver ants, removing trash,
cutting up incoming prey
4. Foraging.
Foraging is last because it is very hazardous, in some species the daily
attrit rate runs 30% for foragers. Experiments have done, and no evidence
of a group "mind" or the like has ever been found. Interactions such as
trails or similar to fish schools or bird flocks 'emergent behaviour' are
present.
>True, but you may want to consider ants for a moment.
Um, the number is 200 billion for a human brain. Each cell connects with
abount 1000 others. I don't know about ant brains, but I suspect the
connectivity is much less, perhaps 100. The inter-ant bandwidth is very
slow, 100 bits/sec at best. The inter-ant signal delay is tens of
milliseconds. The ants moving about prevents the detailed specialization
which is found in all parts of the brain. (An indirect argument against any
homogenous form of 'computronium')
Ant colonies with multiple queens wiht populations running 6 million do exist.
>Another thought on ants: An ant brain has about 250,000 brain cells. A human
>brain has about 10,000 million. So a colony of 40,000 ants has a collective
>brain roughly the size of a human. (Can't remember the source)
>
>From: "Eliezer Yudkowsky" <sentience at pobox.com>
==================================
= Hara Ra (aka Gregory Yob) =
= harara at sbcglobal.net =
= Alcor North Cryomanagement =
= Alcor Advisor to Board =
= 831 429 8637 =
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