[ExI] People often think their chatbot is alive

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of Dave S via extropy-chat
Subject: Re: [ExI] People often think their chatbot is alive

 

On Fri, Jul 15, 2022 at 12:09 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 

Dave do you ever ponder how the hell they do that?  It’s a mind blower.

 

Sure. That's why I read _Honeybee Democracy_, which explains what we know about how hives work. Here's the blurb from Amazon:

 

Honeybees make decisions collectively--and democratically…

An impressive exploration of animal behavior, Honeybee Democracy shows that decision-making groups, whether honeybee or human, can be smarter than even the smartest individuals in them.

 

https://smile.amazon.com/Honeybee-Democracy-Thomas-D-Seeley/dp/0691147213

A swarm of bees will do things nearly in unison.  The queen doesn’t actually lead them as far as I know.

 

The queen's sole purpose is to lay eggs. She's not a leader or decider.

 

-Dave

 

 

 

Ja Dave from watching them, I concluded likewise: there is no central planning and the queen is just another bee except for having operational reproductive organs.  She isn’t smarter than the others and doesn’t give commands or requests.  Even calling her the queen bee invites misleading anthropomorphism, as I see in the Amazon blurb.  It isn’t clear what it meant, but the language describing the process as open debate also leads to trying to map bee-havior onto how humans do things.  Analogies break down from calling that bee process open debate, for it causes the reader to imagine bees arguing with each other, which they really don’t.

 

I agree there is a form of collective fact finding, as can be seen in a bee swarm in the wind.  Note that the mass will settle down and rest while a few scouts fly out and look around.  Then they come back and somehow report to the others if they find a suitable place to set up hivekeeping. 

 

A more interesting observation is how human societies have a kind of hive-mind.  In the original post I mentioned the Inuit tour guide who spoke on the legend of Chief Raven Eagle, who traveled down to California in 1870, returning to Alaska in 1878 with a most astonishing report.  A line that caught my attention: he noted that the Inuit community taught all the children the same things and they all did pretty much the same things: hunting, fishing, shelter building, tool making, etc.  The Crazy White Man’s society was filled with people who knew almost nothing, but they all knew something very well.

 

spike

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