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+--- Thread: Bees Might be Able to Understand the Concept of Zero (/thread-4081.html)
Bees Might be Able to Understand the Concept of Zero - Yazata - Aug 23, 2017
If they can conceive of zero being a number, they will be the first invertebrates able to do so. (I would be surprised if relatively-brilliant octopuses couldn't do it, but they apparently haven't been tested. I'm convinced that octupuses are the smartest invertebrates, comparable to many mammals.)
An Australian researcher created motivators for the bees (a sweet sucrose solution that they like and a nasty-tasting quinine solution that they detest).
Then the researcher put positive and negative feeders along with groups of symbols, always associating sugar with fewer symbols and the nasty stuff with more. (Apparently bees operate visually more than by smell, as the effectiveness of bright flowers in attracting them illustrates.
The bees eventually learned the setup and went for the smaller number of symbols more than 80% of the time. That's already interesting, suggesting that they can cognize 'greater' and 'less'.
The new thing here arose from putting the feeder full of nasty stuff next to one symbol and the sugar feeder without any symbols. The bees still went for the sugar. So they were apparently aware that no symbols was less than one symbol. It's even difficult for human babies to get their minds around treating zero as a number.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2142884-bees-are-first-insects-shown-to-understand-the-concept-of-z
RE: Bees Might be Able to Understand the Concept of Zero - C C - Aug 24, 2017
Superorganisms on Earth have already wasted millions of years as a head start. So I still won't be betting on either spacefaring or telecommunicative ET being an insect hive-mind.
RE: Bees Might be Able to Understand the Concept of Zero - RainbowUnicorn - Aug 25, 2017
(Aug 24, 2017 11:06 PM)C C Wrote: Superorganisms on Earth have already wasted millions of years as a head start. So I still won't be betting on either spacefaring or telecommunicative ET being an insect hive-mind.
http://bigthink.com/think-tank/big-idea-technology-grows-exponentially
Quote:The doubling of computer processing speed every 18 months, known as Moore's Law, is just one manifestation of the greater trend that all technological change occurs at an exponential rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
Quote:Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_mind
Quote:Hive mindCollective consciousness Vs Swarm intelligence
A hive mind or group mind may refer to a number of uses or concepts, ranging from positive to neutral and pejorative. Examples include:
- Collective consciousness or collective intelligence, concepts in sociology and philosophy
can humans percieve the difference without attaching the limitation of current norms of social conception ?