3 ms·

Ants and the nature of their intelligence

19 points by comatose_kid 19y ago

LPTS 19y ago
This is the kind of idea that will lead to revolutionary thinking across multiple domains at some point. People in all sorts of fields should follow this kind of work very closely. Excellent, exciting stuff. This also offers a very fertile, multidisciplinary endeavor for developers, designers, and science folks. A good designer should build an ant environment such that the environment is strictly controlled, and precise alterations to the environment can be made, and either video + software or tagging to track the ants movements, environment, and functionality. A good computer scientist, with a physics, mathematical, or cryptographic bent, could work with this designer and ant researcher to use the ant environment video to generate algorithms to model and predict ant behavior, which could be evolved as the system generates more information about the ants. They could create several of these identical boxes to run at once. Eventually, the system will be quite good at predicting the behavior of ants. At this point, they could bring aboard a person with an interest in ant brains, to link the models evolved from the boxes with ant neurology. Then, they will have an answer to how intelligent behavior can arise from stupid ants, which will offer revolutionary insight into fields from AI to economics to psychology to neurology to education.
logjam 19y ago
Knuth just said something about this at his last "Musings" lecture.... http://thermalnoise.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/notes-from-valentines-day/ http://thermalnoise.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/notes-from-vale...
Alex3917 19y ago
I think it was E.O. Wilson who once said, "If you're not interested in ants then you're probably not a very interesting person."
mhartl 19y ago
A single neuron in the human brain can respond only to what the neurons connected to it are doing, but all of them together can be Immanuel Kant. That's a lamentable example, though oddly appropriate given the recent "more philosophy majors" story. As the Harvard Lampoon's A Harvard Education in a Book wryly observed, "Immanuel Kant is most famous for his great contribution to the study of ethics, which is: 'What if everyone did that?'" A better summary of the Categorical Imperative, I've never seen. I'll take the ants any day. At least they wouldn't turn me in if an axe murderer showed up looking for me.
dill_day 19y ago
Hofstadter hit on this almost 30 years ago I think... I thought his dialogs with the ant eater were really entertaining and thought provoking as well.

19 points by comatose_kid 19y ago

LPTS 19y ago

This is the kind of idea that will lead to revolutionary thinking across multiple domains at some point. People in all sorts of fields should follow this kind of work very closely. Excellent, exciting stuff. This also offers a very fertile, multidisciplinary endeavor for developers, designers, and science folks. A good designer should build an ant environment such that the environment is strictly controlled, and precise alterations to the environment can be made, and either video + software or tagging to track the ants movements, environment, and functionality. A good computer scientist, with a physics, mathematical, or cryptographic bent, could work with this designer and ant researcher to use the ant environment video to generate algorithms to model and predict ant behavior, which could be evolved as the system generates more information about the ants. They could create several of these identical boxes to run at once. Eventually, the system will be quite good at predicting the behavior of ants. At this point, they could bring aboard a person with an interest in ant brains, to link the models evolved from the boxes with ant neurology. Then, they will have an answer to how intelligent behavior can arise from stupid ants, which will offer revolutionary insight into fields from AI to economics to psychology to neurology to education.

logjam 19y ago

Knuth just said something about this at his last "Musings" lecture.... http://thermalnoise.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/notes-from-valentines-day/ http://thermalnoise.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/notes-from-vale...

Alex3917 19y ago

I think it was E.O. Wilson who once said, "If you're not interested in ants then you're probably not a very interesting person."

mhartl 19y ago

A single neuron in the human brain can respond only to what the neurons connected to it are doing, but all of them together can be Immanuel Kant. That's a lamentable example, though oddly appropriate given the recent "more philosophy majors" story. As the Harvard Lampoon's A Harvard Education in a Book wryly observed, "Immanuel Kant is most famous for his great contribution to the study of ethics, which is: 'What if everyone did that?'" A better summary of the Categorical Imperative, I've never seen. I'll take the ants any day. At least they wouldn't turn me in if an axe murderer showed up looking for me.

dill_day 19y ago

Hofstadter hit on this almost 30 years ago I think... I thought his dialogs with the ant eater were really entertaining and thought provoking as well.