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I’ll be that guy to point out that bees have a queen. But more seriously, imo, it is an error to conflate permanent organizational perches of top-down systems
by eternalban 7y ago
I’ll be that guy to point out that bees have a queen.
But more seriously, imo, it is an error to conflate permanent organizational perches of top-down systems (“leader”) with command and control networks and ‘critical nodes’.
In context of considering bottom-up, self-organizing system, it is important to note that order increases, and ‘organization’ is a neutral term. Critical nodes may (temporarily) emerge.
There is also nothing fundamental in the bottom-up organization process that inherently precludes the emergence of a hierarchy.
- carapace 7y ago> bees have a queen. The "queens" are gonad not brain.
- tlarkworthy 7y agoNot really she has a number of major decisions to make (kill her sisters, decide to leave hive, regulate bonding) https://www.perfectbee.com/learn-about-bees/the-life-of-bees/role-queen-bee https://www.perfectbee.com/learn-about-bees/the-life-of-bees...
- carapace 7y ago> The queen is very directed and regimented in everything she does, from her mating flight to her regular, consistent egg-laying prowess. Given her central role and even her name, it is understandable that the layman assumes the queen to be a decision-maker, of sorts. This is not the case at all. > She is the star of the hive, because of her egg-laying abilities, but is controlled by an overall puppet master – the collection of worker bees. Right at the start of the article my friend...
- tlarkworthy 7y agoI am arguing against her being a gonad. Read the rest of the article
- carapace 7y agoI read it. It doesn't seem to me to make your point.
- eternalban 7y agoI've always viewed the entire colony as the "thinker". It is true that the queen is not the "brain" but then neither is the individual worker bee. Considered as a cellular automata, the queen 'cell' is a super-cell. The queen regulates flow of pheromones, and communication is communication, whether it uses electric signals or gradient diffusion of chemicals. That 'cell' is sitting on top of a hierarchy, and whether she is just a glorified "gland" as you would have it or not, little worker bees will NOT disregard her input.
- carapace 7y agoFWIW it's not like we disregard the, uh, input of our gonads, eh? Anyway, I basically agree with you, except that I doubt the queen is doing much more, uh, thinking than any particular worker. I don't think she's more of a person (independent mind) than a worker.
- eternalban 7y agoIt's very simple: there is a hierarchy in a hive. And yes, on occasion I surprise myself, to say nothing of my demanding gonad, and veto hormonal urges. The topic at hand, my original remark above, is that self-organization does not speak to the necessity of leaders, and hierarchical organizational order.
- specialist 7y agoI think the boids analogy works better if the "small green pieces of paper" are the agents. Their tendency to cluster may then explain winner takes all accumulation. Survival strategies in tension with predation from taxes, fraud, rent seeking. -- “This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy