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> Successful escapes by smarter fruit flies may have left scientists breeding from a less intelligent pool of lab subjects. This line of reasoning has really g

> Successful escapes by smarter fruit flies may have left scientists breeding from a less intelligent pool of lab subjects. This line of reasoning has really got a lot of geneticists concerned their findings may not be generalizable.

dalbasal 5y ago
This comment feels like a Douglas Adams joke going slightly over my head.
- jerf 5y ago
  No, it's just the biological analog of those stories you hear about AIs exploiting the rules of the simulation to crash it and score infinite points or whatever. Evolution/natural selection is at work all over the place, it can't be stopped, and it's even less able to be controlled and corralled than in the AI case. When you breed a long line of lab animals, you can't help but start imposing new selection pressures that didn't exist in the wild specimen, while having also removed other selection pressures, and the result will be that fairly quickly you don't quite have fully natural specimens. How much that matters depends on the nature of your experiments. Many cases it won't matter at all. Some experiments may entirely wrecked.
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    OK... I have to. jerf, are you a mouse?
    - jerf 5y ago
      I believe in this context the correct question is whether I'm a hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional creature whose rodent aspect represents merely a three-dimensional projection of my actual form, to which I can safely say, no comment.
      - dalbasal 5y ago
        just checkin. I hope the unintelligent fly problem isn't causing you too much nuisance.
acomjean 5y ago
I work in a fly lab (in the computer support part). I've seen a stray fly from time to time (they have traps set for them... they love vinegar.) but I'm not sure the ability to "escape" is some great intelligence test. The vials are tapped, the flies fall of the sides. insert new vial, flip and tap again..) There is a lot of sequencing so you'd think they'd be pretty sure what is going on. I think its hard to measure fly intelligence, though the brain has been mapped https://www.hhmi.org/news/unveiling-the-biggest-and-most-detailed-map-of-the-fly-brain-yet https://www.hhmi.org/news/unveiling-the-biggest-and-most-det.... You can buy all sort of fly stocks with genetics you might need for your research. https://bdsc.indiana.edu/information/fly-culture.html https://bdsc.indiana.edu/information/fly-culture.html

dalbasal 5y ago

This comment feels like a Douglas Adams joke going slightly over my head.

jerf 5y ago
No, it's just the biological analog of those stories you hear about AIs exploiting the rules of the simulation to crash it and score infinite points or whatever. Evolution/natural selection is at work all over the place, it can't be stopped, and it's even less able to be controlled and corralled than in the AI case. When you breed a long line of lab animals, you can't help but start imposing new selection pressures that didn't exist in the wild specimen, while having also removed other selection pressures, and the result will be that fairly quickly you don't quite have fully natural specimens. How much that matters depends on the nature of your experiments. Many cases it won't matter at all. Some experiments may entirely wrecked.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  OK... I have to. jerf, are you a mouse?
  - jerf 5y ago
    I believe in this context the correct question is whether I'm a hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional creature whose rodent aspect represents merely a three-dimensional projection of my actual form, to which I can safely say, no comment.
    - dalbasal 5y ago
      just checkin. I hope the unintelligent fly problem isn't causing you too much nuisance.

acomjean 5y ago

I work in a fly lab (in the computer support part). I've seen a stray fly from time to time (they have traps set for them... they love vinegar.) but I'm not sure the ability to "escape" is some great intelligence test. The vials are tapped, the flies fall of the sides. insert new vial, flip and tap again..) There is a lot of sequencing so you'd think they'd be pretty sure what is going on. I think its hard to measure fly intelligence, though the brain has been mapped https://www.hhmi.org/news/unveiling-the-biggest-and-most-detailed-map-of-the-fly-brain-yet https://www.hhmi.org/news/unveiling-the-biggest-and-most-det.... You can buy all sort of fly stocks with genetics you might need for your research. https://bdsc.indiana.edu/information/fly-culture.html https://bdsc.indiana.edu/information/fly-culture.html