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The Army tried to develop a missile guided by pigeons
- JadoJodo 4y agoRelated: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
- ketralnis 4y agoUnrelated bat bomb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsJA1C19AyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsJA1C19AyE
- implements 4y agoRelated: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog Two problems: a) smell is a primary sense for dogs and the enemy tanks (petrol) didn’t smell like the training ones (diesel), and b) frightened dogs run back to their familiar handlers.
- chris_wot 4y agoYeah, well, in WWII the Russians created dog mines and during the Cold War the CIA came up with "Acoustic Kitty" with a microphone in it's tail, at a cost of several million dollars, designed to spy on the Russians. (They released it over the road from the Russian embassy, it ran across said road and was run over by a taxi.)
- jmgao 4y agoThe British had a proposal for a time-detonated nuclear land mine which would be kept warm by sealing chickens inside with a food and water supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock
- jaclaz 4y agoAnd bat bombs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
- jameshart 4y agoThis makes sense, because the pigeon knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation.
- glitchc 4y agoWhat happens next?
- itsyaboi 4y agoThe pigeon uses deviations to generate corrective commands to drive itself from a position where it is to a position where it isn't and, arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, is now the position that it wasn't, and it follows that the position that it was is now the position that it isn't. In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that it wasn't, the system has acquired a variation; the variation being the difference between where the pigeon is and where it isn't.
- user5678 4y ago
- _yb2s 4y agoThis sounds like a Douglas adams quote
- mgdlbp 4y agohttps://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-missile-knows-where-it-is https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-missile-knows-where-it-is
- quickthrower2 4y agoWhere it isn’t is a big place
- duxup 4y ago> even six years later, they could still identify their targets Some battle ship out there had a pigeon with its name on it.
- jameshart 4y agoIronic perhaps that this was the wartime work of B.F. Skinner, who went on to develop the theory of operant conditioning (he invented the 'Skinner Box' which trains animals... usually pigeons... to push a button to obtain a reward. [1]) That work was of course famously the underpinning of the fast, addictive, reward driven mobile games industry, which gave us Angry Birds, in which... pigeons once again are used as missiles. The circle is complete. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
- magundu 4y agoSeems interesting. Cell phone are new Skinner box
- llanowarelves 4y agoAlso interesting that Netflix's co-founder and first CEO, Marc Rudolph, is great-nephew of none other than Edward Bernays, pioneer in both PR and propaganda.
- leobg 4y agoAnd psychologists today say Skinner is no longer relevant. Makes me chuckle every time.
- threatofrain 4y agoSkinner's theory is no longer relevant because more predictive theories of animal learning have come along. Similarly, Newtonian theory is no longer relevant but that doesn't mean it now fails to predict.
- winReInstall 4y agoSkinner was replaced by Zuckerberg/Thiels datamining of all human minds. In hindsight it was a mistake to get completely naked.
- hbrav 4y ago
- tzs 4y agoI don't remember if it was Skinner or someone else, but another great example of using pigeons was inspecting parts in a factory. The automated line was supposed to be producing identical parts but occasional one have a defect that could easily be spotted visually. They had humans whose job was to just sit there watching the stream of parts come off the line and if they saw a defective one pull it off the line. The problem was that humans were great at that for a short time after their shift started, and then their accuracy at noticing bad parts would drop way off. A researcher proposed trying pigeons. They trained a pigeon to press a button when it was show a defective part and not press when shown a part that was not defective. The pigeon was more accurate than humans and it could go all day without losing accuracy. But they couldn't just deploy the pigeon because it needed to occasionally be rewarded for correctly identifying defective parts to reinforce the behavior. Otherwise over time he would revert to not caring about the parts and buttons. The solution to that was to deploy pigeons in groups of 3. The 3 would all see the same part at the same time. Their buttons were wired to a system that would: 1. if at least 2 out of 3 press their buttons trigger something that kicks the current part off the line, and 2. if 2 pressed their button and the other one did not would trigger automated food dispensers to give those 2 a reward. The idea with #2 is that as the learning starts to fade the number of 2 of 3 pressing the button would go up, which would reward the two that got it right. This provides intermittent rewards that would sustain the learning. To train new pigeons they extended the system so that a 4th pigeon could be added to a group of 3. The 4th pigeon's presses would not count toward deciding the fate of the current part, but the 4th pigeon would be rewarded for a press if a majority of the group of 3 pressed. This let them have a group of 3 already trained pigeons train up a new pigeon with minimal human intervention. Technically the pigeon based inspections were a complete success. Much cheaper than humans, much more accurate, and the accuracy stayed high throughout their shift. At the conclusion of test though the company declined to go forward and put the pigeons into production. Their worry was that the public would have a hard time accepting pigeon inspected parts no matter how much research they could cite showing the pigeons were superior in pretty much every way than humans at that job. PS: I've probably got some details wrong. I heard about this in a psychology class I took around 40+ years ago.
- saghm 4y ago> if at least 2 out of 3 press their buttons trigger something that kicks the current part off the line If wherever they kicked the part off to wasn't called a "pigeon hole", somebody wasn't doing their job
- exabrial 4y agoThis is a side note: I am genuinely surprised that this website is not ran by “Chris Cappy” of YouTube fame. I absolutely love his channel and it’s worth watching if you are into military (not political) discourse.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sacnoradhq 4y agoAfrican or European?
- Calzifer 4y agoAlso the plot of an old danish movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_First_Freddy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strike_First_Freddy
- Kaibeezy 4y agoAutonomous (Annalee Newitz, 2017) has a military robot character that uses part of a human brain for functions like face and emotion recognition. As a technical device it’s a smart use of capabilities; as a fictional device it’s a bit facile but not overwrought.
- lordelph 4y agoI'm sure I've read a much older short story, possibly by Frank Herbert, where in the future computers do all the calculations so humans have forgotten how to do basic arithmetic. It is rediscovered, only now it's much cheaper to put a human in a missile to perform guidance calculations than using an expensive computer! The HN hive mind will probably remember this better... EDIT: It was "A Feeling of Power" by Asimov - https://archive.org/details/1958-02_IF/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/1958-02_IF/page/n5/mode/2up?view...
- treebeard901 4y agoNice to see an implementation of RFC1149
- pvaldes 4y agoSucking more money from the taxpayers is hard when you are short of new ideas.