5 ms·

If you're the kind of person who is suspicious of small sample sizes, several of the bee studies cited in the article as evidence [1, 2, 3] draw conclusions fro

If you're the kind of person who is suspicious of small sample sizes, several of the bee studies cited in the article as evidence [1, 2, 3] draw conclusions from small groups of 10-20 bees. I think this is a good question, and I get why it's hard to do animal research at more statistically significant scales, but for me the current evidence is uncomfortably close to "behavioral psych, but for bees", right down to the fun pop-sci conclusions ("bees like to play!"), which again, cute! but overstated as something that "science tells us". (This is all separate from the larger question of the relationship between response to external stimuli and emotional states, which just seems hard to answer.) [1] https://europepmc.org/article/med/27708101 https://europepmc.org/article/med/27708101 [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347222002366 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000334722... [3] https://europepmc.org/article/med/27708101 https://europepmc.org/article/med/27708101

taneq 3y ago
You’ve got to be careful when rationalising sentient-seeming behaviour in non-humans as ‘actually non-sentient’. Pull too hard on that thread and you’ll realise that most humans aren’t especially sentient most of the time either, with all the attendant uncomfortable implications.
- tux3 3y ago
  Can you say more? I'd like to hear about examples you've experienced.
  - taneq 3y ago
    I'd say there's a pretty good case that during states like 'highway hypnosis' where we're performing some long-running monotonous task and seemingly cease being consciously aware of it, we're not 'conscious' as most people define the term. I've had situations when extremely tired when I've zoned out for long periods while driving (yeah I probably shouldn't have been driving at that point) and been jolted out of it by some event on the road (eg. someone cutting in in front of me.) By the time I was consciously aware of the situation I'd already slowed and/or moved to the side to avoid the collision so I was clearly still operating the car with some level of competence beyond just simple lane-following, but I had no memory of the preceding 10-15km. A little more controversially, I think being in a state of 'flow' (aka that state most of us see as the epitome of intellectual existence) almost definitionally means you're not 'self-aware'. You're wholly focused on the activity rather than yourself. More generally, any routine situation where people spend a lot of time in a semi-dissociated state. I don't think people are actively conscious most of the time, consciousness is more like a supervisor task that pops up to intervene when the baseline circuits governing moment-to-moment behaviour reach a certain level of perplexity.
    - tux3 3y ago
      Thanks, those are interesting! I didn't think of them and I can see your point
- User23 3y ago
  Bees are sentient in at least two senses of the word (depending on the reading of “conscious”): sentient Having sense perception; conscious. Experiencing sensation or feeling. Having a faculty, or faculties, of sensation and perception. The property humans have is reason. And yes it’s observably not always exercised.
  - JimDabell 3y ago
    A lot of people say “sentient” when they mean “sapient”.
- fasterik 3y ago
  It seems like you're confusing sentience with intelligence or some other related concept. Sentience is the mental state of subjectively experiencing sensations. The only time humans aren't sentient is during some stages of sleep, being knocked unconscious, general anesthesia, brain damage, etc.
  - TOGoS 3y ago
    I'm not sure that there's a sharp distinction. From my experience inside my own head, the times that I spend 'on autopilot' in hindsight seem a bit robotic. Pleasure and pain may have been experienced, but were somehow less meaningful than on other occasions when I am better attending to my feelings or just in a more stimulating environment (e.g. when it's raining and there's fresh breeze blowing in through the window). What we think of as 'sentience' is surely a combination of things happening in our brains that all animals have to different degrees, rather than an on/off switch that's only present in certain animals and at certain times. It's just that most people's conscious experience is boring enough (unconscious -> wake up -> go to work -> go home -> go to sleep; I can do algebra but my cat can't, etc) that a simplified 'conscious or not' model is generally accepted.
    - fasterik 3y ago
      Yes, I think the general consensus is that consciousness is a spectrum. But even when something is a spectrum, it can still make sense to define a binary in terms of a threshold, like how we define bits in terms of high and low voltages. Obviously even when you're on autopilot you're above a certain threshold of sentience because you're still having conscious experiences. You would react if you were to see something dangerous or feel something painful. I still think it makes sense in this context to say that humans are sentient most of the time. I think it's reasonable to assume that intelligence is orthogonal to consciousness. I can imagine an AI that is very intelligent but has no subjective experience. Similarly, I can imagine a creature that has a very rich range of subjective experiences, but is unable to understand and change the world around it. Obviously these are just thought experiments and we don't have good theories of what consciousness and intelligence really are, but I think it's consistent with our current understanding of biology and neuroscience.
almostnormal 3y ago
> [...] several of the bee studies cited in the article as evidence [1, 2, 3] draw conclusions from small groups of 10-20 bees. Seems fair. We don't judge human intelligence based on a large group of people either.

taneq 3y ago

You’ve got to be careful when rationalising sentient-seeming behaviour in non-humans as ‘actually non-sentient’. Pull too hard on that thread and you’ll realise that most humans aren’t especially sentient most of the time either, with all the attendant uncomfortable implications.

tux3 3y ago
Can you say more? I'd like to hear about examples you've experienced.
- taneq 3y ago
  I'd say there's a pretty good case that during states like 'highway hypnosis' where we're performing some long-running monotonous task and seemingly cease being consciously aware of it, we're not 'conscious' as most people define the term. I've had situations when extremely tired when I've zoned out for long periods while driving (yeah I probably shouldn't have been driving at that point) and been jolted out of it by some event on the road (eg. someone cutting in in front of me.) By the time I was consciously aware of the situation I'd already slowed and/or moved to the side to avoid the collision so I was clearly still operating the car with some level of competence beyond just simple lane-following, but I had no memory of the preceding 10-15km. A little more controversially, I think being in a state of 'flow' (aka that state most of us see as the epitome of intellectual existence) almost definitionally means you're not 'self-aware'. You're wholly focused on the activity rather than yourself. More generally, any routine situation where people spend a lot of time in a semi-dissociated state. I don't think people are actively conscious most of the time, consciousness is more like a supervisor task that pops up to intervene when the baseline circuits governing moment-to-moment behaviour reach a certain level of perplexity.
  - tux3 3y ago
    Thanks, those are interesting! I didn't think of them and I can see your point
User23 3y ago
Bees are sentient in at least two senses of the word (depending on the reading of “conscious”): sentient Having sense perception; conscious. Experiencing sensation or feeling. Having a faculty, or faculties, of sensation and perception. The property humans have is reason. And yes it’s observably not always exercised.
- JimDabell 3y ago
  A lot of people say “sentient” when they mean “sapient”.
fasterik 3y ago
It seems like you're confusing sentience with intelligence or some other related concept. Sentience is the mental state of subjectively experiencing sensations. The only time humans aren't sentient is during some stages of sleep, being knocked unconscious, general anesthesia, brain damage, etc.
- TOGoS 3y ago
  I'm not sure that there's a sharp distinction. From my experience inside my own head, the times that I spend 'on autopilot' in hindsight seem a bit robotic. Pleasure and pain may have been experienced, but were somehow less meaningful than on other occasions when I am better attending to my feelings or just in a more stimulating environment (e.g. when it's raining and there's fresh breeze blowing in through the window). What we think of as 'sentience' is surely a combination of things happening in our brains that all animals have to different degrees, rather than an on/off switch that's only present in certain animals and at certain times. It's just that most people's conscious experience is boring enough (unconscious -> wake up -> go to work -> go home -> go to sleep; I can do algebra but my cat can't, etc) that a simplified 'conscious or not' model is generally accepted.
  - fasterik 3y ago
    Yes, I think the general consensus is that consciousness is a spectrum. But even when something is a spectrum, it can still make sense to define a binary in terms of a threshold, like how we define bits in terms of high and low voltages. Obviously even when you're on autopilot you're above a certain threshold of sentience because you're still having conscious experiences. You would react if you were to see something dangerous or feel something painful. I still think it makes sense in this context to say that humans are sentient most of the time. I think it's reasonable to assume that intelligence is orthogonal to consciousness. I can imagine an AI that is very intelligent but has no subjective experience. Similarly, I can imagine a creature that has a very rich range of subjective experiences, but is unable to understand and change the world around it. Obviously these are just thought experiments and we don't have good theories of what consciousness and intelligence really are, but I think it's consistent with our current understanding of biology and neuroscience.

almostnormal 3y ago

> [...] several of the bee studies cited in the article as evidence [1, 2, 3] draw conclusions from small groups of 10-20 bees. Seems fair. We don't judge human intelligence based on a large group of people either.