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Wasps and bees have different ecological constraints with different risks involved. There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own con

by sedatk 2y ago

Wasps and bees have different ecological constraints with different risks involved. There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Evolution doesn’t have any goals or agenda. That’s why whales still have vestigial hip bones despite having no hips whatsoever. Because it’s not a significant parameter in their survival. Same with barbed stingers of bees.

jstanley 2y ago
I think this is a perfect example of what your parent comment is talking about, being: > unprovable, unfalsifiable, and have the same circular logic as bad religion. You said: > There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Sure, there's no contradiction, but this is totally circular reasoning that could be used to prove anything. The connection graph between "They survive because they're the fittest" and "They must be the fittest because they survive" is just a circle disconnected from all other knowledge. Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality.[0] But with this circular understanding of natural selection, you could be given a description of absolutely any conceivable configuration of organism and your response would be the same: "they must be the fittest, because they survive, because only the fittest survive" and you haven't gained any understanding at all. There will never be a contradiction, because the argument is disconnected from any larger system of reasoning that could plausibly contradict it. "Hey, there is a random monkey in the Amazon that has 3 hoops on its head and a big hole through its abdomen, isn't that weird? Why are they like that?" "Ah, the hoops and the holes are required for Fitness. Only the Fittest survive, you know. So if they have 3 hoops on their heads and big holes in their abdomens, that is what makes them Fittest. Amen." "Why aren't other monkeys like that then?" "Other monkeys don't need hoops and holes for Fitness. Otherwise they too would have hoops and holes. :)" A better understanding of natural selection would be confused about the hoops and the holes, and that confusion would correlate with either the random monkey species actually not existing, or the model being wrong. As regards the bees: there probably is a reason that dying when stinging confers Fitness. But we should find out what that reason is, rather than state "Fitness because Survival" and feel like we've answered the question. [0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5JDkW4MYXit2CquLs/your-strength-as-a-rationalist https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5JDkW4MYXit2CquLs/your-stren...
- Retric 2y ago
  > totally circular reasoning that could be used to prove anything. No, you can attack the reasoning by looking into actual costs. It seems like it can explain anything because we don’t constantly see examples where it’s false. Looking at the costs to bees you see what percentage of them die from attacking mammal flesh and yep it’s a tiny rounding error. Hypothetically, in a world without constraints mice could have a 100 foot long teeth, but we don’t live in a world without constraints.
  - xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
    > Hypothetically, in a world without constraints mice could have a 100 foot long teeth Oh boy, today's the day you learn something new about rodents.
    - stavros 2y ago
      What, the fact that their teeth can grow so long that they'll circle around and stab their brains?
- kevinventullo 2y ago
  My understanding from the article and the general theory of Superorganisms is that it’s not exactly true that “dying when stinging confers fitness”. Rather, dying when stinging is just not a huge penalty when you’re talking about non-reproducing members of a colony. So, while it may be a good thing for bees to evolve the ability to survive stinging, the selective pressure is not as large as one might intuitively expect. Maybe a better title for the post would be something like, “Isn’t it weird that bees die when they sting? Shouldn’t they have evolved away from that?”
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    Well, there's a larger problem in the post. The primary reason that a bee dies when it stings you is that you kill the bee. A bee stinging an inanimate hunk of meat is unlikely to die. But they can die, and yeah, a big part of the reason why is that dying isn't as large of a cost for bees as you might expect from a human perspective. And looping back, another part is that given the very high risk of being intentionally killed when stinging an enemy who you want to sting, improving the much smaller rate of accidental death isn't really worth much. But even though it isn't worth much, it's worth something, and work has been done on the project.

by sedatk 2y ago

jstanley 2y ago

I think this is a perfect example of what your parent comment is talking about, being: > unprovable, unfalsifiable, and have the same circular logic as bad religion. You said: > There is no contradiction here. They evolved as the fittest in their own constraint set. If bees weren’t fit enough, they would have gone extinct and replaced by bees with non-barbed stingers. There is no magic that makes them survive. Sure, there's no contradiction, but this is totally circular reasoning that could be used to prove anything. The connection graph between "They survive because they're the fittest" and "They must be the fittest because they survive" is just a circle disconnected from all other knowledge. Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality.[0] But with this circular understanding of natural selection, you could be given a description of absolutely any conceivable configuration of organism and your response would be the same: "they must be the fittest, because they survive, because only the fittest survive" and you haven't gained any understanding at all. There will never be a contradiction, because the argument is disconnected from any larger system of reasoning that could plausibly contradict it. "Hey, there is a random monkey in the Amazon that has 3 hoops on its head and a big hole through its abdomen, isn't that weird? Why are they like that?" "Ah, the hoops and the holes are required for Fitness. Only the Fittest survive, you know. So if they have 3 hoops on their heads and big holes in their abdomens, that is what makes them Fittest. Amen." "Why aren't other monkeys like that then?" "Other monkeys don't need hoops and holes for Fitness. Otherwise they too would have hoops and holes. :)" A better understanding of natural selection would be confused about the hoops and the holes, and that confusion would correlate with either the random monkey species actually not existing, or the model being wrong. As regards the bees: there probably is a reason that dying when stinging confers Fitness. But we should find out what that reason is, rather than state "Fitness because Survival" and feel like we've answered the question. [0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5JDkW4MYXit2CquLs/your-strength-as-a-rationalist https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5JDkW4MYXit2CquLs/your-stren...

Retric 2y ago
> totally circular reasoning that could be used to prove anything. No, you can attack the reasoning by looking into actual costs. It seems like it can explain anything because we don’t constantly see examples where it’s false. Looking at the costs to bees you see what percentage of them die from attacking mammal flesh and yep it’s a tiny rounding error. Hypothetically, in a world without constraints mice could have a 100 foot long teeth, but we don’t live in a world without constraints.
- xyzzy_plugh 2y ago
  > Hypothetically, in a world without constraints mice could have a 100 foot long teeth Oh boy, today's the day you learn something new about rodents.
  - stavros 2y ago
    What, the fact that their teeth can grow so long that they'll circle around and stab their brains?
kevinventullo 2y ago
My understanding from the article and the general theory of Superorganisms is that it’s not exactly true that “dying when stinging confers fitness”. Rather, dying when stinging is just not a huge penalty when you’re talking about non-reproducing members of a colony. So, while it may be a good thing for bees to evolve the ability to survive stinging, the selective pressure is not as large as one might intuitively expect. Maybe a better title for the post would be something like, “Isn’t it weird that bees die when they sting? Shouldn’t they have evolved away from that?”
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Well, there's a larger problem in the post. The primary reason that a bee dies when it stings you is that you kill the bee. A bee stinging an inanimate hunk of meat is unlikely to die. But they can die, and yeah, a big part of the reason why is that dying isn't as large of a cost for bees as you might expect from a human perspective. And looping back, another part is that given the very high risk of being intentionally killed when stinging an enemy who you want to sting, improving the much smaller rate of accidental death isn't really worth much. But even though it isn't worth much, it's worth something, and work has been done on the project.