Clever Corvids: more on how clever (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, November 24, 2018, 15:28 (2191 days ago) @ dhw

Under "ants stop spread of illness":

DAVID: They avoid the sick ones:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2186140-sick-ants-stay-clear-of-their-co-workers-t...

QUOTE: Simulations show that these changes in behaviour reduce the spread of infections and protect healthy workers and the queen from disease.
"Responses like this are to be expected in social insects, since only the queen reproduces, so evolution favours individual behaviour that benefits the whole colony.
“'I think we could learn from the social insects about ways to decrease transmission of disease at the scale of the population,” says Stroeymeyt. Although she concedes that the ants are good role models only up to a point. “We can’t really ask sick people to sacrifice themselves by dying in isolation like the ants do.'”

DAVID’s comment: What is not understood is how the ants recognize the infection, but there must be some stimulus that they recognize as a warning.

dhw: Thank you for yet another wonderful article about wonderful ants. They not only recognize the infection, but they have worked out ways of minimizing the overall effect. Sheer intelligence!

No question they react with an intelligent solution, based on a warning stimulus. Do the ants know why they react the way they do? That would be a sign of true intelligence

Under “clever corvids”:

QUOTE: "We don’t know very much about intelligence in animals and birds but we do know that it is not a function of the mechanical organization of their brains. That raises a question: If artificial intelligence really came to exist, would it depend on the organization of the mechanism?"

DAVID: Much more to the point is a mind that works on problems are not a brain. IT always must be something more, as we know full well in humans.

dhw: Well, there can be no doubt that ants as well as corvids solve problems, so could it be that they have “something more”, and could it be that bacteria – probably of all our fellow creatures the most adept at solving problems – also have “something more"? Or could it even be that the materials of which cells (whether individual or multi) are made can produce a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, i.e. intelligence?

The issue is still the same: a mind knows why the action is intelligent. That is true intelligence. Our outside judgement recognizes intelligent results which actually is our analysis of the action. The underlying process can be automatic or intelligent. No way around this.