slime mold decisions: begins to study loners (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, May 25, 2020, 09:02 (1641 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Do you really think that bees which do all the simple mental gymnastics you describe can get to the contemplative level in the bold? You skipped over the point.

dhw: What on earth is “contemplative” about this process?

QUOTE: worker bumblebees can make plants flower earlier than normal by using their mouthparts to pierce small holes in leaves.
"In a series of laboratory and outdoor experiments, the researchers found that bumblebees were more likely to pierce holes in the leaves of tomato plants and black mustard plants when deprived of food. The leaf damage caused the tomato plants to flower 30 days earlier than usual and the black mustard plants to flower 16 days earlier.”

dhw: Nobody knows the origin of such “natural wonders”, but biting a leaf, noticing and then remembering that 16-30 days later the plant flowers, does not require contemplation! It requires observing what happened, remembering what happened, and passing on the information to other bees, who will then perform the same trick. There is no “clearly thought out concept” or contemplation! Now please tell us whether you think your God preprogrammed the trick 3.8 billion years ago or “stepped in” to teach bees a lesson in leaf-biting.

DAVID: What you have carefully left out is the reasoning involved: bees: "we bit leaves almost a month ago and now there are flowers that weren't there before. Did one cause the other?" What you are ignoring, as a superior human, is the integrative thinking involved. 'What is it like to be a bee?' Nagelizing it shows what you miss. Only repeated biting under the same circumstances would prove it to the bees and probably to us after first time around. God may well have helped.

What you have carefully left out is my statement that nobody knows the origin of such “natural wonders”, but I would imagine a different dialogue. "Hey girls, I bit that leaf a fortnight ago and now it's flowered! Must remember that for next time, eh?"
I asked you whether you thought your God preprogrammed this trick 3.8 billion years ago or “stepped in” to teach bees a lesson in leaf-biting. These are the only forms of “help” (or guidelines) you have ever managed to come up with. If you think both of these to be unlikely, the only alternative is that bees observe, remember, and pass on information – not through human-type calculations or “contemplation”, but through their own form of intelligence.