Natures wonders: insect migration (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, November 24, 2021, 08:40 (1093 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The DNA of the bee's neurons contains the program's algorithm, as the author of the article proposes. Specifically, this is not equivalent of adults learning new functions or facts. It does resemble the way children pick up language quickly, although not exactly the same time frame. as you noted.

dhw: That doesn’t tell me what your “imbedded program” programmes. Children cannot possibly learn language without using their intelligence to understand new functions and facts! And calculating directions and distances and communicating information about them to others would hardly be possible without learning about facts and functions! You have highlighted a similar learning procedure in the article on children and humour (progressively acting like animals, playing with concepts, making fun of others, playing with social rules). The bees follow the same course of learning, but with a vastly more limited repertoire of facts and functions and over a vastly shorter period of time.

DAVID: The author calls it an algorithm. Definition:
"A finite set of unambiguous instructions that, given some set of initial conditions, can be performed in a prescribed sequence to achieve a certain goal and that has a recognizable set of end conditions. [or]
a precise rule (or set of rules) specifying how to solve some problem; a set of procedures guaranteed to find the solution to a problem."
What more do you want?

According to you, all the natural wonders and all the solutions to problems other than human ones are preprogrammed by God’s instructions, and all you have done now is to give those instructions a posh-sounding scientific name: algorithms. Bacteria have solved countless problems throughout their history, and continue to do so. How many “algorithms” did your God plant in them 3.8 billion years ago? Or does he pop in and insert a new one every time there’s a new problem? You have compared bees’ learning to that of children learning a language. Children perceive facts, learn the sounds that are associated with those facts, use those sounds to communicate with others, and eventually take decisions if the facts require a decision. Bees perceive facts, learn the movements that are associated with those facts, use the movements to communicate with others and eventually take decisions. Are you now saying that your God placed an algorithm in the human brain for children to learn a language, or do you think he gave them the intelligence to learn it? I see no difference between these processes other than scale and time span. Or have you now decided that humans are also automatons?