Natures wonders: insect migration (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, December 03, 2021, 15:34 (1084 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: The author states: "Therefore, the behavior appears to be a combination of innate capabilities and pre-programmed learning." Sure they are taught by watching the dance and have to go out from the hive and experience what they are told to look for. The innate capabilities involve having memorized what they have seen in the dance, which includes how far to fly, the direction, some concept of 'flower', and the author adds the obvious need for 'preprogrammed learning' to integrate it all in seven days. He doesn't say they fly with a co-pilot.

dhw: You asked: “How do bees know where to fly for nectar from a hive they have never left?” The answer is that they leave the hive! That has to be part of the learning process! So what is “pre-programmed” if they watch the dance, experience what they are told to look for, and memorize all the information you have listed? The capability to learn is innate in them as in us, and what is learned is through instructions from those who have the knowledge, and from experience of the reality to which that knowledge has to be applied. I don’t know about “co-pilots”, but nor does the author say God provided each new adult bee with an instruction manual.

The author is exactly saying the new bee has an instruction manual to learn the dance meanings. He does not mention God but the source is an ID site.

Ant bridge algorithm

DAVID: We know it is a result of evolution providing consciousness with thought in humans.

dhw: How does that mean that no form of consciousness or thought evolved in other life forms?

Not our degree, and how much automaticity of resposnse?

DAVID: As the author suggests it results from individual ants being programmed to do the same response each time. And God could have given the ants brains the design plans

dhw: And ants could have designed the “plans” in the first place, and these designs are then handed down to subsequent generations. Your answer to my bolded request is simply a repetition of your fixed belief that bees and ants are automatons!

Yes.

QUOTE: To see how this unfolds, take the perspective of an ant on the march. When it comes to a gap in its path, it slows down. The rest of the colony, still barreling along at 12 centimeters per second, comes trampling over its back.

dhw: My guess is that the other 149,999 ants would then fall straight into the water. […]

DAVID: You missed the point they automatically hold on to each other when stepped upon.

dhw: You missed the point that the author has missed the point that ants are not stupid. The first ant stops when it sees a gap (sentience and cognition), and other ants don’t go trampling over its back. They build on each other. The origin of the process of bridge-building – like all their other complex activities – requires cognition, sentience, purposefulness with sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities. Once the technique has been perfected, it will be handed down – no doubt with adjustments to individual conditions. Once more: how does this differ from human activity, other than through time and scale?

Automaticity can explain all of it. We are still on the outside looking at a 50/50 probability, just as in cells.