Natures wonders: insect migration (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 08, 2021, 09:16 (1079 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Yes how? If you sat in a classroom and were given these vague dances about things you know nothing about, how would you know what to do? But the new bee does, because his brain has an automatic program of interpretation, the author's not so vague point.

dhw: You have asked the right question. The bee has to know about flowers, distances and directions before it can interpret the dance. So what is this vague “program of interpretation”? The bee comes with the ABILITY to interpret, and it uses that ability to collate, understand, and memorize all the information which is presented to it, and to translate the information into the appropriate action. How does this differ – other than in time and scale – from the process which drives our own actions?

DAVID: Your 'ability to interpret' is the author's algorithm

At last you agree that bees (and by extension, all other life forms) are provided with the ability to interpret, and not with a detailed programme telling them what they will perceive, how they will process the information (interpret it), what and how they will communicate with others, and what decisions they will take. No “algorithm” for any of that. Just the same autonomous processes as our own.Thank you.

Ant bridge algorithm
DAVID: All animals are built to note danger. The first ant at a stream will automatically stop as he spots the danger. The rest with the same reaction pile on to go over.

dhw: All ants forage for food, so why don’t all species of ant automatically stop and build bridges when they come to gaps? Are you saying that your God specially chose eciton hamatum for his algorithm, because without one species of ant building bridges he could never have designed humans and their food (his one and only purpose)?

DAVID: I would assume, as you should, the Army ants special travels in their special environment required the development of bridge-building skills.

dhw: I’m happy with that explanation. Different life forms develop different skills to cope with different conditions. I find this much more convincing than your proposal that either the ants come equipped with a 3.8-billion-year-old programme for bridge-building, or your God pops in to give these particular ants bridge-building courses. Furthermore, I suggest that the ability of one species of ant to build bridges has nothing to do with the design of H. sapiens and his foods, which you believe to have been your God’s only purpose.

DAVID: And I remind you the ants are part of necessary ecosystems providing food for all of life.

I remind you that according to you, your God specially designed the bridge-building programme for this particular species of ant. So if this particular species of ant was not able to build bridges, there would not be food for all? How did life survive before this particular species learnt to build bridges? Would your God have been unable to design H. sapiens if he had not programmed/dabbled bridge-building by this particular species of ant? Will the human race go extinct if this particular species stops building bridges?

dhw: Once again: Intelligence requires cognition, sentience, purposefulness with sensory, communication, information-processing and decision-making capabilities. All these attributes of intelligence are required for ant bridges, farms, nurseries, cities, strategies for defence and attack. Leaving aside your fixed belief, please explain why – apart from time required and scale of building etc – these obvious attributes are different from those we observe in humans.

DAVID: Outward appearance still gives a 50/50 probability.

dhw: Once more: 50/50, but you go for 100% no, and still you refuse to bbexplain why all the manifested features of intelligence exhibited by insects and bacteria and cells in general are different from those exhibited by humans, apart from time and scale.[…]

DAVID: While you totter on your intellectual fence, I take a side based on my ability to reason and conclude which is most likely correct. Sorry you can't do that.

And now, using your undoubted ability to reason, please explain the difference between the cognitive, sentient, purposeful, sensory, information-processing and decision-making activities of bees and ants – other than time and scale – and our own, bearing in mind that the God-given “algorithm” is the ABILITY to interpret, and not all the individual interpretations of all the individual pieces of information.