Natures wonders: insect migration (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 09, 2021, 08:55 (862 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Give an inch and take a mile. I didn't drop the idea of innate algorithms.

But the author’s algorithm referred only to the ability to interpret, and it takes the bees a week to interpret the dance. What on earth is the point of having an ability to interpret if the perception, information, processing and communication of that information, and the decision-making have already been done for you, and you are merely an automaton that thinks and learns and decides absolutely nothing?

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: For current food supply each small ecosystem melds into bigger ones so all can eat. Prior systems in the past were present to satisfy your usual compartmentalized-time complaints.

And those that can’t/couldn’t eat go/went extinct and new ecosystems form/formed and so on for billions of years, and the vast majority had no connection with humans although you insist that they were all “part of the goal of evolving [= designing] humans” and their food. You keep admitting that you have no idea why your God would have chosen such a method to achieve such a purpose, and yet still you go on editing your theory in order to leave out the factors that make it illogical! […]

dhw: 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.

DAVID: You are again mincing around about the word algorithm. Language theory suggests we have a syntax algorithm as a counter example.

Then forget the word “algorithm”. Bearing in mind that you believe your God gave bees the ability to interpret, 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.

Baby bats learn navigation
QUOTE:: The young bats would then make a solo trip from the cave mouth to the nursery tree and begin their exploration of the wider world using that tree as a base. This means the pups somehow learn to navigate to their nursery tree while hanging upside down from their mothers, the researchers conclude."

DAVID: more research is needed to see how they learn.

May I humbly suggest that they learn by observing and memorizing details of their surroundings, just as human children go out with Mummy and Daddy and eventually know which streets lead to their house, and which house is theirs. What’s your theory? That 3.8 billion years ago God preprogrammed bees and their dance, one species of ant and its bridges, and baby bat navigation – or did he pop in and give them private lessons?