There are other examples where insects use their environment in extremely intelligent ways. That just blows my mind. Is it just coincidence or do they know what the fuck is going on? Relatively speaking I think insects are considered pretty dumb creatures but nature has a way of showing us things differently. Do you think it's at all possible that these insects are genetically programmed (somehow) to just know to use the sap? The program didn't say but I wonder if the tree benefits from having the bees around? The reason the sap contains antiobitoics is to treat the trees wounds. I guess if I took the whole thing a step further I could ask how the fuck do tree create antiobiotics but that's a different story. Anyone else catch the show? I think it's on a bunch more times if you are interested.

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Biology, not really my thing. Cool shit though. I think the bees use the sap because it's sticky.

Why do we combust hydrocarbons for fuel? We didn't know initially what it was made of, just that they burn well, and make a lot of heat.

[ 02-16-2006: Message edited by: AcidWarp ]

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

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quote:

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Originally posted by AcidWarp:
Why do we combust hydrocarbons for fuel?

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We don't consciously choose what our body burns for energy. Bees, on the other hand, have a choice of what they use for their nests.

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

quote:

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Originally posted by Mad Max:
To me that means:
1. the bees use the sap because it's sticky and is great for building strong nests. The additional benefit of the antibiotics is just a bonus that they don't know anything about.
2. the bees know about the protection the sap yields and that's why they use it.

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3. Due to natural selection, all bees (and pre-bees) that used other materials that didn't happen to have antibiotics in them died out and didn't live on to pass their genes on.

Or rather, the bees that happened to use the antibioticful sticky stuff surived slightly better than the other bees.
Add a couple of million years of competing over the same resources, and suddenly that's all you have left. (The new bees, I mean, not the competing)

[ 02-17-2006: Message edited by: RaverBoy ]

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quote:

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Originally posted by RaverBoy:
3. Due to natural selection, all bees (and pre-bees) that used other materials that didn't happen to have antibiotics in them died out and didn't live on to pass their genes on.

Or rather, the bees that happened to use the antibioticful sticky stuff surived slightly better than the other bees.
Add a couple of million years of competing over the same resources, and suddenly that's all you have left. (The new bees, I mean, not the competing)

[ 02-17-2006: Message edited by: RaverBoy ]

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I think that is the same as option 1 above unless you are saying that in option 3 the bees are making a conscious decision to use the beneficial sap?

[ 02-17-2006: Message edited by: Mad Max ]

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#1 implies it's just an accident.
#3 explains why it isn't an accident.

First there are bees.
The bees have children.
The children inherit the DNA from their parents.
This process is flawed, and has random errors in it.
Sometimes an error results in a change that increases the odds of the bee surviving long enough to have children.
(For example, a bee might be born with a mutation that makes it avoid open flames because its extra sensitive to heat)
Since the odds are higher for that bee to pass on its dna than it is for the rest of the bees, its dna spreads unproportionally fast compared to the "normal" dna.

On the flipside, if a bee is born with a mutation that makes it seek out open flames, its dna will spread unproportionally slow, as it kills itself (before spawning children) more frequently than other bees.

How anyone can possibly not "believe" in natural selection is beyond me. There's nothing "selective" about it.. it's just pure logic.

As a small sidenote, I once wrote an evolving neural net that evolved to calculate x+y with 99.95% accuracy in just a couple of hundred generations.
It was totally randomly wired.
Each child net inherited random dna picked from two parents, with some small odds of randomly flipping bits. At any given time, there was 500 nets active, and the 20 most accurate were used as parents for new nets. The least accurate nets got snuffed and garbage collected.

It was very interesting to play around with. If I fed it sequential input data instead of random, sometimes nets with memory (loops in the neural net) evolved that predicted the next number. Those failed very very hard if I switched to random input.
I even tried making them calculate x^y for any given x and y, and they did a fairly decent job at that as well! Nowhere near 99% accuracy, but somewhere around 80% for the really good nets.
Not bad for just 500 neurons and 2000 random (evolved) synapses. =D

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quote:

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Originally posted by RaverBoy:
Not at all.
It's natural selection.

#1 implies it's just an accident.
#3 explains why it isn't an accident.

First there are bees.
The bees have children.
The children inherit the DNA from their parents.
This process is flawed, and has random errors in it.
Sometimes an error results in a change that increases the odds of the bee surviving long enough to have children.
(For example, a bee might be born with a mutation that makes it avoid open flames because its extra sensitive to heat)
Since the odds are higher for that bee to pass on its dna than it is for the rest of the bees, its dna spreads unproportionally fast compared to the "normal" dna.

On the flipside, if a bee is born with a mutation that makes it seek out open flames, its dna will spread unproportionally slow, as it kills itself (before spawning children) more frequently than other bees.

How anyone can possibly not "believe" in natural selection is beyond me. There's nothing "selective" about it.. it's just pure logic.

As a small sidenote, I once wrote an evolving neural net that evolved to calculate x+y with 99.95% accuracy in just a couple of hundred generations.
It was totally randomly wired.
Each child net inherited random dna picked from two parents, with some small odds of randomly flipping bits. At any given time, there was 500 nets active, and the 20 most accurate were used as parents for new nets. The least accurate nets got snuffed and garbage collected.

It was very interesting to play around with. If I fed it sequential input data instead of random, sometimes nets with memory (loops in the neural net) evolved that predicted the next number. Those failed very very hard if I switched to random input.
I even tried making them calculate x^y for any given x and y, and they did a fairly decent job at that as well! Nowhere near 99% accuracy, but somewhere around 80% for the really good nets.
Not bad for just 500 neurons and 2000 random (evolved) synapses. =D

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Sorry, my bad, I wasn't clear. I understand the WHY, my question is whether or not the bees are aware of the decisions they are making. My guess is that they are not.

I was talking to my wife about this last night. Consider animals that are born in hostile environments. In some case the babies are up and running in a few moments. Now that's pretty impressive for an animal that has never seen the light of day, never mind another creature using its legs. I think this proves that there is some pre-programming.

I wonder how much of what we learn is really learning and how much is understanding how to do things our brain already knows how to do.

[ 02-18-2006: Message edited by: Mad Max ]

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Only a suprisingly small amount of all animals are capable of large scale learning.

Human brains are specialized towards learning instead of just relying on hard-wired functionaly (commonly called instinct, or the id).
That combined with the ability to communicate leads to very very fast social evolution where good ideas survive and bad ideas die out.

We've trancended beyond biological evolution. Soon we will transcend beyond social evolution as well.

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quote:

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Originally posted by RaverBoy:
We've trancended beyond biological evolution. Soon we will transcend beyond social evolution as well.

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I'm a little concerned about both.

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For all intents and purposes, we would become gods.

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Personally, I would like to see the Catholic church abolished (its teachings are the #1 contributor to overpopulation). And I would like to see strict birth control measures enforced across the globe. An applicant process should be in place for couples wishing to conceive. It'll never happen, of course, because of all the bleeding hearts out there. And so we're doomed to chew this planet up and live in mediocrity in order to sustain the lowest common denominator of life. It sickens me, that we're wasting this place.

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We didn't just come from monkeys, we're going back that way too.

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“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”

“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”

x, gays can't reproduce ;*

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Rather than becoming gods, I find it more likely we are the chaos from which god emerge.

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I'm not my parents, and I'm not too worried about my children not being me.

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Instead of "licensing" people to have kids...maybe we should take a step back and decide to license health care. Or perhaps do away with the idea health care is a "right". It is a problem we are facing in Canada right now. Health care is a "right" so ragrdless of the cost, we must have it some argue. But then there are people in this country who are complete lazy oafs who either are uneducatable (is that a word) or just completely lack any real ethic (work or life) to get or hold down a real job...but they have no worries: they have health care and welfare and our system is going broke because of it all. Damn Lefties. We essentially have stripped "natural selection" from western society and it will hurt us...and bad!

"I think the difference between what humans do and what animals is we keep records so future generations don't have to relearn over and over again."

Many animals are taught by their parents or the herd. Insect on the other hand are primarily creatures of instinct. They did not "learn" their habits. Whether "instincts" are passed down via methods such as natural selection is one that is good for debate.

"We don't consciously choose what our body burns for energy. Bees, on the other hand, have a choice of what they use for their nests."

We don't? Why is it then we have an obesity issue in North America? I won't touch the bees thing though cause I know wasps will chew up pretty much anything they can for their nests...even a chunk of my flesh...damn little...glad I lit the bastards on fire

"It's natural selection.
#1 implies it's just an accident.
#3 explains why it isn't an accident."

Perhaps it is coincidence? I mean...I have NEVER had a flu shot but I haven't had the flu in over 20 years. Yet I know people who have the flu shot every year and almost like cockwork get the flu whenever it comes time.

"I can pretty much guarantee it's hard wired.
Only a suprisingly small amount of all animals are capable of large scale learning."

ANY animal that does not leave its parents is capable of "large scale learning" as you put it. From cats to whales. While lots of it is for protection...a lot of it is for "life skills" if you will. Had a cat once on the farm that the mother died shortly after he was born. The dog litter trained it and he couldn't catch a mouse worth a damn.

"That combined with the ability to communicate leads to very very fast social evolution where good ideas survive and bad ideas die out."

And now let us remember that EVERY empire that ruled this world fell. Makes you feel good about bad ideas and correlating it to nukes doesn't it?

"We've trancended beyond biological evolution. Soon we will transcend beyond social evolution as well."

Based on what is going on because of a little cartoon and a few nut jobs who take religion a little too seriously and literal in this world...I think you give humans far too much credit.

"For all intents and purposes, we would become gods."

/me steps back from the spot the lightning is surely to strike

"x, gays can't reproduce ;* "

My best friend once made that relation between gays and Darwinism...maybe there is something inherently wrong with gays so they are not SUPPOSED to reproduce and thus they are wired to be gay. But science has intervened with that. That is my problem with science...it is so concerned with fixing problems that perhaps the problems are part of a system designed to create harmony within the system. Only since science started to interfere have much more significant problems emerged.

Don't get me wrong...I like science and it fascinates me. I think though as a specied we have ventured too far into the unknown with are rather miniscule knowledge of the universe (and I don't mean space!).

quote:

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Perhaps it is coincidence? I mean...I have NEVER had a flu shot but I haven't had the flu in over 20 years. Yet I know people who have the flu shot every year and almost like cockwork get the flu whenever it comes time.

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Those people have never had the flu either. They got a cold from a slightly weakened immune system from the vaccine. "Flu" and "cold" are not synonymous.

...and I will refrain from giggling at the typo "cockwork"

quote:

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Originally posted by LordVader:

...and I will refrain from giggling at the typo "cockwork"

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I won't. That's fucking hilarious!

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Where do you get the idea those people had a cold?!

quote:

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Originally posted by LordVader:
Influenza is (still) a deadly virus, and if diagnosed by a physician, is reportable as an epidemic viral outbreak to the CDC in Atlanta. What "those people" had was likely a variant of a less potent virus. They did not have the 'flu' that the vaccine was designed to protect. A lot of folks use the term 'flu' to describe a bad cold.

(...I kinda do this for a living...)

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What are your thoughts of the pendinf bird-flu pandemic? Using the terror level, what colour would we be on? For absolutley not reason whatsoever, I don't feel worried in the least even though I've heard reports of upto 80million Americans being affected.

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