News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
Insects don't really have brains. The complexity of their ganglia is not really comparable to what we consider a brain and seems rather unlikely that they have anything like our consciousness, just due to the difference in complexity. Does not mean we should treat them like shit, they are living creatures - but also not sure why we need to pretend they are something they are clearly not.
Jumping spiders show some level of consciousness. They're intelligent predators that heavily use their sight to identify prey. They can recognise different prey types, learn their behaviours and adjust hunting strategies accordingly. A good example is how they are able to recognise when certain prey is acting odd, deduce it's injured and drop their stealthy approach for a more direct one. They're also capable of remembering their environment and using indirect and often complex paths to sneak up on prey.
Scientists have even observed them "dreaming", which is likely when they do the information processing required for such comparatively complex behaviours https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/jumping-spiders-dream-rem-sleep-study-suggests
Bold claim to go from REM in sleep-like state to dreams and consciousness, and the original paper is not making that claim.
All of this seems rather possible even with basic learning mechanisms on molecular level. Not sure why you would claim that this need consciousness. But if you have a paper on this topic I would be more than interested to read them.
No papers that are actually concrete. Most of it is just speculation.
I'm not a scientist, and for me personally it's enough to make me spend a bit longer thinking before immediately dismissing all insects as mindless automatons. Most probably are simple biological machines. Jumping spiders are however massive outliers in terms of insect intelligence, and a cursory Google search will provide a wealth of evidence for it.
I personally would also go as far as believing that they dream. I just don't believe there's a reasonable explanation for the REM like state other than some form of dreaming, even if rudimentary.
I'm not going to state that jumping spiders are fully conscious as 100% fact, there's not enough proof for that. But they do have a proven ability to learn, and an ability to make somewhat complex plans. And all I'm trying to say is that we need more research before dismissing them so certainly.
Not a scientist my self, but I studies biology and neuroscience more specifically - just left the field. I will look more into jumping spiders, since it's sounds interesting and I was not really aware that they are that different from other spiders. Now I'm more curious and I definitely agree that we need more research in general.
This doesn't explain complex behavior seen in many insects like how bumblebees can learn how to solve puzzles from watching other bees performing the solution (this requires a minimal degree of visual recognition of the same species, theory of mind to understand they have a goal and what it is, recognition of their actions and the ability to translate them to copy them, etc).
Having a drastically different structure to their neurons doesn't mean they can't think.
"Same" neurons (they don't have all the neuron types we have but in general one can say it's the same neurons), just no complex brain structures. You can have very complex behavior completely reliant on pheromone systems, quite well studied in ants. I'm not to familiar with bumblebees so I would need to look into literature, but for example simple learning already happens at molecular level and does not require any thinking at all.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002019
They show evidence of a degree of culture (socially shared knowledge)
Came around to read the paper. Indeed very interesting - also not suited to base broader conclusions about coinciosness in insects in my opinion, the idea that culture might be supported by much simpler neuronal mechanisms is fascinating to me. Very speculative it might very well be than that even coinciosness can emerge in less complex systems then previously thought. Also bumblebees are even more dope than I previously thought. Great read thanks.
Thanks, will check the paper out.
Not sure how your answer is related to my.
Thanks for explaining, I somehow didn't get your point.
Just give a small summary at the end maybe, like you did after I asked you? Might help yourself to stay on point.
Yes, I agree, in just pointing out how difficult is to understand that. Theoretically, it's not like a human-level intelligent insect couldn't exist.
My thinking to challenge myself/ourselves: Then how do whole colonies decide and plan resources? When to gave truce or war with the neighbouring colonies (of same or completely different species?). Their war strategies resemble human wars without technology/weapons. They also cultivate insects, plants, and fungi. Some within colonies plan, deceive, and try to develop a new queen (instead of the queen doing it in purpose/strategy).
Having brains as such imho is part of the problem as it adds a lot of complexity for humans to relate to.
But even our brains don't work and govern alone, major organs have a complex nervous systems of their own (complex in the sense of not having a centre).
Not as a direct comparison to insect, but eg cephalopod brains are also vastly different, yet clearly highly intelligent.
We understand most of your questions quiet well. It's been a long time since I studied biology and I'm not working in that field anymore so I won't be able to give you most answers from memory, but if you are interested you will find a lot of research on those topics. It's mostly really rather automatic responses through pheromone systems with involuntary responses. Especially the wars of ants are quite well understood in that regard.
Cephalopod have different but also rather complex brain structures. Again - insects just completely lack higher brain anatomy. If you into those question I would highly recommend you to take an introductory lecture into neuroscience online. We don't understand everything but we understand some things quiet well.