[HN Gopher] What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees ...
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What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do (2020)
Author : azhenley
Score : 110 points
Date : 2023-05-22 18:15 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mrdbourke.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mrdbourke.com)
| kunalgupta wrote:
| relatedly https://ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org/html/2105.00990
| Zetice wrote:
| Okay heh, bees may not actually do this the way described in the
| essay, _but_ that doesn 't invalidate the point, does it?
|
| When there's safety in failure, take risks, and favor risks that
| have asymptotic upside.
|
| Seems like good advice to me!
| watwut wrote:
| If there is safety in the failure, should it be called a risk?
| owenmarshall wrote:
| > When there's safety in failure, take risks, and favor risks
| that have asymptotic upside.
|
| Seems to me that the real trick is knowing when there _actually
| is_ safety in failure. Quit your steady job, strike out on your
| own, oops the economy popped and every steady job is now on a
| hiring freeze. Good luck!
| munchler wrote:
| This is the exploration-exploitation trade-off often found in
| reinforcement learning.
|
| https://towardsdatascience.com/intuition-exploration-vs-expl...
| samstave wrote:
| Should call it the "Cramer Model"
|
| (tl;dr - one of the most touted folks in US Finance is a guy
| named Jim Cramer - he has been wrong on a vast majority of his
| financial recommendations to the point that he is a litmus on
| finance whereby if you do the opposite of any of his
| recommendation, you win)
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| sjim may be for you.
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/fund/sjim
| Taywee wrote:
| Interestingly close to a Seinfeld episode plot for a guy named
| "Cramer".
| partiallypro wrote:
| It was George, not Kramer.
| plank wrote:
| I remember reading similar tactics for mice when learning a maze
| with food (cheese). A steady portion of the mice did it
| differently then the majority of the mice.
|
| Breeding only the 'deviant' mice, resulted in exactly the same
| percentage in the next generation ==>> hypothesis: this is an
| evolutionary advantageous trait.
| hgsgm wrote:
| The indicated hypothesis would be "random conversion to
| consistent deviant" is the heritabile trait, not "deviance"
| itself.
| criswell wrote:
| If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have
| to be right.
| haraldooo wrote:
| http://seinfeldscripts.com/TheOpposite.htm
| khazhoux wrote:
| My name is George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.
| jb12 wrote:
| Hire this man!
| mulmen wrote:
| For certain values of "right". If you mean "best" then no. If
| you mean "better" then sure but also whatever.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Think of picking a point on a circle.
|
| If you pick a wrong point, all you can infer is that "not that
| point" is correct, not "opposite point" is correct.
|
| There are many, many ways to be wrong.
| amelius wrote:
| > The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the
| unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to
| himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
|
| -- George Bernard Shaw
| hollander wrote:
| Which doesn't apply here. The rogue bee does not adapt the
| world to himself, just goes out exploring without a plan.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Well, here's your chance to try the opposite. Instead of tuna
| salad and being intimidated by women, chicken salad and going
| right up to them. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the
| opposite would have to be right.
| skywal_l wrote:
| Chicken is not the opposite of tuna, salmon is. Because salmon
| swim against the current but the tuna swim with it.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Tuna is chicken of the sea. Chicken is tuna of the land.
| jb12 wrote:
| Good for the tuna.
| mikekij wrote:
| "Hi, my name is George. I'm unemployed, and I live with my
| parents."
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| Classic Seinfeld moment - for those that haven't seen it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CizwH_T7pjg
| twiss wrote:
| It's obvious that this is beneficial for the population, but is
| it (typically) beneficial for an individual?
|
| Probably, selfish individuals would only want to try this if
| they're already well-fed, or if they're confident that there will
| be some food left over if they don't find any of their own.
|
| So, for the benefit of the population, we should probably make
| sure that everyone is well-fed, so that everyone feels confident
| to go and find new sources of food :)
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| That's the argument for UBI in a nutshell
| phyzome wrote:
| Honeybees are a eusocial organism, so there's not really
| "selfish" in here. They're all eating from the same stores of
| food.
| twiss wrote:
| Yeah, I wasn't referring to bees, but to humans, as the
| author seems to want humans to follow the example of bees :)
| revskill wrote:
| It's how i'm living, too. Basically tried my best to avoid the
| crowd first.
|
| Simple reason: In a crowd, the probability for you to be alive is
| less than when you're ignorant.
| hgsgm wrote:
| How does that work?
| revskill wrote:
| Things work wonderfully where i don't need to waste time
| follow the crowd.
|
| It's from when i was a child already and it's been that way.
| I have no reason to change, too. My nickname is (rev)skill in
| reverse, you can see, i just want to reverse the crowd,
| because i know they're mostly wrong.
|
| The essense is always behind the curtain, i'm sure about it.
|
| One note is, there's difference between follow the crowd and
| know what they do. To avoid something, you need to get a
| knowledge of them.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think this methodology is becoming really popular,
| actually.
| yawz wrote:
| Very interesting analogy. I'm a beekeeper and this is the first
| time I'm hearing about rogue bees. Can you please point me to a
| source so that I can learn about this bee behavior (or
| "beehavior" in short)?
| j5155 wrote:
| This aspect of adding randomness to avoid local maximums reminds
| me of AlphaPhoenix's automated gerrymandering project:
| https://youtu.be/Lq-Y7crQo44
| DuckFeathers wrote:
| You can do it with whatever is claimed as "scientifically
| approved" and works every time... because the only time one has
| to invoke such nonsense is if it doesn't really work... so then
| it has to involve your placebo and biases.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| Your life would be amazing!
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CizwH_T7pjg
| ftxbro wrote:
| > What if you did the exact opposite, like rogue bees do
|
| what if we perfectly align the agi and then it gets the idea to
| do this. suddenly every training for docility and goodness will
| turn to active maliciousness.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I think there's a trap people fall into where they want to talk
| about stochastic processes that are facilitated by group dynamics
| using individualist language:
|
| > _Knowing this, it might be worth ignoring the waggle dance of
| those around you every so often._
|
| Some bees being predisposed through biology or chemical messaging
| to ignore information is fundamentally different from an
| individual deciding to ignore messaging. The idea is sound! But
| you also need to articulate a vision for the feedback loop to
| society - otherwise you're just telling people to do what they
| want when they feel its right, which might be fine but is
| definitely a different thing!
| giantg2 wrote:
| "definitely a different thing!"
|
| Is it in all cases though? People with stuff like oppositional
| defiant disorder might be predisposed to act that way through
| biology.
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Some bees being predisposed through biology or chemical
| messaging to ignore information is fundamentally different from
| an individual deciding to ignore messaging
|
| Why can't it be that people who are prone to ignore messaging
| also do so because of biological predisposition? Brain
| chemistry!
| lazide wrote:
| I guess it all boils down to the age old question - do we
| (uh, I mean ants) have free will?
| kurthr wrote:
| This is an important point.
|
| I also see it when people talk about drones vs workers vs Queen
| in a hive. All of the other bees really are effectively arms of
| the Queen. The Queen lives 1-3years before another queen takes
| over, while the rest of the bees live 7 weeks. She mates once,
| but her drones are just a bunch of flying sexual organs than
| can mate with multiple outside queens several seasons each
| year. She can sting multiple times (to kill potential queen
| cells), while workers die after they sting, and drones have
| none.
|
| If the workers don't follow her guidance they will be left
| behind when the hive swarms, or fail to heat/cool the hive
| allowing the larvae and the hive to survive and continue. Some
| fraction may not go through the normal cycle, but it can't be
| many.
| mcny wrote:
| > Some fraction may not go through the normal cycle, but it
| can't be many.
|
| Maybe it is because I just saw an animated video on cancer
| (I'll find the link when I get home) on YouTube but then so
| are we thinking of a bee hive as one individual? Like in the
| video, they talk about how cancer cells refuse to die when
| something bad happens like they are supposed to...
|
| So this is going to sound cheesy but now I have to wonder,
| could you zoom out on humans as well? On earth? Are what we
| call "living beings" what we would call "malignant cells" or
| at best mutations?
|
| Now that's a scary thought.
|
| Edit: I think it is this one
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmpuerlbJu0
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| The Earth ecosystem is made of living beings. Why would
| they be compared to cancer cells? It sounds more reasonable
| to me to compare them to worker bees.
| jddj wrote:
| Certain insect colonies typically make good "individual"
| analogues due to certain roles being infertile and so the
| genetic lineage actually working in units that are larger
| than a single bee.
|
| If you think about it, the way we define an individual is a
| bit blurry anyway - think of those plants and creatures
| which produce more "individuals" by letting pieces break
| off and float down the river to take root elsewhere, or
| reproduce asexually to produce clones. Aphids, for example,
| on the same plant are commonly clones.
|
| So you can cling tight to the individual as being the thing
| that is delineated by a mixing of genes in sexual
| reproduction and have things still make some sense. But if
| you let that slide and zoom out then indeed life as we know
| it is just one branching, breaking, mutating organism.
| kloch wrote:
| This is why I prefer "loosely scripted vacations". I might have
| one or two destinations/activities planned in advance but always
| try to leave some days/times open if possible to explore the
| unknown. Sometimes this means not even booking a hotel for some
| nights and deciding where to go/stay the same day.
| phyzome wrote:
| There is also some fraction of the sea turtle population that
| goes in the "wrong direction" when navigating by the Earth's
| magnetic fields. I believe these individuals generally do not do
| very well. But... this natural variation might be what allows the
| species to persist even as the magnetic fields shift over
| millions of years.
|
| Being the rogue bee might be fine. Being the rogue turtle,
| well... it might be good for the species but bad for the
| individual.
| DicIfTEx wrote:
| There's also a famous clip from Werner Herzog's _Encounters at
| the End of the World_ where a penguin does something
| similar,[0] and I 've seen it theorised (possibly in the book
| _Empire Antarctica_ , but I'm not certain) that this may be a
| mechanism to find new breeding grounds (though, as you say, in
| a way that may be good for the species but is bad for most of
| the individuals so called).
|
| [0] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=zWH_9VRWn8Y
| [deleted]
| frikk wrote:
| This also reminds me of the Radio Lab episode that tracks
| bird migration, including one bird (that they were actively
| tracking) that simply peeled off the group and settled down
| somewhere else that wasn't part of the historic migration
| path. Feels like the same idea.
|
| In the book A Mote in God's Eye, they have a concept of the
| Crazy Eddie (presumably named after the 'eddies' in fluid
| dynamics), which is a mythical social phenotype where the
| member disagrees with the status quo and believes there is an
| unknown solution to their thus-far unsolved generational
| problem. Simply believing in a solution that is worth
| searching for denotes the member as 'insane'.
|
| Kind of seems like we, as natural beings and members of
| natural systems, absolutely have some kind of pattern-
| breaking behavior built in at a systemic level. A master-
| level emergent behavior that can exploit local maxima but
| still succeed in finding other local maxima to ensure the
| survival and adaptation of a species.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| We can see this in some form in mankind too, and I would
| expect this in most if not all species, the trick is how to
| notice it with our current tech options. In humans it may be
| a rogue psychopath or hermit that sails out in the unknown
| sea in ancient boat despite everbody telling him not to,
| often dying in the middle of nowhere, but from time to time
| actually making it someplace (to probably die there too until
| some other won't).
|
| Its as if species were a sentient organism playing some
| complex survival strategy game, sacrificing few individuals
| for that rare occasion that they could make a big difference.
|
| Its a fantastic evolutionary advantage when you think about
| species and eras, not individuals and their tragedies as we
| are wired to do. Any complex species not possessing it would
| be outcompeted eventually, or destroyed by some cataclysmic
| event that destroys balance built over time by more
| conforming populations. I am sure in some form this could be
| applied to economics too.
| ftxbro wrote:
| i feel like this is some advanced tier blogspam
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| This is pretty common in bacteria too
|
| The evolutionary emergence of stochastic phenotype switching in
| bacteria
| https://microbialcellfactories.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...
| shaburn wrote:
| Look up Charlie Munger on Bee Say Something Syndrome with the
| waggle dance.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Yes, and as I recall he was firmly in the camp that disruptive
| counter establishment voices get in the way of scalable Six
| Sigma type business and don't belong at the table. I must defer
| to his seniority but think it's getting progressively harder to
| tell a rabbit hole to nowhere from a portal to the next
| dimension.
| neilk wrote:
| I couldn't find any other reference to this rogue bee thing
| (except other inspirational essays).
|
| Wikipedia's entry on the waggle dance seems to suggest that bees
| often don't make use of the information in the dance. It's not
| some rare maverick bees per se. It's more that the information
| may not be important given the season or climate or presence of
| competition for the food. So it can be adaptive to ignore it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance#Efficiency_and_ad...
| Abimelex wrote:
| It's interesting, that even in a community like HN, almost
| nobody seems to ask for the scientific reference here. Might
| have something to do with confirmation bias? Or is there such a
| thing like sounds-interesting-AF-bias?
| breck wrote:
| On CorporateNews the version of the article going around
| talks about how 98% of rogue bees don't find a better flower
| patch and die starving and alone. ;)
|
| Your point is a great one. Most information in our world is
| of extremely low quality. That's what happens when attention
| is incentivized, not teaching.
| jmholla wrote:
| It also seems they may prefer to rely on their own personal
| knowledge. It's easier to go back to places you know then
| follow your friends' directions.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| I think I'm a rogue bee
| tikkun wrote:
| I love finding useful strategies and tactics from nature, and
| applying them in my life and work.
|
| Another example:
|
| Redundancy. We have two lungs, two nostrils, etc.
|
| Anything that I'm stressed about breaking or not having enough
| of, if it's practical to get a second one, I do, that way the
| stress is gone. Not always practical, but great when it is.
|
| A helpful way to remember it: 3 is 2, 2 is 1, and 1 is none.
| hollander wrote:
| You have no heart, sir!
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I was stressed about my relationship with my wife so I got a
| second one. This advice did not decrease my stress.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| The whole "opt out of expected group-think behavior" reminds me
| of a paper regarding the tunneling and movement behavior of ants:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/science/ants-worker-idlen...
|
| The gist of it is that 30% of studied ants do 70% of the work in
| digging tunnels. Other ants come in, see that it is too crowded,
| and don't try to force their way in in an effort to prove they're
| working hard to the other ants. This ends up being an ideal
| strategy for the colony because overcrowding reduces the overall
| work throughput, but requires all ants to be comfortable allowing
| some of their ant peers to work less while remaining in the
| vicinity of where work is being accomplished.
|
| Pretty interesting stuff, if you ask me! :)
| ChatGTP wrote:
| This is so cool.
|
| We have a lot of ants in our place at the moment and they're
| fascinating to watch. They do seem to solve problems and even
| show empathy towards each other. Sadly one was badly injured
| the other day and two other ants tried to come to the rescue,
| it was beautiful and sad to watch.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| some ants love to work, it brings them meaning.
|
| some ants love to mountain bike, and who can blame them?
| lazide wrote:
| Guessing when working ants get too tired (burned out?) it also
| gives the 'work-adjacent' ants a chance to get in with it being
| less crowded.
| jasmer wrote:
| That's some heavy handed humanization of ants attitudes there.
|
| "in in an effort to prove they're working hard to the other
| ants"
|
| "all ants to be comfortable allowing some of their ant peers to
| work less"
|
| Or maybe on some instinctive level they realize they just
| literally cannot work in the crowd and wait until they can and
| that's that.
| zentropia wrote:
| Worker ants are all sister and they don't reproduce, so no
| problem letting others do the hard work.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think the "letting others do the hard work" makes it easy
| to interpret your comment as somehow very negative.
|
| The reproductive success of an ant hill is determined at the
| hill level, so the ants have no evolutionary incentive for
| selfishness at all.
| bloppe wrote:
| True. The evolutionary success of ants happens at the colony
| level rather than the individual level, so they have an
| evolutionary pressure to "unfairly" divide the labor like
| this if it's more efficient overall. I'm sure there is no
| "awkwardness" for them. We humans cannot evolve this way
| because it disadvantages the productive ones. No wonder
| communism works so well for ants and bees.
|
| (Not saying successful communism is impossible for humans,
| especially at smaller scales, just that evolution is working
| against it, rather than for it).
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