[HN Gopher] Number 16 (spider)
___________________________________________________________________
Number 16 (spider)
Author : histories
Score : 308 points
Date : 2024-05-22 08:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| egypturnash wrote:
| Forty-three years. That's a long time to be a spider.
| throwanem wrote:
| It's a long time to be a human, come to that.
| Bonolio wrote:
| One has to consider that if the longest lived spider ever, is
| one out of possible millions, chosen for a particular study,
| that maybe 43 years isn't actually that long for a spider. It
| seems unlikely that at random they just happened to choose the
| spider that would live longer than them all.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Black widow spiders last something like a thousand eggs, and
| the hatchlings murder and easy one another until only a
| couple survive... Who go in to live for as long as black
| widows live for. The average lifespan is likely quite low,
| however.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Very few people seem to be able to distinguish between "the
| largest number on record" and "the largest thing that ever
| happened", even if they know perfectly well that records of
| whatever the phenomenon is are never kept.
| epolanski wrote:
| Can't they make different studies to determine age?
|
| We know that some turtles, sharks and whales can live way
| more than a century if not multiple centuries, but we don't
| know that because we have been following them from centuries.
|
| There's a tortoise living on the Seychelle's governor garden
| since 1882 and has outlived every single governor yet.
|
| We have a picture of it dating 1886: https://upload.wikimedia
| .org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Jonathan...
| rdlw wrote:
| > There's a tortoise living on the Seychelle's governor
| garden since 1882 and has outlived every single governor
| yet.
|
| Is this just a fancy way to say that the tortoise is alive,
| and whoever was governor in 1882 is dead?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, actually it is saying that every governor _since_
| 1882 (except, by implication of "yet", the current one
| implied to exist) is also dead, not just that the 1882
| governor is dead. Of course, in the limit case if there
| were no governors after 1882 (except the current one, if
| any) it would just say the one in 1882 was dead, but
| there were, in fact, 24 or 25, depending on exactly when
| in 1882 the tortoise arrived (not sure on that),
| subsequent governors before the position was abolished
| with home rule which quickly transitioned into
| independence.
|
| Which makes the "yet" weird, but I suppose it admits the
| possibility that the office might be restored before the
| tortoise dies, and the tortoise might not outlive the
| potential future governor.
| rdlw wrote:
| Sure, the "yet" seemed to imply that one governor has
| taken over. There's no further information regarding the
| number of governors, and I refrained from speculation.
| All I could deduce was that the 1882 governor is dead,
| the current one is alive, and there is a nonnegative
| whole number of intervening governors (zero or more).
| egypturnash wrote:
| Imagine the life of a spider. Imagine it for forty three
| years. Lurking in your burrow, waiting for a snack to wander
| by. Getting fucked by spider boys and maybe eating them. Do
| trapdoor spiders eat their mates? I'm not sure. Laying eggs
| and watching the spiderlings go running off. Again and again
| for forty three years.
|
| That just feels like a long time to be a spider.
| ErneX wrote:
| And it was killed, who knows for how long it could have lived.
| pvaldes wrote:
| In my opinion, the logical assumption is that this spider
| species can't live for much more time than exactly that
| interval of time
|
| The interesting point here to me is that it was not killed
| before. This suggests that it was able to fend off the wasps
| attacks for fourty years. I assume that hen died it was too
| weak (too old) to fight back. Another possibility is that it
| had moult recently and was too soft to defend itself.
|
| Insects die soon because adult wings can't moult twice.
| Spiders don't have wings so they can moult indefinitely and
| became much much older than insects --but-- is easy to
| predict that (unlike jellyfishes), spiders can't live forever
|
| We can be 100% sure of this empirically. We even could
| predict mathematically the life time span of each species,
| also if we would want it (again, in my opinion).
| serf wrote:
| it's neat that the spider outlasted the arachnologist's career.
|
| I wonder how long it would have lived without the wasps'
| interference.
| bentcorner wrote:
| While we're talking spiders, here's a book recommendation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel) (it's a
| fantastic novel, if you have any interest at all don't spoil it
| for yourself)
| riffraff wrote:
| I second this, I cannot recommend this enough. The sequels are
| also interesting, but not so much.
| throwanem wrote:
| Strong second.
| jasonkester wrote:
| Yeah, it's got a bit of that "sci-fi books that HN recommends "
| syndrome in that it's a cool idea for a book but not actually a
| good book. More interesting to have described to you by someone
| who has read it than to read.
|
| But probably worth forcing your way through the poor writing,
| character building and storytelling to get those cool ideas out
| of it.
|
| It's a good book to have read, but not to read, I guess. Sadly,
| the second one squanders an even more interesting concept, and
| isn't worth reading.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I found the pacing a bit difficult, like they got 500 pages
| in and realized "okay, we've gotta wrap this up in a hurry".
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > it's a cool idea for a book but not actually a good book
|
| This was my impression of K. J. Parker's work. (I read the
| Scavenger trilogy of his.)
|
| Intricate idea, uninteresting writing.
| shirleyquirk wrote:
| I'm so glad to hear you say that, i was carrying it around
| while slogging through it and everyone else who saw exclaimed
| how good they'd heard it was. I do think the sequel is
| better, I can suspend my disbelief more and found parts of it
| honestly thrilling
| hluska wrote:
| That's a whole lot of words to shit on a book that someone
| else wrote. It's not a very good look. I mean, yes you're
| smart, but have some class.
| adammarples wrote:
| Not at all, that's a valuable review for me
| kmarc wrote:
| I read it before I became a daily reader of HN.
|
| I always thought and still think it's a great book. It may
| miss some writer's instruments to make it "a good book" in
| the classical sense, but to me it wasn't missing at all.
|
| If anyone here neglects this book due to being a "sci-fi
| booksthat HN recommends", please give it a try!
| jimmydddd wrote:
| I was a huge Asimov fan as a kid. Re-reading some of my
| favorites, I noticed they lacked a lot of classical "good
| book" elements. But they are still great in their own way.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Yeah, it's got a bit of that "sci-fi books that HN
| recommends " syndrome in that it's a cool idea for a book but
| not actually a good book.
|
| Since you seem to have a higher bar than many, what are some
| examples of sci-fi books that you think are actually good
| books?
| hultner wrote:
| I have not read this but I can recommend Vernor Vinges book "A
| Deepness of the Sky" on a similar theme.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| I've read both and both are 10/10. But if you use a 100-point
| scale then Vinge's book is 99/100 and Tchaikovsky's is
| 95/100.
| foobiekr wrote:
| The final sentence is very sad. Fuck Alzheimer's.
| epolanski wrote:
| A neighbor of mine went from the most brilliant and kindest
| person I've ever met, to not recognizing his own wife at home
| in a short time span of few months.
|
| The fact that he would not recognize me after talking together
| every week for a decade felt slightly odd.
|
| But what broke the camel's straw was after one morning he
| assaulted his own wife coming back with groceries thinking she
| was an intruder.
|
| Living 50 years together and not remembering her at all was
| awful.
|
| Broke her and his heart too when he had to be taken to a proper
| elderly care facility as he was too dangerous (70+ but still
| very fit and strong) to his own family. Obviously, luck wanted
| that he was lucid when they were taking him out the house. He
| was aware of what was happening and why for few minutes. But
| when it came to say goodbye it felt like Shutter Island finale,
| you couldn't say whether he was now faking a few moments later
| or if he was doing it because aware of his condition and
| danger.
| rc_mob wrote:
| the spider is forever alive in her heart
| happytoexplain wrote:
| >For her 40th birthday, research assistant Leanda Mason wanted to
| give the spider a mealworm, but Main denied the request since it
| would interfere with the study.
|
| I have to admire the level of professionalism it takes to not
| give a single mealworm to a spider you have been watching for
| forty years.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| They also didn't give her a name - she remained "#16", without
| any pet name.
| throwanem wrote:
| Nor should they have. Instead, they behaved respectfully.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| What would be disrespectful about calling her Brenda for
| example ?
| aa-jv wrote:
| The potential for confusion when documenting the work in
| any scientific papers.
| martin293 wrote:
| How does that have amything to do with disrespect?
| aa-jv wrote:
| Not having respect for the scientific process, where
| using loaded or ambiguous labels introduces culture where
| only raw technical facts are required.
| martin293 wrote:
| Meh. As another commenter pointed out,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_(parrot) . Also I find
| the idea of "academic seriousness" very weird. I would
| never ever want to wake up with the thought of doing
| "serious science" all day. I want science (in my personal
| case, math) to be interesting, and thus fun.
|
| "Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the
| seriousness of a child at play." - Heraclitus
| sdk77 wrote:
| It doesn't. The spider's name is 'Number 16'. It could be
| any alphanumeric string.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| But the original assertion was that the researchers
| "behaved respectfully" by using the #16 name.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Spiders are math loving creatures
| dotancohen wrote:
| Many research animals are named. Alex the parrot comes to
| mind.
| AdamN wrote:
| This is an outcome of Jane Goodall challenging the
| convention of the day to use code numbers for animal
| subjects. At the time it was considered apostasy.
| throwanem wrote:
| It'd be unduly familiar.
| lIl-IIIl wrote:
| Reminds me of "Red XIII", a character in Final Fantasy 7, who
| was a specimen in a study when encountered by the player. The
| name is probably chosen to highlight the heartless practice
| of giving a number to a sentient being instead of using a
| name.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| On the other hand, the difference it makes in the study is
| zero.
| alex_duf wrote:
| what if the spider dies shortly after? You'll have no way of
| knowing if the worm was the cause of the death.
|
| what if the spider doesn't die shortly after? You'll have no
| way of knowing if the spider would have died of hunger
| without your intervention
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You can safely assume that nothing ever dies of hunger.
|
| It doesn't matter, though; none of your results will be
| different either way.
| janalsncm wrote:
| What amazes me about spiders is their complex unlearned behavior.
| No trapdoor spider learns how to build a trap. No orb weaver
| learns how to spin a web. Trap/web building behavior is entirely
| programmed in their DNA.
|
| I think about this a lot in the context of conversations about
| intelligence. If spiders can have complex behaviors hard-coded,
| humans certainly do too. (In other words, the Tabula Rasa theory
| is wrong.) The ability to learn language and emotion are
| certainly two examples. We are pretty good at certain things
| (learning language, picking up social cues) and relatively bad at
| others (calculating an 18% tip).
|
| So if you're going to measure "intelligence" the first thing
| you'll need to do is choose what to measure. What questions do
| you ask? You might be inclined to pick things we humans think are
| important. But then that's not an objective universal
| measurement, at best it's yardstick for human cognitive
| abilities.
| ggm wrote:
| They don't just build one. You may mean they don't learn from
| observation of others or from their mother. They may still
| acquire a sense of a better trapdoor and make better trap doors
| by experience. I can't think of an experiment to test the
| theory, but it might be around qualities like "thickness" or
| "wind resistance" if you could make a condition of test which
| put the trapdoor they do un-biassed under specific stresses.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Still, even if that's true, it does not refute the point. The
| knowledge necessary to build the very first burrow or web, or
| trapdoor (which will be definitely more than good enough
| otherwise spiders would no longer exist) is hardcoded, not
| externally acquired.
| kid64 wrote:
| Isn't virtually all behavior of non-humans driven by
| instinct? Our learned behavior seems way more unlikely and
| amazing.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| Are you saying that humans are the only animal capable of
| learning?
| seszett wrote:
| No, learning from parents is common for the young of most
| mammals and many birds, at least.
|
| Primates are on another level compared to most other
| animals, and humans are definitely outliers, but learned
| behaviour is far from unique to humans.
| ggm wrote:
| I agree. An individual may develop improvement over time
| (43 years!) but there's no evidence of transmission across
| generations. Still, ability to refine might be heritable?
| FabHK wrote:
| > the Tabula Rasa theory is wrong
|
| Good book about precisely this (and in agreement with your
| statement) is cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker's 2002 book
| _The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature_.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate
| dhosek wrote:
| I've thought about differing levels of innate behaviors in
| different species as being somewhat akin to different sorts
| of programming languages. So dogs and cats are more akin to,
| say, Pascal1 which provides a high level of functionality at
| the language level, but are limited in capability2 while
| humans are more like C where there's less functionality out
| of the box, but the ability to accomplish unique tasks is
| less bounded.
|
| [?]
|
| 1. This is a theory I came up with as a high school student
| in the 80s so my choices of programming languages reflect
| that.
|
| 2. Insert obligatory Turing-completeness disclaimer here.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Story time.
|
| I'm from Western Australia and spent a lot of time in its
| deserts in my youth.
|
| I have a very distinct memory of walking out among the spinifex
| as a child, needing to pee. Its hot, my bare feet are burning,
| the ground is unforgiving and I already have spinifex'ed
| ankles, so naturally I tread as carefully as I can, trying to
| avoid the sand and the spikes, only walking on the slightly
| less heated organic mats that surround some of the spinifex, a
| kind of carpet of twigs and leaves, gathered in pockets by the
| wind.
|
| The natural urge is rising, and I stop paying attention and get
| a bit of pace, as relief must be had. I see a particularly
| appealing area, covered by this organic dust, and I leap over
| to it, get my body parts aligned, and begin the process of
| relief.
|
| A few seconds into it, I feel something moving. The entire mat
| that I was standing on, is in fact, a field of trap doors.
| Maybe a hundred of them. They begin to open.
|
| I have never levitated as hard and as fast in my life.
|
| So my Tabula Rasa has given me this lesson: don't go into the
| spinifex to pee. Ever.
| tgittos wrote:
| Wild. I also grew up in Perth and until just now thought WA
| didn't have trapdoor spiders. Thanks for the anecdote that
| taught me something.
| helpfulContrib wrote:
| In fact they recently found new species ...
|
| https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2018/05/fourte
| e...
| bruce511 wrote:
| We struggle to define intelligence, much less measure it.
|
| When I was at school a million years ago "smart" kids were ones
| who learned to read fast, did numbers well, and had good memory
| recall.
|
| Then along came computers, which had perfect memory, did
| numbers really well. So "intelligent machines?"
|
| Obviously not, so we tweaked our measure of intelligence.
| Perhaps to include writing well, or learning quickly. Which,
| um, computers now do.
|
| But we still view the computers as "not intelligent" but I'm
| not sure what measure we'll use now. Something to do with art
| or music? Hmm, no, wait, that's no good either....
|
| (PS schools still mostly measure numbers and memory....)
| lukan wrote:
| "But we still view the computers as "not intelligent" but I'm
| not sure what measure we'll use now. Something to do with art
| or music? Hmm, no, wait, that's no good either...."
|
| We could focus on whether the student has actually understood
| the topic and is not just able to produce nice sounding words
| and some quotes about it.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| How do you differentiate between a student who actually
| understands the topic and one who is just able to produce a
| convincing essay about it?
|
| More generally, how do you measure 'actual understanding',
| if not by judging the student's output?
| lukan wrote:
| "if not by judging the student's output"
|
| Where did I say to not do that?
|
| And someone who can produce a convincing essay usually
| has understood the topic (unless he copy pasted it). And
| when there are doubts, one can ask that student specific
| questions.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > Where did I say to not do that?
|
| You asserted that the student should "not just [be] able
| to produce nice sounding words". What do you suggest
| output is if not words (nice sounding or not)?
|
| > And someone who can produce a convincing essay usually
| has understood the topic (unless he copy pasted it).
|
| Then, what is the difference between a convincing essay
| ('nice sounding words') produced by a human, and similar
| words produced by an LLM?
|
| After all, even today, students are passing ChatGPT's
| work off as their own. Does this then demonstrate
| understanding by the student or by ChatGPT?
|
| > And when there are doubts, one can ask that student
| specific questions.
|
| If an LLM can answer specific questions about a subject,
| does this demonstrate true understanding? If not, why
| not?
| dotancohen wrote:
| Schools deem a child smart when that child excels at tasks
| that the school assigns to them. I've those tasks were simply
| to read and add. Then those tasks included writing and
| remembering. What tasks do schools demand of children today?
|
| It seems that intelligence is a term that we apply to people
| who consistently excel at the mental tasks assigned to them,
| no matter what those tasks entail.
| LtdJorge wrote:
| Kids being smart normally means they are _more_ intelligent
| than the others. Computers, compared to average humans are
| dumb as rocks.
| fmbb wrote:
| Who struggles to do what for which purpose?
|
| Sometimes the word "intelligent" is used by someone who sells
| IQ tests.
|
| Sometimes the word is used by someone who sells the idea of a
| computer that can think like a human.
|
| I don't know if people in general struggle or care about the
| definition.
| liampulles wrote:
| I wonder if the process of building a complex web can be
| reduced to a simple set of rules, almost like a cellular
| automata.
|
| The simple rulesets which lead to complex outcomes in nature is
| amazing to me.
| fartsucker69 wrote:
| simple nets for sure, but spiders can easily deal with an
| uncountable number of corner cases, I somehow think it's not
| reducible to all-too simple rules (in the 'game of life'
| sense) and more an interaction of several non-trivially
| complex systems like their various perception systems.
|
| obviously their neural networks are limited in size and
| therefor complexity has to remain somewhat simple relatively
| to larger animals).
| lqet wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1135/
| tshaddox wrote:
| Many years ago when I was working IT for a public school
| district, I was unpacking a large number of identical HP PCs
| from cardboard boxes. I noticed that a large portion (it must
| have been half or more) of the boxes had the exact same type
| of spider in a nearly identical web in the exact same spot in
| the cardboard box. It was a small cardboard cubby taped onto
| the inside of the large exterior box, for storing a power
| cord and other small accessories. It must have been just the
| right shape and size, and accessible in just the right way,
| that this type of spider absolutely loved it.
| viraptor wrote:
| > If spiders can have complex behaviors hard-coded, humans
| certainly do too.
|
| Depends what you mean by complex... All creatures get born with
| an idea how to get food. Human babies have never seen breast or
| anyone sucking breast, yet they can go through the process
| pretty much immediately. That's a very clever movement /
| sensation following combination, but it's there from the
| beginning.
| alandarev wrote:
| do you have children or worked with babies? they suck
| anything they can fit in mouth. The reflex of sucking is
| wired, yes, but not the object
| lqet wrote:
| Babies are definitely hardwired to be attracted by the
| contrast of skin / areola on the female breast. Once they
| have targeted this contrast, they will do a very typical
| (also hardwired) "search" for the nipple: they come very
| close to the breast, open their mouth, do exploratory
| sucking via fast breathing, and quickly move their head
| left and right until they have "docked" on the breast. They
| start doing this minutes after birth (they are also
| hardwired to search for the breast when placed on the
| mother right after birth), and stop once their sensory
| systems are fully developed and they have learned how mom
| looks, how mom smells, and where mom's breast is (after 1-2
| months). On my own child, I even noticed how it once
| mistook the snout of a teddy bear for a female breast.
|
| The "will suck at anything" instinct is IMHO a fall-back
| mechanism if for some reason a female breast is not
| available.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| Here's a source for the above claim that I found after
| looking this up:
|
| >During pregnancy, the nipple has become more pigmented
| 68 and is easy for the newborn infant to discover (Fig.
| 1C). We have observed that soon after birth, the areola
| expands and takes a bulb-like shape (Fig. 1G). The
| Montgomery glands also become more pronounced (Fig. 1G).
| The scent of areolar secretions has been linked to
| behavioural responses, such as head turning 69 and
| directional crawling in newborn infants 70. This release
| of the breast odour by the Montgomery glands is known to
| help the newborn infant find the nipple 17, 27, 69. The
| newborn infant recognises the scent of the mother's
| breast from the amniotic fluid 71, touches the breast and
| transmits the taste of the breast to the mouth (hand-to-
| breast-mouth movements) 17. This stimulates rooting and
| crawling movements in the newborn infant to reach the
| nipple. The connection between the taste of amniotic
| fluid and the scent of the breast from the Montgomery
| glands highlights a biological survival mechanism - a
| pathway of flavour with lifelong consequences. (Fig. 3)
| (17, 71-80) When knowing of this sensitive odour-
| dependent mechanism, it might be wise not to interfere
| with unfamiliar hands.[0]
|
| [0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/apa.14754
| viraptor wrote:
| There's more to it. Have a look at the specific idea of
| "breast crawl".
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| > What amazes me about spiders is their complex unlearned
| behavior. No trapdoor spider learns how to build a trap. No orb
| weaver learns how to spin a web. Trap/web building behavior is
| entirely programmed in their DNA.
|
| Do we really have evidence for this rather than observation and
| communication from parents to offspring. I'm deeply skeptical.
| edanm wrote:
| I have no idea about this, but, how hard would it be in
| theory to test? Just remove a spider from any other spiders
| and see if they develop that behavior.
|
| I don't know if the parent comment represented the expert
| consensus correctly, but if they did, I wouldn't
| automatically be skeptical of it.
| berkes wrote:
| we do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture#Int
| ellig...
|
| That evidence is compelling and well-reviewed. But that
| evidence is also countered with other evidence: the debate
| isn't settled. But it's undoubtedly clear that a part of our
| intelligence and other personality traits are inherited:
| coded into our DNA. What's not settled, is how much.
| seszett wrote:
| Spiders that hatch without their parents around build the
| same webs as any other spider from the same species. This
| behaviour is really not something that leaves any space for
| being sceptical.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| Is it too much to believe that both hardware (built-in) and
| software (flexible) parts are employed in nature?
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| > If spiders can have complex behaviors hard-coded, humans
| certainly do too.
|
| That does not follow. It's a logical fallacy. ('Spiders can
| have eight legs, so humans certainly do too.')
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymelia
| wddkcs wrote:
| That's a birth defect, not applicable.
| fartsucker69 wrote:
| in the limit the distinction between something that is
| learned and something that is programmed genetically is
| somewhat a matter of definitions. if a species genes makes it
| so they create a complex social web that teaches all its
| individuals certain skills, is that genetically programmed or
| not?
|
| free will wouldn't even change that, since it's presumably
| also given by our genes.
| dcre wrote:
| It's only a logical fallacy if it is taken to be the entirety
| of the argument rather than an abbreviated representation of
| a longer chain of reasoning. I don't think anyone would claim
| that sentence is self-evidently true!
| barbs wrote:
| Sometimes I feel like my fear of spiders is baked into my DNA.
| I think I found some evidence to support this, can't remember
| where though...
| llmblockchain wrote:
| Interesting-- I wonder if criminal behavior is embedded in
| DNA...
| Geezus_42 wrote:
| And now we're heading towards eugenics once again. Amazing
| how quickly these discussions turn that direction.
| angiosperm wrote:
| Curiously, though, we don't really know it is coded in DNA.
|
| Michael Levin has been discovering lately that biology is more
| complicated than we thought. His YT videos are mind-boggling.
| Flatworm genetics are a dog's breakfast that the cells work
| around by means nobody understands.
| moi2388 wrote:
| His talks are some of the most fascinating I've ever heard.
| Nick Lane is a close second.
| phito wrote:
| Michael Levin's work is awesome
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| What do you mean by this specifically? What claims does he
| make? It's hard to respond to this just based on what you
| wrote. I don't think biologists have claimed that biology
| isn't complicated, and I don't think anyone claims that DNA
| isn't complicated either. Unless you are referring to
| genetics? That is still caused by DNA, just not by gene
| expression.
| AeroNotix wrote:
| I think the biggest issues involved around
| knowledge/skills/intelligence being potentially linked to
| genetics is that it often draws the eugenics proponents into
| the discussion and it's obvious how that conversation ends.
| SCM-Enthusiast wrote:
| the children of time series explores this concept in spiders.
| What happens if you were able pass down all of your knowledge
| into your children through genetics and how would that change
| society.
| jcul wrote:
| It reminds me of how Noam Chomsky speaks about language /
| language learning being something inate in humans.
| diroussel wrote:
| Carl Jung held this view too. And he knew his teacher Freud
| disagreed. For instance a Carl Jung thought a humans fear of
| spiders in innate, and not learnt.
|
| The same as how a bird can be scared on snakes. Interestingly
| native birds in Australia aren't scared of humans.
| csomar wrote:
| > For instance a Carl Jung thought a humans fear of spiders
| in innate, and not learnt.
|
| I don't have fear of spiders (was surprised by how many
| people do fear spiders). When I was young, I "hosted" a bunch
| of them under my table. Thinking of it, I think most people
| have their fears transmitted through their mothers. My mom
| certainly didn't fear spiders but she hated their "dirty"
| webs.
|
| For example I do have a strong reaction to cockroaches till
| this day; a harmless insect that my mother fear. I can't even
| look at the beast. My cousin do not and conversely do fear
| spiders.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I saw a project on GitHub some time ago where someone trained a
| neural net with only a single, shared weight to play a driving
| game.
|
| They used a gentic algorithm to evolve the network, its
| connections and activation functions (per node).
|
| It got quite good.
|
| Perhaps not that surprising that one can encode a lot in the
| graph structure itself, and given how DNA is quite good at
| dictating complex organs, I don't see why something similar
| couldn't be at work for insects and mammals alike. After all,
| nobody taught the newborn kangaroo babies how to crawl up into
| the pouch of their mom either.
| mobeets wrote:
| Probably this (awesome) paper: https://proceedings.neurips.cc
| /paper/2019/hash/e98741479a7b9...
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Yep, can't recall if someone else implemented it or if it
| was official repo tho. Was a car driving over obstacles in
| 2D IIRC.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| It has been well argued that "The Blank Slate" argument is
| wrong, or at least more complex and subtle than that.
|
| In Pinker's book The Blank Slate" in particular.
|
| We are born blank of our mother tongue, but are wired to
| acquire one. Not wired with the skill itself, but with the
| propensity to acquire it. Both nature and nurture are deeply
| important to the outcome.
| dhosek wrote:
| I kind of wonder whether certain cultural artifacts might be
| genetically inspired. My son, when he was young, without any
| prompting wanted to be an architect (like his great-grandfather
| whom he had never met, nor even heard anything about before
| this) and was obsessed with guitars (like me, although at that
| point, my own guitar had been in the basement for years and he
| had never seen me play it). This is not to say that these
| particular behaviors are explicitly encoded in genetics (both
| guitars and architecture as a discipline are much younger than
| evolutionary time), but rather that some intrinsic
| predisposition towards them exists (so, perhaps had we lived in
| fifteenth-century Persia, we would be oud-obsessed, to choose
| one posseible alternate reality).
| dewbrite wrote:
| Anecdotally, I had a grandfather I never met who had built
| his own house on a nice plot of land out in the sticks, and
| that's something I'm obsessed with doing in the future. My
| father also worked in tech, but didn't really pass knowledge
| to me.
|
| Though, both of these things are almost stereotypical [1]
|
| 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/vnmmuo/w
| he...
| foolfoolz wrote:
| i think we are going to find way more comes from dna than we
| thought. Physiognomy is the science of determining your
| personality (and other traits) from the way your face looks.
| this was cast aside as pseudoscience like palm reading, until
| recently ai facial recognition found its real
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy
| jonahx wrote:
| > Because of Number 16, Main's project took far longer than she
| had expected. She continued to work into her late 80s, but she
| "began to look forward to the project's end"
|
| Reminded me of The Onion's "Expert Wasted Entire Life Studying
| Anteaters":
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXD9HnrNrvk
| junon wrote:
| > Australian arachnologist Barbara York Main ... returned to the
| site annually, sometimes more frequently, for more than four
| decades.
|
| Huge respect. Always amazed by scientists sticking with studies
| like that.
| brap wrote:
| I wonder what it's like living life idle 99% of the time. Do
| spiders get bored?
| optimalsolver wrote:
| You may be interested in this discussion:
|
| "Imagining the psychology of aliens evolved from ambush
| predators"
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/16a9m2h/ima...
| disagree123 wrote:
| Rarely do I see a wikipedia post here that actually is new and
| interesting to me. Thanks!
| zeigotaro wrote:
| This was also posted on depthsofwikipedia on IG, which, if you
| haven't checked out, is quite the rabbit hole. Highly
| recommended.
| Miraltar wrote:
| The longest-lived spider: mygalomorphs dig deep, and persevere
|
| Research article reporting the spider's death by Leanda Denise
| Mason, Grant Wardell-Johnson and Barbara York Main
|
| https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?url=http%3A%2F%...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-23 23:02 UTC)