Do bees learn? Like how to deal with mites? Or do they just die off every 45 days and only get replaced by bees who accidentally happen to be a little better at dealing with mites?
I am not an expert on insectology or beeology, I don’t actually know do they learn or not. An emergent entity of a hive seems to be learning better than the individual insect, but we’re learning so much about them even now, I don’t feel comfortable to make any speculations.
I know about mammals a bit more, and know that humans do learn, but the hive mind learning works worse than in hiving insects.
I wouldn’t say “if humans weren’t capable of learning we wouldn’t be here in the first place” - I would say “by random evolution of circumstances, humans are where we are today - some capable of learning, some apparently not.”
the (human) hive mind learning works worse than in hiving insects.
That’s an entirely opinion driven statement. What is better, or worse? From whose perspective? Do you know what you don’t know? If you think you do, you’re wrong.
From my perspective, people are a squishy mess. AI/LLM are also somewhat of a squishy mess, but I find them to be a lot more consistent and predictable in their behavior than randomly selected people. And, as far as the hiring process to find “the right” people for a particular job, that’s a long complicated unpredictable usually costly and error prone process, even before you get to the point that the people you have engaged for a certain task might start to learn and improve in their role. I can hire AI agents for the equivalent of pennies per hour of equivalent human output, and while they have their issues, I can get as many of them as I want with that same predictable behavior / capability for just a few dollars more. They haven’t started suing for slip and fall (yet), their performance doesn’t degrade based on time of day, day of the week, phase of the moon. They don’t call out sick, or pregnant. They don’t want healthcare insurance… whatever they can do, they would seem to be the ideal employees to do it.
Do bees learn? Like how to deal with mites? Or do they just die off every 45 days and only get replaced by bees who accidentally happen to be a little better at dealing with mites?
I am not an expert on insectology or beeology, I don’t actually know do they learn or not. An emergent entity of a hive seems to be learning better than the individual insect, but we’re learning so much about them even now, I don’t feel comfortable to make any speculations.
I know about mammals a bit more, and know that humans do learn, but the hive mind learning works worse than in hiving insects.
I wouldn’t say “if humans weren’t capable of learning we wouldn’t be here in the first place” - I would say “by random evolution of circumstances, humans are where we are today - some capable of learning, some apparently not.”
That’s an entirely opinion driven statement. What is better, or worse? From whose perspective? Do you know what you don’t know? If you think you do, you’re wrong.
From my perspective, people are a squishy mess. AI/LLM are also somewhat of a squishy mess, but I find them to be a lot more consistent and predictable in their behavior than randomly selected people. And, as far as the hiring process to find “the right” people for a particular job, that’s a long complicated unpredictable usually costly and error prone process, even before you get to the point that the people you have engaged for a certain task might start to learn and improve in their role. I can hire AI agents for the equivalent of pennies per hour of equivalent human output, and while they have their issues, I can get as many of them as I want with that same predictable behavior / capability for just a few dollars more. They haven’t started suing for slip and fall (yet), their performance doesn’t degrade based on time of day, day of the week, phase of the moon. They don’t call out sick, or pregnant. They don’t want healthcare insurance… whatever they can do, they would seem to be the ideal employees to do it.