What happens when you pour molten aluminium into an anthill? | Hacker News Reader

What happens when you pour molten aluminium into an anthill?

anthillart.com

31 pointsjackgavigan81 comments

Something about pouring molten metal on an ant colony just feels wrong.

Everything about it feels wrong.

Ever had a colony of ants invade your house?

Yes/No. What's the difference how he answers your question.

You're absolutely the reason why our politics and logical thinking of our citizens suffer. People who think that asking a "wiseass" question suffices for actual ethics/moral compass.

Here let me try this brainless questionnary approach to rhetoric. Tell me if I'm up to your level of quality.

------ I've had raccoons raid my trash bin. Should I slice the next raccoon up and turn him into a "Rorschach test"?

> You're absolutely the reason why our politics and logical thinking of our citizens suffer. People who think that asking a "wiseass" question suffices for actual ethics/moral compass.

This is not a constructive response.

> This is not a constructive response.

Hm, this is not a constructive response either.

>You're absolutely the reason why our politics and logical thinking of our citizens suffer. People who think that asking a "wiseass" question suffices for actual ethics/moral compass.

Perhaps you're overthinking it? It's insects. For humanity it has been a non-issue killing them for the entirety of our existence.

What's next? "Is it ethical to kill cancer cells?".

That's the kind of thinking that when extended by induction, supports killing of all sorts of things. Insects might be annoying but as humans all we have over them is our ability to build, shape the tera, and command respect of intellect by the deeds we do.

The fact that it is hardly necessary is the main facet here. We should not be killing and destroying homes for pleasure or entertainment. Unfortunately the pleasure part is already being done in the form of eating animals, so it's hard to argue a facet of morality that 99% of the world espouses with.

>That's the kind of thinking that when extended by induction, supports killing of all sorts of things.

And that's totally fine. Nature also kills "all sorts of things", has all sorts of things killing each other, and could even wipe out the planet tomorrow with a huge comet or something...

Note that every time you wash your hands you're killing millions of germs...

Visit a jungle, or an African savannah, or go for a swim in shark-infested waters. Go make friends with some animals. When you meet a hungry predator, or a swarm of parasites, you will be attacked and eaten.

What will you say? Survival of the fittest? Or immoral animal unnecessarily eating an innocent human being for its pleasure?

If you really believe that humans are just another animal, then we have as much right to eat them as they have to eat us--and they do.

But that's the point. We have intelligence and morals. It's what we base our humanity on - achievements in the realm of mathematics, engineering, physics, chemistry, etc. We cannot use "well we're animals" as justification for intellectually reprehensible acts like torture. A cogent human has no business factory farming, ie. torturing animals for tastebud entropy unless it's by necessity. Hunting and eating animals is a blurred line but I'd generally say its OK given that it's a lot more filled with respect and lack of torture than the meat industry.

> You're absolutely the reason why our politics and logical thinking of our citizens suffer. People who think that asking a "wiseass" question...

What do you think you're doing?

He asked a reasonable question that provided context and counterpoint to the original assertion, which advances the discussion. You posted a reactionary, knee-jerk response, driving the level of discussion into the ground, and accusing him of being in the wrong.

You are trolling.

I was not trolling. The question he asked was a baseless setup for anecdotal personal attacks. I simply added a tangential point to the conversation. Asking a question like that only serves to debate by way of cheap anecdotes.

"Well if you DID experience an ant colony invading your home, you would change the value of your binary view"

Its a cheap shot and I'd actually take your entire comment and point it at the unreasonably coy question intended to create a rift in what should be objective logic.

That's not a good analogy. Molten metal invading the ant habitat kills them. Ant invading your habitat annoys you.

But it annoys him A LOT! How dare indiginous life on this planet invade his artificially built home that happens to have been built on the habitats of others animals..

That's something only someone isolated from nature, and living in an "artificially built home" would say.

People living close to nature need to defend their habitats from "indigenous life", from rats to ants and all kinds of pests all the time.

Homo sapiens are indigenous life on this planet. From a neutral perspective, homo sapiens' "nests" are no more artificial than an anthill. And when an ant colony invades an already-existing house--indeed, how dare they.

Most people I know poison the ants when they are in the house.

If you watch carefully, not a single ant flees the mound or is visible anywhere near. Fire ants abandon their mounds when the colony moves.

For an analog: if an abandoned stable burns down, no horses are harmed.

Once the art market for pouring molten aluminium into anthills is saturated, we'll pour molten aluminium into an elephants digestive system, because that would look cool as well.

We'll only do it to the circus elephants that refuse to obey their commands. And the rest of the body, the meat will goto charity!

This looks rather nice and neatly displays an aspect of ant colonies that is hard to see otherwise. When done for research, I think that this is awesome. Have a look at the concrete pouring of a leafcutter ant colony (which is huge and has a very interesting layout) if you find this interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFg21x2sj-M

But then, having this memorial to an ant colony extinguished by hot molten metal sitting in my room strikes me as a bit macabre. At least intuitively, I don't even feel that sorry for the ant colony (which I think is the relevant organism eradicated here, not the individual ants), but turning its death into a work of art still feels tasteless. But then, I have ants as pets (I can only recommend to do that, it is not too much work but very interesting), so maybe I am overly sentimental here.

Why is everyone assuming ants were killed in the process? There are plenty of abandoned ant colonies in the world.

That particular one (#72) would make a great tabletop Christmas tree emulation.

These are Red imported fire ants, they are considered to be a pest so nothing wrong with this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Counterm...

they also do it on native colonies: e.g. "Ant Type: Field Ants (Formica pallidefulva)" among others. (all those less "rooty" casts)

It starts with one justification. And then ends with another. Even if it was just pests, it's in bad taste to create art through termination of life.

Does that include art that involves plants? Ink made from bacteria?

Of course an HNers gonna ask something like this. Plants have no mechanisms to experience time at a metabolism even near the slowest of animals (ie tortoise, elephant.) Nothing close to a nervous system. When you find out the first pain-bearing plant, don't comment here, go get your Nobel Prize. Don't waste your breath on a specious argument.

I can only trust you'll be so considerate to a nest of termites that infests your house.

Only if they take their shoes off at the door.

What about my computer then, it has a mechanism to 'experience' time, on a level far better than any living being. (The real time clock.) It can process information, which seems quite similar to a nervous system. And it can cry for help via log-files. Seems by your definition I need a really good justification for a reboot.

You're just pulling a pundit...

But to entertain your coy argument. Metaphors are not biology. A computer has nothing close to a nervous system. And has no self modifying parts.

Ants are incredible. The variety is absolutely enormous, in Panama in an apartment building on the 8th floor I stayed in for a while there were ants so small you could barely see them with the naked eye, and down on the ground right in front of the building were ants that were 10mm+.

The leafcutter ant paths there would look like conveyor belts running back and forth with slices of leaves from bushes, I could watch them for hours.

The point of this is being missed because of holiness spiral signalling noise. Yes yes, you need to show off your superior ethics because that's a competitive market, you've done so, now get out of the way of the "real" discussion.

The story at the end of the contact page (just click on 'contact') is the actual gold for HN. In summary, the life story of this "startup" begins with No demand, no money, no market. Post videos, one of which gets 6M views per day. Now the market is maybe 300 requests, and the artist claims most of the 300 are not responding and paying up when he's got shippable product. Its quite possible world demand for the product is only the 30 or so produced.

So there are startup lessons here. At least some of them:

1) Really cool videos and gets 6M daily views and tons of press can mean as few as a couple dozen sales. Conversion rate matters.

2) Artist thinks he's in the business of making art pieces, but no body is buying them such that he's offering to give them to science museums. Artist is actually in the monetizing viral videos business where he makes videos 6M people per day watch, while someone is selling those viewers cars and diet sodas or whatever is advertised. All the money is being made in his online videos, not his product.

3) Production rate is critical. Artist claims the interest he's got, weak as it is, is none the less so far in advance of production speed that it would take years to catch up. Scaling does matter!

4) Don't market something you can't ship for years. Maybe his conversion rate would be higher if he shipped when it was a "thing" not months to years later.

To some extent if you read the contact page this is a stereotypical startup failure story that we see every day on HN, its just this startup was doing strange things with liquid aluminum instead of wrapping someone else's project in bootstrap or writing copycat CRUD frontends or whatever is momentarily trendy for the entitled. There is at least some commonality in startup failure across the business world. This story was an interesting read. Go ahead, click "contact" and read it!

After consideration [1], pretty awesome.

[1] A) Individual ants are not protected by ethics in a way that outweighs the creation of art. B) A anthill is probably not significant enough to warrant protection by environmental concerns.

1A is pretty interesting. It's not a statement of fact, though, and your arbitrary moral line probably doesn't line up with everyone else's.

The sculptures are cool indeed, but I'm not sure killing hundreds or thousands of living things for something unnecessary lines up with my arbitrary moral line.

Edit: yes, I know they're an invasive species, but parent's comment wasn't about that.

This kind of killing is generally accepted in society, sadly. People eat meat for sensory enjoyment, not out of necessity.

The worst part of it too, is denial. You'll have some that "their body needs meat" and others that say being a vegetarian is "too expensive." Yet it's been shown time and time again, that especially in this day and age, it's pretty trivial to be a vegan, let alone a vegetarian.

The fact is that people are pretty weak when it comes to understanding their rather wicked sensory addiction to meat flavors. It is beyond me, how someone could say with a straight face that they trade torture and death for extra pepper. I'm inclined to believe that denial of the alternatives is the primary vehicle for the evil.

And I eat meat because grains, legumes, and starches kill me if I eat them. I was an omnivore that would eat pretty much anything. Not anymore, but by medical requirement.

I'm T2 diabetic. I map my blood sugar and can show you what happens if I eat 20g carbs (hint: its not pretty).

Now, I also think that killed plants also think and feel, just not in the timeframe we do. Their chemical triggers are their communication. Their neural net... I'm still not sure, but I'm sure there are plant biologists whom study this.

Low-carb vegetarian diet is very easy to do. You can eat eggs, cheese, nuts, tofu and Quorn in addition to protein rich veggies like beans/lentils. Not to mention all the regular veggies that are low carb.

Eggs are pretty horrific from an animal rights point of view.

You only need female chickens to lay eggs, so almost all the male chicks are disposed of by gassing with carbon dioxide (if they're unlucky) or grinding (if they're lucky).

Hundreds of millions of chicks are hatched and then killed within a day because they're male.

Note that the type of egg production (caged, barn, pastured, free range) doesn't make any difference here.

I'm sure me and OP agree with you. But most people are incapable of going straight to vegan.

Also, keep in kind that eggs CAN be humane and not a source of death - it is just that the current industry is.

First of all, you are reaching when you try to equate killing plants with killing animals. Second of all, vegetarian protein sources like peanuts and cashews have next to no carbs. Tofu is almost no carbs as well. And like I said, in this day and age, you can just get a good protein powder. If you don't want to go full vegan, just have cheese, milk, and eggs. Boom, protein, without killing.

You are a classic case of the denial that is overreaching our culture. Kind of what I was referring to in my post. I think my arguments fall on deaf ears, because what you mentioned is so easily dispelled that I would garner you never took even a day to research vegetarian dietary options.

> You are a classic case of the denial that is overreaching our culture.

Denial? All life is sacred. I just don't put one life form above or under another. In order for me to eat, others have to die. That's true if it's lettuce or chickens or fish or yeast.

Instead, I ask why you value mammals so much more than plant life? They doth deserve to live, right?

You've got to be kidding me. How in the homeruns of fucks have you melted your mind into comparing torturing and killing animals to harvesting lettuce. You my friend, are carnal, absolutely warped denial.

You mock and make fun of me, but my ideas are firmly based in scientific evidence. And you never answered my question: why do you think mammal based life is worth more than plant based life?

http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-int...

http://www.dw.com/en/when-plants-say-ouch/a-510552-1

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden...

You're reaching very very far. It's not so much the value of life as much as the life experiences pain and suffering. I'm done here.

> It's not so much the value of life as much as the life experiences pain and suffering.

So, how do you quantify the "experience of pain and suffering"? Is the scream of a mammal any different than the chemicals of "screaming" that plants emit when they're being hurt?

Or is the sickness (and chemical whimpering) of a cucumber somehow foreign to someone familiar with the whimpering of some sick human or animal?

It seems to me that your value of pain and suffering is only limited to your human experience: in other words, "if it's not a mammal, I can't empathize, and I refuse to acknowledge that non-mammals can also have pain and suffer."

I figure, given how militant you are about veganism, that you would also do your homework to see if plants also have the similar attributes animals have. Alas, I'm wrong. I expect too much scientific thought and critical assessments of world-views. I can only conclude that your position is that of a political one; as it's certainly not scientific, nor will you consider the ethical ramifications.

It's exactly what you mention. Plants don't feel pain in a way that can be considered on the level that animals do. You -have- to claim they do. We already know animals avoid pain and have a haunting conscious experience in slaughterhouses.

You are baseless if you think your pandering to plants makes torturing animals any more righteous.

Then show me the scientific evidence of pain in mammals. What pattern of neurons must fire to show a pain response? And no, simply asking someone for a number does not count.

And for the article which I assume you didn't read: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-01-09/new-research-plant-int...

"So what about pain? Do plants feel? Pollan says they do respond to anesthetics. "You can put a plant out with a human anesthetic. ... And not only that, plants produce their own compounds that are anesthetic to us." But scientists are reluctant to go as far as to say they are responding to pain."

And only a bit further down the page, is an example of plants learning:

"Mimosa is a plant, which looks something like a fern, that collapses its leaves temporarily when it is disturbed. So Gagliano set up a contraption that would drop the mimosa plant, without hurting it. When the plant dropped, as expected, its leaves collapsed. She kept dropping the plants every five to six seconds.

"After five or six drops, the plants would stop responding, as if they'd learned to tune out the stimulus as irrelevent," Pollan says. "This is a very important part of learning — to learn what you can safely ignore in your environment." "

Let me see:

Living? Check. Reproducing? Check. Responds to stimuli? Check. Language for expression (chemical vs voice)? Check. Doesn't respond when subject to anesthetic? Check.

I ask again: what makes plant life 'less than' animal life as you defend? I argue that they are equal.

> You are baseless if you think your pandering to plants makes torturing animals any more righteous.

It's not "pandering": They respond to pain, they communicate, and they live. Same with humans, birds, mammals, bacteria, yeasts.. And nor do I advocate torturing animals, which you seem to think I am eager to do. I eat, knowing that whatever I ate gave its life so that I may continue to live.

So, what is your minimum level of lifeform that you consider to have the rights of "animal"? What is your criteria

I read your Mimosa/fern article before. It's just chemical adaption. Plants may have mildly complex hormonal systems to respond to lots of different stimuli. But you still haven't addressed the cold pedant nature of your arguments. It's obvious that animals feel pain. You are really reaching for anything resembling even a physical response by plants, let alone pain. We should strive to treat those similar to us in conscious experience, the way we would like to be treated. Plants have no consciousness that we can relate to, if a consciousness at all. There is no brain. There is no response to physical stimuli, no eyes, no ears. Nothing that can sense the passage of time as quickly as animals. You are truly reaching, and I understand you may have autism which leads you to take this cold anachronistic view of the science of pain. But you really are lost here. Forget the plant thing. Treat animals well.

"protected by ethics." Who's ethics? The law had slaves at 3/5ths a person at one point.

Generally, a way not to be an ass, is to avoid taking life unecessarily. These art pieces are cool but I'm pretty sure no comprehensive set of ethics supports taking life for sake of entertainment or "coolness."

I find it disgusting.

You can buy bug spray in the supermarket, because chemically torturing and murdering flies is acceptable. Where is the outrage?

Nobody is doing art exhibits with bug spray nor are they running around nature spraying nests for no good reason. If pouring aluminum was done for science in a limited number of times then that's acceptable, but doing it just to produce cheap artifacts of dubious artistic value is mildly obscene.

> Who's ethics?

Mine, I am not speaking for some higher power.

> Generally, a way not to be an ass, is to avoid taking life unecessarily.

And here is the problem with your argument, this art form takes lives necessarily. So the question is, if we are better off without a few ant colonies or without an entire art form.

Perhaps one day killing will be seen as "getting one's hands dirty" and unecessarily organic in an otherwise square, cold, sterile, sharply edged world. Killing will not stop for morals but rather for reasons of seperation. Meals will be perfectly produced homogenous mixtures of 3d printed amino acids, vitamins, and sacchatides. Yeah.. I dont have much faith in the ability for people to trade pleasures for lives.

Here's a video of the process: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Xvsxarw-J0

Not an endorsement but this is cool. 10 tons of concrete http://youtu.be/lFg21x2sj-M

That's an underground city by any standard.

I saw that on PBS, probably a "Nature" or "Nova" episode.

The result is cool, but screw people doing that.

did you read the part where it says: These are the red imported fire ants (RIFA) which are harmful to the environment and their nests are exterminated by the millions in the United States using poisons, gasoline and fire, boiling water

they are apparently doing the environment a favor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Counterm...

Still a disgusting practice. You can go ahead and say the tusk on your wall is from an elephant hunt that you paid 15k for which went to starving African children.

Everyone is still going to be disgusted by the fact that you killed an elephant, or killed 10 million ants, for your fancy shmancy art piece.

How about if you kill them without producing an art piece in the process, because they're a pest? Is that also immoral?

I believe it's in bad taste. We don't make art out of executed criminals. In the same vain, making art out of pests is reprehensible.

Bad taste yes, but bad taste is subjective. Morality (should be) objective, so it's one thing to say "I don't like this" (I don't like it either), and another thing to say "nobody should like this".

Morality isn't black and white. It's somewhat bad to be killing ants but let's not say it's on the same level as killing sentient life. It's just a rather shitty thing to do.

The issue here isn't whether or not to kill ants (we're killing them anyway), it's whether it's immoral to make art out of their nests.

Considering the very thing that is the object of beauty, it seems perverse to have destroyed it and its forebearers in entirety to produce it. Something akin to a buffoon's take on art.

Oh, you must be an alien. My species, humanity, has been displaying the corpses of criminals for the entirity of its existence and continues to create paintings, songs and movies about it. The question is more "Is it art, or is it porn?", followed by " Is porn art?". Find me a catholic church which doesn't have a cast crucifix. That the ants were in the 'mold' feels like an implementation detail. They were scheduled for death. Weather the aluminium was poured before or after the extermination feels like an implementation detail. But do I want one? Fuck, no. It was interesting for science, but once was enough.

"Hey, look at those ants on that blue planet. Are you ready to fire the Death Star?" "Armed and ready, planet has gone molten. Awesome, get the contracts ready, I got dibs on the cast of the NYC subway, I heard that those ants really loved those tunnels, man, it's gonna look awesome in my gazeebo."

"They were an invasive species anyway, always scheming to extend beyond their own planet."

Yep, or the hornet's nest on your porch.

Now you've added an immediate threat to safety. Things change. After all, the goal of steadystate life is to survive. Don't try to cross the two.

Not really a good analogy. Elephants are not an imported pest animal. And if it was a really old elephant, I think a lot of people would be OK about selling hunting licenses for large sums of money that benefit the community.

A better analogy is cane toads in Australia. Those things have become such a threat to local wildlife, they are killed indiscriminantly. And yes, they are turned into 'art', even if they are tacky http://toadshop.com/7-all-items

not all casts are. look at the less "bushy/rooty" ones, they are e.g. "Ant Type: Field Ants (Formica pallidefulva)"

Link-bait title. The destination is web shop, not a proper answer.

Since I don't believe any of them are for sale, I don't think it's a "shop".

It's a gallery, with videos, of what transpires.

IMO the pictures on the site answer the question. Title is fine.

If E.O. Wilson ever finds this artist, he can expect a beatdown with a cane.

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