Slime molds remember, but do they learn? | Hacker News Reader

Slime molds remember, but do they learn?

quantamagazine.org

42 pointsdbasedweeb11 comments

As usual with questions related to mind and cognition, the definitions of the terms are nebulous to the point of meaninglessness until you explicitly state the definition you're using.

To say that slime molds "remember" things is to simply define the word "remember" to include: "chemical changes in biological organisms that persist over time". Using the word "remember" makes it seem like there's something more interesting going on, because it evokes our anthropocentric notions of vivid recollection and high level cognition.

As Djikstra stated decades ago, all of these nebulous questions are meaningless until you make them explicit. "The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim."

If memory in humans is not covered by "chemical changes in biological organisms that persist over time" then what could it be?

It is. I think you misunderstood. I was simply pointing out that defining "remember" to include that extremely broad definition basically makes the term meaningless because it includes all kinds of biological processes that we would never associate with memory under other circumstances. But when we want to talk about slime mold "cognition", science journalists start using loaded terms to pique interest in otherwise mundane behaviors.

I had wondered the other day whether animal intelligence was either associated with or predicated on memory abilities. This paper[0] seemed at first blush to support that notion. Am I interpreting that correctly? Is there other supporting evidence? What are the problems with this idea?

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784289/

If they do, countless hours of playing Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior on the NES has left me quite adept at dispatching slime wholesale.

Watch the speedrun of Dragon Warrior, it's mental how much that dude has to remember and time properly based on sound cues.

I’m surprised there was no mention of experiments that involved reproduction. I’d be interested in how a single cell of slime mold spilt from th organism and left to reproduce for some time would fare.