Cockroaches live in a democracy (2006) | Hacker News Reader

Cockroaches live in a democracy (2006)

abc.net.au

26 pointsAxisOfEval10 comments

Ants behave similarly. If Steven Johnson's book Emergence, he writes that ant colonies have three "landmarks" - the queen, the dead ants, and a "trash pile" - husks and leftovers from food and foraging. The queen is placed first, and as ants die they will place the dead ant pile - but they will place it to be at the max distance (while still in the colony) from the queen. The trash pile is then placed at the location that maximizes the distance from the other two.

He claims the the queen is not responsible for this behavior - she's not a "dictator" nor much smarter than other ants. They are able to do it because, individually, they will move things to a better place if they know one exists.

They also manage to distribute their efforts very well, because each ant keeps track ly of what other ants are doing (based on pheromones and running into other ants). If an ant senses that there aren't enough ants looking for new food (based on his limited interactions), he will go look for new food.

Really cool stuff, though I agree the title isn't great. This isn't really about democracy, but individually simple behaviors that are optimal for the group.

I bet the cockroach brains are much less varied than ours, i.e., the variance of intelligence in a random sample population of cockroaches is much smaller than it would be in a random sample of human beings.

With that added variance, the implications of 'everyone having an equal say' are profound.

How are you defining intelligence? And how would you measure variance of intelligence across cockroaches in a way that is relevant to a way that you measure intelligence across humans?

Maybe intelligence isn't the right word? As I understood m52go's comment, it's more like smaller brains -> less variations of "mind state" (as in state machines)? Hence less "variance of intelligence".

Of course, I have no idea how a brain works, and it's unlikely that it's anything like a computer.

Intelligence--the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills. That's how Google claims to define it, although frustratingly, it doesn't list its source.

That seems like a reasonable definition.

As a result, I think it's reasonable to say intelligence in humans is a lot more varied than intelligence in cockroaches. There are some humans who will never be as productive as the least productive cockroach. On the other hand, there are some humans who will create things more profound than the most productive cockroach.

I assume I know what makes a cockroach productive...obviously I don't, but it's seems reasonable to me to assume that cockroaches haven't had their version of cockroach-on-the-moon moment.

The day they do, we may be in trouble!

Excerpt:

For example, if 50 insects were placed in a dish with three shelters, each with a capacity for 40 bugs, 25 roaches huddled together in the first shelter, 25 gathered in the second shelter, and the third was left vacant.

When the researchers altered this set-up so that it had three shelters with a capacity for more than 50 insects, all the cockroaches moved into the first "house".

Yeah, this does not really sound anything like democracy. I can't figure out what to call it but deciding "yuppers, there is enough room in one shelter for the colony" or "whoops, we need to divide up because it won't take us all" is not any kind of evidence of "voting."

Herding behaviour. Like sheep, and people. Big topic in behavioural economics, and finance/investment in general.

Holy anthropomorphism Batman!

There are numerous mechanisms to explain how tiny-brained insects could determine suitable shelter that are all much more plausible than "democracy".

Can anyone suggest a better title? The submitted title was "Cockroaches can count and do integer division". That seems overly editorialized, which is why we reverted to the article title. But you're right, that one is misleading.

I'm all ears...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com