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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 05/06/2006 : 15:59:58
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This topic could have as easily fitted into the "Creation/Evolution" or the "Politics" forum.
An article by Robin Lloyd in LiveScience gives an overview of a study by Thomas Seeley of Cornell University and Kirk Visscher of the University of California-Riverside of how bees use a practical form of adversarial democracy to choose the site of a new hive.quote:
. . .
Here is what they found: When bees outgrow their hives, a few hundred scouts selected by the queen search for the perfect, new location for a swarm—a south-facing knothole that is smaller than 4.7 square inches, perched several yards above the ground and leads to a hollow in the tree that is at least 5 gallons in volume.
Scouts return to the waiting swarm and perform a waggle dance, vibrating their abdomens laterally while walking in figure eights, to report on what they found. The longer the waggle dance, the better the site. This prompts other scouts to visit the recommended site.
Competition
Scouts compete to attract uncommitted scouts to visit their sites. As time passes, coalitions form that prefer one site over another.
Instead of hashing it out endlessly, the group usually makes a decision with no more than 16 hours of dancing debate. As soon as 15 or more bees are at any one site, the scouts signal to the waiting bees in the swarm to warm up their flight muscles. Soon, the swarm lifts off toward its new home.
"The bees' method, which is a product of disagreement and contest rather than consensus or compromise, consistently yields excellent collective decisions," Seeley said.
An open forum for opinions and a decentralized, competitive "debate" that filters out extreme or inaccurate opinions are the key features that make the bees' decision-making process effective, Seeley said.
Americans value democracy, or at least a representative version of it. Honeybees have evolved to rely on this quorum or majority method to collect independent opinions, something that differs from a one-man, one-vote democracy or an agonizing attempt to hammer out something everyone agrees upon.
It's a faster route to a swift and also smart decision, Seeley said.
. . .
Fascinating! I am left wondering whether such a decision-making process is or could be used by human societies. I wonder, how could this be organized? And should it? Does the bee method of making important decisions have possible applications to AI research?
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
Edited by - HalfMooner on 05/06/2006 16:11:08
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2006 : 16:46:12 [Permalink]
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quote:
Fascinating! I am left wondering whether such a decision-making process is or could be used by human societies. I wonder, how could this be organized? And should it? Does the bee method of making important decisions have possible applications to AI research?
Never happen, 'Mooner. It works with honey bees because they never tell a lie. Bummer, ain't it? 
But thanks for the article. I had known that they had excellent communication, but hadn't known it was quite that sophisticated.
I'm going to move a little farther back into the woods this summer and I hope to have a hive or two, for my sweet tooth (what's left of it), you know.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2006 : 20:37:11 [Permalink]
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Filthy opined: quote:
Never happen, 'Mooner. It works with honey bees because they never tell a lie. Bummer, ain't it?
They must have stronger civic and ethical standards than we do, then. Too bad we can't emulate 'em.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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