There is something fascinating about this video where a monkey seems to be teaching a human (or at least uses a human) to crush leaves. The man should watch closely. We previously saw how monkeys have a much more efficient way to peel bananas.
The monkey could be playing or using the human for the task. Either way, it is rather riveting.
There is growing evidence of various species using tools – a task once thought to distinguish humans from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Bron,
Here is the video again, so you don’t have to look for it:
Bron 1, December 9, 2013 at 6:32 pm
Dredd:
so what you are saying, I think, is that living entities can create connections that enable them to do things which might mimic consciousness?
Such as ant colony when it goes in search of food, the random actions, when looked at in toto, gives the appearance of a single conscious entity.
Is that right?
You come up with some interesting stuff, I am still fascinated by the fact that the bacteria in a cuttlefish know when to light up.
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It isn’t me saying it, it is three scientists.
I wish it was me, but they are far more the scientist than I am.
I am only the messenger.
But, that said.
What I hear (there is a video with movies of bacteria / microbes that will blow you away.
I mean since you, liike me, are amazed that they can communicate (know when to turn off and on the lights) and that the fish and the microbes have a working relationship … how does the fish know to “hire” those doods to be its light source? etc.)
I am just blown away by all of it.
The video I posted at 7:44 am is a lecture by a professor who counsels NASA on microbes, etc.
He is Hebrew so his english is a bit ragged … but there is additional English at the bottom of the screen.
They do a million times more than turn lights on and off … the whole community (“more than the population of all people on earth”) work like a brain … they work together.
But, no, this is not about consciousness in the way we think of it.
Focus on cognition … in the sense of them detecting the world around them, responding to it in ways that are “surprising.”
Like the ones working with the fish, only far more astounding.
“BlockQUOTE” (HTML) does this:
. You have very, very severe comprehension problems (or a controlling gene) if you think that quote is like what you do … quote only yourself.
I am quoting someone.else, who happens to be a great scientist, one of three in a paper.
Point out like Tony C where you think they are wrong.
Tony C says they overdid “cognition” … after he had already dogmatically said bacteria / microbes absolutely cannot do cognition.
You, on the other had, use intellectual dishonesty and juvenile denial and aversion to say I can’t comprehend what they are saying.
In other words, you do not like what they say, but blame it on me.
Tony C does not like what they say, but he is intellectually honest enough to blame what he does not like about what they say on them.
He at least does not shoot the messenger.
He is overly egotistical to think what he does, but not intellectually dishonest.
You, on the other hand, are over the top egotistical and a laughingstock to use the argument you do.
That is just the way it is.
Cognition in some of those microbes / bacterium is more reliable than yours.
Since you never quote anyone, it does not surprise me that you do not know what it is useful for.
Your opinion within your distorted intellectually dishonest gene controlled environment within you cranium is all that is loud and clear to you.
It is quite obvious.
Tony C at least has the huevos to say he does not like what the scientist says.
You don’t.
You avoid it by alleging it is me who is saying it rather that quoting it.
I wonder if your brat gene made you a brat early on.
The tantrums do not change reality.
You ain’t got game, all you have is lame.
Dredd:
so what you are saying, I think, is that living entities can create connections that enable them to do things which might mimic consciousness?
Such as ant colony when it goes in search of food, the random actions, when looked at in toto, gives the appearance of a single conscious entity.
Is that right?
You come up with some interesting stuff, I am still fascinated by the fact that the bacteria in a cuttlefish know when to light up.
What do I think? I think neither of you understand natural selection very well if you insist that environment trumps genetics. See, I don’t need to appeal to authority, Dredd. I understand the underlying concepts well enough that I’m capable of not only evaluating the matter on the merits but doing so using principle driven reasoning instead of pop-sci speculation turned into a religious dogma. Genes matter. Whether you or Dr. NASA like it or not. So does environment. If you understood natural selection, you’d understand this. But you don’t. So you make the same mistake that fringers of both the “genetic determinism” and “epigentic influence is everything” camps. You mistake one of the two inputs in to natural selection as mutually exclusive and/or dominant when they work in tandem to varying degrees depending upon any given situation. I even understand what causes this irrational divide in the minority of the biological sciences community: the competitive quest for funding causes both sides to “sexy up” their assertions to the point of ridiculous overstatements. That you’ve bought in to some of these overstatements as being gospel is simply your personal misfortune, Dredd. It is like most positions adopted in ignorance of basic principles, a self-inflicted wound.
I understand when someone is quoting a scientist and when one is quoting Gene H or Tony C.
It is unmistakable.
But I can’t respond to Gene H and Tony C except to quote well known scientists repeatedly.
Tony C did mention that he would not approve of what one of them said, no matter what peer reviewed Journal published their papers.
He does not believe them.
His explanation for why was incoherent.
Baby blue Gene is so incoherent that I am not sure what he thinks of scientists … unless he thinks I am the world renowned scientist who advises NASA on microbes.
I am not I just quote them and he blathers and mumbles something about reading comprehension.
I agree that mule headed and cognition are not the same like grandpa’s dictionary says, but like I said that is not a coherent part of the discussion.
So, I post for the benefit of the other people reading the blog who can read what scientists write.
Pay no attention to Gene Blue Gene, he is a crock.
Apes can cite philosophy, Otto. They just don’t understand it.
You have yet to address one scientist … you think it is me.
Read up on block quote in HTML, the little thingy one uses when quoting another.
The computer scientists don’t call it block quote for nothing.
Tony C and the Gene H get down.
What they really think science is:
It’s not your reading comprehension here that is so troublesome, Dredd.
It’s you total lack of integrating and understanding everything else you read and then transcribe to your ridiculous microbial gospels.
As for your “epigenetic assertions”, apparently one of the things you don’t understand is the use of the word “environment” as it relates to biology either. Only a fool discounts one half of the genes/environment equation. And that’s what makes you a both a fringer and a fool. In biology, people who really understand the subject and how natural selection impacts behaviors understand that genes and environment work in tandem. It’s a “AND” relationship. Not an “OR” relationship.
Carry on.
Oh, and I do apologize to only to Gene H and Tony C for not being able to comprehend their comments.
Most everyone else’s are comprehendable.
It is no doubt the intellectual dishonesty and clingy personalities developed in defective environments.
Or perhaps they do have the genetic makeup that they say they do, rendering them helpless and hapless.
Sad to see.
But without coherent comments from them I will continue to stick with the scientific evidence that it is an epigenetic behavioral problem, not a genetic problem.
My. How petulantly predictable. And how, exactly, am I wrong about me not wanting mead? I think I’d be an expert on what I like to drink or not and, having had mead, know that wouldn’t be mead. I’m considered the world’s leading, if not only, expert on matters of what I like.
Gene H,
Your are wrong about Mead, microbes, reading comprehension, and anything else that requires intellectual honesty.
The professiors I quote read quite well, and comprehend quite well.
You and Tony C will never be able to get out of the 18th century.
That’s ok.
I like living history in action, and it is not as difficult as cloning a dinosaur to see what things used to be like.
Meadlichlorian muley.
Dredd,
Sorry, but I didn’t get anything nearly as useful from you as “drain bamage”. Or anything useful at all from you for that matter. I did, however, get a lot of amusement in that you think you understand microbiology when you really really don’t. Throw in a tinge of sadness at how poor your education must have been for you to fundamentally misunderstand science in the way that you do. That purposeful malapropism? Is as old as comedy in the English language. In fact, the first time I recall hearing it used was by Robin Williams in about 1978.
BTW, you still need to work on that whole “reading/comprehension” nexus, Otto.
Tony C. 1, December 9, 2013 at 11:05 am
P.S. And feel free to forward my comments to Jacobs if you like, it is essentially what I would have told him had I been one of his anonymous reviewers.
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Ok.
You have not commented on his video presentation nor that he is an advisor to NASA on microbes.
Or that he is a professor at various universities.
He is one of many hundreds of renowned experts who hold a different opinion than you on this issue.
The difference is that they have done these experiments in labs and you only have your blather.
They cite so many papers before them that came to the same conclusion they did, papers published in major journals.
I only quoted them, I did not come to any conclusion other than theirs.
You are stilted like some many who form sacred opinions rather than valid scientific conclusions.
I detect a lot of religious bias in you.
P.S. And feel free to forward my comments to Jacobs if you like, it is essentially what I would have told him had I been one of his anonymous reviewers.
Dredd says: was published in Physica:
So? Unlike you, I am a professional scientist that has read more peer-reviewed scientific articles than I can count. Unlike you, I am not in reverent awe of anything just because it happens to be in a good journal. Unlike you, I am part of the process of peer review and I (on occasion) decide what gets into a journal. Unlike you, I have published many articles in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and venues. Unlike you, I know what I am talking about, and I think Jacobs, et al, overstepped their boundaries and made an error; which happens in peer-reviewed journals; even the best of them. Getting published is not some religious consecration granting infallibility; it is the vote of a very small jury; typically an editor and two or three anonymous peers, that what has been submitted is (with their caveats, corrections, and sometimes suggestions) original and worthy of dissemination to the scientific community at large. Like all juries, that judgment may be a mistake, or the editor may have overrode a reviewer’s recommendation and decided to overlook an envelope-pushing claim because it was not an absolute claim (as this one was not) and the rest of the paper contained important contributions.
I don’t care where it was published. I think their claim, despite the caveats (possibly forced on them by the editor agreeing with peer reviewers) is overblown and you are misinterpreting it.
Gene H. 1, December 7, 2013 at 10:13 pm
Dredd,
You really need to learn how to read for comprehension. The reason your comments are out is I released them from the spam filter. If that was the total of your comments? Well then good for you, you ol’ microbe worshipper you. You avoided the Vortex.
You can keep the mead though.
It causes drain bamage.
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You liked my “dain bramage” phrase of a while back.
Anyway, I have one more in the Word Mess cue (two but the one about Dr. Ben-Jacob with block quotes is the first and preferred one.
I posted it without blockquotes but it was consumed by the dain bramaged Mess that is far dumber than bacteria.
As Dr. Ben-Jacob sas, like some professionals.
From Micrbes-Mind Forum:
Eshel Ben-Jacob is a theoretical and experimental physicist at Tel Aviv University, holder of the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems, and Fellow of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP) at the University of California San Diego. In the field of Systems Neuroscience he has focused first on investigations of living neural networks outside the brain and later on analysis of actual brain activity. In 2007, Scientific American selected Ben-Jacob’s invention, the first hybrid NeuroMemory Chip, as one of the 50 most important achievements in all fields of science and technology for that year. The NeuroMemory Chip entails imprinting multiple memories, based upon development of a novel, system-level analysis of neural network activity (developed from concepts in statistical physics and quantum mechanics), ideas about distributed information processing (developed from his research on collective behaviors of bacteria) and new experimental methods based on nanotechnology (carbon nanotubes). During the 1980s he became an international leader in the theory of self-organization and pattern formation in open systems, later extended this to adaptive complex systems and biocomplexity. His specialization in self organization of complex systems yielded the breakthrough of solving the long standing (since Kepler) snowflake problem. In the late 1980s, he turned to study of bacterial self-organization, believing that bacteria hold the key to understanding larger biological systems. He developed new pattern forming bacteria species, became a pioneer in the study of social behaviors of bacteria, and has been influential in establishing the now rapidly evolving Physics of Life (Biological Physics and Physical Biology) disciplines. He maintains that the essence of cognition is rooted in the ability of bacteria to gather, measure, and process information, and to adapt in response. Prof. Ben-Jacob received his PhD in physics (1982) at Tel Aviv University, Israel, served as Vice President of the Israel Physical Society (1999-2002), then as President of the Israel Physical Society (2002-2005), initiating the online magazine PhysicaPlus, the only Hebrew-English bilingual science magazine.
From Micrbes-Mind Forum:
(Link in my comment above).
Here is a link to the Microbes-Mind Forum … where Dr. Eshel Ben-Jacob is an advisor.
Tony C can contact him there to inform him of his errors.
I may send him and some other microbiologists I communicate with Tony C’s remarks for their edification.
Or I may not.