Oysters are thought to have the opposite behaviour, per a famous experiment by Brown in 1954. If you transport them several hours of longitude away and keep them in a dark lab, they don't suffer jetlag, but instead they mysteriously adjust to the local lunar cycle.
At least, that's what I thought, but this criticism of the methodology [0] doesn't make it look conclusive, and presumably it would have been replicated if it was any good.
On the other hand, the totality of experiments should have suggested that they likely can. You can keep trying to find better experiments, but if bees are defeating each one, your prior should be changing
And one still cannot in 2024 ;). Almost all red-eye flights go from east to west. There are none from Paris to NYC. There are some from America's west coast to Asia though, because those are super long flights.
I am currently reading "What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions?" by Vinciane Despret, which is full of interesting stories like this and questions how we perceive the intelligence (and other aspects) of animals. Might be an interesting read for people who find this story interesting.
Thanks for the recommendation. I write about animal intelligence and will be keen to pick that one up.
The molecular basis of circadian rhythm has been studied in fruit flies. Every cell has a chemical clock which adjusts for a range of temperatures. They found that calorie restriction and cold temperature extends the life span of fruit flies. But if you alter the DNA of their circadian clock those lifespan increases do not happen.
You could certainly argue that we do not. Perceptions are not instantaneous, and if they can be said to "take time" then they cannot have time as their object of perception directly. And even if they "take time", perceptions are ending simultaneously as they are beginning. Being aware of the passage of time does not require perception, as anyone can report when they have an understanding of how long they slept as soon as they wake. Not sure how all that relates to bees, though.
Anyway, no abstract musing about time is complete without a word from Dōgen: "You may suppose that time is only passing away, and not understand that time never arrives."
We seem to perceive time indirectly. Examples of how include our feelings, seeing changes in environment with temporal associations, and even counting the seconds that we generate. We are perceiving the passage of time in these cases as observed change in the perceptible state of the universe.
If time itself is change, then we are directly observing it. If time is something else, and it causes change, then we can’t observe it but can observe the effects. We’ll probably perceive it similarly either way.
This is totally anecdotal, but I suspect this is a skill that varies across the population. A buddy in high school was uncannily accurate when guessing the time without access to a watch or clock. His error bar would increase with the amount of time past between "experiments", but was never more than ~5 minutes out, at a three or four hour interval. Inside an hour he was always +/- 1 minute. He thought it was unremarkable, and that we were weirdos for always quizzing him about the time.
Feinman writes somewhere about training himself to accurately perceive a minute, with some success.
I'm curious whether there are any human studies about this.
I wonder if that idea is compatible with something like caesium standard time. Is causality at work in the frequency of atomic resonance? (Separately, I would be inclined to disagree that we directly perceive causality.)
If like to hear the argument then since it’s trivial to know how much time has passed if you sit down and wait. You know the difference between 1 min and 10 min and 30 min and 60 min.
And on high doses of certain psychedelics you can experience what it’s like to lose that.
You bring up people knowing how much time passed while they slept but I don’t think that’s true. Without cues like lighting and restfulness I don’t think we do know.
Are viruses alive? They’re pretty close. That pretty-closeness is evidence that the definition of ‘living’ is arbitrary. In high school biology, ‘living’ was a list of five points to be memorized, and those points were definitely made up by humans. And viruses were used as a sorta-joke by the teacher to illustrate that it’s arbitrary.
Why I cared enough to dig into that: every word/category is arbitrary; words and word-logic only help us insofar as they tell us useful things about reality.
> every word/category is arbitrary; words and word-logic only help us insofar as they tell us useful things about reality
haha, having useful meanings is the exact thing that makes word categories non-arbitrary.
Having different categories and words for food and poison is useful. The distinction is not arbitrary.
Similarly, the concept and definition of living/inanimate is not arbitrary. It defiantly tells us something useful.
You could say the exact definition of "living" isn't clear, but that doesn't mean every definition is equally good. For example, “things that are purple“, would be a pretty crappy definition of "living". It's not random or arbitrary. Thought and logic went into crafting the definition.
> Having different categories and words for food and poison is useful. The distinction is not arbitrary.
A very hot pepper has features of both food and poison. Most things are not perfect binaries, and if you put a dividing line on a spectrum, the placement of that dividing line must be arbitrary. Obviously people try to come up with good definitions of things, but that still doesn’t mean it’s a productive use of anyone’s time/effort deciding which side of an arbitrary divide a thing falls into.
> It's not random or arbitrary.
No one said arbitrary == random! Arbitrary in this discussion is meaning “a person chose it”. And it is a useful concept to me here in this context because it distinguishes things a person is deciding from things that are just real in-and-of-themselves out here in spacetime.
>No one said arbitrary == random! Arbitrary in this discussion is meaning “a person chose it”.
Opposed to what what exactly? Nothing that can be perceived, processed, or communicated by humans fails this test. In that case, all language, logic, and thought is arbitrary. 2+2=4 is arbitrary, because someone chose definitions which fit within a logical construct of assumptions, and those rules too were selected by humans.
Something is not arbitrary simply because alternatives may exist. Alternatives can be more or less useful, and useful for different purposes.
Selection of a definition fit for purpose, is therefore not arbitrary, specifically Because it comes with implications and consequences. It is a distinction with a difference
>A very hot pepper has features of both food and poison. Most things are not perfect binaries, and if you put a dividing line on a spectrum, the placement of that dividing line must be arbitrary. Obviously people try to come up with good definitions of things, but that still doesn’t mean it’s a productive use of anyone’s time/effort deciding which side of an arbitrary divide a thing falls into.
I truly dont understand your example. Is it not a productive use of time to know if a hot pepper is food or poison, despite being on a spectrum? It seems to prove the opposite. Most things are not perfect binaries, but society doesn't throw up our hands and say it isn't productive to delineate food from poison. A definition of poison that excludes hot peppers is clearly more useful for nearly everyone, nearly all the time.
I go by the typical dictionary definitions or arbitrary:
a: existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will
b: based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something
A definition that is thoughtfully constructed to fit within the greater body of human knowledge, logic, and utility is not random, capricious, or motivated by personal preference or convenience.
2+2=4 is arbitrary. Humans decided base 10 makes sense because we have ten fingers. It's arbitrary in the sense that it's something we picked out of convenience. Base 10 isn't some real thing existing in reality that you can touch or sense. Language is also arbitrary. Humans came up with it! Wasn't like Proto-Indo-European was something objective and real that we discovered. We settled on it out of convenience and necessity.
If someone is allergic to peanuts, they could definitely say it's poison. Categories aren't objective.
Yeah, I just think that is kinda a garbage perspective.
If your perspective is so great that everything is arbitrary simply because it is the product of the human mind, then the term is meaningless. why bother even using it.
Similarly, if someone treats every definitions as fluid, and makes no attempt seek logical or objective consistency, I don't see the point in conversing with them.
I will just assume the true meaning of everything you said is enthusiastic agreement. If you disagree, I can waive your point away as the arbitrary and pointless ravings of a human mind.
The definition of life is based on what we observe, on empirical observations, which is the best kind of knowledge. The current definition may not be perfect, but it's useful enough to predict phenomena, such as how life on other planets might look like. And this is the opposite of arbitrary.
You're getting into metaphysics, which is in general not useful. I mean, Nietzsche's essay on words being lies is entertaining and all, but ultimately just something to contemplate when stoned.
What is self-awareness? Do you think dogs are self aware? I think dogs are conscious at least even if they fail to recognize themselves in a mirror. Being aware that you are a consciousness requires intelligence, not just consciousness.
I think dogs can be self aware.
I think self-awareness is the ability to comprehend the "Self" as distinct from the "environment" and then compute and weigh the likely outcomes of different actions. It is high level thinking with many pre-requisites.
An alarm clock is not self aware, because it doesn't model the world, and select between actions.
Similarly, a bee, (which I believe to act on pre-programed instinct, not in the moment reason), is not self aware. This is because it selects between actions, but can not logically model the world.
A dog, on the other hand, can build logical models of the world, and then take actions based on that. It can that begging from one person results in treats, while begging from another results in discipline. It can update this logic and behavior based on new information.
I mean, it's pretty hard to tell what's going on inside any other creature's brain, from dogs to bees to humans. It's generally easier the closer they are to yourself, so it's easier with dogs than with bees.
I think you are shortchanging bees a bit, based on your description of a dog building a logical model of the world, I would say bees definitely qualify.
>A dog, on the other hand, can build logical models of the world, and then take actions based on that. It can that begging from one person results in treats, while begging from another results in discipline. It can update this logic and behavior based on new information.
Bees are capable of a lot of interesting and complex behavior, from learning to communication with other bees.[1] It's been theorized that they can play around just for fun, which is hard to reconcile with them behaving on entirely pre-programmed instincts.[2]
So you have arbitrarily decided on units, such as bees and dogs. But perhaps it is an error to consider a singular bee as an arbitrary unit. What if we consider the entire hive/swarm as a unified organism? What would our results be then? What about considering individual cells of a dog instead of that whole dog? Wouldn't that tend to skew your results unfairly?
My examples weren't arbitrary, they were made for specific reasons. I selected bees because the article and my OP was about bees, and I selected dogs because I was asked about dogs.
I don't think a hive is self aware for the same reasons as the bee. It acts conditionally but does not create new logic models of the world.
As for the cells, I think they closer to complex alarm clocks than the bees, and are not self aware for the same reason.
I think this is inaccurate. Bees definitely model the world, how else would they fly around it? Further they do communicate with one another about their environments which suggests that the hive would have a greater model of the world than any singular bee.
> What if we consider the entire hive/swarm as a unified organism?
We get a less-predictive model for some questions and a more-predictive one for others. Sort of like how asking whether we should model humans as collections of cells, individuals or societies is freshman dorm stuff until we pair it with an actual question.
At least, that's what I thought, but this criticism of the methodology [0] doesn't make it look conclusive, and presumably it would have been replicated if it was any good.
[0] https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29...