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Is there any scientific basis for some kind of shared collective thought I don’t know about? In other words, what’s the “hive mind” if not the collective result of individual minds?

AlecSchueler

3 hours ago

Changes in behaviour in the individual level might result in an apparent cognitive decline for that individual, but could still benefit the hive as a whole.

kbelder

an hour ago

If human society changed so that average individual intelligence decreased, but the human race as a whole acted more intelligently, did human intelligence increase or decrease?

folkrav

2 hours ago

I was asking about the concept of “hive mind”. Is the concept accepted as a “thing”, has it ever been measured in any way, and if yes, what is it?

Yes, it's the idea that the colony exhibits behaviour with a level of intelligence impossible for any of the single bees. Things like choosing the location of the nest or managing the temperature of the nest, there's various decisions "made" by the colony as a kind of emergent property of the behaviour of the individual bees who themselves don't have the capacity to think at that level. The various aspects of colony behaviour have all been individually studied by quite a few people and groups, yes.

s1artibartfast

an hour ago

I think you are missing the point of the question, and it revolves around calling it a mind capable of decisions.

AlecSchueler

32 minutes ago

Am I? I just mentioned there's research that shows a colony of bees can make decisions that individual bees are incapable of. What am I misunderstanding?

lupire

3 hours ago

Why are they testing a whole brain instead of individual neurons? What is a brain if not the collective result of individual neurons?

folkrav

2 hours ago

The comparison only works if the concept of a “hive mind” is as accepted and defined as the concept of a brain, which is quite literally what I was asking.

collingreen

32 minutes ago

"Hive mind" conjures ideas of an omnipresent, all-controlling intelligence to me like startrek's borg, but I think this is more about the idea of a "superorganism" [0] like some bees and most ants where the group exhibits traits and "behavior" and "decisions" as a whole, beyond the ability of any single, specialized individual. Less superintelligence and more emergent behavior and complexity.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superorganism

alex_suzuki

8 hours ago

Nitpick: the article mentions that the bees are tracked with QR Codes, but I find that hard to believe, given the space constraints. In one photo it looks like it is an ArUco marker.

diggan

7 hours ago

2mm QR codes according to the article:

> The protocol used at Fukushima is automated. Each bee is equipped with a 2-mm-wide QR Code which is read by a camera, activating the opening of the maze.

But yeah, doesn't look like a QR code at all, are there possibly different variations of QR codes? Haven't heard about that myself.

blueflow

7 hours ago

I can imagine the journalist referring to all Matrix Codes as "QR".

wanderingstan

5 hours ago

This is it. All matrix codes are now commonly referred to as “QR Codes”. I’ve noticed this especially at airports where both passengers and gate agents refer to the “QR codes” on boarding passes. (Which are IIRC Aztec codes)

alex_suzuki

5 hours ago

Boarding passes are typically Aztec, but don‘t have to be. IATA allows other types as well: https://www.iata.org/contentassets/1dccc9ed041b4f3bbdcf8ee86...

thaumasiotes

5 hours ago

In China the normal word is 二维码 "two-dimensional code".

noduerme

2 hours ago

is a barcode a one-dimensional code?

collingreen

30 minutes ago

Yes - even though it obviously has visual height the data only runs in one dimension. For the 2D codes like QR the data is in both directions, which is why orientation often comes up in their design.

ChrisMarshallNY

5 hours ago

Anyone remember these?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Capacity_Color_Barcode

Haven't seen one in ages.

diggan

3 hours ago

We have something similar in Barcelona (maybe entire Spain? Apparently called NaviLens, colored squares rather than triangles) all around public transit points. They're used for blind people to navigate the public transit system :)

> As users sweep their environment with a smartphone, audio cues allow them to find and center the tag in the phone’s field of view. A shake of the wrist prompts the details contained within the tag to be read out (visually impaired people are often holding a guide dog or cane with their other hand). https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/06/06/135057/these-col...

alex_suzuki

4 hours ago

Never saw one of those in the wild. But I have seen NaviLens codes (on cereal packaging), they use color as well: https://www.navilens.com/en/

randall

3 hours ago

they’re at every new york subway station. i don’t know why.

ChrisMarshallNY

3 hours ago

Surprised that they are still there.

It’s an old Microsoft standard. I’m pretty sure that MS rolled it up, years ago, so they may not be valid, anymore.

joecool1029

3 hours ago

They are Navilens, new thing: https://www.mta.info/accessibility/innovations/navilens

ChrisMarshallNY

3 hours ago

Ah. That makes sense. Different look, though. The Microsoft ones used triangles.

ants_everywhere

an hour ago

possibly BEEtag? https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

alex_suzuki

5 hours ago

There‘s MicroQR, which is just a single finder pattern of a regular QR code, with some adjoining data. But it doesn’t look like one.

traceroute66

3 hours ago

There's something called a bCode...

https://theapiarist.org/barcoding-bees/

numpad0

7 hours ago

TIL: Wikipedia does not have a standalone article for ArUco markers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARTag

tokai

5 hours ago

Nitpick: QR code is widely used as a generic term for matrix barcodes.

Thorrez

7 hours ago

>Although the results of the study have yet to be published, scientists are already reporting a decline in insect cognition in the contaminated area of Fukushima Prefecture.

blueflow

7 hours ago

Troll-tier conclusion: Human presence improves cognition in insects

IAmBroom

6 hours ago

Scientific research causes cancer in mice.

That's actually a fact; there are specific bloodlines prone to cancers.

gus_massa

5 hours ago

I can see a direct relation in this test, but it may be my lack of imagination or knowdledge...

Anyway, animals in islands without predators lose escape hability, in particular the dodo.

I'm not sure why but this sentence feels vaguely menacing.

"Fukushima was a massive disaster. It was also Arthur Buzzby's origin story."