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Fly Neural Net

Network of Flies
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I'm just reading this article today that starts out about the Copernican revolution and how that translates today into how humans aren't the center of everything with all these recent studies of animal language and tool making, and I was thinking that they still aren't communicating very well but if the Copernican revolution thing does translate, so if it is a rule, then it must mean that we are not able to communicate with what we are treating as entities but that we still communicating although unconsciously with whatever the real entities are. So maybe they would be networks of what we are considering to be individuals so like whole species or groups of species or ecological systems, but how do you communicate with an ecological system? Well it probably has to do with us giving up our hold on things that we consider fundamental and unchangable like logic, which would be hard for most people to do so how do you incrementalize people toward that? So maybe one way would be to make a neural network out of things that we consider entities like flies. Aren't they wiring flies so that they can control their sense of direction now? Could you make a neural net out of flies in which the nodes were decision making processes between two flies? I mean like set up flies in a wired network so that as much as possible of a part of the heavy computing part of the problem was on the fly brain and as much a part of the controlable part was on the silicon and copper or whatever?

I'm sure someone must be doing this.

JesusHChrist, Apr 13 2008

flies with free will http://www.boingboi...flies-with-fre.html
[JesusHChrist, Apr 13 2008]

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       The problem with all these "hive mind" notions is memory. Humans store memory in changes between specific synapses, that are always connected across specific axons. When you're talking about a cluster of small organisms, their neural nets only extend as far as their teeny brains, then you have these really huge 'synapses' composed of air between each organism. Unfortunately, air isn't a good memory storage medium, and for there to be persistent storage, each fly or bee or whatever would have to 'remember' a specific other fly to transmit to or receive from.   

       So, in order for your idea of integrating a bunch of insect brains into a much larger neural net to work, you'd have to solve the persistent interconnect problem between specific bugs. Also, the usual serial information transfer across air is much slower than axon depolarization and suffers from high error rate and low bandwidth. The signals of hundreds of thousands of neurons have to be boiled down to a thin serial stream of air vibrations, then reconstructed into hundreds of thousands of neuron firing patterns on the other side.   

       It's this bandwidth bottleneck, by the way, that produces our own sense of individuality.
gregor-e, Apr 13 2008
  

       Suggested reading: Godel Esher Bach. I believe it is the tortoise who has enlightened conversation and smalltalk with an ant colony.
zeno, Apr 13 2008
  

       //It's this bandwidth bottleneck// blue-bottle neck, in this case.
Ling, Apr 14 2008
  

       Greg Bear's memorable Slant features an AI based on a neural network of insects, including a reset mechanism consisting primarily of Raid.   

       His previous book, Queen of Angels, includes as an aside the idea that bacteria are really vast amorphous intelligences, slowly communicating through viruses.
DrCurry, Apr 14 2008
  

       Allow me to introduce my good friend, Paragraph. He doesn't seem like much, but if you have him on your side, everything you write looks better.
Voice, Apr 17 2008
  

       Indeed, letters form words, words make sentences, sentences make paragraphs. Paragraphs make books, pamphlets, ideas on the halfbakery and whatnot. In a sense, words communicate with following words to create a wider meaning in the paragraph. Good anno [voice]! Go memes!
zeno, Apr 18 2008
  


 

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