

Cockroaches live in a democracy (2006) - AxisOfEval
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/04/03/1607034.htm

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clay_to_n
Ants behave similarly. If Steven Johnson's book Emergence, he writes that ant
colonies have three "landmarks" \- the queen, the dead ants, and a "trash
pile" \- husks and leftovers from food and foraging. The queen is placed
first, and as ants die they will place the dead ant pile - but they will place
it to be at the max distance (while still in the colony) from the queen. The
trash pile is then placed at the location that maximizes the distance from the
other two.

He claims the the queen is not responsible for this behavior - she's not a
"dictator" nor much smarter than other ants. They are able to do it because,
individually, they will move things to a better place if they know one exists.

They also manage to distribute their efforts very well, because each ant keeps
track ly of what other ants are doing (based on pheromones and running into
other ants). If an ant senses that there aren't enough ants looking for new
food (based on his limited interactions), he will go look for new food.

Really cool stuff, though I agree the title isn't great. This isn't really
about democracy, but individually simple behaviors that are optimal for the
group.

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m52go
I bet the cockroach brains are much less varied than ours, i.e., the variance
of intelligence in a random sample population of cockroaches is much smaller
than it would be in a random sample of human beings.

With that added variance, the implications of 'everyone having an equal say'
are profound.

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ikawe
How are you defining intelligence? And how would you measure variance of
intelligence across cockroaches in a way that is relevant to a way that you
measure intelligence across humans?

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jckt
Maybe intelligence isn't the right word? As I understood m52go's comment, it's
more like smaller brains -> less variations of "mind state" (as in state
machines)? Hence less "variance of intelligence".

Of course, I have no idea how a brain works, and it's unlikely that it's
anything like a computer.

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Mz
Excerpt:

 _For example, if 50 insects were placed in a dish with three shelters, each
with a capacity for 40 bugs, 25 roaches huddled together in the first shelter,
25 gathered in the second shelter, and the third was left vacant.

When the researchers altered this set-up so that it had three shelters with a
capacity for more than 50 insects, all the cockroaches moved into the first
"house". _

Yeah, this does not really sound anything like democracy. I can't figure out
what to call it but deciding "yuppers, there is enough room in one shelter for
the colony" or "whoops, we need to divide up because it won't take us all" is
not any kind of evidence of "voting."

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zhte415
Herding behaviour. Like sheep, and people. Big topic in behavioural economics,
and finance/investment in general.

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jessaustin
Holy anthropomorphism Batman!

There are numerous mechanisms to explain how tiny-brained insects could
determine suitable shelter that are all _much_ more plausible than
"democracy".

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dang
Can anyone suggest a better title? The submitted title was "Cockroaches can
count and do integer division". That seems overly editorialized, which is why
we reverted to the article title. But you're right, that one is misleading.

