

Bees and flowers communicate using electrical fields, researchers discover - nonrecursive
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2013/9163.html

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jeremyx
What is more interesting to me, is the fact that flowers are beautiful and
bees and people seem to universally recognize this. There is a sophisticated
information exchange going with respect to how flowers evolved to attract
pollinators. Co-evolution with information exchange across species. See David
Deutsch's 'The Beginning of Infinity' for a fascinating discussion on
objective beauty...

~~~
kbutler
Coincidence - we like flowers, and admire bees. So we appreciate that bees are
attracted to beauty.

Replace bees with flies, and flowers with manure (or plants that seek to
attract flies <http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0602.htm>).

Where's the objective beauty?

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jeremyx
There is something more than that. There are many beautiful things, but
flowers in particular seem to stand out as something that is recognized for
their beauty regardless of culture, time or place. In the same way that people
the world over, independent of one another, come up with the same conclusions
about geometry and mathematics...

~~~
abraininavat
But not regardless of species. That both bees and humans find flowers
beautiful is coincidence. That humans are similar to other humans in a way
that crosses cultures is obvious to most.

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ajuc
It's more like flowers are external memory, and bees use them to send signals
to each other. Just like ants do with pheromones.

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sbirchall
Ah, time for one of my favourite ever articles: QUANTUM BEES!
<http://discovermagazine.com/1997/nov/quantumhoneybees1263>

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MichailP
Wonder how they managed to measure such weak signals from the flowers. Also
not sure if signal is the right term to use, because from the article it seems
that no information (in conventional sense)is being transferred. Charged
particle q (bumblebee) feels some force (F=q*E1 since we can neglect magnetic
field) that is the consequence of static field E1 from flower :) Although it
could also be the other way round, i.e. the bumblebee could produce field E2
etc.

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antiterra
Is it plausible that humans have at one point or another interfered with these
electrical fields in a manner detrimental to bees? Systemically?

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Fishkins
There's (inconclusive) evidence that cell phones or cell phone towers are
disrupting bees' lives.

[http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/cellphones-contribute-
bee-c...](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/cellphones-contribute-bee-colony-
decline-study-suggests/story?id=13597625)

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jpdoctor
> _Plants are usually charged negatively and emit weak electric fields. On
> their side, bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air. ..._

> _How then do bees detect electric fields?_

Why is the answer not as simple as: The bees feel an attractive force when
they are near the flower?

~~~
kbutler
Because the attractive force is so small. The net force of the electric field
plus gravity is likely very similar to just gravity.

You may have rubbed a balloon on your hair, generating a static charge. You
feel no attractive force toward the balloon, but your hair is pulled toward
it, and your nerves can detect the changed angles of the hair.

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blendergasket
I think there's a ton of this kind of communication going on that we don't
realize. I have been a practitioner of QiGong for about 9 months and it has
opened me up to a whole different dimension of information that is passed
between living things. I think much more study is needed on these methods of
energy transferrence between living organisms.

These kinds of subtle communications make up a dimension of the human
experience that can only be consciously experience by being actively
cultivated and the main stream scientific community has bound itself to a set
of ideological assumptions (IMHO inhereted from the Christian church) that
deny the existence of these dimensions of human experience and so do not
respect their cultivation or deem them worthy of study.

This is going to become more of an issue the closer our technological
interfaces interact with our senses. These assumptions about what we are, how
we communicate, and how we interact with the physical/spiritual world form the
base assumptions underlying the future course of our evolution and progress.
What happens if by augmenting/modifying one sense we cut ourselves off from
another that informs us subconsciously?

~~~
purplelobster
Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't know
where you're getting this conspiracy theory from. Do you think humans
communicate with other things through electromagnetic fields? Then tell us of
an experiment that shows this. What is the mechanism for this communication?
Asian mysticism is deeply traditional and faith based, just a different kind
of faith (placebo based). If these types of communications are so subtle that
we're hardly aware of them, then that means that they are in fact weaker than
the placebo effect. People are convinced they spoke to God and were abducted
by aliens, why should I believe that you can sense subtle magnetic fields?

~~~
blendergasket
"Scientific research is by no means tied to Christian assumptions, I don't
know where you're getting this conspiracy theory from."

Alchemy was actively frowned upon by the church, as was witchcraft of all
kinds. People who worked in these traditions were burned at the stake and
sentenced to death. Alchemists, like Newton, got their harder science
published but not their Alchemical work. Other Alchemists/Magicians got burned
to death for their work, like Bruno. There was a very strong disincentive to
publish the more spiritual work, and the work that might have related to the
convergence of science and the spiritual.

So people who were actively engaged in science were actively engaged in these
studies and a.) were censured, b.) weren't able to get them published. c.)
were burned at the stake

This was because they didn't fit into the Christian set of assumptions, which
were enforced by torture, death and censure. So the texts that form the
groundwork for our scientific understanding of the world leave out a whole
dimension of the thinking of the people who wrote them, who were either unable
to publish that part or afraid for their heads.

Asian mysticism is deeply traditional and faith based, just a different kind
of faith (placebo based).

Everything is faith based unless it's actually rigorously tested. Your
assertion that my experience is a placebo effect is based on your faith in Qi
being unreal. Many studies have been done on acupuncture that have shown very
real benefits.

If these types of communications are so subtle that we're hardly aware of
them, then that means that they are in fact weaker than the placebo effect.

They're not so subtle if you train yourself to be aware of them. But to train
yourself to be aware of them you can't have faith in their nonexistence.

People are convinced they spoke to God and were abducted by aliens, why should
I believe that you can sense subtle magnetic fields?

Calling people who have beliefs that don't fit into your philosophical
assumptions about how the world works delusional is both hubristic and
counterproductive in that it turns science into something like a religion and
defines the boundary conditions of what is and is not allowed to be studied,
which actively inhibits our getting a clear view of the world.

~~~
GHFigs
_...the texts that form the groundwork for our scientific understanding of the
world leave out a whole dimension of the thinking of the people who wrote
them..._

This is a feature, not a bug. Scientific understanding depends on quality of
the science, not the reputation of the scientist. It also doesn't depend on
faith, but on experiments and observations that can be reproduced.

We use this method because it's the most reliable way we know to arrive at
answers that give us predictive power about how our world works, rather than
just answers that "feel right". An answer that feels right may still be right,
but that doesn't make it scientific.

 _Your assertion that my experience is a placebo effect is based on your faith
in Qi being unreal._

You seem to be interpreting the placebo effect to mean "unreal", but our
present scientific understanding is that the placebo effect _is_ real.

To put it another way: Nobody is denying your subjective experience. It's the
attribution of that experience to mysterious mechanisms that require faith for
observation that is incompatible with scientific understanding, not the
experience itself.

This is important when you're suggesting that science excludes some things
from study -- what it actually excludes are things that can't be studied
scientifically, such as vaguely defined hidden dimensions or energies. It's
like trying to hammer nails into air: you have the hammer, the nails, and
plenty of air, but no matter how hard you swing, there's nothing for the nail
to be driven into.

 _They're not so subtle if you train yourself to be aware of them. But to
train yourself to be aware of them you can't have faith in their
nonexistence._

This faith requirement is incompatible with your desire for more study on the
subject. Science allows for the answer of "we don't know why this happens",
but not the answer of "we know because we believe", as the latter undermines
the very meaning of what it means to "know".

