Thursday, December 31, 2015
Who's smarter?
Another sciency item. A live look at the neurons of the 'lab rat' nematode C. Elegans. The accompanying video is moderately interesting, but the comments are vastly more interesting in a grimly clinical way.
In the video the worm's 300 neurons seem to be responding in a simple way, which is understandable. More or less rhythmic, and pretty much the same areas flashing all the time. Some areas flash more at certain times. Presumably these variations are responses to sensory inputs and motor actions of the worm. (The small changes would be more readable if the researchers had done some video editing to rotate the brain image to a constant position.)
What’s less understandable is the super-simple response of the commenters, who are presumably human and presumably possess a trillion neurons.
Only one neuron lights up. It’s totally unrelated to the task at hand. It lights up in a perfectly predictable and rhythmic way, flashing TRUMP IS FASCIST BUFFOON : TRUMP IS FASCIST BUFFOON : TRUMP IS FASCIST BUFFOON : TRUMP IS FASCIST BUFFOON ... ad infinitum.
Who's smarter? The worm with its task-related response, or the humans with their rigid inorganic clockwork response to every event and action?
¶ 2:03 AM 
