Sunday, August 06, 2017
Ought vs nought
Headline: Bees are first insects shown to understand the concept of Zero
The researchers trained the bees to associate a platform that had fewer shapes on it with the sweet reward, until they made the right choice 80 per cent of the time. The bees were put through further tests with differently shaped objects to confirm that they were responding to the number of shapes and not their appearance. Next, when given a choice between two or three shapes and “zero” shapes, bees picked zero most of the time.Good experiment. Not hugely surprising, despite the tiny brain. Intelligence is turning out to be independent of neuron count or brain volume. I'd argue that this isn't about Zero in the sense of roman vs arabic number systems. This is more about establishing a template and knowing when reality violates the template. Immediate example: My kitchen faucet has developed a leak at the rotator joint for the spout. Until I get around to ordering a new gasket, I'm trying to avoid the positions that leak the most. Last night when washing dishes I left the spout over the soap-holding pan instead of turning it to the right over the egg pan as I normally do after filling the soap-holding pan. When I finished the stuff in the soap-holding pan and dipped the washcloth into the egg pan to start scrubbing, ALARM ALARM ALARM SOMETHING IS WRONG! Oh. The water in the egg pan was room temperature instead of warm, because the faucet hadn't been over the egg pan for the previous three minutes as it usually is. Every minuscule detail of a well-developed habit is ALARM ALARM ALARM when any sensed measurement is off by more than a difference limen. When the bees have formed the habit of expecting some shape objects on the platform, the absence of shape objects is ALARM ALARM ALARM! Brain expects things on platform! No things on platform! Etymology of NOUGHT: Middle English noght, from Old English nōwiht, which in turn comes from ne-ā-wiht, which was a phrase used as an emphatic "no", meaning "not a thing". Zero in numeration is a more abstract concept, which developed separately from seeing and marking a NO-THING where things are expected. Few minutes later: Ordered the gasket. ALARM can be useful.
Labels: bee, Grand Blueprint, Real World Math
¶ 11:36 PM
