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swarm intelligence, hive minds, and all that, this topic has been more and more interesting to me lately. Ants, bees, locusts, schools of fish, flocks of birds, herds of animals and stuff like that
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Did you know that locust swarms move and stir by biting each other in the ankles and cannibalizing individuals that stray too far from the swarm's movement?
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It's the creepiest form of intelligence

I posted about this many years ago here regarding an incident with gigantic mosquito clouds in my backyard one summer and no matter how much I shoo'd them off with bug spray or sprayed it with a hose to fuckoff they kept flying back to the exact same spot on my patio for no real reason at all.
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>>4901074
The question is, how do you really kill that intelligence? Do you have to kill every single mosquito or just enough of them? At what point have you destroyed the sould of that mosquito cloud, or does it linger?
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>>4901078
Flamethrower.
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>>4901100
Sure, but that doesn't really answer the question. What if like 1 or 2 get away?
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>>4901078
>At what point have you destroyed the sould of that mosquito cloud, or does it linger?
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>>4901105
thanks for the recommendation, those greek fellas really thought of almost everything before
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I don't want to sound like an asshole but I somehow get the feeling people aren't as interested in this topic as I am, but maybe it's also just because this is literally one of the slowest boards
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>>4900954
Me on the right
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>>4901563
eventually some autist who enjoys this as much as you do will show up with some fun facts but yes this is a slow board
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>>4901563
It's interesting but I know nothing about the phenomena other than it looks cool and is an interesting topic so I have nothing to contribute.
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>>4901695
>>4901703
thanks anons. yeah my autistic fixations mostly comes from the idea that human collectives also function similar to animal hiveminds as >>4901672 implied, and what that emergent consciousness would look like if the emergent consciousness made up of ants can create something as "intelligent" as an anthill is a thought that has gripped me
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>>4901672
More like swarm retardation lmao.
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>>4900954
heard ducks fly in V formation for optimal airflow
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>>4901729
when I worked in a dollar store I noticed people have a tendency to get in line for checkout at the same time, despite coming in and shopping at different times. it was like something clicked in the air and everybody decided they were done. I noticed this every day, like 2 or 3 times a day, and it was always eerie.
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>>4901868
I mean yeah if you ever walk through a crowded city on a busy day it's actually amazing that people don't constantly bump into each other, and pic related is just a mild example. There is propably alot of shit going on, mostly sight, some hearing and to a lesser degree smell and hormones or some shit that constantly subconsciously gets processed by our brains to help us navigate shit like that without even thinking about it much
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>>4901078
Since emergent intelligence in swarms is a result of input-output relationship of its individual parts, it means you have to destroy a sufficient quantity of members for its functions to be impaired. How many that is varies between animals, I could easily see 50% in the case of mosquitoes, maybe more. The alternative is to damage enough of them that they can no longer function, and impair the swarm's ability overall. Poison that does not kill, but incapacitates, is the obvious method, but at that point you could just use a lethal poison, or you could go inside.

Swarms are cool, and if they had the capacity to be more developed I could easily see a swarm be an apex predator. But we developed shelter for a reason, and I think that in general swarms are just something our markets encourage us to destroy, for good reason. Weapons that work against them are plentiful, but they are destructive, and every idiot who is plagued by mosquitoes shouldn't be fumigating their backyard. So we are left to simpler tools like mechanical destruction (swatters, salt guns), or simpler poisons (handheld bugspray). Fundamentally a swarm is just a crude logic system where the logic is being carried out by complex entities, and its only 'strength' in this regard is that it is entire decentralised, a swarm can hypothetically exist as long as 2 members of it exists.
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what I find interesting how with humans the intelligence drops the bigger the hive is
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>>4900966
poor lil guy, he was so close to breaking free but one is already out to get him
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>>4902069
The same way a school of fish can react very quickly because they offload their critical thinking burden onto just paying attention to adjacent fish; so too do humans offload their critical thinking burden onto watching the other members of the swarm. But with humans, our critical thinking is our most highly developed faculty. Left to our own devices we would know to run when we hear the building creaking, but if everyone is cool with it why shouldn't you be? Don't worry about it, if you were in danger your fellow tribe members would warn you.
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>>4902063
>The alternative is to damage enough of them that they can no longer function, and impair the swarm's ability overall. Poison that does not kill, but incapacitates, is the obvious method
you got that right brother
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>>4902076
More insects should make themselves useful like the bee. A creature deserving of the less-than-lethal poison.
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>>4902117
I think the idea of swarms never really makin it is also interesting, why no apex predator, just because of us? can't really believe that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTk2i5v23PI&ab_channel=TheProdigy-Topic
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>>4902355
p-p-Piranha!
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you can simulate swarms or at least flocks
https://ditzbitz.com/hyperboids.html
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>>4902063
>Swarms are cool, and if they had the capacity to be more developed I could easily see a swarm be an apex predator
Hold that thought. Apex swarm? Look into a mirror
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>>4903180
thanks bro, gonna play around with that for a while



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