4 ms·

Bees are doing democracy right

45 points by forloop 11y ago

jkot 11y ago
> Of course, every bee wants credit for their own find. So there needs to be a countervailing costly mechanism to prevent bees from simply over-promoting any pollen source they know. Bees must spend a lot of energy to bring their fellows around. That is wrong. Bee spends lot of energy with promotion, but what really decides is snow-ball effects. When other bees try that source, they will start dancing as well.
formulaT 11y ago
Of course, every bee wants credit for their own find. So there needs to be a countervailing costly mechanism to prevent bees from simply over-promoting any pollen source they know. Two problems with this. Most importantly, if bees have the same genetic interests (it's a bit complicated but see The Selfish Gene for Dawkin's explanation of why bees are genetically programmed not to have different interests than their hives) then there is no reason for a bee to want credit. Second, has any reward for the scouts ever been observed?
- gweinberg 11y ago
  Right the article is a complete crock of shit. A bee does not benefit in any way from it being her find that the hive exploits. The bee in her dance is just trying to accurately convey the quality of her find, not to try to set policy based on her personal preferences, which scarcely even exist. Drawing an analogy between these bee dances and human voting is just mind boggling stupid.
  - gus_massa 11y ago
    [I agree with the idea in your comment, but I think it can be written in a more polite language.]
- rusanu 11y ago
  Is also note worthy that the bees in the hive are in effect slaves of the queen, acting in the queen interest and not on their own. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_mandibular_pheromone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_mandibular_pheromone. As such the bees may evolve behavior that would not appear in a colony of truly independent "voters".
  - gus_massa 11y ago
    The (female) workers bees are more related to their sisters than to their own daughter and sons ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratios_in_haplodiploidy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratio... ). So it's better to kidnap^H^H^H help her mother than to have their own children. The ratio of drones vs new queens is difficult to measure, because a new queen means that the colony splits, so the theoretical 3/4 is difficult to be corroborated. So, in spite of the hormonal details, it's more like the workers enslaved the queen than that the queen enslaved the workers. [The hormone is probably there only to signal that there is a queen, and it's not necessary to pass to the emergency mode and try to make a new queen.]
  - orthecreedence 11y ago
    Attraction and slavery are very different. If I'm attracted to a human female via pheromones, am I her slave? Hardly. I would liken bees, ants, et al more to anarcho-communists than monarchists. Queen is a complete misnomer. It's just another job in the collective.
gaius 11y ago
On the contrary, the cost of expressing an opinion on social media can be very high. Sometimes rightly of course, but sometimes not.
pluma 11y ago
Governance is so much easier if all citizens are insects that happen to be nearly perfect clones of each other.
- higherpurpose 11y ago
  China is working on that. But I'm not so sure it's democracy that will come out of it.
- rancur 11y ago
  > clones I read that as 'drones' and noticed...
kleer001 11y ago
Ah, Quadratic Voting, very cool stuff. Forget all the stuff about the bees, that's just stuff and nonsense. Democracy, I think, really only matter when each individual is heterogeneous. Here's some more on QV (ugh, such a horrible name): http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/01/collusion-in-quadratic-voting.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/01/collusion-in-quadratic... http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/my-thoughts-on-quadratic-voting-and-politics-as-education.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/my-... and finally an academic paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531 Random thought, what about exponential voting blocks? Everyone gets 100 votes, but you have to spend them in smaller and smaller chunks namely: 50, 25, 12, 6, 3, 2, 1, & 1.
- notahacker 11y ago
  Call me old fashioned, but I'm not persuaded democracy is improved either by requiring that votes are either paid for or so complicated for the voter they require an instruction manual to avoid inadvertently spoiling their ballot paper.
  - kleer001 11y ago
    That's okay. I'm old fashioned too. I think all voting should be done with pen and paper. Electronic voting is a straight up scam. This complicated stuff , I think, is more about the science of voting rather than the real-world engineering of voting.
DocOcassi 11y ago
This period there was a monumental shift from a moralistic view of human relations as passions which were largely detested to a view that self-interest, read avarice, could be used to tame the other passions, the problem with the bees is the bees are not human with all the vices and wants that go with our being, so attempting to apply simplistic ideas like that to human governance you will undoubtedly lose resolution. Regarding a complex system of governance that is required for modern society, voting pre-dates the above shift in conception, but it's use was spurred on by the idea that our self-interest can be used to the keep more dangerous vices in check, the problem with this is that avarice is a vice and if you promote it throughout society as being the main force for taming of humanity, you will inevitably fall under it's wheels, this will probably be seen in rising inequality, where virtues, patience, kindness... are marginalised, for the benefit of this one vice. I'm sorry I don't have an answer, I do think we have gone a long way down a dead end, I can only hope we have not done exactly the same to pride.
platz 11y ago
Who decides what topics the voters get to spend their points on? How could voters choose between candidates with such a structure?
platz 11y ago
https://www.uservoice.com https://www.uservoice.com
jbuzbee 11y ago
Doing Democracy right? I recall that worker bees will kill a co-worker if the co-worker doesn't do a good enough dance that tells where pollen can be found. I'd hate to think what would have happened to some of my co-workers based on the code they checked in. Or maybe the guy has a point...

45 points by forloop 11y ago

jkot 11y ago

> Of course, every bee wants credit for their own find. So there needs to be a countervailing costly mechanism to prevent bees from simply over-promoting any pollen source they know. Bees must spend a lot of energy to bring their fellows around. That is wrong. Bee spends lot of energy with promotion, but what really decides is snow-ball effects. When other bees try that source, they will start dancing as well.

formulaT 11y ago

Of course, every bee wants credit for their own find. So there needs to be a countervailing costly mechanism to prevent bees from simply over-promoting any pollen source they know. Two problems with this. Most importantly, if bees have the same genetic interests (it's a bit complicated but see The Selfish Gene for Dawkin's explanation of why bees are genetically programmed not to have different interests than their hives) then there is no reason for a bee to want credit. Second, has any reward for the scouts ever been observed?

gweinberg 11y ago
Right the article is a complete crock of shit. A bee does not benefit in any way from it being her find that the hive exploits. The bee in her dance is just trying to accurately convey the quality of her find, not to try to set policy based on her personal preferences, which scarcely even exist. Drawing an analogy between these bee dances and human voting is just mind boggling stupid.
- gus_massa 11y ago
  [I agree with the idea in your comment, but I think it can be written in a more polite language.]
rusanu 11y ago
Is also note worthy that the bees in the hive are in effect slaves of the queen, acting in the queen interest and not on their own. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_mandibular_pheromone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_mandibular_pheromone. As such the bees may evolve behavior that would not appear in a colony of truly independent "voters".
- gus_massa 11y ago
  The (female) workers bees are more related to their sisters than to their own daughter and sons ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratios_in_haplodiploidy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy#Relatedness_ratio... ). So it's better to kidnap^H^H^H help her mother than to have their own children. The ratio of drones vs new queens is difficult to measure, because a new queen means that the colony splits, so the theoretical 3/4 is difficult to be corroborated. So, in spite of the hormonal details, it's more like the workers enslaved the queen than that the queen enslaved the workers. [The hormone is probably there only to signal that there is a queen, and it's not necessary to pass to the emergency mode and try to make a new queen.]
- orthecreedence 11y ago
  Attraction and slavery are very different. If I'm attracted to a human female via pheromones, am I her slave? Hardly. I would liken bees, ants, et al more to anarcho-communists than monarchists. Queen is a complete misnomer. It's just another job in the collective.

gaius 11y ago

On the contrary, the cost of expressing an opinion on social media can be very high. Sometimes rightly of course, but sometimes not.

pluma 11y ago

Governance is so much easier if all citizens are insects that happen to be nearly perfect clones of each other.

higherpurpose 11y ago
China is working on that. But I'm not so sure it's democracy that will come out of it.
rancur 11y ago
> clones I read that as 'drones' and noticed...

kleer001 11y ago

Ah, Quadratic Voting, very cool stuff. Forget all the stuff about the bees, that's just stuff and nonsense. Democracy, I think, really only matter when each individual is heterogeneous. Here's some more on QV (ugh, such a horrible name): http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/01/collusion-in-quadratic-voting.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/01/collusion-in-quadratic... http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/my-thoughts-on-quadratic-voting-and-politics-as-education.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/my-... and finally an academic paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531 Random thought, what about exponential voting blocks? Everyone gets 100 votes, but you have to spend them in smaller and smaller chunks namely: 50, 25, 12, 6, 3, 2, 1, & 1.

notahacker 11y ago
Call me old fashioned, but I'm not persuaded democracy is improved either by requiring that votes are either paid for or so complicated for the voter they require an instruction manual to avoid inadvertently spoiling their ballot paper.
- kleer001 11y ago
  That's okay. I'm old fashioned too. I think all voting should be done with pen and paper. Electronic voting is a straight up scam. This complicated stuff , I think, is more about the science of voting rather than the real-world engineering of voting.

DocOcassi 11y ago

This period there was a monumental shift from a moralistic view of human relations as passions which were largely detested to a view that self-interest, read avarice, could be used to tame the other passions, the problem with the bees is the bees are not human with all the vices and wants that go with our being, so attempting to apply simplistic ideas like that to human governance you will undoubtedly lose resolution. Regarding a complex system of governance that is required for modern society, voting pre-dates the above shift in conception, but it's use was spurred on by the idea that our self-interest can be used to the keep more dangerous vices in check, the problem with this is that avarice is a vice and if you promote it throughout society as being the main force for taming of humanity, you will inevitably fall under it's wheels, this will probably be seen in rising inequality, where virtues, patience, kindness... are marginalised, for the benefit of this one vice. I'm sorry I don't have an answer, I do think we have gone a long way down a dead end, I can only hope we have not done exactly the same to pride.

platz 11y ago

Who decides what topics the voters get to spend their points on? How could voters choose between candidates with such a structure?

platz 11y ago

https://www.uservoice.com https://www.uservoice.com

jbuzbee 11y ago

Doing Democracy right? I recall that worker bees will kill a co-worker if the co-worker doesn't do a good enough dance that tells where pollen can be found. I'd hate to think what would have happened to some of my co-workers based on the code they checked in. Or maybe the guy has a point...