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Source: Two Wonderful Podcasts
Winter is a quiet season for beekeepers, so what better time to make yourself a steaming mug of cocoa and settle down to two great podcasts about bees!
The first podcast is a public discussion held at LSE by the Forum for European Philosophy, titled Hive Minds: Collective Intelligence in Humans and Other Animals. The panelists are Christian List (philosopher, LSE), Elli Leadbeater (social insect biologist, Royal Holloway), and Larissa Conradt (evolutionary theorist, Max Planck Institute for Human Development).
Leadbeater opens the discussion brilliantly, asking us to picture a swarm of honey bees who have just left a hive. So now they are clustering on a tree branch, with about three days to find a new home before they run out of food. Scout bees fly off in all directions looking for nesting sites with certain desirable features – large but not too large, protected from the elements, free of ants, and so on. These bees fly back and report their findings through the famous waggle dance, and other scouts fly off to verify their findings. Gradually a consensus emerges. In this way, thousands of bees with no central decision-making authority prove to be surprisingly effective in choosing an optimal nest.
This paves the way to discuss broader questions, such as, is there collective intelligence in bees and other social insects? If so, what is the evidence for it, and what form does it take? Do we also find forms of collective intelligence in humans? And what can humans learn from bees about the best ways to make collective decisions? The discussion encompasses philosophical questions (the nature of intelligence), historical anecdotes (Galton’s ox) and current developments (Brexit, Donald Trump).
Source: Two Wonderful Podcasts
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