Gabe Newell (Valve/Steam) seems to agree with your analyst friend's take.
> The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.
Is there any scientific basis for some kind of shared collective thought I don’t know about? In other words, what’s the “hive mind” if not the collective result of individual minds?
Changes in behaviour in the individual level might result in an apparent cognitive decline for that individual, but could still benefit the hive as a whole.
Yes, it's the idea that the colony exhibits behaviour with a level of intelligence impossible for any of the single bees. Things like choosing the location of the nest or managing the temperature of the nest, there's various decisions "made" by the colony as a kind of emergent property of the behaviour of the individual bees who themselves don't have the capacity to think at that level. The various aspects of colony behaviour have all been individually studied by quite a few people and groups, yes.
Am I? I just mentioned there's research that shows a colony of bees can make decisions that individual bees are incapable of. What am I misunderstanding?
Crowds of people, as an average, are more accurate at guessing the number of beans in a jar at a county fair than individual people, but not because there's such a thing as cognition manifesting at the group level in any literal sense.
I think you're making an interesting point, but I think you're attempting to point to a hive mind like it's the only pertinent topic when it comes to cognition of bees, as if testing for cognitive capabilities of individuals was a misunderstanding. But it's not a misunderstanding, it's part of what I think is some pretty explosively important research testifying to insect, cognition and even consciousness. At least speaking for myself, if the research holds, for me it necessitates a mind-blowing reevaluation of the internal lives of at least some insects.
> you're attempting to point to a hive mind like it's the only pertinent topic when it comes to cognition of bees, as if testing for cognitive capabilities of individuals was a misunderstanding
I'm not at all. I only responded to the questions "is a hive mind a thing, had anyone even studied that?" which is a Yes, and "why would they study the hive mind, isn't studying the individual enough?" for which I gave one potential reason to do so. I never suggested that studying the individuals was insufficient or that I took any issue with the study as it was conducted, I only answered these questions.
> Crowds of people, as an average, are more accurate at guessing the number of beans in a jar at a county fair than individual people, but not because there's such a thing as cognition manifesting at the group level in any literal sense.
Sure but if someone asked you "is there any point in studying group dynamics when you could just study individuals" you could still give a good argument for it right?
If human society changed so that average individual intelligence decreased, but the human race as a whole acted more intelligently, did human intelligence increase or decrease?
The comparison only works if the concept of a “hive mind” is as accepted and defined as the concept of a brain, which is quite literally what I was asking.
"Hive mind" conjures ideas of an omnipresent, all-controlling intelligence to me like startrek's borg, but I think this is more about the idea of a "superorganism" [0] like some bees and most ants where the group exhibits traits and "behavior" and "decisions" as a whole, beyond the ability of any single, specialized individual. Less superintelligence and more emergent behavior and complexity.
> If you don’t like that, just don’t buy from them…
This line of thinking only works as long as there are decent alternatives that exist. Now that Google is going this way too, the alternatives just plainly don’t exist at all, especially for those bank/government/security apps depending on Play services.
This is already what’s happening on iOS devices. Signing services like Signulous[1] basically buy a bunch of developer licenses, and registers your devices on it. The keys eventually end up getting revoked, obviously.
With how car-centric North America is, there isn’t much to walk to for a lot of people. Things are just very far from each other. I’d walk places a whole lot more if I had things at a reasonable walking distance, I used to do it all the time when I didn’t have kids and lived closer to the city. Back then, I sold my car less than a month after moving there, and relied on car sharing services for the odd trip outside of town.
Nowadays, I’m in a medium-sized agricultural town in Canada, not far outside the larger metropolitan area where half the province lives. Realistically, at a walking distance, I have a convenience store, a drugstore, and a small co-op hardware store. The closest grocery store is at least a 30 minute walk. Both my sons’ school and daycare, the closest market or shops I’d go at, they are all 4+ away.
I’m surprised to see this. From my perspective, reading comments and seeing which posts rise to the top, HN as a whole seems pretty bullish on the tech as whole…
I think there might also just be a vocal minority and/or some astroturfing hyping AI coding around hackernews. I personally keep trying all the latest shit and always stop using it, because it actively slows me down.
It’s changing over time. When copilot came out a few years ago, people were very against it due to it being trained oh GitHub codebase. Now there’s more support around it.
We don't want to admit it but HN has similar characteristics as many other platforms; echo chamber / group think. You see it over and over again.
HN participants (generally speaking) are against: AI, Crypto, HFT. I've worked in 2/3 of these industries so have first hand experience. My basic summary is that the average commenter here has a lot of misinformation on these topics (as a insider).
reply