No one here actually read Origin of Species, eh?
I was waiting for someone to nuance my statements.
WHO HAS READ DARWIN?
Anyone read Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene? High quality work.
He argues that it is not the organism but the genes themselves which must be seen as the agent. So you have to look at individual survival and procreation and group survival at once, which changes the logics, and gives another way of looking at “fitness”.
So, the group is its own primary environment.
all ants in a colony are sterile female clones
the whole colony is one individual
I remember at your compound, taking a walk around it, studying this enormous ant trail, with very strong ants carrying whole flower petals by themselves. It was like 50 yards long at least. Beautiful.
i’ve read those two
among another thing or two
i published a microbiology paper once, too
if that helps
I doubt it will help. But good job.
I have read them both but I prefer the Dawkins because it is the more contemporary of the two
It is one of the truly seminal scientific books anyone remotely interested in science should read
saúva ants
atta subfam
they are beautiful, indeed
they’ll also wipe your crop clean in 24h
Read and learn:
animals.mom.me/ants-female-vs-male-7766.html
Ants unlike apes have division of labor, just like humans.
well I mean, to get to the point where you are able to put something you wrote in a credible scientific publication, surely you’ve studied a good deal of the foundational work on the subject
whatever
i hate it when creds start getting thrown around
y’all can just go ahead and assume that i’m an idiot and you’re better than me
to me it makes no difference
why dontcha keep googling until you get it right
hahaha alright I’ll do more than talk shit
in sum…
reading the mentioning of ants and dawkins in the same page is nice, since ants exemplify the idea of the selfish gene pretty well
an ant’s only purpose in life is to serve the colony because the colony is them
every single one of them is the exact same genetically
except for the males of course, but not because they are something else, but because they are a reduced version of them
they’re fertile, but they hatch from unfertilized eggs
they’re the genetic half of what a worker ant is
they’re referred to as “flying sperm” sometimes, because that’s all they do
they don’t even have jaws for eating
they hatch, fly out, mate, and die
it’s all controlled by the queen
she deliberately withholds sperm from a small fraction of the eggs she lays so that they remain unfertilized
since they are unfertilized, these eggs contain only her gene
so basically, you get to be fertile, but only because you’ll fly out and spread MY gene
anyway, that’s why I say we don’t act at all like ants
we’re not built the same
edit: double post
Alright phoneutria,
I’ll give you 1/2 of the debate.
Ants have division of labor. Apes don’t. Ants do farming, apes don’t, ants build cities, apes don’t etc…
ants don’t have a central command unit
they’re not commanded at all
the queen isn’t giving orders
there’s no ‘obeying’ in an ant colony
they’re born for a precise function, and they perform it until they die
like the cells in a body, without a will of their own
or rather, they each do have a will, that is the will of the whole
to further the queen’s gene, their own gene
there are no depressed ants who wanted to be queens but have to be workers
there’s no stealing in an ant colony, no murder
they are a perfect society because they are a single organism
our societies are anything but that
they’re just extensions of our clans
the further out you go from the circle of your kin, the more exposed you are
no matter what sets of rules we put in place to keep our mass economics flowing
instinct precedes it all
you fear what is not like you
just watch how apprehensive everyone gets when a pack of young black men walk into a store making a ruckus
we act very much like apes
People also fear what doesn’t equate to their sense of reality.
Ghosts are so scary because they are not a part of our sense of reality.
Impossible things defy theory and can frighten a person.
Nice little exposition, I appreciate that.
I wasn’t considering you an idiot, in the least. I just have no regard for publications as such, so just responded to that reference a bit mockingly. Everyone I know from youth virtually has published papers on this or that, Im from that kind of society.
But most of these are of course things like “city planning” and “social sciences”. - Which kind of brings me to a point about ants -
genetically we aren’t like ants, but mimetically, woke society and any kind of anonymous mass ideology for that matter, works like you describe the ant world.
Now granted thats technically only a metaphorical relation, but it does work very much along similar lines. Ideological people are simply incapable of existing if they’re not entirely dependent for the contents of their self-awareness on some central Ideology which could be considered Queen.
I think its a combination. Humans can kill and expel their kin because of ideals.
Look at the Baghdad Gita, to give a grand example, the battle of Kurukshetra, where people wage war against their own.
The god says that this is how it must happen, that this is where the sprit is forged. In so many words.
The 30 year war in Europe is famous for having come between families.
And so new family lineages are established, based on values…
not for nothing that same book introduced the notion of meme
i mean The Selfish Gene, not Bhagavad Gita