[HN Gopher] A single cell slime mold makes decisions without a c... ___________________________________________________________________ A single cell slime mold makes decisions without a central nervous system Author : gmays Score : 108 points Date : 2021-02-27 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.tum.de) (TXT) w3m dump (www.tum.de) | fiftyfifty wrote: | Previous studies were already zeroing in on the cytoskeleton | (made of microtubules) as the likely place where slime molds | stored their memories: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4594612/ | | The break through here is that they've found the memories are | encapsulated in the diameter of the microtubules: "Past feeding | events are embedded in the hierarchy of tube diameters, | specifically in the arrangement of thick and thin tubes in the | network." | rhyn00 wrote: | This sort of reminds me of the book "Vehicles: Experiments in | Synthetic Psychology" by Valentino Braitenberg. In this book the | author starts a series of thought experiments by constructing | small "vehicles" which drive around on a table top. The vehicles | start with very simple behaviors, then he applies evolution (by | vehicles falling off, or being selectively removed) while adding | more complex behaviors until the vehicles eventually become | intelligent. | | In a way the slim mold is a analogous to one of the simple | vehicles that ends up becoming more intelligent through the | simple mechanisms and evolution. | | Book link: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vehicles | tapoxi wrote: | Highly recommend this episode of Nova: | https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/secret-mind-of-slime/ | iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote: | Pour water into a maze (or create a potential difference across a | conductor) and you'll see that as new current flows in, it doesnt | explore every pathway but takes the correct path through. | | This intelligent behavior arises from the simple compulsions | things to reach equal potential. | | The slime mold experiments are cool because they connect simple | compulsions with emergent intelligent behavior in an organism. I | have wondered if it's the same for us, if conciousness is really | just the sum of all our simple compulsions, arising from basic | rules - like is water "conscious" of wanting to seek it's own | level, ions conscious of wanting to react, etc, and together that | makes up what human conciousness is? | TaupeRanger wrote: | Well it wouldn't tell us much about consciousness per se, | because what you're describing is an explanation of behavior, | not the first-person experiential thing we call consciousness. | Although I think there must at least be a correlation between | the two. After all, when you put your hand on a burning stove, | something somewhere goes "out of equilibrium", causing the | reaction AND the accompanying experience of pain. It's just | that we don't really understand why or how the latter | accompanies the former. | asimpletune wrote: | Wait, um, can you explain this more or tell me what to search | for to learn more about this? | | I googled "simple compulsions" already | sidpatil wrote: | Emergence [1] is what I thought of at first. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence | ta1234567890 wrote: | > and together that makes up what human conciousness is? | | If you believe consciousness is completely materialistic, then | maybe it is like that. | | I personally think that to be conscious means to be aware of | being aware. | | You could say it's a circular definition (or recursive), and it | is, but it's the only way to define something by itself instead | of as reference to something else. | neatze wrote: | consciousness is dissimilar to awareness, in my limited | understanding it is about feelings (experience) in itself and | not about being aware of being aware about feelings. | adolph wrote: | The Deep History of Ourselves is a book that goes from single | cell to consciousnesses. Here is a review: | | https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02475-x | SquirrelOnFire wrote: | From Bacteria to Back and Back follows a similar path and was | a worthwhile read for a layman like myself. It emphasizes the | evolutionary fitness of ideas as well as biological | evolution. https://www.nature.com/articles/542030a | cercatrova wrote: | I don't understand the point about the water, why wouldn't it | cover uniformly the entire maze? Assuming the maze is level | with the ground. | | Edit: thanks for the clarification all, I didn't realize it was | an entrance exit maze, I was thinking of one sealed on a ll | sides where the water can't get out. | jfoutz wrote: | I think if a maze has an entrance and and exit, and there's | some surface tension at the leading edge, when you pour water | into the entrance, it'll fill the maze like a breadth first | search. as soon as the water can flow freely at the exit | it'll drain because there's less resistance at the exit. | | pour a little water on a counter and you'll get a round area | with little walls at the edge, if it's not clean it'll kinda | break down where it's dirty (surface tension doesn't hold up) | once it hits the edge of the counter, the surface tension | pushes all the water over the edge. if it's a perfectly flat | clean surface it'll make a perfect circle till it hits the | edge. | | so the water won't fill every nook and cranny of the maze, | it'll start a new circle at every decision point, till one of | those circles goes over the edge. | sgtnoodle wrote: | It would to an extent. The idea is that the maze has an exit, | and once the water made it to the exit, it would spill out. | The steady spilling out of water would create a current of | flowing water all the way back to the water's source, | following the "solved" path of the maze. The water didn't | intelligently solve the maze, though, but rather the solution | emerged out of the simple but massively parallel interactions | between collisions of atoms (i.e "weak forces") and gravity. | lrem wrote: | I would leave gravity out of this. | coryrc wrote: | Surface tension will keep it from spreading beyond a certain | point unless the exit is the longest path of the entire maze. | Stratoscope wrote: | I think OP was talking about a maze with an exit where the | water can drain out, not a maze sealed all around the edges. | | It would be a fun experiment to test this with and with an | open exit drain at the end of the maze. | cercatrova wrote: | Ah OK makes sense now, I was assuming like a kids toy maze | where it's covered on all sides. An entrance and exit maze | makes a lot more sense. | fiftyfifty wrote: | This article says that they've found that the slime mold's | memories are stored in tubes that form intricate networks | inside the cell. It's interesting because neurons have lots of | microtubules and there have been some recent research showing | that they may be more than just structural components of the | neuron: | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3979999/ | | Could there be a relationship between these slime mold memories | and memories in more complex organisms? | [deleted] | eternalban wrote: | I recall Roger Penrose catching flack for his microtubules | theory of consciousness - looks like I missed his | Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory: | | http://www.consciousentities.com/penrose.htm | | https://medium.com/awake-alive-mind/roger-penrose-on-the- | bra... | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti. | .. | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S157106451. | .. | [deleted] | mrmonkeyman wrote: | You call it equal potential, like it is some obvious thing, but | what if that _is_ intelligence? | blowski wrote: | Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztOk-v8epAg | | (I'm a complete numpty here, so need very basic explanations!) | AndrewKemendo wrote: | With few exceptions, the AI research community completely | overlooks the "rest of the body" when it comes to thinking about | intelligent systems and focuses too much on the brain. | | The amount of computing going on in the peripheral nervous system | is staggering - and when you look at HOW and WHERE this computing | works with effectors and sensors you realize how much of | intelligence is reliant on those systems being there. | | Brains are interesting - but they actually don't do all that much | when it comes to the majority of how people interact with the | real world, and frankly you don't need that much (physical mass | of) brain to be intelligent. | patmorgan23 wrote: | This. Mind vs body is a false dicotomy. Your mind is fully | integrated through out your body. Physical and mental health | are so heavily intertwined. | avaldeso wrote: | [Citation needed] | tiborsaas wrote: | You can cite your body. Before you get offended, really, | just examine it as a system, and try to explain how can you | have a conscious experience without any sensory input. | | Even with a lame comparison to computers, the machines also | need a lot of stuff to put a CPU to work. | avaldeso wrote: | > You can cite your body. | | Anecdotal evidence. | | Also, if the mind is fully integrated with the body, how | you explain seemingly inconsistent states that seems to | work just fine. Eg., people with ALS or quadriplegic or | severely injured or mutilated. If the mind can perfectly | works without a perfectly abled body, where's this mind | body connection? Also, where's such connection in a | comatose brain with a completely funcional body? Maybe I | misunderstood what this mind body connection is supposed | to be. | SkyPuncher wrote: | > You can cite your body. | | At best, this is an anecdote. | carapace wrote: | Check out Levin's lab's work: "What Bodies Think About: | Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" - | NeurIPS 2018 | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698 | | In short, the biomolecular machinery that neurons use to | think is present in all cells. | Teever wrote: | This may be the case but a quad amputee is still able to | form and recall memories as well as tell jokes and sing | songs. | ErikVandeWater wrote: | I think the second sentence is opinion, not something that | could be objectively tested. Last sentence is mostly true. | Sick people are much less happy than when they are healthy. | ravi-delia wrote: | And yet I can go a-chopping anywhere but the brain without | cognitive deficit, but even a little scraping of the cortex | has a notable effect. The brain is fed and maintained by the | body, and as such is vulnerable to the body's failures, but | such a connection doesn't exactly break down the difference | between mind and body. | IdiocyInAction wrote: | How do you suggest that AI research should incorporate that? | Most modern AI research isn't even brain-inspired anymore; the | origins of ANNs are brain-inspired, but most SOTA approaches | don't really seem to be. | [deleted] | 01100011 wrote: | Sure but think about what happened. 50+ years ago, researchers | figured out some aspects of a neuron, simulated a network of | grossly simplified neurons, and found out they could do useful | things. Much of modern NN stuff is just following that | trajectory. | | I don't think many people seriously believe that artificial | neurons are in any way comparable to a real neuron, much less | believe that an ANN is comparable to what goes on in the human | body. Maybe in some very limited cases like the visual cortex, | but even then I think most people would admit that it's a poor | model valid only to a 1st approximation. | | That said, there is still merit in pushing the current approach | further while other researchers continue to try to understand | how biology implements intelligence and consciousness. | jtsiskin wrote: | Most AI tasks that I think of - image labeling, NLP - the | majority of that happens in the brain? Do we process language | in our peripheral nervous system? | _Microft wrote: | Edge-enhancement happens at the retina already by clever | combinations of inputs from different photoreceptor cells for | example. | ravi-delia wrote: | But it's also pretty obviously just a convolution, so not | exactly a big unknown. It's super neat, and it makes sense | that it would be in the eye, but at the end of the day the | interesting processing is done in the brain. | peignoir wrote: | Reminds me of the book wetware discribing a similar behavior | Barrin92 wrote: | Great book on the topic is _Wetware: A Computer in Every Living | Cell_. It really does a lot to show the complexity and amount of | work that is done within every-single cell purely at a mechanical | or chemical level, and has made me a lot more skeptical about the | reductionism that is common today in a lot of AI related fields. | szhu wrote: | This doesn't feel as shocking or startling to me as it probably | does for many. | | A slime mold is a collection of adjacent cells without a | hierarchy that can act together to make decisions. Our brain is | also a collection of adjacent cells that can act together to make | decisions. | | They're fundamentally the same thing. It seems like people are | shocked primarily because we arbitrarily defined a notion of | certain collections of cells being an "organism", and a slime | mold doesn't fit within this ontology. | lisper wrote: | Meh. A thermostat makes decisions without a central nervous | system too. | | But the title of the article is actually, "A memory without a | brain", which is actually much more interesting. A better rewrite | of the title would be "A single-cell slime mold can remember the | locations of food sources", which is actually pretty cool. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-27 23:00 UTC)