-
蚂蚁智力
Collective
intelligence:
：
Ants and
brain's neurons
STANFORD
-
An
individual
ant
is
not
very
bright,
but
ants
in
a
colony,
operating as a collective, do
remarkable things.
A single neuron in the human brain can
respond only to what the neurons
connected to it are doing, but all of
them together can be Immanuel Kant.
That resemblance is why
Deborah M. Gordon, StanfordUniversity assistant
professor of biological sciences,
studies ants.
in complicated
ways,
No one
gives orders in an ant colony, yet each ant
decides what to do next.
For instance, an ant may have several
job descriptions. When the colony
discovers a new source of food, an ant
doing housekeeping duty may suddenly
become a forager
. Or if the
colony's territory size expands or contracts,
patroller
ants change the shape of
their reconnaissance pattern to conform to the new
realities. Since no one is in charge of
an ant colony - including the misnamed
This
kind of undirected behavior is not unique to ants,
Gordon said. How do
birds flying in a
flock know when to make a collective right turn?
All anchovies
and other schooling fish
seem to turn in unison, yet no one fish is the
leader
.
Gordon studies harvester ants in
Arizona and, both in the field and in her lab,
the so-called Argentine ants that are
ubiquitous to coastal California.
Argentine ants came to
Louisiana in a sugar shipment in 1908. They were
driven out of the Gulf states by the
fire ant and invaded California, where they
have
displaced
most
of
the
native
ant
species.
One
of
the
things
Gordon
is
studying is how they did
so. No one has ever seen an ant war involving the
Argentine
species
and
the
native
species,
so
it's
not
clear
whether
they
are
quietly
aggressive or just find ways of taking over food
resources and territory.
The Argentine ants in her lab also are
being studied to help her understand
how they change behavior as the size of
the space they are exploring varies.
Gordon said.
Her ants are confined by
Plexiglas walls and a nasty glue-like substance
along the tops of the boards that keeps
the ants inside. She moves the walls in
and out to change the arena and
videotapes the ants' movements. A computer
tracks each ant from its image on the
tape and reads its position so she has a
diagram of the ants' activities.
The motions of
the ants confirm the existence of a collective.
which can
only
do
something
very
simple, but
together the
whole
brain
can
think. None of the neurons can think
ant, but the brain can think ant, though
nothing in the brain told that neuron
to think ant.
For instance, ants scout for food in a
precise pattern. What happens when
that
pattern no longer fits the circumstances, such as
when Gordon moves the
walls?
communicate
by
chemicals,
she
said.
how
they
mostly
perceive the world; they don't see very
well. They use their antennae to smell.
So to smell something, they have to get
very close to it.
as an individual that is
trying to do this - is to have an ant everywhere
all the
time, because if it doesn't
happen close to an ant, they're not going to know
about
it.
Of
course,
there
are
not
enough
ants
in
the
colony
to
do
that,
so
somehow the ants have to
move around in a pattern that allows them to cover
space efficiently.
Keeping in mind that no one
is in charge of a colony and that there is no
central
plan,
how
do
the
ants
adjust
their
reconnaissance
if
their
territory
expands or shrinks?
has to be some
rule that individual ants use in deciding to
change the shape of
their paths so they
cover the areas effectively. I think that that
rule is the rate in
which they bump
into each other
.
The more crowded they are,
the more often each ant will bump into another
ant. If the area of their territory is
expanded, the frequency of contact decreases.
Perhaps, Gordon thinks, each ant has a
threshold for normality and adjusts its
path shape depending on how often the
number of encounters exceeds or falls
short of that threshold.
If the territory shrinks,
the number of contacts increases and the ant
alters
its search pattern. If it
expands, contact decreases and it alters the
pattern a
different way.
In the Arizona harvester
ants, Gordon studies tasks besides patrolling.
Each
ant has a job.
divide the
tasks
into
four:
foraging, nest maintenance, midden
[piling
refuse, including
husks of seeds] and patrolling - patrollers are
the ones that
come
out
first
in
the
morning
and
look
for
food.
The
foragers
go
where
the
patrollers find food.
colony
has
about
eight
different
foraging
paths.
Every
day
it
uses
several
of them. The patrollers go out first on the trails
and they attract each
other when they
find food. By the end of an hour's patrolling,
most patrollers are
on just a few
trails. . . . All the foragers have to do is go
where there are the most
patrollers.
Each
ant
has
its
prescribed
task,
but
the
ants
can
switch
tasks
if
the
collective needs it. An ant on
housekeeping duty will decide to forage. No one
told
it
to
do
so
and
Gordon
and
other
entomologists
don't
know
how
that
happens.
ant
can
possibly
know
how
much
food
everybody
is
collecting,
how
many foragers are
needed,
tell it, 'OK, switch and start
foraging.' But an ant can't assess globally how
much
food the colony needs.
what task
they're doing on a given day. The ants that were
foraging for food
were
green,
those that
were
cleaning the nest
were
blue
and
so on.
Then
I
created some new situation in the
environment; for example, I create a mess
that the nest maintenance workers have
to clean up or I'll put out extra food
that attracts more foragers.
to
do a different task when conditions
change.
Of about
8,000 species of ants, only about 10 percent have
been studied
thus far
.
compared to the
number of species out there.
天才儿童
TIME: 5-7'
HOW IQ BECOMES IQ
In
1904
the
French
minister
of
education,
facing
limited
resources
for
schooling, sought a way
to separate the unable from the merely lazy.
Alfred
Binet got the job of devising
selection principles and his brilliant solution
put a
stamp on the study of
intelligence and was the forerunner of
intelligence tests
still
used
today.
He
developed
a
thirty-problem
test
in
1905,
which
tapped
several abilities
related to intellect, such as judgment and
reasoning. The test
determined a given
child's mental age'. The test previously
established a norm
for children of a
given physical age. For example, five-year-olds on
average get
ten items correct,
therefore, a child with a mental age of five
should score 10,
which would mean that
he or she was functioning pretty much as others of
that
age. The child's mental age was
then compared to his physical age.
A large disparity in the
wrong direction (e.g., a child of nine with a
mental
age of four) might suggest
inability rather than laziness and means that he
or
she was earmarked for special
schooling. Binet, however
, denied that
the test
was measuring intelligence and
said that its purpose was simply diagnostic, for
selection only. This message was
however lost and caused many problems and
misunderstandings later
.
Although
Binet's test was popular
, it was a bit
inconvenient to deal with a
variety
of
physical
and
mental
ages.
So,
in
1912,
Wilhelm
Stern
suggested
simplifying this by reducing the two to
a single number
. He divided the mental
age
by
the
physical
age
and
multiplied
the
result
by
100.
An
average
child,
irrespective of age, would score 100. a
number much lower than 100 would
suggest the need for help and one much
higher would suggest a child well ahead
of his peer
.
This
measurement
is
what
is
now
termed
the
IQ
(intelligence
quotient)
score
and
it
has
evolved
to
be
used
to
show
how
a
person,
adult
or
child,
performed in relation to others. The
term IQ was coined by Lewis m. Terman,
professor of psychology and education
of Stanford University, in 1916. He had
constructed
an
enormously
influential
revision
of
Binet's
test,
called
the
Stanford-Binet test, versions of which
are still given extensively.
The
field
studying
intelligence
and developing
tests
eventually
coalesced
into
a
sub-field
of
psychology
called
psychometrics
(psycho
for
‘
mind'
and
metrics
for
'measurements').
The
practical
side
of
psychometrics
(the
development and use of tests) became
widespread quite early, by 1917, when
Einstein published his grand theory of
relativity, mass-scale testing was already
in use.
Germany's unrestricted submarine
warfare (which led to the sinking of the
Lusitania in 1915) provoked the United
States to finally enter the first world war
in the same year
. The
military had to build up an army very quickly and
it had
two million inductees to sort
out. Who would become officers and who enlisted
men?
Psychometricians
developed
two
intelligence
tests
that
helped
sort
all
these people out, at
least to some extent. This was the first major use
of testing
to decide who lived and who
died since officers were a lot safer on the
battlefield.
The tests themselves were
given under horrendously bad conditions and the
examiners seemed to lack common sense.
A lot of recruits simply had no idea
what to do and in several sessions most
inductees scored zero! The examiners
also came up with the quite astounding
conclusion from the testing that the
average American adult's intelligence
was equal to that of a thirteen-year-old!
Nevertheless,
the
ability
for
various
authorities
to
classify
people
on
scientifically
justifiable
premises
was
too
convenient
and
significant
to
be
dismissed
lightly,
so
with
all
good
astounding
intentions
and
often
over
enthusiasm, society's affinity for
psychological testing proliferated.
Back in Europe, Sir Cyril
Burt, professor of psychology at University
College
London from 1931 to 1950, was a
prominent figure for his contribution to the
field. He was a firm advocate of
intelligence testing and his ideas fitted in well
with English cultural ideas of elitism.
A government committee in 1943 used
some
of
Burt's
ideas
in
devising
a
rather
primitive
typology
on
children's
intellectual behavior
. All
were tested at age eleven and the top 15 or 20 per
cent
went to grammar schools with good
teachers and a fast pace of work to prepare
for the few university places
available. A lot of very bright working-class
children,
who otherwise would never
have succeeded, made it to grammar schools and
universities.
The system for the rest was
however disastrous. These children attended
lesser
secondary
or
technical
schools
and
faced
the
prospect
of
eventual
education oblivion.
They felt like dumb failures, which having been
officially and
scientifically branded.
No wonder their motivation to study plummeted. It
was
not until 1974 that the public
education system was finally reformed. Nowadays
it is believed that Burt has fabricated
a lot of his data. Having an obsession that
intelligence
is
largely
genetic,
he
apparently
made
up
twin
studies,
which
supported
this
idea,
at
the
same
time
inventing
two
co-
workers
who
were
supposed to have gathered the results.
Intelligence
testing enforced political and social prejudice
and their results
were used to argue
that Jews ought to be kept out of the United
States because
they were so
intelligently inferior that they would pollute the
racial mix. And
blacks ought not to be
allowed to breed at all. Abuse and test bias
controversies
continued to plaque
psychometrics.
Measurement
is
fundamental
to
science
and
technology.
Science
often
advances
in
leaps
and
bounds
when
measurement
devices
improve.
Psychometrics has long tried to develop
ways to gauge psychological qualities
such as intelligence and more specific
abilities, anxiety, extroversion, emotional
stability, compatibility with marriage
partner and so on. Their scores are often
given enormous weight. A single IQ
measurement can take on a life of its own if
teachers and parents see it as
definitive. It became a major issue in the 70s
when
court
cases
were
launched
to
stop
anyone
from
making
important
decisions based on IQ test scores. the
main criticism was and still is that current
tests don't really measure
intelligence. Whether intelligence can be measured
at
all is still controversial. some say
it cannot while others say that IQ tests are
psychology's greatest
accomplishments.
全球变暖
A Canary in the Coal Mine
The Arctic seems to be
getting warmer
. So what?
A.
“
Climate change in the
Arctic is a reality now!
”
So
insists Robert Corell, an
oceanographer
with
the
American
Meteorological
Society.
Wild-eyed
proclamations are
all too common when it comes to global warming,
but in this
case his assertion seems
well founded.
B. At first sight, the
ACIA
’
s (American
Construction Inspectors Association)
report
’
s
conclusions
are
not
so
surprising.
After
all,
scientists
have
long
suspected that several factors lead to
greater temperature swings at the poles
than elsewhere on the planet. One is
albedo
—
the posh scientific
name for how
much sunlight is absorbed
by a planet
’
s surface, and
how much is reflected.
Most of the
Polar Regions are covered in snow and ice, which
are much more
reflective than soil or
ocean. If that snow melts, the exposure of dark
earth
(which
absorbs
heat)
acts
as
a
feedback
loop
that
accelerates
warming.
A
second
factor that makes the poles special is that the
atmosphere is thinner
there than at the
equator
, and so less energy is required
to warm it up. A third
factor is that
less solar energy is lost in evaporation at the
frigid poles than in the