According to the Oxford English Dictionary 'Queen Bee' was first used -in print- in 1609 by C. Butler in his 'Of the nature and properties of bees, and of their Queene'. So, the expression dates from pre-revolutionary times when anything but a monarchical hierarchy was en vogue. As such, the hierarchical nature of the denomination is merely a historical accident. In contemporary analysis of beehives, the queen is simply regarded as one of the specialized functions in the hive. A more appropiate term could be "breeder bee".

There are other reasons too to define the hive or colony as the organism. The different tasks are performed by bees or ants that are in fact geneticaly and phenotypically different, much as it is the case with the cells of higher organisms. These genetypes are also the reason they perform different tasks. They have no choice. They are genetically programmed to do such. There is no choice that would necessitate consciousness of individuality. Besides, they lack the neural complexity for consciousness.

There certainly is but it is an emergent property as explained before.
(BTW that expression reminds me of someone )

It's always beneficial to everyone to learn something new. I wish... uhmm, nevermind.

Forgive me - I'm googling as I go along here and doing my best to keep from dumbing down the conversation.

So, social insects demonstrate emergent property, but not consciousness? How is that possible? From what I've read, as I google along here, consciousness is an emergent property.

BTW, now I do understand that swarms have no centralized leadership whereas groups of humans do have centralized leadership.

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Yes, consciousness is considered to be an emergent property but there are tons of them. No system shows all of them. E.g. something simple as wetness is emergent. The individual water molecules do not exhibit any properties that could be described as 'wet', yet the collection of them, i.e. water has the property.
In swarms, the individual birds are clueless as to where they are going, they just look at their immediate neighbours. It's only when looking at the whole that meaningful behaviour emerges.
Emergence has been found in tons of places since people have started looking. The first one was called the Game of Life, which older people might remember (http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/). The rules for the individual squares are dead simple, same as in swarms, and yet the whole shows complex behaviour, even including self-replication.


Well, some have.

The Economy—The Market—Family Values—War on Terrorism—War on Drugs—Support the Troops—Freedom—Democracy—Under God—Pro-life—Pro-choice--Universal notions concocted to maneuver and to manipulate by appearing to represent the interest of the whole mass of the people.

What is the source for these Universal Notions? Do these notions grow like wild flowers? Do these notions form like raindrops and fall to earth to nourish and to refresh all citizens? Are these notions universally benign and beneficial?

Such Universal Notions have a human source and are devised to promote the interests of that source. I suspect that all such notions and many others more mundane have a common source—ideology.

Ideology makes the world-go-round and we know less than nothing about ideology because knowing only that which is erroneous is equivalent to knowing less-than-nothing.

Of special interest to me is the college course outline and content placed on the Internet by the college professor for students of a particular college course. At no significant financial cost one can, through the Internet, take advantage of a college course outline at home. One particular example of such a course “Ideology & Discourse” can be found at http://www.discourse-in-society.org/ideo-dis2.htm.

I can think of few domains of knowledge more important for a person attempting to understand her or his world than ideology.

I suspect many people confuse the content of ideology with the content of philosophy. It is not unusual for someone to question another’s philosophy or worldview when in fact it is the ideology of the person that is the correct question.

Psychology and sociology have generally decided to use the word ‘belief’ to replace a more ambiguous word ‘idea’ and ‘thoughts’ of any kind; I shall follow that same practice in this thread.

In keeping with this attitude and the course of study “Ideology and Discourse: A Multidisplinary Introduction” I shall use the following definition:

Ideologies are the fundamental beliefs of a group and its members.

This definition was chosen by the author to replace an often used meaning of ideology as ‘false consciousness’ or ‘misguided beliefs’. This more general definition will permit a more rational consideration of this domain of knowledge identified as ‘Ideology’.

The word ‘ideology’ has a very negative connotation in political discourse and thus in discourse in general. This apriori negative attitude makes it impossible to give rational consideration to this very important concept. Perhaps the first thing that a person must do to gain knowledge about this important concept is to erase this negative attitude, which has been a result of social osmosis in so many people.

Social discourse plays an essential role in why we adopt ideology, what we know about it and how ideology becomes the most important sociocentric influence in our life. Discourse plays a fundamental role in the nature of ideology and thus discourse is an important consideration in the study of the nature of ideology.

Ideology and discourse is a multidiscipline subject of study. One must approach it from most of the domains of knowledge in the humanities and the social sciences. “However, we shall reduce this large number of potential disciplines to three main clusters, namely those involved in the study of Discourse, Cognition and Society.”

Virtually all people agree that ideology is about the beliefs of a collective of people. “Ideologies consist of shared, social beliefs, and not of personal opinions…Ideologies are about life and death, birth and reproduction…they are about people and their health in relation to their environment…they are about class...about having power…about the redistribution of wealth and resources…they are about gender…about race and ethnicity.”

There is an enormous amount of knowledge accepted by an enormous number of people without any consideration. This vast domain of beliefs has been labeled sociocultural ‘common ground’ of a group or a culture. There are also a great number of beliefs that are not shared by all and need to be asserted or defended.

Ideologies are considered to be ‘basic beliefs’ in that these beliefs form the foundation upon which other beliefs are accepted or rejected. Norms and values are considered to be basic beliefs; they organize our attitudes and actions. Some of these norms and values that are part of every community become translated into basic beliefs of an ideology, therein lies there strength. It is these “group-related and interest defined interpretation of values that form the building blocks of ideological beliefs.”

Namaste,

What you are describing is the science of memetics. Memetics is an approach to evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme. A meme is basically a unit of information transfer in the same manner that a gene is a unit of information transfer. Genes are a physical means of transfer while a meme is a unit of social transfer.

Further information can be found at these places:

Meme - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Meme Central - Memes, Memetics, and Mind Virus Resource

In Peace,
Eglaelin

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Namaste,

Groups are absolutely necessary for the progress of humanity. An individual human is not, generally, survivable in the long term. It is when we cooperate together that civilization is able to progress. A society of individuals dedicated to their own survival and nothing else would simply degrade into chaos.

I find this statement interesting. What your saying is that you shouldn't be part of a collectivist community. I agree. You shouldn't be a part of a collectivist society because you would simply be disruptive to any such attempts. I whole-heartedly support your individual right to remain outside of any group cooperative. However, I do not support your attempt to deny others the right to form such communities. I believe this is the inherent force behind your statement that we shouldn't form collectivist communities.

In Peace,
Eglaelin

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No, I am talking about ideology.

Namaste,

An idea is a meme. The science of studying the transmission of cultural ideas and thought processes is memetics. One's ideology is a collection of memes that has been brought together to reflect a particular mindset. The effects of their transmission and the ways to counter them is found within memetics.

In Peace,
Eglaelin

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I am no expert so this will not sound like a very uneducated post but I was watching NOVA the other day and they had a segment about emergence and they pointed out that humans tend to behave this way when in large crowds. Even when no rules about how the crowd should behave exist they tend to move in patterns. When you think about it if you are walking in a crowd and somebody ahead of you seems to be going in the direction you need to be going you will follow that person's path rather than carving your own.

This segment has some interesting info. Click on the link to watch. NOVA | scienceNOW | Emergence | PBS

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Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
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Yes, it might be applicable to a limited field such as crowd dynamics. It's been applied succesfully to the dynamics of highway traffic too. But that's all one-dimensional behaviour.

Sorry, no can do. It's Windows only. Quicktime is partially supported but most codecs are proprietary. But I've got something for you
Amazon.com: Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos: Books: M. Mitchell Waldrop

I will bookmark it for now. I may pick it up later. Thank.

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"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Do bees swarm?

Do humans swarm?

Is there any known general similarity in swarm behavior patterns? I confess I know nothing of this topic, but it seems very interesting.

Not all species of them, since there are also species that live solitary.

Tricky question. Let's say that in some specific circumstances humans show a behaviour that is collective, non-hierarchical, and governed by the same class of simple, though non linear equations as that of swarms of insects.

Yes, and beyond that. This kind of behaviour is ubiquitous in nature. Not swarming as such but collective behaviour that does not depend on hierarchical transport of information amongst the group but rests solely on the interaction of immediate neighbours. It is also present in things like neural networks, artificial life, the transcription of genes into an organism (DNA does not have sufficient bits of information to exactly describe each cell and its parts), and so on.

My question is would it be beneficial for humans to act in a swarm?

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"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
-John Calvin

According to evolutionary theory, there has to be some benefit to the action or humans wouldn't have adopted it.

I have no idea what that benefit might be.