SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A trio of researchers with Kobe University in Japan has found that lycaenid butterfly caterpillars of the Japanese oakblue variety, have dorsal nectary organ secretions that cause ants that eat the material to abandon their fellow ants to instead hang out with and defend the caterpillar against enemies. In their paper published in the journal Current Biology, Masaru Hojo, Naomi Pierce and Kazuki Tsuji describe their research into the relationship between the two creatures and why they believe the nature of that relationship needs to be reclassified.
Scientists have studied Japanese oakblue butterflies before, noting that ants seem to guard the young caterpillars, but until now that relationship was described as reciprocal, both seemed to derive some benefit. The caterpillars got protection and the ants got a nice meal. Now however, according to this new research, the ants may not be willing partners.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @05:45PM
We neither have a complete model of the universe, nor are we sure know how the mechanisms we do understand lead to the emergence of consciousness. Rejecting an idea that you cannot reasonably falsify is willful ignorance, just as it is to assume it true.
With enough insight and invasive surgery, we could make your body do whatever we want, just like those ants and that caterpillar.
My body is a mechanism controlled by the brain. Unlike mammals, the Ant's brain has evolved to be controlled by external signals, it is physically incapable of opposing them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:40PM
However, given our current knowledge about the universe, there is no reason to think that free will exists, just like there is no reason to think that a god exists. I lack a belief in both things.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday August 05 2015, @10:43AM
At the risk of invoking Pascal's Wager, I would argue that a disbelief in free will is counterproductive:
If free will does not exist, then you have no choice in whether or not you believe in it, and further discussion is irrelevant.
However, if free will does exist, then belief in it empowers you to steer your path through the world, not least of which by engaging in self-directed operant conditioning to shape the "automatic" responses that generally govern the vast majority of behaviors in which we can both agree free will is lacking.
Finally, if free will exists, and you do not believe in it, then have surrendered that power of self direction, and in exchange gain only an internal absolution of responsibility for your own actions. A state which it's worth mentioning makes you potentially dangerous to other individuals and society at large, and thus a candidate for elimination for the greater good.
As an addendum, I would offer an alternate viewpoint to your purely mechanistic view of the universe - free will could itself be a fundamental property of the universe - consider: to an observer lacking broader context an exertion of free will would appear virtually indistinguishable from random behavior - it is after all almost by definition a bounded departure from the rules that normally govern behavior. And when we look at the universe at it's most fundamental level, quantum mechanics, what do we see but a universe dominated by apparently random behavior? If we postulate some mechanism by which such subatomic expressions of free will could contribute to a larger whole (perhaps not unlike the way a collective "mob mentality" can lead individuals to commit acts they later find appalling), then "high level" free will could emerge as naturally from the fundamental aspects of the universe as does complex biology.