Thread: The Web That Weaves (Itself)

Originally Posted by robwhit

Hmm. Well, you're arguing minor semantics of word definitions, which I am not.

I cannot imagine what you are doing could be described in ANY other way, Rob. And your semantics are remarkably "reductive" to boot.

Originally Posted by Sebastiani

I mean, the human genome is only around 750 MB. Granted, it's had plenty of time to work out an efficient system, but that's still cutting it pretty close. Hell, the OS I'm running now is like 3 GB (not to mention add-ons).

750MB seems like quite a lot to me. I mean DNA doesn't contain a final image of the human body, does it? From what I remember of the stuff they taught us in school it's more like an instruction manual to build one. It's probably compressed in such a way that it only contains absolutely neccessary information. The construction processes itself might fill in the blancs with the only possible "values". A procedurally generated body!

Your computer OS by comparison (a bad one, I think) is more like a snapshot. And don't forget all the different drivers! The human body is probably standardized as in "both eyes connect to the brain in the same fashion", left/right extremities are mirrored, all the alveolus (air vesicles) in the lungs are constructed in the same way and so on...

Thinking about it, you could probably fit that information in much less than 750MB. I'd venture a guess and say that given ideal compression and no redundancy, 10% of that should suffice.

The source code for the OS is not even going to be close to 3GB -- in fact it is probably not even close to 750mb (1.5 billion words ~ 170000 pages).

Am I the only one noticing that people just say stuff with no data to back them up? No proof, that means :P
Also, when baby is born it automaticly opens it's eyes and a smack to the bottom and it breaths, is this not true? So considering this to be true, the spiderlings could either just know that their backs can produce web, or as they are born they leak web out of their sacks and then find out how to control it, and likely by the stickiness of it, they find out it can lift their weight, maybe 'cause they fall while leaking web and find out that the can float by the help of this web. Then later on they find out that stuff gets stuck in their webs, including food, so they start making a web that's most effective at catching (and this is when I can't say how they know how to make their webs, as in all spiders use the same system when making webs, so either they try often and then learn the right one, or just know it, which means memory or knowledge transfer through genetics(that is DNA or some other thing that's transferred through birth), but I believe I've read somewhere that spiders do always make the same web system, even from the first try, but when drugged, with hashish or anything like that, they can't make the right system.). But this is all a hypotesis, I have no scientific proof, and I think Imma skip making the tests, since I'm Arachnophobic.

Am I the only one noticing that people just say stuff with no data to back them up? No proof, that means :P

There's isn't much... "data" to back things up, anyways.

We are still pretty much at the point of empiric observation. We can't even establish yet any form of two-way communication outside our species. About anything you can think is nothing more than a hypothesis when animal behavior is concerned.

the spiderlings could either just know that their backs can produce web, or as they are born they leak web out of their sacks and then find out how to control it, and likely by the stickiness of it, they find out it can lift their weight, maybe 'cause they fall while leaking web and find out that the can float by the help of this web. Then later on they find out that stuff gets stuck in their webs, including food, so they start making a web that's most effective at catching

See? You are not exempt of spreading rumors either

In any case I find that extremely unlikely, if not even impossible. The brain of a spider is too small to be able to carry all the thought process needed for basic survival plus coordinate its central nervous system and still learn by way of experience. Especially when we consider spiders that live for no more than two years. And definitely the idea of food being caught by chance on their web serving as a catalyst for repeated behavior is completely against all we know about life; that is, certain basic survival instincts are hard-wired on all species. Namely feeding and reproduction.

The idea of a spider being born with the knowledge on how to make a web is on the other hand quite acceptable. The process is almost mechanical and remarkably simple (robots could make webs with very few lines of code). And we also know spiders can be particularly "dumb". Like trying to make a web on a place frequently used by humans.

You could argue other animals need to teach their young on how to feed. Predators come to mind. Yet, the instinct for hunt is there whether they are taught or not. And they will hunt once coming of age, regardless. Their progenitor teachings will instead guarantee a higher degree of success. The act of selecting, chasing and bringing down a prey is a rather complex task involving far more brain activity and body coordination than waiting on a web.

Still we observe the exact opposite on other species. That we know of, no one teaches a shark how to do what they do best; hunt. On the other hand we seem to know that a perfectly apt human child that isn't taught will become an inferior representative of our species. Incapable of even communicating.

Essentially this boils down to the species, its biology and how it evolved. That is why comparing human children to spiders is not a good idea. You cannot draw parallels and expect these to hold against scrutiny.

I was just making a hypotesis, but I believe that creatures (as in everything that comes out of it's parent at birth) are born with instincts that have been trained by their ancestors, I have no idea how this is possible tho, but I'm not much of a biology person :P