Are bees more Bayesian?

It appears, therefore, that a swarm's scout bees do something sharply different from what humans do to reach a full agreement in a debate.  Both bees and humans need a group's members to avoid stubbornly supporting their first view, but whereas we humans will usually (and sensibly) ive up on a position only after we have learned of a better one, the bees will stop supporting a position automatically.  As is shown…after a shorter or longer time, each scout bee becomes silent and leaves the rest of the debate to a new set of bees.  Figure 6.7 shows how this regular turnover in which scouts are dancing can help a swarm's scouts quickly reach an agreement…

In other words, the bee algorithms allow attrition (a time-honored process of improving the scientific community) to operate at an especially rapid pace.

That is from the fascinating book Honeybee Democracy, by Thomas D. Seeley.  Here is the book's home page.  Here is a good review of the book:

In the final chapter, Seeley suggests five lessons we could learn from bees.

†¢ Compose a decision-making group of individuals with shared interests. Here bees have a higher stake than us: all members of a colony are related (sisters) and nobody can survive without the group.

†¢ Minimise the leader's influence on the group. Here we humans have much to learn.

†¢ Seek diverse solutions to the problem. Humans realised only recently that diversity is good for a group.

†¢ Update the group's knowledge through debate. Here again, bees are superior to us, as each scout's "dances" become less effective with time, no matter how good a new site is, while stubbornness can lead humans to argue forever.

†¢ Use quorums to gain cohesion, accuracy and speed. Impressively, bees came up with this concept long before the Greeks.

As a departmental chair at Cornell University, Seeley says, he applies these principles at faculty meetings with great success.

Definitely recommended.

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