Gongol.com Archives: January 2025
January 10, 2025
It's an arresting headline from the pages of the journal Science: "Ants best humans at test of collective intelligence". The story is a distillation of a research study conducted at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, which found that groups of ants trying to solve a puzzle-like spatial problem did better than humans solving an identical (but scaled-up) version of the same problem. ■ The reported conclusion is tantalizing, but there's a problem: "To make the comparison as meaningful as possible, groups of humans were in some cases instructed to avoid communicating through speaking or gestures, even wearing surgical masks and sunglasses to conceal their mouths and eyes." ■ That's no small caveat. By "leveling the playing field" in such a way, the researchers denied their human subjects the use of what makes our intelligence collective. We are a cooperative species, but our cooperation depends upon communication. Not just among ourselves, either -- part of what makes our relationship with dogs so special is that they know how to follow our gaze. That's an enormous factor! We can't share our intelligence effectively without a combination of both our extraordinary verbal skills and our advanced nonverbal skills, too. ■ Perhaps if ants had the same evolutionary advantages, they'd be even better at collective intelligence than humans (again, "on a level playing field"). But if you take away from humans some of the most defining features that make us human, then it should be no surprise that the denial leaves us looking pretty stupid. ■ Communication doesn't always make our decision-making better; we have social media, TV talent shows, and no small number of democratic election results to disavow us of assumptions otherwise. We would be fools, though, to underestimate the scope of communication as part of human intelligence or to disrespect the importance of communication as a skill.
