You don’t need a brain to remember things (2 Viewers)

[Ahsoka]

Slime molds (exactly what they sound like) have shown the ability to solve mazes and remember, despite having no brains or neurons. To solve mazes with food in them, they fill up the entire maze, then retract the branches that are dead ends to feed, thus reverse engineering the maze. They also remember the paths that used to be most favorable for food, and prioritize those paths to keep those paths open longer than unsuccessful paths before eliminating them.

 

[Ahsoka]

General facts:
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[uran]

even slime are smarter than me

 

[HelloGoodbyeDie]

I feel like humans play second fiddle here

 

[karenina]

who knows what else could potentially have some sort of consciousness in a way

in the future, i may need to get slime to do my math tests for me then

 

[Moguri]

I thought this might be about chatGPT

 

[Moguri]

who knows what else could potentially have some sort of consciousness in a way

in the future, i may need to get slime to do my math tests for me then

that would be really great maybe there is a loophole that does not prevent to bring slimes to a test

 

[Selfmate]

even slime are smarter than me

 

[LoveYooShaSha]

Slime molds (exactly what they sound like) have shown the ability to solve mazes and remember; despite having no brains or neurons. To solve mazes with food in them, they fill up the entire maze, then retract the branches that are dead ends to feed, thus reverse engineering the maze. They also have sure the ability to remember past mazes and the results.

R u sure slime molds hv memory to rmbr past mazes n results?

Famously there's the rats in a maze looking for food study; most students/science-ers only quote past results, until a famous Nobel prize winner: richard feyman (u may know him as thd guy who showed on live tv why the gaskets on space shuttle were insufficient to handle the temperature by dropping a gasket in freezing water or sthg, i nvr watched it as it was pre internet).

anyways he redid the rats in a mmaze looking for food experiment n found tat rather than memory it was traces of rat tracks tat they responded to, ie they were retracing steps tat successfully led to food previously. When he accounted for tat(by re-laying new tracks with no traces of previous successful rat paths to food, they got only random success to find food, concluding tat rats had no memory of previous successful paths to food.

so it could be tat the slimes are just re-tracing prior successful paths, like when u see ants in ur kitchen(or anywhere) tracing routes tat were laid out previously, they sense scents laid out earlier by other(or even the same) ants, i think theres directionality too ie to food or to home might be scented differently.

maybe slimes process their mazes the same way, if the maze were completely new(except the route is the same) or the surface/walls/ceilings of the maze were completely cleaned of all traces of slime maybe it would be only randomly successful as in the rat experiment above(feynman's version not the non falsifiable version from earlier).

feynman i think said therez a point tat experiments must not fool the experimenters or sthg to tat effect.no one earluer thought to verify the proof tat ratz had memory of the mazes until feynman did it. Even now i think scientists might not know widely his debunking of the rat maze unless they come across ir in his book or teachers teach it(i doubt so its widely taught tho, maybd it is idk).

 

[Ahsoka]

R u sure slime molds hv memory to rmbr past mazes n results?

Famously there's the rats in a maze looking for food study; most students/science-ers only quote past results, until a famous Nobel prize winner: richard feyman (u may know him as thd guy who showed on live tv why the gaskets on space shuttle were insufficient to handle the temperature by dropping a gasket in freezing water or sthg, i nvr watched it as it was pre internet).

anyways he redid the rats in a mmaze looking for food experiment n found tat rather than memory it was traces of rat tracks tat they responded to, ie they were retracing steps tat successfully led to food previously. When he accounted for tat(by re-laying new tracks with no traces of previous successful rat paths to food, they got only random success to find food, concluding tat rats had no memory of previous successful paths to food.

so it could be tat the slimes are just re-tracing prior successful paths, like when u see ants in ur kitchen(or anywhere) tracing routes tat were laid out previously, they sense scents laid out earlier by other(or even the same) ants, i think theres directionality too ie to food or to home might be scented differently.

maybe slimes process their mazes the same way, if the maze were completely new(except the route is the same) or the surface/walls/ceilings of the maze were completely cleaned of all traces of slime maybe it would be only randomly successful as in the rat experiment above(feynman's version not the non falsifiable version from earlier).

feynman i think said therez a point tat experiments must not fool the experimenters or sthg to tat effect.no one earluer thought to verify the proof tat ratz had memory of the mazes until feynman did it. Even now i think scientists might not know widely his debunking of the rat maze unless they come across ir in his book or teachers teach it(i doubt so its widely taught tho, maybd it is idk).

The slime doesn’t remember in the same way humans do. It remembers by keeping open and strengthening pathways that more recently had food in them, and as more time passes without food the pathways become weaker until they completely shrivel up. The memory is more so about the actual architecture of the slime and the strength of the pathways than retracting its steps, which is doesn’t have the ability to do

 

[LoveYooShaSha]

The slime doesn’t remember in the same way humans do. It remembers by keeping open and strengthening pathways that more recently had food in them, and as more time passes without food the pathways become weaker until they completely shrivel up. The memory is more so about the actual architecture of the slime and the strength of the pathways than retracting its steps, which is doesn’t have the ability to do

Ur OP stated: " past mazes n the results" which is wat i was going off of.

if the slime mold is still in the maze currently n only extending to pathways tat still hv food, i dont get how its "memory" is doing anything.

I think of bacteria or viruses not doing doing things by memory or past results but just by random chance, same as the slime mold: it extends its pathways to find food n memory(if it's extension no longer has food!) I would think has nothing to do with it's practices. But maybe we just disagree on the definition of memory.

 

[Ahsoka]

Ur OP stated: " past mazes n the results" which is wat i was going off of.

if the slime mold is still in the maze currently n only extending to pathways tat still hv food, i dont get how its "memory" is doing anything.

I think of bacteria or viruses not doing doing things by memory or past results but just by random chance, same as the slime mold: it extends its pathways to find food n memory(if it's extension no longer has food!) I would think has nothing to do with it's practices. But maybe we just disagree on the definition of memory.

I worded that poorly, I agree. I’ll fix that part of the op.

It’s still not random chance though. Random chance would mean that how quickly the path ceases to exist would be unrelated to how much or for how long there was food at the end. Once the food is gone, that path would not be expected to last any longer than another dead end branch of the slime that never had food. I guess a good non living comparison is memory foam. It doesn’t remember an imprint because it has neurons allowing it to do so, but it does still remember the imprint because of the physical properties of the foam itself. But the end result is still the same because the imprint is directly based on past experiences

 

[LoveYooShaSha]

I worded that poorly, I agree. I’ll fix that part of the op.

It’s still not random chance though. Random chance would mean that how quickly the path ceases to exist would be unrelated to how much or for how long there was food at the end. Once the food is gone, that path would not be expected to last any longer than another dead end branch of the slime that never had food. I guess a good non living comparison is memory foam. It doesn’t remember an imprint because it has neurons allowing it to do so, but it does still remember the imprint because of the physical properties of the foam itself. But the end result is still the same because the imprint is directly based on past experiences

I still think "memory" is misleading rather than biologic/evolutionary process leading to pathways being open longer than unsuccessful pathways tat had no food but i agree tat sthg is going on tat is more than my mentikned rats in a maze experiment.

High school biology(n my country's geography) were my worst subjects so maybe i misunderstood all along. I could just be disagreeing on the meaning of remembering n memory(since u mentioned upfront tat slimes hv no brain cells/neurons).

PS i wanted to mentoin wat i learned from a comic, Swamp Thing-where the title character was previously believed to be the mutated man who died/burned in a swamp but (the writer read of experiments where memories of plants were transferred from other plants somehow) it was revealed it was the surrounding plants who absorbed the dead man's memories! There was a movie earlier of Swamp Thing(this led to the comic bekng revived n the story of the revised origin of swamp thing was in the 20sthg issue). The return of swamp thing sequel movie came later(but didnt include the idea of swamp thing being a plant, it also included the plot/romance of swampy with his lady live-so tat may hv been why it was excluded).

The scientific theory of plants absorbing memories of other plants was later debunked(planarian flatworms ate other flatworms n seemed to absorb memories) or disproven, i only know wat i read in interviews/articles about swamp thing connection to tat story so im not sure how true is the original story or its debunking/disproven. Just thought it interesting.