Assuming the ants are unaware when they are in an ant mill, wouldn't it be naive to assume that we would be able to recognize if/when we were in an equivalent phenomena as humans?
I would say no, unless there were similar phenomena documented in a statistical majority of known species and also maybe only if a statistical majority of ants experienced this. It sounds like its super rare.
Still, human mill, culture mill, economic mill etc. Brain exploding slack emoji. Favorite HN post of the week.
It would probably not happen
in a city with clear landmarks, because humans are good at recognizing places they have already been, but could easily happen in a forest or desert. Or in an underground network, as soon as everything looks the same.
Most of the time humans will think the problem through though instead of just following others.
But if you think it at another scale, humans can follow each other into traps like this, thinking of hate for example, when nobody really knows why they hate something or some group of other people, they just do because others do.
See also the monkey ladder experiment: https://www.wisdompills.com/monkey-ladder/ - The behaviour is, of course, not as stupid as it seems. Humans are especially prone to copy extra steps from others that don't seem to add anything.
But sometimes, when you skip over the "useless" steps while preparing a certain kind of food (e.g. for some manioc variant), you may slowly poison yourself over the years. Also, remember to always brush your teeth.
I like the hate example. In the same way that another poster mentioned local minima and metastable solutions, I see that unfolding in the current socio-political landscape. There is a metastable solution we're currently refining. That memeplex becomes an increasingly difficult well from which to escape. In a sense there may even be an ideological escape velocity to some of these memetics attractors.
On broader scales, the dominant mode of production is a metastable state. In the same way we might experience false vaccum decay, the current mode of production may undergo the same kind of spontaneous transformation. What's even more interesting is that it has done this at least three times already.
If you take it quite literally as running around in a circle, then probably not. The ants are unable to know their position in the world or know very much at all. They don't have memory to remember they have been at a location before or probably even the brainpower to work out what is going on.
These days with GPS it would not happen but even pre gps we have always had the stars, compasses, the sun, etc to know where we are and where we are going. If you take it as a more abstract concept about going in circles, than idk, maybe?
I would argue that a majority of humans are in a human mill, blindly following the next person, who follows the next person, ad infinitum, and are blind to it. I say this not scornfully, but rather as an outside observer, who having been flicked off the trail by a series of accidents, now observes the same humans passing by, over and over. Or perhaps they’re different humans, but are functionally indistinguishable. Same wants, same needs, same counterproductive and counterintuitive but “normal” decisions and behaviours.
A fundamental feature of behaviour in the animal kingdom is mimicry, memetics, whatever you want to call it - and the behaviours which propagate are usually favourable to the gestalt, rather than the individual.
What does it mean the follow another human in this context? I went to the store today. I believe I did so by my own free will. I wasn’t aware of anyone else going to the store.
Not OP, but I'd interpret it in a broader sense, that is, not focusing on specific and daily activities, but rather on general, social trends. Anthropologically, humans (but also animals) tend to mimic others so that they can integrate into a social group, and thus have better chances at surviving. Even if people are unaware of it, they're constantly influenced, directly or indirectly, in the modern world, whether it be through ads, fashion, music trends, hobbies... Generally, people try to conform to other people's tastes lest they'll be rejected and isolated. I mean, the prime example of that is high school, where you have the popular groups on the one side, the members of which all like the same type of stuff, and who reject those they call the "weirdos" because they're not into the same things.
Study hard, get a good job, work hard, aspire to own things, buy things, work hard, get a promotion, aspire to more things, buy more things, work hard, buy things, die. It’s absolutely a mill and is absolutely possible to leave - but most will deny that it’s a mill, that they are on a unique and special journey. Sure, this ant wears a party hat, that ant has clogs on, but they’re still all walking in a circle.
Most existences are functionally indistinguishable. Not all, by any means, but most.
Where do you get your food? What are you reading HN on? You’re making “working hard for a promotion” seem like a futile endeavor, and yet you likely sustain yourself and entertain yourself with the fruits of those working the jobs you deride.
This article is about an ant mill, which occurs when a group of ant’s start following a circular track of pheromones The ants think they’re heading towards the colony, but they’re not. What you describe as a “mill” is really just society, i.e. the ant colony. To me, it seems like you’re on the mill, following an idea that ultimately leads nowhere.
I produce about half of my own food, and hope to get that to 100% within the next five years - but for that I have to wait for trees to grow.
I deride nobody - I feel great empathy for those walking the well trodden industrial path, as I too was born into it, and I too saw it as The Path. I understand your anger at my position - it is quite an affront to have someone say that your existence may as well have been manufactured on a production line.
What you see as society is, in my view (and of many, many philosophers - see Baudrillard, Sartre, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, for starters) a gigantic mill, spiralling in on itself, self referential and crippled through the reification of concepts introduced in 18th century Britain.
We are so deeply inured to the ideas that industrialisation bought that we are mostly blind to the idea that there are other paths to tread, other goals to seek. Our entire value system has been harnessed by a mindless machine of capital, with no human or humanity at the helm - it is a pattern, self sustaining through humans’ tendency to do as others do, and fear of social ostracism.
This indolent peasant decided to go back to the land, rather than to continue to toil in a dark, satanic mill. I am ostracised for it, and that’s quite alright.
Are you really being "ostracized" for it? Lots of people I know semi retire on hobby farms. And you simply can't produce food as efficiently or cheaply as modern farming techniques, so you're in the privileged position (probably as the result of studying and working and earning) that you can afford to spend a large amount of time and money growing your on food.
This is a nice and fulfilling/entertaining lifestyle choice, that's great for you and you that you are in this position now. Maybe that advice you got about getting ahead wasn't so bad then?
This mill is the only thing that keeps this many humans alive though. To have humanity abandon it is to subject 90% of the population to starvation. A steep price to pay to become people living off the land without industrialization.
The only reason you are able to wait for trees to grow in peace is also because you live in the protection of modern society. You are only allowed to “go back to the land” because of the massive industrial military protecting you.
Here's a story.
Imagine a jigsaw puzzle. But not any jigsaw puzzle. An unbelievably huge jigsaw puzzle that's been mixed up with other jigsaw puzzles. Some of them are really old and faded. Some of them are brand new. Some are larger and some are smaller. The edges change from jagged to smooth. Like everyone else at the table, you've been trying to put this one puzzle together for years, trying out numberless pieces until one day you realize that you don't even have the box for it. Like everyone else, you were told what it looked like when you were first sat down in this room and left to it. But you're not making any progress and the solution, the memory faded by time and others, doesn't feel right and you abandon it.
Now, you ask everyone around you about what the puzzle looks like. And they are all certain about what it looks like when it's finished, despite the fact that you know they haven't spent nearly enough time looking in the box, or the pieces, and you're pretty damn sure it's not a picture of your loved ones burning, a giant man creating smaller men, or nothingness.
And you start to talk with other people who don't believe in these solutions. They have their own ideas about the puzzle. The vast majority of them think the idea of a pre-solution is the problem. If only those who have been working on their own sections piece by piece were allowed to work together with their work corroborated by other piece-by-piece sectioners, without pre-solutionists telling them what it looks like, it'd be put together by now. You think this is the right course of action going forward. So you dabble in doing your own piece-by-piece work, keeping up with the latest pictures of the latest additions to different sections, published and funded by the people who originally sat you down at the table.
And everything is fine. For a while. Then you begin to see that the sectioners' works are being used to justify new pre-solutions by onlookers that aren't compatible with each other. Some sectioners are just producing pictures of themselves and their funders. And you realize that this just doesn't make any sense. None of it makes any sense. Not the pre-solutionists, not the sectioners. It's all a giant question with no authority and no one seems to realize how insane and un-ending the whole process is. Then you pick up a piece that changes everything. In it you merely see the Self and your own reflection in it. But it changes everything.
You look up from the table and see through eons. You see everyone who has ever been sat down at this puzzle table. You see the same people wearing different costumes as the endless passage of time flows. You see the same puzzle processes and sections arising, maturing, then being scattered. You notice this and infinite other things, lost to the ephemera of cognition and memory. Then the pieces fall into place in your brain. And you see that it isn't a puzzle. It was never a puzzle. You realize in your vision that there were countless people throughout time who stood up from the table. And they saw a door and went through it. And came back. And they said in exaltation in the plurality of dialects and tongues that this is not a puzzle. It is a map. A map to exit the room. These chosen few make a new map of the room, offering it triumphantly to the rest. Some see it and in turn stand up and leave the room to go outside. Others follow. But the stream of people slows and stops. The map is left, abandoned by those who followed it to those that didn't or couldn't. And those remaining beings slowly rip it apart, piece by piece, to fit in their view of the puzzle until it too resembles... a puzzle.
You proceed to come down from grasping this piece, realizing the truth of what you have seen; That this in fact a massive collection of old, incomplete maps, made puzzles by mankind, all showing the way to a door that leads to outside the realm of the puzzle. So you stand up from the table, go to the exit, and open the door. And there it is. Outside. The Sun. Indescribable to anyone who has been left inside the cave their entire lives. This is so apparent to you that it is the very definition of self-evidence, bound with knowledge ascertained by pure observation. And you realize that nothing, absolutely nothing can erase the certainty that outside and the Sun exists, having been there. You now have a decision to make. In an act of compassion, you return to the room and proceed to draw yet another map for those left behind...
Alright I'll bite. This obviously starts out as an allegory for the ways we attempt to make sense of the world, with the different solutionist dogmas stand in for religion / truth from authority and the sectioners being a stand in for science / truth from evidence. The way the pre-solutioners twist the sectioners words is a stand in for rationalizations like trying to shoe-horn the big bang into creation myths. The sectioners making pictures of themselves and their funders is a swipe at academia, the fallible real approximation of science in its true platonic form.
Then there's the whole leaving the room epiphany and I don't really get what is meant by this. To exit the room, to go beyond the reality we can't make sense of, means what exactly? Do psychedelics? Meet god and become a prophet? Stop trying to make sense of the world and find the door to happiness? Or maybe all these questions missing the point and I'm just tearing the map into puzzle pieces as we speak.
I would say no, unless there were similar phenomena documented in a statistical majority of known species and also maybe only if a statistical majority of ants experienced this. It sounds like its super rare.
Still, human mill, culture mill, economic mill etc. Brain exploding slack emoji. Favorite HN post of the week.