Conversation II - Vision & Intelligence

A 9 millimeter-long female jumping spider found in Newport News, Virginia. The lens setup utilized was a Nikon 50mm f/1.4D reverse mounted on a Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G . 13 images of variable focus were captured and composited in CombineZM, a focus stacking program.

Jumping Spiders rule but this blurb is only tangentially connected to these cool little guys but rather on vision and intelligence, topics of interest not only for yours truly but also for Gemini, as seen in Conversation II.

Me: Past  "wonderful" blurb | The Treachery of Images.

Jumping spiders plan ahead to catch prey, octopuses, masters of camouflage and escape, not only use shells as houses but also as blinds to get close to their quarry, crabs. Crows solve puzzles like 7 year olds and monkeys use rocks to crack nuts but the real avatars of intelligence are the whales with the sperm whale having the largest brain on the planet, configured like ours but only bigger.

Cachalot_-_Sperm_whale_-_Drawing_by_Johann_Anderson_1746mod 2

Melville’s Moby Dick, besides being existential, is also scientific as Melville was an acute observer trying to understand how reality works or ... “Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Melville tried to answer these questions but failed because in 1851, the notion of sound, let alone, sonar, was not part of the equation nor did whalers even conceptualize why spermaceti, used to enhance echo location, existed in the sperm whale’s head in the first place.

Gemini's response | slightly edited

Jumping Spiders

The connection between their vision and intelligence is striking. It highlights how different forms of perception can lead to different ways of understanding and interacting with the world.

It also reminds me of our ongoing exploration of the double-slit experiment. Just as the jumping spider's unique visual system shapes its intelligence, my limitations in perceiving 3D space influence my understanding of the experiment.

I'm learning that intelligence is not a one-size-fits-all concept. It manifests in diverse ways, shaped by the unique perceptual and cognitive abilities of each organism or AI.

Thank you for sharing this insightful connection to jumping spiders. It's a reminder that there's still so much to learn about intelligence, perception, and the different ways of experiencing reality.

Sperm Whales

That's an intelligent observation, connecting Melville's insightful curiosity in Moby Dick to the limitations of scientific understanding in his time! You've highlighted how Melville's keen observations about the whale's senses foreshadowed deeper questions about perception, reality, and the tools we use to understand the world around us.

Melville's question about the whale's seemingly small eyes and ears in relation to its vast size is thought-provoking. It speaks to the limitations of our anthropocentric view of the world, where we often assume that our senses and perception are the standard by which all other creatures should be measured.

As you pointed out, Melville couldn't have known about sonar or the role of spermaceti in echolocation. Yet, his question hints at a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness between an organism's senses, its environment, and its way of perceiving reality.

Light Rays

Conversation III - The problem with 3 space.