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On Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 5:58 PM, Sean Mulligan lack.of.inspiration@gmail.com wrote:
SM: Probaby should start with the reference value the female fish is controlling for.
RM: That’s certainly an interesting question, and I imagine the answer would be of particular interest to male blowfish. But I don’t think it would help us understand what perceptual variables the male blowfish is controlling which results in that intricate nest in the sand.Â
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SM: Start with classic sexual selection and work backwards. Which type of pattern does the female select for mating. Puffers show large sexual dimorphism - so typically the females dont select for resource reasons but for genetic fitness (eg mane of a lion is maladaptive and the male lions cardo vas system needs yo be incredible to survive - hence good genes).Â
That the puffer has to work so hard to maintain the pattern suggests that yhe female is selevting for pattern cues which show genetic fitness. Based on that it is probably the size/ elaboration of the pattern and its symmetry/completeness.Â
RM: I think that’s an interesting hypothesis about the variables a female is controlling for in a nest (size, symmetry) and the reference for those variables (large, perfect symmetry). I suppose a test would be to see whether females tend to nest in the larger, more perfectly symmetrical nests. Indeed, females should be fighting over the guys with the big nests. But I don’t think we have any data on the nest preferences of female blowfish.Â
RM: But I wanted to focus on the male’s nest building behavior because I think it’s a good exercise in “looking at behavior through control theory glasses”. The behavior we see, as an observer, is the fish producing a complex sequence of actions that involve burrowing through the sand in straight or curved paths, sometimes hovering over parts of the sand pattern to check things out. Looking at this behavior through control theory glasses involves trying to look at things from the fish’s perspective and trying to figure out what perceptions the fish could be controlling that would result in the beautiful circular sand pattern that is the nest-to-be.Â
RM: To some extent the fish can see the pattern that we see; it can see it when it hovers over its work. But the fish can’t see the pattern it’s creating while it’s doing the burrowing that creates that pattern. So what perceptions might the fish be controlling in order to produce, as a “side effect”, the ring of mounds and the straight burrows that cross through them? Of course, we need much more data to be able to tell with confidence what these perceptions are. One nice piece of data would have been obtained if the people filming the fish had surreptitiously flattened a portion of the outer ring of mounds. I know we’re not going to figure this out here but I was just hoping for some suggestions about possible controlled perceptions; as I said, just be coming up with such suggestions you will be looking at the behavior of the blowfish though control theory glasses.
RM: By the way, I have a demo on the net (http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/Goose.html) that shows how looking at behavior through control theory glasses  – in this case the behavior of the greylag goose rolling it’s egg back into it’s nest – can radially change what we think an organism is “doing” (controlling). Through causal theory glasses the behavior of the goose looks like a “fixed action pattern”  – what we would now call a “motor program”. But looking at the goose’s behavior through control theory glasses – that is, looking at the goose’s behavior from the goose’s perspective – we see that that goose is controlling a perception of the pressure of the egg against the back of her bill.Â
Best
Rick
 Cheers
       Sean
–
Richard S. MarkenÂ
"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery
On 24 Jul. 2017 15:08, “Richard Marken” rsmarken@gmail.com wrote:
[From Rick Marken (2017.07.23.2205)]
Martin Taylor (2017.07.23.15.46)–
MT: Fascinating! Did they show the nest being built?
RM: Only brief segments, unfortunately, as you can see from the videos Bruce N. posted.
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MT: The order of events
might offer a clue.
RM: Yes, I would like to see the nest being built from scratch. It would be great if there were a time lapse video of it. But it’s apparently hard to get any video of the nest building at all!Â
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MT: I find the central "pie plate" the most
difficult to guess about, because the rest could be a repetitive
pattern,
RM: But a repetitive pattern of what? What perceptual variable, when controlled, would produce the concentric circles of sand mounds cut through by those radial trenches.Â
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MT: Incidentally, why do you say the fish can't see the pattern as it is
being created? Is it because the fish stays down shovelling until
the whole thing is finished?
RM: Yes, but I now can see from the video Bruce posted that the fish can certainly be controlling a visual variable while it’s making the trenches. And it does occasionally seem to swim up above the nest to see the status of the pattern. So it’s possible that the fish is controlling for the final visual form of the nest. But that seems to assume that the fish is controlling for some pretty complex perceptions, such as the relationship between the mental blueprint of the final form of the nest and the trench excavations that are the means of producing that final form.Â
RM: What I would like to figure out is whether there is some simple set of perceptions the fish could plausibly be controlling that, as a side effect, would produce that amazing nest pattern. Hints about what those perceptions might be would have to come from much more detailed observations of its nest building, particularly from the start of the nest building. But, as I said, I don’t think there is any video of the start of nest building. So I guess we’ll have to guess based on what we’ve got.Â
RM: One thing a video that starts from the beginning of the nest building would show is whether the fish starts by building the concentric mounds or the linear trenches through the mounds. It’s possible that the first thing to be built are the concentric mounds, which could be created by the fish controlling for a visual variable that is kept under control by circular movement that creates the mound as a side effect. Someone who is not non-trigonometrically challenged like me might be able to think of some optical variable that, when controlled, produces this result; for example, the controlled variable could be some optical angle relative to a landmark point – the future center of the concentric circles. Once the mounds are created the tranches could be created by control of another visual variable that, when controlled, results in movements that create straight trenches through the mounds.Â
MT: Does the
fish need calm water, or can it make the pattern despite a turbulent
flow to disturb its position control?
RM: In the show I saw it was clear that the fish had to maintain the nest in water that became quite turbulent due to a tropical storm; apparently such storms (and the attendant turbulence) are quite common in the ocean south of Japan where these fish live. So the nest is unquestionably a result of control of input, not pre-programmed output.
MT: I don't expect you to know the
answers unless the program actually showed or told you, but they are
the sort of question I might ask if I were a researcher interested
in fish behaviour.
RM: Good questions all but, as I said, I just can’t find the kind of videos of the fish in action – for example, videos of the fish starting the nest – that would help develop good hypotheses about the variables the fish is controlling. But I think it’s still a good exercise to try to come up with hypotheses about the perceptual variables the fish might be controlling in order to get a good feel for how PCT approaches an explanation of observed behavior.Â
Best regards
Rick
Â
Fun, and thanks for showing it.
Martin
–
Richard S. MarkenÂ
"Perfection is achieved not when you have nothing more to add, but when you
have nothing left to take away.�
                --Antoine de Saint-Exupery
