News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The queen does not rule by djsumdog on Friday December 23, 2016 @12:27PM (#13245913)
I think what the author is trying to get at here is that there is no control system. There is no central brain coordinating things. Each individual ant brain evolved to do different things based on the signals it receives from others. Useful behaviours that lead to a higher fitness tend to survive and progress to future generations of ants.

When you look at the human analogy, the queen doesn't have all the resources and food she could ever need. In human society, we prise those people at the top who convince others to give them resources. Human societies are not equal. They never have been. In fact, equality is a completely human social construct that we must actively and consciously pursue:

http://khanism.org/society/created-equal/

Re:The queen does not rule by winstonewert on Friday December 23, 2016 @12:41PM (#13246005)
Yes, but the author still continually describes it as a rejection of the division of labor.
Re:The queen does not rule by program_whiz on Friday December 23, 2016 @07:57PM (#13248068)
Even our concept that the brain "controls" things is just our own projection of things. Think about it, you get hit hard in the leg, so the leg releases chemicals that trigger a bunch of repsonses, perhaps using the brain as the intermediary point of communication, but to say the brain "controls it", is just one way to look at it. The brain was really told what to do by the leg, or maybe the nerves, or the blood. There is no system in nature that has centralized control, all systems with "central authority" are really just a projection of human conditioning.

For example, even in government, how exactly is centralized control maintained? Its a bunch of distributed interactions that cause people to go out and take actions that result in overall changes, but there isn't a "government" per se that is like a giant telepathic mind controlling anyone's actions, its just millions of interactions of people choosing what to do (some soldiers, some merchants, some politicians), flowing in all directions.

Re:The queen does not rule by SixSigma on Friday December 23, 2016 @09:41PM (#13248294)
See also: the only person Hitler ever killed was himself.