"The desert ants in my backyard have minuscule brains, but far exceed human navigational capacities, in principle, not just performance. There is no Great Chain of Being with humans at the top."
This quote brought to mind the very different technological development path of the spider species in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. They used pheromones to 'program' a race of ants to do computation.
I don't know what he's talking about. Humans clearly outperform ants in navigation. Especially if you allow arbitrary markings on the terrain.
Sounds like "ineffable nature" mumbo-jumbo.
Arbitrary markings on the terrain? Why not GPS, satellite photo etc? All of those are human inventions and we can navigate much better and in a broader set of environments than ants thanks to them.
Because I was making a stronger argument (strict vs relaxed requirements on humans) to preempt another nature mumbo-jumbo argument that GPS is not the same/cheating.