Although I do not agree with everything he says in that talk. I think he may be right in that one reason both bees and humans find flowers attractive is that there was a huge genetic gap between bees and flowers, and so the shortest way of signaling between the species was to use a more universal standard, a standard that seems to be embedded in the very nature of intelligence(at least in part of mindspace) and therefore also appealing to human general intelligence, I think it has something to do with simplicity and complexity, minimal description length and symmetry and is definitively calibrated by the our laws of physics, cosmological constants, and environment on earth. Of course from an outside viewpoint this standard is not special or any more valuable that any other, but it may have a certain absolute quality to it that may appear in most intelligences at least i this universe, it may not be completely arbitrary, there may even be parts wich would evolve in any intelligence anywhere in the MUH.
one reason both bees and humans find flowers attractive is that there was a huge genetic gap between bees and flowers, and so the shortest way of signaling between the species was to use a more universal standard, a standard that seems to be embedded in the very nature of intelligence
I haven’t watched the talk, but that sounds like a very odd reply when you consider that humans can’t actually see the complicated ultraviolet patterns that flowers use to signal to bees in particular.
This doesn’t address the visual beauty of flowers as such but, worth noting: flowers often emit chemicals that mimic the smell of sex hormones and their metabolites. Sex hormones are quite similar across the animal kingdom. This is part of why we like flowers and use them in perfumes. Other species do similar things eg truffles.
So the appeal to humans could, in the case of truffles, be a side-effect of an attempt by the fungus’s to get pigs to dig them up and spread the spores.
There is an argument from David Deutsch about the beauty of flowers. It is available here http://www.qubit.org/people/david/index.php?path=Video/Why%20Are%20Flowers%20Beautiful
Although I do not agree with everything he says in that talk. I think he may be right in that one reason both bees and humans find flowers attractive is that there was a huge genetic gap between bees and flowers, and so the shortest way of signaling between the species was to use a more universal standard, a standard that seems to be embedded in the very nature of intelligence(at least in part of mindspace) and therefore also appealing to human general intelligence, I think it has something to do with simplicity and complexity, minimal description length and symmetry and is definitively calibrated by the our laws of physics, cosmological constants, and environment on earth. Of course from an outside viewpoint this standard is not special or any more valuable that any other, but it may have a certain absolute quality to it that may appear in most intelligences at least i this universe, it may not be completely arbitrary, there may even be parts wich would evolve in any intelligence anywhere in the MUH.
I haven’t watched the talk, but that sounds like a very odd reply when you consider that humans can’t actually see the complicated ultraviolet patterns that flowers use to signal to bees in particular.
This doesn’t address the visual beauty of flowers as such but, worth noting: flowers often emit chemicals that mimic the smell of sex hormones and their metabolites. Sex hormones are quite similar across the animal kingdom. This is part of why we like flowers and use them in perfumes. Other species do similar things eg truffles.
So the appeal to humans could, in the case of truffles, be a side-effect of an attempt by the fungus’s to get pigs to dig them up and spread the spores.
A fascinating book on this topic “The Scented Ape” https://www.amazon.com/Scented-Ape-Biology-Individual-Development/dp/0521395615/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1467162838&sr=8-1&keywords=scented+ape also it is interesting to read a few books about how perfumes are made.