Swarm Theory Makes National Geographic

g8orade writes "Swarm Behavior / Swarm Theory has made the pages of National Geographic. Brief but interesting article with several examples." Swarm theory has been discussed here a few times in recent years.

Comments

Nomenclature

[pubjames]

It seems to me that this whole field (what do I call it - complex systems? derived behaviour? emergent systems? swarm theory?) lacks a consistent language. It is a hugely important scientific field, but everyone calling it different names means it appears smaller than it really is!

Re:Nomenclature

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Agreed. And TFA itself is a little confused itself about the differences between the "Hive Mind" and swarming/schooling/flocking/herding behavior; which are really two completely different things.

Re:Nomenclature

[Prof.Phreak]

I call it ``bottom-up AI'' (as opposed to the ``top-down AI'' everyone is familiar with).

Re:Nomenclature

[Gunark]

The correct term is Dynamical Systems, and its common, consistent language is the branch of mathematics dealing with dynamical systems (complete with its own vocabulary -- strange attractors, manifolds, emergence, chaos, etc.)

Re:Nomenclature

[pubjames]

According to the article you link to:

  The dynamical system concept is a mathematical formalization for any fixed "rule" which describes the time dependence of a point's position in its ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in a pipe, and the number of fish each spring in a lake.

which doesn't sound right to me.

Re:Nomenclature

[AndersOSU]

When did dynamical become a cromulent word, and who decided that systems was too good a noun to be modified by an adjective like everyone else?

Re:Nomenclature

[stonecypher]

The field of complex agent behavior has had a well established and consistent terminology since it emerged as a branch of economic game theory in the 1960s. The primary problem is that most people on SlashDot don't check the math section for books, only the computer science section, and the mathematicians beat us to the punch by so many years that we had little afterwards to say.

John Nash is a good place to start reading, if you're interested.

Re:Nomenclature

[JohnFluxx]

In what way are they different things? The emergent behaviour is a result of the hive 'mind'.

Re:Nomenclature

[m0nstr42]

The correct term is Dynamical Systems, and its common, consistent language is the branch of mathematics dealing with dynamical systems (complete with its own vocabulary -- strange attractors, manifolds, emergence, chaos, etc.)

Dynamical systems is *one* approach to studying collective motion/swarming/whatever you want to call it. In this framework we consider the "collective" as a group of coupled ordinary differential equations (representing the states of each "agent"), and see what we can say about the whole system (or vice versa). The applications of dynamical systems theory are VERY far reaching. Generally speaking, this is an example of a Lagrangian approach.

Another type of approach altogether is the Eulerian approach. Here we consider a point in space and talk about the volume or density of individuals over time, usually using partial differential equations.

Both of the above are only examples of mathematical frameworks. Others are used in this field as well, for example game theory and algorithm analysis. Even then you have to back up a step and consider that there are many many others who study these problems from non-mathematical approaches - there are lots of experimental biologists doing really cool work here.

The bottom line is that the OP hits on a key issue in this field: there are a LOT of different people working in it, and they all speak different languages and have different interests and goals. It can throw up barriers at times, but for the most part it makes it a really exciting field to work in.

Re:Nomenclature

[atomicstrawberry]

I think whoever wrote TFA has confused themselves and created 'swarm behavior' as some kind of strange blend of swarm intelligence (the actual name of the field) and collective and/or emergent behavior. It threw me out until I realised this - when I read 'swarm behavior' I was expecting to see some discussion of flocking, but the author went straight into talking about ant behavior, which is generally considered a different part of the field.

Insect swarms are smarter than insects

[idontgno]

Aunt Hillary would agree.

To the confused, Aunt Hillary is an ant hill, a character in Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher,Bach; an Eternal Golden Braid. The chapter she's featured in is subtitled "...Ant Fugue". (Which is the chapter following one subtitled "Prelude...")

Re:Insect swarms are smarter than insects

[Slur]

And it's reprinted in "The Mind's I" by Hofstaedter and Dan Dennett. Check out Dan Dennett, he knows the philosophical thing inside-out-backwards-forwards... and he's lent a lot to our understanding of consciousness as an emergent phenomenon.

Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

My fascination is with how similar this is to the theory of free market economics.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[DigiShaman]

Day Traders would agree...if they weren't so busy chasing each others tails. The vector to gaining the swarms attention is money, and lots of it all at once!

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[igny]

My fascination is with how similar this is to the theory of free market economics.

Or communism...

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

Actually it is the opposite of communism. In every real world application of communism you had central planners who told people what to produce. In swarm theory, there is no central planning, each individual reacts to stimuli that they receive from other individuals to make decisions on what to do.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[ojQj]

I'm not sure what you mean. Communism's other name is "command economics". It's the idea that some wise and benevolent leader is better at allocating resources than a pack of ravenous self-interested capitalists. Combine that with the idea that an elite, educated few are better at choosing a wise benevolent leader, than an unwashed mob of drooling voters, and what have you got?

The idea that there is a net benefit for a group from the collective selfish actions of individual actors is closer to what this article is describing as swarm theory. It's also a reasonable description of democracy and free market economics. Both are ideas which I kind of like.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[ettlz]

My fascination is with how similar this is to the theory of free market economics.

I'm not too familiar, but there may be some universalities associated with them. Often seemingly different systems like these (e.g., in condensed matter systems and QFTs) composed of a large number of simple but linked elements exhibit similar behaviours (such as around phase transitions).

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[wvmarle]

you're mixing up communism and socialism. Communism, in the Marxist sense, has never been reached. The planned economy is a stage in Marxes theories on the way to communism, which is a utopia where everyone works for themselves, taking only what they need, giving what they can or think the group needs. Communes often come close to communism (and the words being almost the same is no coincidence).

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[xappax]

The idea that there is a net benefit for a group from the collective selfish actions of individual actors is closer to what this article is describing as swarm theory.

Actually, the article doesn't say anything about the collective selfish actions of anybody. In fact, in almost all the examples given, the actors are behaving unselfishly. The ants don't know exactly why they should go out and follow a given trail, the bees don't really understand why they should choose one nest over another - even a protester wasn't aware of how their movement to a particular street would help overwhelm police.

There is no apparent benefit to any of the individuals in doing any of that. In fact, I daresay that a "free market" ant wouldn't follow any trails, wouldn't bother to smell any pheromones, it would just chill in the nest and eat what the other ants brought, expending the minimum effort for the maximum gain. And free market ants certainly wouldn't automatically tell everyone else where the food-jackpot was that one of them had personally worked to find.

So I agree that swarms are unlike authoritarian communism. They're unlike authoritarian anything, simply because swarms are anti-authoritarian and non-hierarchial - any structure involving a boss or a "chain of command" cannot function as a swarm. However, they're definitely not behaving the way a free market does, either. The key thing to understand is that the actors in a swarm are voluntarily doing non-selfish things because those things, when done by a lot of actors all together, will result in a net benefit for all the actors.

So, swarms definitely have a sort of collectivist, socialist tinge to them, because they require all the actors to base their actions on what will benefit and sustain the group - not them personally. However, because of the lack of authority, swarms are sort of a more pure form of socialism that is inherently resistant to the corruption and oppression by things like governments or leaders.

I think swarms are one of the most important trends in society, because they're the one thing that terrifies all people in power - capitalist CEOs and communist dictators alike.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

By that definition, there is no real difference between an ideal free market economy and communism. Except that in an ideal free market economy people have access to luxuries and in an ideal communist economy no one has any luxuries, since by definition a luxury is something you don't need. In an ideal free market economy, everyone's needs are met by the efficiencies of the economy. Of course, since this is not an ideal world, neither of these will ever happen. The question is which theory does a better job of meeting people's needs in the real world.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[AncientPC]

University of Texas at Austin is beginning to teach swarm theory as business theory under the term Complex Adaptive Systems for management classes. I just finished taking a management final ~60 minutes ago too. :)

Managing Complexity (MIS 382N.5) Syllabus
Complex adaptive systems, attractors, and patching [electronic resource] : a complex systems science analysis of organizational change - Business Administration, Management thesis

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Elemenope]

No, in Communism there is access to luxuries, only they must be produced by the labor of the individual consuming them or appropriated by equal (i.e. no surplus value subtracted) labor from someone who can. Besides, it is narrow to assume that the economic definition of 'luxury' is equivalent to the practical definition of the same. Many here I'm sure can attest that access to sci-fi books and video games, while not strictly necessary for survival, are beneficial to their continued functioning as healthy individuals, and as such aren't really 'unnecessary'. There is such a thing as prioritized consumption.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[tom_evil]

More like anarchism. Capitalism has corporate bosses, communism has party bosses.

One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one's in charge. No generals command ant warriors. No managers boss ant workers. The queen plays no role except to lay eggs. Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all--at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Liberaltarian]

The principles, if one must cast a political/economic philosophy over them, would most closely resemble anarchism. Representative democracy and the modern business both have leaders and led, the rule-makers and the rule-followers: a disturbing amount of our economy and polity is top-down (also never meaningfully accountable) and couldn't be further from swarm theory. If we want to see a more rhizomic society, we'll have to think a lot further outside the box, that's for sure.

The closest the article's author comes to political applications is the Seattle '99 protests. However such tactics and structural sentiments abound in anti-neoliberal movements, from the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil to the Zapatistas in southern Mexico.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[joh]

Communism's other name is "command economics". It's the idea that some wise and benevolent leader is better at allocating resources than a pack of ravenous self-interested capitalists.

No, it isn't. In real communism there's not even more a need for a state, a government or a leader. In theory at least.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[zaajats]

+1 informative

Communism's other name is "command economics" truly is very wrong.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[mrbooze]

Communism's other name is "command economics". It's the idea that some wise and benevolent leader is better at allocating resources than a pack of ravenous self-interested capitalists

I think there are some Amish over there waving their hands trying to get your attention.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

Where does Marx discuss luxuries? or is this your personal addition to the theory? Of course since we are discussing a purely theoretical economic system (that is one that cannot exist in the real world) we can make any postulates we want as to what it consists of.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[SPickett]

I read an interesting book called "The Selfish Gene." The premise was that Survival of the Fittest doesn't refer to individual actors, but rather individual genes. In the case of swarm theory, it's irrelevant if the action of an individual is unselfish, but rather whether the action (the gene) improves the chance of that gene surviving. So if a colony consists of many ants with the gene that says, "Go out, follow the pheromone trail and bring back the food," that colony will tend to thrive and so will that gene. It's the individual gene that survives and what happens to each particular individual is irrelevant. If a quail is hiding and is flushed out by a predator (like a man with a gun), he makes an alarm sound that causes other quail to fly off at the same time. The other quail have a better chance of surviving by leaving the area while the hunter is busy shooting the original quail. Assuming the group share the alarm-sounding gene, that gene will survive despite the fact that the original quail decreased his individual chance of survival by attracting attention to himself.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[jc42]

Representative democracy and the modern business both have leaders and led, the rule-makers and the rule-followers: a disturbing amount of our economy and polity is top-down (also never meaningfully accountable) and couldn't be further from swarm theory.

The fact that humans in groups always seem to have leaders could be one of the reasons behind the common observation that, unlike ants and bees, humans in groups typically show less intelligence than we do as individuals. Anyone who has ever worked in a business or corporate or political organization knows the dumbing-down effect of the power structure. It usually doesn't matter much if a "worker" has a good idea; ideas only get implemented if they trickle up to or originate with a leader. Since we don't communicate well, the actual implementation of leaders' commands tend to be full of misunderstandings and reinterpretations, so what the group does is often a weak parody of the leader's commands, which in turn are often based on misunderstanding what the workers have been telling the leaders.

There is dispute about the actual intelligence function that maps a group's size to its effective IQ. Early guesses were that it was 1/N, but this is probably too simple. 1/log(N) is probably a more accurate function. In some groups, the function is probably much more complicated, and depends on the details of the hierarchy.

But, while studying social insects may not provide insights into the problems with our own group behavior, it may lead to useful algorithms and heuristics for robots and distributed computer systems. Unlike humans, they can be programmed to follow strict behavioral rules.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Agripa]

You choice of ants as an example was particularly poor since they were one of the first exceptions to prove the rule.

For a long time Darwin's theory of evolution was suspect because it did not explain the behavior of ants or other social insects except through group selection which did not really explain anything. Why should the workers toil to help the queen have more children instead of having children themselves? How is their social contract enforced? With the advent of selfish gene theory the reason for parental altruism toward children was easier to understand (*1) but social insect behavior still conflicted with this.

The answer lay with the nature of social insect sex determination. Ants males (drones) are haploid and receive only one set of chromosomes. The female queen and workers are diploid having two complete sets of chromosomes. The result is that workers (female) are more closely related to their sisters (relatedness of 0.75) then to their children (relatedness of 0.50 if they had any). (*2) This can be tested by measuring the sex ratio between drones and queens which is reflected by which genes (queen or worker) is controlling the nest. Excluding species of ants which take slaves, this ratio shows that the workers are actually in charge and are using their mother as an egg laying sister producing machine. (*3) The workers have every incentive to do so selfishly because the pay off for them is greater then if they raised their own children.

*1 For a long time it was considered so obvious that it was not thought to need an explanation.
*2 Queens actually try to undermine this relationship by mating with multiple drones.
*3 For slave species the opposite is true because the workers are unrelated to the queen an evolved the wrong behaviors for control.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Elemenope]

Where does Marx discuss luxuries? or is this your personal addition to the theory?

Yeah, you must be one of those people who believe that Christianity is simply the "stuff that Jesus said". Please. Communism is not restricted to Marx's writings; he laid the foundational theoretical work for the system he was describing; the evolution of the idea did not stop with his death.

But, beyond that, it doesn't take much assuming to fit a theory of luxury commodities into a Marxist framework. Since his major critique of Capitalism stemmed from the exploitation of the surplus value created by the appropriation of labor, and the major item that he wished to remove from an economic system was that exploitation, my thumbnail description of how luxury goods might work is perfectly apt. A good Marxist economist would probably factor in the fetishization of commodities in attempting to suss out the difference between a true luxury good and a practical but non-necessary good, but since I am neither a Marxist nor an economist, that isn't my job. I'll leave it to others.

Next time you want to make a smartass comment, be sure it isn't based on a caricature of an idea rather than the idea itself. Ideas, per se, do not belong to their creators, right from the moment where they publish it on a page or speak it from their mouths; to assume so is to place an arbitrary (and frankly ridiculous) restriction upon how to understand how an idea has evolved into its present form and the manner in which it is likely to continue to do so.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[treeves]

Too bad they can't just get on the computer and type a reply!

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

Yeah, you must be one of those people who believe that Christianity is simply the "stuff that Jesus said". As a matter of fact I am. To be more precise, the stuff that Jesus taught.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Johnny5000]

Yeah, you must be one of those people who believe that Christianity is simply the "stuff that Jesus said". As a matter of fact I am. To be more precise, the stuff that Jesus taught.

The problem with this is our only link to what Jesus may have said comes from a book assembled a few hundred years after his death by a bunch of guys who had their own reasons (such as suppressing various inconvenient sects) for determining what Jesus may or may not have said, from a huge number of various conflicting accounts, many of which never made it into the bible (and haven't been seen since.)

And that's assuming Jesus existed at all in the first place.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

All of the documents used in the New Testament were written by the end of the 1st Century AD. Most of them were written within 30 years of his death. All of the supposedly "suppressed" documents were written significantly later. We have more reliable information about Jesus than we do about any other figure of ancient history. The source material for Alexander the Great was written 400 years after his death.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Elemenope]

You honestly believe that all (or even MANY) of current Christian practices can be traced back to a saying (canonical or otherwise) of Jesus? LOL!

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Johnny5000]

Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing.

Kind of like tribalism? It worked pretty well as an organizational system for pretty much all(99.9%+) of human history (except for a few cultures that developed in the past few thousand years.)

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

No, I am saying they can be traced back to the teachings of Jesus. This is an important distinction. Not everything that Jesus taught was written down as a quote. The writings of the New Testament were all available while the people who heard Jesus teach were still alive. If the people who heard Jesus preach thought, in significant numbers, that what was written did not agree with what he taught, we would have a record of such disagreement.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[cartman]

My fascination is with how similar this is to the theory of free market economics.

The theory of "swarm behavior" had already been elucidated in economics several decades ago, and its applicability to biology (and simultaneous co-discovery in that field) was described at that time.

Von Hayek described "swarm theory" and how it operates in the price system of a modern economy. Hayek elucidated how the price system coordinates the activities of millions of people, each of whom has extremely limited information, and without any kind of central authority. Each person follows simple rules based on his own local information and the result is an allocation similar to what perfect information of all participants would have suggested. Decision-making is purely distributed in a free market, and information travels by means of "price signals" to coordinate the activities of far-flung individuals who have never heard of each other. You can see this principle at work with regard to the extremely complicated interactions in the global economy. An example is the "ripple effect" of prices where you place a demand for something, which in turns affects the demand for what's necessary to manufacture that thing, which in turn affects the demand for something else, etc, until some shop in Taiwan manufacturing a part for a sub-sub-contractor in something seemingly unrelated shifts his production away from transistors because for some reason (in fact for millions of different reasons) the demand for that kind of transistor has gone down. The shop owner in Taiwan made the correct allocative decision that optimally satisfies the needs of an unbelievably complex interaction, but he didn't know why or how. All he must do is pay attention to local price changes--the price of this component has gone down, so produce less of it. The result of all this, even though it's difficult to believe at first, is that free prices produce the optimal allocation even though each individual participant was acting on limited information and was using only simple rules.

Von Hayek also made the additional claim that the price system itself was never devised by anyone, but was the product of an evolutionary development which nobody understood when it was occurring. Hayek speculated that the price system would never have been consciously devised, but resulted from people following "what worked" based on their own local information. People who followed the price system bred more quickly (in the malthusian sense--fewer of them died) and spread civilization. Of course on this point Hayek acknowledged that he was being very speculative.

The spontaneous order of the market was the basis for Hayek's claim that communism would quickly collapse--not because of a lack of incentives, but because of the need for conscious control. Conscious control was not a benefit (as claimed) but was actually a fatal flaw, because even the supremely intelligent leaders could never achieve the kind of coordination and distributed information that a market could easily achieve. As a result, Hayek believed that claims of capitalism being "anarchic" and "disorderly" were actually compliments to it, because only distributed, spontaneous order could ever hope to contend with the complexity of a modern economy.

Hayek immediately pointed out that the same principle was applicable to biology. He was then informed that a similar change was already underway in that field. He was told that ants and bees used something similar, etc.

Another example of "swarm theory" in economics is the efficient market hypothesis, which relates to stock markets, and which is mentioned frequently in the book about "the wisdom of crowds."

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[xappax]

Excluding species of ants which take slaves, this ratio shows that the workers are actually in charge and are using their mother as an egg laying sister producing machine. (*3) The workers have every incentive to do so selfishly because the pay off for them is greater then if they raised their own children.

Okay, I think I understand. You're saying that the worker ants aren't "laboring selflessly", but are in fact feeding the queen because of a selfish desire to create more related offspring. But the fact remains that there are a whole lot of workers all feeding the same queen, and they don't derive any direct individual payoff for having done so. If an individual ant was selfish, it would try to avoid doing the dangerous work of food gathering. After all, the queen will get fed by the other ants just the same, and the queen's offspring will be just as genetically related to the lazy ant, whether it works or not, right? Where's the incentive for the selfish individual to act in this scenario?

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Oligonicella]

'... any structure involving a boss or a "chain of command" cannot function as a swarm."

Bee swarms.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

Now that you refer to him, I seem to remember coming across something about Von Hayek on this topic. It has been a long time and I never found time to read any of his writings.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[NoOneInParticular]

We have more reliable information about Jesus than we do about any other figure of ancient history.

I give you Julius Caesar, Augustus, Herod, and countless others in the same timeframe whose history is much more thoroughly documented than the shady figure of Jesus of Nazareth.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[NoOneInParticular]

No, I'm sorry. That record of disagreement would have been destroyed in one of the earlier councils of the Church to be.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Elemenope]

I am not arguing that there was substantial disagreement between what Jesus said and what he was quoted as saying in the Bible. I am arguing rather two different points:

1.) Christians today have many ceremonies, beliefs, and practices that cannot be substantially derived from the Bible itself. Thus, Christianity today is much more than simply the "teachings of Jesus" and include exegetical, dogmatic, and apologetic doctrines and works aimed at clarifying what was previously unclear and readjusting the structure of Christianity to an ever-evolving surrounding world.

2.) The words of Jesus as written in the Bible are almost without doubt substantially incomplete. While what he said may very well be what is indicated in the text, it is very likely that is not all that he said. To believe otherwise places him as an absurdly laconic deity, as well as human being. Since he was given heavily to speaking in parables and concealing discursive meanings, it is likely that his hagiographers missed some important details. Has it never crossed your mind that maybe the people who heard him preach sometimes simply didn't get it? Many times Jesus himself remarks how amazed he is how thick his disciples can be sometimes.

Either way the fact remains that if one were to take the "axioms" of Christianity to be those teachings that survive to us to this day, one would be hard pressed to take many current Christian teachings and 'derive' them from those 'axioms'.

The criticism ultimately wasn't even addressed towards Christianity (it was merely a convenient example); it was addressed towards your patently absurd notion that Communism is merely stuff "that Marx wrote". There were socialist thinkers before Marx and there were socialist thinkers afterwards. While surely his presence in the field influenced everything that came after his impact, it is absurd that those additions be considered not part of the exploration of Scientific Socialism.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[NoOneInParticular]

There's no point in an ant being selfish in this way. If not working for the queen to get offspring, what would they do? Watch a bit of tele, hoping the rest would take up the slack? This particular kind of individual selfishness is not what the selfish gene is about. It is not about individuals, it is about genes: if an ant is not working towards the transmission of its genes, it is not selfish, but stupid and ripe for extinction.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[arbitraryaardvark]

That's what I've been saying over at the xkcd forum.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

I believe that you will find that there is actually very little information about any of them. There are one or two sources the oldest copies of the information about them is from manuscripts copied in around 12th century AD. The earliest copies of the New Testament manuscripts that we have are from the 3rd Century AD. I could be mistaken on this because I do not have access to my source material at the moment. I am pretty sure that there is almost no documents referring to Herod outside of Josephus and New Testament texts. There is some archaeological (buildings, etc) information on Herod, but then he was the political ruler of an area.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

Oh so thats why we have no records of the "Gospel of Thomas" or the "Gospel OF Mary". (Except of course that we do.) We, also, have writings of numerous people who disagreed with the doctrines laid down in those Councils. What we don't have is writings saying "John BarJohn, who was there, says that Jesus actually said this in contradiction to what the Council says." (Actually it would be in contradiction to what some person who was used as an authority by the Councils). You really should do a little study of the early Church disputes and disagreements before you make such a claim.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[NMerriam]

the common observation that, unlike ants and bees, humans in groups typically show less intelligence than we do as individuals

That's not even remotely true. Numerous studies have been conducted on individual decision-making vs group decision-making, and the groups almost always outperformed individuals. What is strange is that even if you have a group full of people who have no experience in the subject or real knowledge, they will still perform better, as they sort of bounce ideas off each other and generally weed out the weakest ones simply through common sense or supposition.

When you're talking about corporate decision-making, you're complaining that leaders don't listen to the rest of the group and followers don't listen well to leaders. There are also lots of power issues that come into any decision. That's very different from group decision-making, where the members of the group collectively decide what action to take.

This very phenomenon was part of the reason that so many companies started moving towards flatter hierarchies in the 90s and continue to do so.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Agripa]

But the fact remains that there are a whole lot of workers all feeding the same queen, and they don't derive any direct individual payoff for having done so.

They derive even less individual payoff doing something other then activities devoted to maintaining the queen. Even if all possible choices yield a negative payoff, the one that has the least negative payoff will be selected for.

If an individual ant was selfish, it would try to avoid doing the dangerous work of food gathering.

The work is only dangerous to the individual based on the potential that is lost when the individual is damaged or killed. In the case of a worker ant, since they do not have children anyway, dying only affects their reproductive success because they failed at whatever the specific task was. The fact that they can no longer have children is irrelevant because they never could and have no incentive to do so. This is a case where literally dying for a cause can be in the individual's best interests. For another example of this in social insects, consider honey bee stings which are fatal to the honey bee.

This is of course completely different for most diploid species. Here, risks in food gathering have a direct consequence to an individual's reproductive fitness. Consider that every one of your ancestors lived to successfully reproduce. None of them died before doing so. Zero. Convincing someone else to do the hazardous work can have a big payoff.

After all, the queen will get fed by the other ants just the same, and the queen's offspring will be just as genetically related to the lazy ant, whether it works or not, right? Where's the incentive for the selfish individual to act in this scenario?

None of the other behaviors that the ant has to choose from are more selfish then looking after the queen. What else is an individual ant going to do in lew of maintaining the queen?

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Orestesx]

The ant may not be free market but its genes are. The actions of the ant can be described as selfish from the point of view of the gene for the social behavior. It is important not to forget this when describing what will "benefit and sustain the group." I mean this in all sincerity, not to be a smartass, you would benefit from reading The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[encoderer]

Actually, many historians agree that a Jesus of Nazereth did, indeed, exist. He's on roman tax rolls. You might remember that jesus was born in a manger because Mary and Joseph had to travel to Josephs hometown in order to be included in the first Roman census of the holy lands.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[ArsonSmith]

"More like anarchism. Capitalism has corporate bosses, communism has party bosses."

This isn't quite right. This behavior is more pure communism as originally designed. The ants are pre-programed with what they are to do and then just do it as needed. The party bosses that you describe are part of the step towards communism where they are trying to do the programming. What is eventually suppose to happen is that the bosses go away as they are no longer needed. Of course humans aren't quite programmable in that way, the bosses end up never going away and the people become extremely repressed and lose any programming that may have been initiated. Capitalism may be imperfect, but so are people. Capitalism is the perfect fit for the competition driven human race.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[NoOneInParticular]

Hmm, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, (search for it), is an account by Julius Caesar himself about his exploits in what's now called France. There's also a guy called Cicero, an enemy of Caesar, that wrote at length about the character in question. Augustus, well, search for it. All first hand accounts, written shortly after the events occurred. Romans were reasonably literate, and documented their exploits quite extensively. Herod the Great (search for it) was a client king of the Romans, and as such has appeared in quite a few commentaries. These are all much more trustworthy sources than a group of rogue believers deciding to write up the teachings of their Guru. The Romans were masters of the world: in literature, in engineering, and in power. The USA is built upon the teachings of the Roman republic, not upon the teachings of Christ.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[AmberBlackCat]

I don't know if you consider capitalism and free market economy to be the same thing, but I've thought a lot about capitalism versus communism. I think in a system of communism, everybody will have what they need as long as the system has enough resources for everybody. In a system of capitalism, some people will capitalize and end up with more than they need, while others will consequentially end up with less than they need. So I think communism is a better system because, assuming there is enough for everybody, communism would guarantee everybody gets enough while capitalism would guarantee some people would be deprived.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

Capitalism and free market economy are not quite the same thing, although they are close. You should stop just "thinking" about the comparison and look in the real world. In almost every case where there has been an attempt to implement communism the result has been misery.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[tom_evil]

Obligatory quoting of Bakunin/Kropotkin/Chomsky, refuting of Marx, refuting of Milton Friedman...

Now that that is out of the way, I'd just like to say that I, for one, welcome our new anarcho-communist ant overlords.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[encoderer]

Mod me down, fine, but I'm right. He definitely did exist. But whether or not he's the son of god, well, that's a matter of faith.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Johnny5000]

Actually, many historians agree that a Jesus of Nazereth did, indeed, exist. He's on roman tax rolls. You might remember that jesus was born in a manger because Mary and Joseph had to travel to Josephs hometown in order to be included in the first Roman census of the holy lands.

Except there's no historical record of the Roman census as described in the bible.

Luke 2:
1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.

Quirinius was not governor of Syria when Herod was king. There was a census after Herod was dead, but that was years after Jesus was supposedly born.

And besides, what kind of census requires people to travel? The point of a census is to count people where they are, not where their great, great, great, great, great (etc.) grandfather David was from.

Basically they're attempting to backfit the story to the prophecy- The Messiah is supposed to be descended from David, so this tale is created to link Jesus with David, although it's historically impossible that it happened this way.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[xappax]

The ant may not be free market but its genes are.

Right, the selfish gene. But now we're blurring the distinction between individual interest and group interest. It's like saying "Cuba may not be a free market, but the international community it participates in is." Sure, as a meta-actor, Cuba exhibits free market behavior, trying to import goods for cheap, export its own for as high as possible, but that has nothing to do with the individuals living under communism, so it's not very useful when making a socio-economic analysis.

From a biological perspective, I see that you're right, but as an individual, I don't really give a crap about the interests of the genes I may be carrying ;)

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Orestesx]

Yeah, you're right it doesn't really apply to socio-economics. I was being a bad contributer to the discussion and merely pointing out that the ant is free market from the right point of view.

You don't have to care about your genes. They can fend for themselves.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Stooshie]

... All of the documents used in the New Testament were written by the end of the 1st Century AD ...

Great, can you tell me where I can view these documents? Presumably if they were used to write the New Testament, they must be somewhere. Also, which version of the New Testemant are you talking about?

Just had a thought. Either the documents still exist, in which case there is no need for the New Testament. Or they don't, in which case the New Testament is un-verifiable.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

First, I am referring to the Greek version of the generally accepted New Testament. I am unaware of any major religious group which considers the New Testament to consist of a different set of books. There are multiple copies of these documents, more than of any other document from the same time period. Check with a major University near you for information on where you can access a copy (although if you don't read Greek they won't do you much good). If you don't believe that the copies of the New Testament books give us an accurate view of the original documents, then you cannot believe that we have an accurate view of any major document from that era. Someone earlier mentioned documents that refer to Julius Caesar, Augustus, etc. No one has the originals of those either. There are more copies of New Testament documents than any other document of the period, by a factor of over 100.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[twerppoet]

Seems to me that all economic systems could be explained as swarm theory, and that none of them will work perfectly.

From the explanation, swarm theory says that individuals act on simple rules regardless of their understanding of the overall goals of the system. The rules result in a self organizing system. Whether we consider the rules inherently selfish isn't really important. All that matters is the result. In economics, for instance, what maters is a workable distribution of work and products. Both Communism and free market could achieve these in theory. They both fall short in reality.

Humans are not a swarm. They make decisions based on complex rules, a complex understanding of of the world, and a complex often contradictory set of goals. Any resemblance to swarm behavior is purely superficial. And here is the telling point. Ants and bees can't change their minds about what rules to follow. We can.

Which is the main reason that no economic system is ever going to be perfect, at least as long as it is based on simplistic rules. Not everyone in the system is going to agree to play by the rules. Most won't agree on the exact interpretation of the rules. Large groups will want their own rules, or at least their own subset of rules.

So, free market requires some unfreedom. Communism requires some inequalty. And though I've never studied socialism, I suspect it needs to be a bit unsocial at times.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

I will agree with your analysis except for one thing. Free market economics does the best job of providing the most good to the most people because it at least takes into account that people are selfish and greedy and attempts to harness that fact. People are not basically good, so there will be injustice and inequities in any system devised by man.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[twerppoet]

I won't argue with that. I favor a free market as well, for pretty much the same reasons. That, and it has the word free in it.

However I disagree about people not being basicly good. I believe most people are mostly good most of the time. I submit as my evidence that any economic system works at all. Most people will abide by the rules, and a suprising number will do so even when no one is looking. Ever give back a cashier the extra change they accidently gave you?

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[AmberBlackCat]

I think you should start thinking too. Ask yourself if those attempts failed because communism doesn't work. Or did they fail because economic sanctions in those cases reduced the resources below the level that would be enough to sustain the entire population. Or was it because those cases were only communism in name rather than practice. Or if you feel better, just keep saying I'm not looking at the real world.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

Ever heard of Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. The original colonists tried a communistic (pre-Marx) system, they almost starved to death, what saved them was changing to a free market system. Read your history, not all attempts at communism were defeated by outside forces. My question is, why have all attempts at communism failed? Why have the overwhelming majority of economies based on free market theory succeeded?

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[armareum]

And that's where having an element of socialism is useful - to help support the people at the bottom end of the spectrum.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Stooshie]

... I am unaware of any major religious group which considers the New Testament to consist of a different set of books ...

The Catholic Church uses the Jerusalem Bible, there is the Apochryphal New Testament and there are also various versions of the New Testament used in protestant Churches (Anything from the King James Version, to the Good News Version and various others in between)

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Attila Dimedici]

"The Catholic Church uses the Jerusalem Bible," I am not discussing the whole Bible just the New Testament. "there is the Apochryphal New Testament" This is universally rejected as authenticate writings by all Christian Churches. While these writings often claim to be first century writings, they were rejected by the Early Church because they were not in fact written in the first century. When someone is referring to "The New Testament", they are never referring to any part of the Apocrypha unless they don't have a clue. To reiterate, the apocryphal new testament books are not part of the New Testament because they were not written in the first century AD. "there are also various versions of the New Testament used in protestant Churches (Anything from the King James Version, to the Good News Version and various others in between)" This demonstrates that you don't have any understanding of the subject, these are all varied translations into English. The original New Testament documents were written in Ancient Greek. Your reply indicates that you have no understanding of the subject. You are merely parroting excuses to ignore the New Testament. You have demonstrated little knowledge and less understanding of the topic we are discussing.

Re:Swarm Theory and Economics

[Stooshie]

I did start writing a long and involved reply to this. But, I have had so many discussions about the authenticity of scriptures with christians (I am assuming you are a christian) that I know exactly the path of this discussion.

We will either end up agreeing to diagree (You are a believer and I am not) or we will end up going on an on arguiing finer and finer points and it will inevitably end up in both of us becoming abusive.

Sorry, if you were rooting for a good argument, but at the moment I am not. Perhaps at a later date.

I have a sneaking suspicion

[Colin Smith]

That human consciousness is a swarm of neuronal interactions.

Re:I have a sneaking suspicion

[WormholeFiend]

And the rest of the body is a swarm of cooperating cells.

Re:I have a sneaking suspicion

[beyondkaoru]

and a computer is a swarm of cooperating transistors.

Re:I have a sneaking suspicion

[Anonymous Coward]

And a swarm of bees is a swarm of interacting neurons in the mind of the one and only Bee God, or alternately Jung's collective unconscious of the Archetypal Bee.

Re:I have a sneaking suspicion

[Anonymous Coward]

I am harmony. And these are some good jellybeans, man.

Re:Oh Wow...

[ThisIsWhyImHot]

Apparently when large groups of African women get together in swarms they form enough intelligence to cover up for the photos.

You want another example?

[ben0207]

See how many "I for one welcome our hivemind overlords" type posts we get with this story.

Re: You want another example?

[davermont]

You're right, there is one.

Alternatively

[z0idberg]

From TFA "Ants aren't smart," Gordon says. "Ant colonies are."

But apparently...

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - Kay

Re:Alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah but I wonder, how well do different ant colonies coordinate together?
Or, how well would people do if there were no barriers (skull) to neurones making connections across different brains?

Re:Alternatively

[Cemu]

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - Kay
Exactly. I have a friend that theorizes that the IQ of a group of people is the IQ of the smartest person divided by the number of people in that group. If you pay attention to this the next time you are in a group, you'll find yourself breaking away from it quite often.

Re:Alternatively

[dominious]

This is quite interesting actually, maybe it depends on the simplicity of the individual in order for the colony to be smart. Ants are not smart, they are doing simple routines. People on the other hand have passed that level and now we are in chaos repeating a pattern maybe:)

Re:Alternatively

[z0idberg]

Yes, I though interesting too.

But the moderators say Funny and we all know that the majority is always right.....right? everyone? or is that just with ants?

Re:Alternatively

[umghhh]

I do not know how anybody could mod the parent funny. Informed maybe but not funny.

It is rather depressing. Humans in a group are less inteligent than a block of led. Tragically some of more inteligent but less scrupulous of us always try and suceed to become leaders and get the PROFIT - usually on cost of everybody else. Of course at the end we kill all life on earth, ourselves included, so it does not really matter who was smart and whether this was groupwise or on individual base.

Re:Alternatively

[UnknowingFool]

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - Kay

Which adequately describes the /. effect.

Re:Alternatively

[Archimonde]

I don't see a logic in that system:

Lets have a group of 10 people and the highest IQ of them all is 140.

so 140/10=14. Or we have a group of 3 people, with the highest IQ of 60 so the formula is:
60/3=20.

So by that logic, it would be preferable to be in the latter rather than former group. But I don't think it makes much sense, because I made a secret presumption that everyone in the first group (except the guy with IQ of 140) has IQ of 139.

Re:Alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

It was supposed to be funny. Calm down.

Re:Alternatively

[boris111]

I agree it's FUNNER being stupid. And do not correct my grammar.
That's why I hang out with my college drop out friends more often than my extremely successful over achieving ones.

Re:Alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd say that behaviour is very rare, but when I got beaten up in the middle of a street in full daylight, other people didn't help either. When I developed fears of going outside later and searched professional help, the psychologist told me it is quite common.

It led me to my current belief that most people are just like cows. Dumb and clueless. Just look at the type of tv-shows and imagine the audience they're made for. They're not necessarily evil, but they don't understand and don't care. I don't want anything to do with them.

Luckilly not all people are like that, hacker events are just the opposite for example: lots of intelligent, knowledgable people. The difference is enourmous.

Re:Alternatively

[Skrynkelberg]

Whoosh.

Re:Alternatively

[davermont]

Ant colonies aren't smart either. That's akin to saying a computer is smart, which in inaccurate. A computer executes pre-programmed algorithms specific to solving a particular problem. Similarly, through millions of years of evolutionary reinforcement, ants are programmed to solve very specific problems very efficiently. A cataclysmic environmental change would mean death to a colony, however, because like a computer, an ant colony is unable to solve problems outside its context. Therefore, intelligence is not a factor.

Re:Alternatively

[MarcoG42]

So, now you have a group of people with high IQ's trying to convince one another that *their* idea on the best way rid the valley of Count Bludsuckingfiend, which leads to much chart-drawing and counter-pointing. All the while the good Count is systematically draining their daughters' circulatory systems.

Now, you've got the low IQ guys, whose first thought may be "Der...maybe we should just kill him." The other two guys, not having any better idea, happily go along with the first.

Re:Alternatively

[WrongMonkey]

Point of Order
You used the Kitty Genovese story as an example of a group of people acting dumb, then linked to an article about how most the story is urban legend, that most of the witnesses weren't eye-witnesses, there were at most one to three actual witnesses and that the police were called after the initial attack by one of those witnesses.
Its a terrible, tragic incident, but it's actually not a very good example of groups of people acting dumb. A

Re:Alternatively

[slashdotmsiriv]

Actually, several people did not watch someone get murdered without anyone calling 911, What most likely happened is listed here (linked in fact by the site you cited): http://www.oldkewgardens.com/kitty_genovese-001.ht ml

Re:Alternatively

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, guess I should READ the pages I grab from google.
Honestly, I don't subscribe to the re-analysis though. The case has been studied a LOT and although the details were off in the initial Times story, the behavior is clear as day. Furthermore, imho I think the witnesses blocked out things because they didn't want to view themselves as someone who let her die through apathy. I find it much more believable that people just dicked around trying to figure out what was going on.

"Practical Applications" of Swarm Theory

[chillax137]

They cite a practical application of Swarm Theory as optimizing the business operation of a gas producer. They say this technique was inspired by how ants learn to forage for food, but this technique is a standard (and pretty obvious) solution to numerical optimization. So while the idea is interesting and can definitely be applied to networks of robots, it is a retroactive explanation of something that has already been developed (for marketing purposes, I'm sure).

Re:"Practical Applications" of Swarm Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't RTFA. Let me guess, is that gas producer perhaps Bee Pee?

Re:"Practical Applications" of Swarm Theory

[ezdude]

Swarm theory - as applied to optimization (also commonly referred to as particle swarm optimization) - is not just fancy marketing. There are many global optimization algorithms based on either biological or physical theories - genetic algorithms and simulated annealed probably being the two best known. PSO has grown in popularity over the last decade or so, because it offers advantages in some problems. PSO is certainly not a "retroactive explanation", as the particular techniques were not being used, let's say 20-30 years ago.

who killed the bees?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

To find out how, Seeley's team applied paint dots and tiny plastic tags to identify all 4,000 bees in each of several small swarms that they ferried to Appledore Island, home of the Shoals Marine Laboratory. There, in a series of experiments, they released each swarm

So that is what killed all the bees!

Unmentioned in the article

[Control Group]

It's not mentioned, but it seems an obvious sort of question to ask given the content they've got: is there anything to "real" (by which I mean, individual) intelligence other than swarm behavior at the neuron level? In fact, is the entire biology of any given animal (ourselves, obviously, included) anything more than swarm behavior at the cellular level? Or, if we accept the idea that cells are just a reproductive mechanism for DNA, is it just swarm behavior at the molecular level?

Which would have a fascination all its own, since I don't think anyone's ever argued that DNA has anything we'd call intelligence. If all of life arises out of swarm behavior at the molecular level, we've managed to take intelligence completely out of the equation.

Which, in turn, just makes this another facet of the belief that the entire universe is an emergent phenomenon of a vast set of simple items following simple rules.

The truly intriguing observation (from my point of view, anyway), though, is that this emergent phenomenon contains examples of exactly the same mechanism at so many levels of complexity. It wouldn't necessarily have to be true that simple interactions at the fundamental particle level would give rise to higher-order behaviors that can be macroscopically described as simple interactions at that higher level. It's the fractal nature of the mechanism that is most intriguing, I think.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[lawpoop]

Which, in turn, just makes this another facet of the belief that the entire universe is an emergent phenomenon of a vast set of simple items following simple rules. Stephen Wolfram, is that you?

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Control Group]

Just because he's a bit of a kook doesn't mean that everything he says is wrong.

(That said, I haven't actually bothered to read ANKoS, so maybe I'd distance myself from the idea if I had)

But, really - if the search for a theory of everything isn't an expression of the belief that the universe can be distilled down to (comparatively, at least) simple rules, I don't know what would be.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[lawpoop]

Just because he's a bit of a kook doesn't mean that everything he says is wrong. I never said anything about anyone being wrong OR a kook for that matter... who are you talking about, Wolfram or the grandparent, anyway? ;)

I was just making a joke. Grandparent seems to subscribe to the same set of beliefs that Wolfram does -- all observable phenomenon can be reduced to a simple set of rules.

But, really - if the search for a theory of everything isn't an expression of the belief that the universe can be distilled down to (comparatively, at least) simple rules, I don't know what would be. That sounds about right to me.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[ThosLives]

Yeah, I don't really see this as "swarm intelligence" so much as a system with self optimizing behavior.

Take the example of the gas producer / distributor. They have a system of equations linking variables (the routes that trucks can take, cost to operate the trucks, and price of the product at various plants) which is solved for an optimal solution. The optimization is simply to find the maximum profit - it's a very simple optimization problem. (For mathematical definitions of "simple".) The fact that it's not intuitive doesn't really mean anything other than intuition isn't a good method for optimizing systems.

The interesting thing is that the biological system of an ant hive developed to be an "optimization solver" - which isn't really that surprising considering the whole point of a biological system is to minimize some potential (as happens with all physical systems). It just so happens that with biological systems, minimizing that potential also increases the probability of the system existing for longer periods of time (in other words, perpetuating the species). I think ant hive behavior is kind of anthropic - if hives were not optimized that way, ant hives wouldn't exist because all the ants would be dead.

So, yes, this is nifty stuff, but I don't see it as "intelligence" so much as an optimization problem.

Of course, it may be the case that "intelligence" is the result of an optimization, but it may also be the case that "intelligence" falls into "Godel space" (i.e. that space where something exists but can't be proven because logic, being sufficiently powerful, is incomplete).

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[iangoldby]

There is an interesting question of reductionism here. There a good form of reductionism, were a complex idea is described in terms of an aggregation of simpler parts. But there is also a bad form of reductionism in which the complex idea is claimed to be 'nothing but' the aggregation of simpler parts.

This bad reductionism has been called alternately 'nothing buttery' and 'Greedy Reductionism'. (Greedy Reductionism.)

In this case we just need to be careful not to suppose that if intelligence might perhaps be well-described in terms of swarm-theory of neurons then intelligence is not "real".

(Incidently, there is a difference that might be relevant here between describing something and explaining it.)

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I don't really see this as "swarm intelligence" so much as a system with self optimizing behavior.

Mmhmm, and I bet you don't see Shor's algorithm as anything amazing -- it's just a way to solve a problem. So what? People have been using algorithms for ages now.
(You're too hung up on the solution and not paying enough attention to how it was solved -- the point of TFA is that many nodes can follow very simple rules and solve very complex problems very quickly. The "intelligence" is not the result of optimization, it's the method of optimization.)

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Hal_Porter]

Which would have a fascination all its own, since I don't think anyone's ever argued that DNA has anything we'd call intelligence. If all of life arises out of swarm behavior at the molecular level, we've managed to take intelligence completely out of the equation.

DNA doesn't but the process of evolution manages to make perfect designs from swarm like rules I think. I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that all intelligence is emergent behaviour from swarms actually.

The truly intriguing observation (from my point of view, anyway), though, is that this emergent phenomenon contains examples of exactly the same mechanism at so many levels of complexity. It wouldn't necessarily have to be true that simple interactions at the fundamental particle level would give rise to higher-order behaviors that can be macroscopically described as simple interactions at that higher level. It's the fractal nature of the mechanism that is most intriguing, I think

You know there's a hole in all this that I think means we don't understand it. Once DNA and proteins are there, evolution has booted up and can do anything. But DNA and proteins are two complex to appear by chance. My hunch is that some evolution like process which was not dependent on DNA and proteins must have been running first, and it made them as tools before they took over. But no one to my knowledge has explained how this could work, though some people have tried.

But life appeared pretty soon on earth, almost instantly, and I don't believe in luck or supernatural intervention, so I'd expect someone to figure it out sooner or later.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Vireo]

I think ant hive behavior is kind of anthropic - if hives were not optimized that way, ant hives wouldn't exist because all the ants would be dead. This is clearly the antropic principle at work.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Control Group]

Well, I am the grandparent, so odds are good I'm talking about Wolfram. ;)

In any event - I plead ignorance on the matter. I'm not familiar enough with what Wolfram believes (aside from the general idea of emergent behaviors from simple rules) to know if I'm agreeing with him or not.

OTOH, I've really given too much thought to what was originally a joke so...forgive me for being a humorless curmudgeon.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Control Group]

Absolutely. I didn't mean to be diminutive of what intelligence clearly is - "nothing but" was (in retrospect, obviously) a bad choice of words. I couldn't agree more that intelligence, whatever its provenance, is real; in much the same fashion, regardless of whether we can identify what gives rise to swarm behavior, the fact remains that the swarm acts more intelligently than the sum of its parts.

I also apologize for falling prey to recognizing no difference between description and explanation - especially since it's a pet peeve of mine.

In any event, I wasn't trying to make broad claims about the value or lack thereof of intelligence, or denying its reality. Just pondering out loud about the underlying principles/causes/systems that give rise to it.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[lawpoop]

You're you're own parent? Woah... ;)

I don't fault Wolfram's idea in general, but I think the main criticism is that he makes associations that are unwarranted. Combine that with the tome he wrote over a number of years in almost complete isolation, claiming that it would totally revolutionize science, it makes him come off as a little crazy. If it weren't for the fact that he is a genius, and he has contributed immensely to various fields, I think people would dismiss him as a total nut. But even productive geniuses can go insane, or have an 'episode' where they go off on the wrong track for a while.

Basically he takes the patterns you can get from the game of life mathematics, and says it can describe almost anything, and then shows how, as one example, patterns in sea shells look similar to output from a game of life checkerboard.

Not that game-of-life examples can't be used to describe things, but to jump to the conclusion that it can describe everything, and the implication that it *is* the fundamental function of the universe... well, time will tell! ;)

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Control Group]

Of course, it may be the case that "intelligence" is the result of an optimization

At the risk of falling into the trap of excessive reductionism (rather, falling into it again, as a sibling post to yours pointed out), that's exactly what I was getting at. One point of view would be to look at human intelligence as an optimization from the point of view of DNA reproducing.

As far as not being able to demonstrate intelligence goes, I would be more amenable to the idea that we can't prove/disprove/adequately analyze the nature of our own intelligence as a result of trying to use the subject as the intrument to study the subject. It's possible that it's more fundamentally inscrutable than that, but my inclination is to think that we're limited in our self study by being ourselves.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[lawpoop]

Yeah, I don't really see this as "swarm intelligence" so much as a system with self optimizing behavior. I think the reason people are talking about this is that it goes against the sort of inborn intuition about where intelligence lies in living organism.

Without critical study, we seem to have the inborn idea that the individual mull-cellular organism is intelligent. Humans are intelligent, dogs less so, plants, not really at all. If a group of organisms is acting intelligently, we assume that each one of them has to be pretty smart, or else the whole group couldn't be smart. In the case of swarms that exhibit intelligence, none of the organisms seem to be that smart -- or at least, they don't have the complete set of smarts that is shown in the group behavior. In fact, they are pretty simple when it comes to interacting with groups.

So when studying ant colony behavior, there was kind of a conundrum in the field for a while. If individual ants are dumb, why does the colony behave so intelligently? People where then looking for the hidden smarts inside each individual ant. Or, another possibility is that colony behavior really isn't that smart, despite it seeming so to us.

But it turns out colonies really are smart, *but* there are no hidden smarts in the ant. The ant really is dumb. It's only when you combine their simple behavior in the swarm that you find intelligence. It's not in the ant; it's in the colony.

This is a paradigm shift in the understanding of complex behavior of multicellular organisms. We have had good evidence of individual organisms acting smart, that was never in question. But until now, we have never had good scientific, mathematical evidence of intelligence at the group level. People may have suspected it, but now they have evidence to convince skeptics.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO, evolution runs always, as long as there is time progression and conservation laws apply (perhaps this conditions could even get loosened some more).

For each definable entity there is always state of existence (entity matches definition) and non-existence (entity doesn't match definition).

If there is something that exists and is under at least of couple of "forming" (not necessary a "copying" as it is special case of biology) and "annihilating" processes and if that something can keep its definition (or even, change own definition but keep distinction from its environment) while moving itself over certain space of own mutable states, then the force of evolution is undoubtedly exerted upon it, moving it toward maximizing existence (or else we can not detect its nonexistent...existence).

In short, evolution is mathematical or ontological category, not strictly biology, chemistry, system theory or even chaos theory exclusive.

Evolution is a sort of "entropy with a feedback" and as the entropy itself, it is an illusion of time-bound order or rule, because we chose to pick and promote certain patterns into "ordered". We can find it in cosmology, geology, economy, sociology ... technology, design (very much indeed!), ...
history of science, ... in the very extreme, evolution is the "Creator" of existence itself and there is nothing mystical about it. Common sense, really...

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[boris111]

self optimizing behavior. Yes ever have Paint Parties? I've painted a few rooms by myself, but I've found with other people around I get a great deal more done individually. Less breaks, work harder, work longer.

Even if you take out the advantage you get from specialization of jobs (i.e. someone paints the trim while someone else has the roller) The benefit of working with people (even if they're slow themselves) is very apparent.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Skrynkelberg]

You're you're own parent? Woah... ;)

I've never realized replying to your own post makes you Jesus.

So THAT'S why you shouldn't double-post. You can end up being crucified. Gotta watch those code tags...

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Elemenope]

Yeah, but we've known that theoretical tidbit for nearly thirty years; Conway's Game of Life, and its explorations, have yielded that spatial singularities with only three simple rules can be used to create logic gates and memory, and machines can be built using those elements that are Turing Complete. It's not that this isn't amazing (simple elements yield complex behaviors == awesome!!!111!!!1!), but rather that it's old news. Just taking that insight into a slightly new computational context isn't nearly as breathtaking. Stuff like this is exciting for me, because most of my recent work is based upon similar principles, but for most people it seems like just more of the same.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't think anyone's ever argued that DNA has anything we'd call intelligence."

Not as such, but there have been many arguments to the effect that evolution has an intelligence behind it. Swarm theory (applied at both the micro and macro level simultaneously) refutes those arguments handily and conclusively.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Hal_Porter]

IMHO, evolution runs always, as long as there is time progression and conservation laws apply (perhaps this conditions could even get loosened some more).

Biological evolution needs quite a complex system to be present before it can work. DNA stores a blueprint. Enzymes transcribe it into RNA which leaves the cell nucleus. Then Ribozymes transcribe into proteins, including the enzymes that do the transcription. Copying errors a long the way provide the mutations, and natural selection ensures that good organims with good mutations become more numerous whereas ones without them become less so. But the minimum organism for this is still really complex.

In Cairns-Smith's model, there is another simpler version of life which built DNA and proteins essentially as tools, but they took on a life of their own. Richard Dawkins even speculated that the same thing might happen to us. Silicon based machines built as tools may one day take over from biological systems, and a robot version of Cairns-Smith might note that life had jumped from being Silicon based clay, to Carbon based DNA and proteins and back to Silicon based microchips, switching to a more flexible architecture at each jump.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[dslauson]

"So, yes, this is nifty stuff, but I don't see it as "intelligence" so much as an optimization problem."

This sort of reminds me of the the Chinese Room Argument. The gist is that a person is isolated in a room with a complex instruction manual, and that person receives cards with Chinese characters. Using the instruction manual, the person translates the characters into English.

The argument is that the person in the room doesn't really understand Chinese. He's executing instructions that lead to a Chinese translation.

This is used as a corollary for computing, where the person is the CPU and the manual is the program/software. Obviously, the person/CPU doesn't understand Chinese, and the book/program/software clearly doesn't understand Chinese either. So, the argument becomes whether you can claim the system (in this case consisting of the person, his program, etc...) understands Chinese, and therefore whether or not it makes sense to attribute intelligence to something other than an individual.

Of course, the argument, IMO, always comes back to the semantics of how you define intelligence in the first place, which is an argument that nobody is likely to win, but I digress.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[rhakka]

I have wondered that for a very long time, and for me the idea of (and I am NO expert of course!) quantum mechanics still leaves the door open for intelligence of some kind... non-determinism is what is needed, otherwise we're all just very complex automatons.

Obviously some of our behaviour is deterministic, but I'm still not sure it ALL is, and quantum theory is the only place that allows for non-deterministic behaviour.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[wongaboo]

I'm not sure it's correct to say that "[no one's] ever argued that DNA has anything we'd call intelligence." It seems to me that is the central argument of Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene." If you haven't read it, I highly recommended it. It's very well done. Wikipedia describes his argument this way: "Dawkins proposes that genes that help the organism, which they happen to be in, to survive and reproduce tend to also improve their own chances of being passed on, so - most of the time - "successful" genes will also be beneficial to the organism. An example of this might be a gene that protects the organism against a disease, which helps the gene spread and also helps the organism. There are other times when the implicit interests of the vehicle and replicate are in conflict, such as the genes behind certain male spiders' instinctive mating behavior, which increase the organism's inclusive fitness by allowing it to reproduce, but shorten its life by exposing it to the risk of being eaten by the cannibalistic female." That sounds like swarm theory to me.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a personal bugbear of mine, which I have to call you out on.

evolution does not make perfect designs

If evolution made perfect designs then how could foreign species outcompete native ones - surely the native ones would be perfectly adapted to their local environment, and the foreign ones perfect for a different environment (and therefore less than perfect for where they're introduced).

On a different tack, there are literally hundreds of ways in which humans are not perfect. I'll only mention one, because I think it's enough in itself. People can be born with a fatal heart condition.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Control Group]

But randomness (á la quantum theory) doesn't actually get us closer to the classical concept of free will than pure determinism. In the latter case, you've got your behavior determined by particle interactions and precision mathematics.

In the former, you've got your behavior determined by particle interactions and dice rolls.

Neither is "free will."

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[rhakka]

But what IS randomness?

What if it's not random after all?

What if it's a hallmark of conciousness?

I"m not saying it IS of course.. that's quite a leap. But, it is the only thing we know of so far that is not purely determnisitic and COULD, perhaps, just maybe, allow for free will to be a reality. And since it SEEMS like free will IS a reality... well, perhaps it's worth thinking about ;)

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[jc42]

This sort of reminds me of the the Chinese Room Argument. The gist is that a person is isolated in a room with a complex instruction manual, and that person receives cards with Chinese characters. Using the instruction manual, the person translates the characters into English. The argument is that the person in the room doesn't really understand Chinese. He's executing instructions that lead to a Chinese translation.

And just about anyone who knows more than one language understands the fallacy behind this scenario. For a lot of fun examples of the results, visit engrish.com and wander around a bit. You'll quickly find a lot of example of the results of word-by-word translation. In the case of east Asian writing, translating individual characters without understanding that there are multi-character words can lead to especially humorous results. But even some of the "correct" translations are hilarious. And sometimes, of course, you just can't tell what was meant unless you can read the original.

The reason that computerized translation has been "5 years away" for so many decades is that the job requires intelligence and understanding. Doing it mechanically as a text-substitution process simply doesn't work very well. But it's a good source of humor.

(Reports are that the Chinese government is preparing for their upcoming Olympics by replacing a lot of multilingual signs with better translations. This has led to complaints that they are taking a lot of the fun out of trying to find your way around in Beijing. ;-)

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Control Group]

Well, if randomness is not random, we're rapidly coming into an area where all we're discussing is definitions of terms, rather than any reality.

When discussing free will, though, the dead end I always end up in is that it's a moot point, because it's untestable. The premise of free will is that a given person can choose either A or B - but all we ever get to know is whether that person did choose A or B. Since the brain is a one-directional, feedback-driven state machine (making the assumption that the brain can only be in one of a finite number of states...which seems a safe assumption, given that there are a finite number of atoms in the brain), each test is non-repeatable. That is, the act of making the decision between A and B becomes an input into whether to make that same decision next time, which means that without actually reversing local time, you can never know whether the person chose A because he couldn't choose B, whether he would choose A or B according to some probability distribution, or whether he could have consciously decided via some non-deterministic, non-random mechanism to choose B.

I suspect it's unknowable. Which leaves us in the position of having to accept free will because, as you say, it seems to exist, without being able to be certain that it does.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[rhakka]

I guess I should have said, what if it only appears random, not called the notion of randomness into question. Lots of things seem random to us and now, these days, we know they are not truly random, they are just complex... so complex, they might as well be random to Joe Blow on the street. I don't see any reason why the apparently random actions of the quantum world necessarily have to BE random, instead of just misunderstood.

Testable? Perhaps not. Knowable? Perhaps not. But never more than perhaps ;)

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Ajehals]

evolution does not make perfect designs I tend to agree, however, evolution is a process that is ongoing, not something that has happened, there is no reason to suggest that if it is possible for a perfect design to exist for a given environment (and that environment does not change) that evolution would not achieve it. The problem is that 1) evolution is ongoing and 2) environments change leading to 3) the criteria for natural selection is altered both by changes introduced in other evolving organisms and changes in the environment. So I guess for a simple enough system you should be able to get to a perfect design, but its not likely within a complex system.

If evolution made perfect designs then how could foreign species out compete native ones Foreign species by definition would have to be introduced into the environment in which the native species evolved, this would change the environment (even if only by the foreign species presence, not taking into account its other impacts) and thus the native species would no longer be perfectly adapted,

A test for this would be to establish two separate but identical environments, and allow some sort of organism to evolve in one of them (how you do that and keep the two environments the same I don't know..) once the organism is suitably evolved, introduce a foreign organism not native to the other environment, you can then compare how the native and foreign organisms do in identical but separate environments, I would suggest that the native species would do better until the foreign species became sufficiently adapted to the environment. Putting them in together doesn't prove anything other than that in this particular instance the native species has not evolved a method of dealing with a foreign species that it has never been exposed to. Needless to say that the time scales involved in carrying out a test like this would be large even for a simple system.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[DamnStupidElf]

This is a paradigm shift in the understanding of complex behavior of multicellular organisms. We have had good evidence of individual organisms acting smart, that was never in question. But until now, we have never had good scientific, mathematical evidence of intelligence at the group level. People may have suspected it, but now they have evidence to convince skeptics.

It shouldn't be too difficult to understand why, either. Humans have a large brain with lots of neurons that interact electrically and chemically, ants have small individual brains but link them together with chemical pheromones into a hive. They just do distributed computing instead of having what appears to be a single supercomputer like humans. Different paradigms, but ultimately the same approach to intelligence; hooking lots of processors (neurons) together with input from the environment. The only thing ant hive brains lack is direct electrical connections between them.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[the not-troll]

Another poster noted that there is a "bad" kind of reductionism; of this kind is your underlying assumption that if our behaviour could be explained in terms of individual neurons, there could be no consciousness, because after all, neurons obviously don't think.

I mean, the very topic of TFA are emergent phenomena of behaviour: An ant hill might be intelligent while individual ants aren't. In the same way, the interactions of neurons create intelligence but do not require every neuron to be intelligent. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, but it can still be explained in terms of its parts; there is no such thing as "irreducible complexity" or a least element carrying a specific property: no part of your computer "is" the image you see on the screen, but it still gets created.

If deterministic reductionism actually proved, as is your assertion, that intelligence cannot exist because neurons don't think, we'd have thrown it out long ago, because intelligence obviously does exist. (Actually I think that there actually are some people who actually believe that if we could explain the human mind scientifically, then we'd actually destroy the soul, because in their eyes it existed, but we proved that it doesn't, so we must have turned everyone into soulless zombies just so science could be right...)

Indeed, the requirement of non-determinism with respect to "free will" was caused by the Theodicee, i.e. the proof that a god cannot be simultaneously good, omniscient and omnipotent. However, as we cannot know everything, we don't run into this dilemma in practice: there always are things we don't know, thus there is something seeming non-deterministic to us. Still, we cannot ever allow ourselves to accept something as non-deterministic: Maybe quantum theory means that there is a fundamental break with determinism - not just that we don't know but that we can't know, no matter how we try. However, if we accepted that, we need to ask the question: Why stop with quantum theory? Why not much earlier with having god doing everything? In the end, we need to realize that we cannot just assume indeterminism, thus we have to assume that quantum theory is deterministic in a way we didn't imagine before.

To summarize: quantum mechanics doesn't "leave open" the door for intelligence (it's the wrong scale for that, anyway), but you don't need it to, anyway, because intelligence probably is fully deterministic.

At least we need to assume that and nothing to the countrary has ever been shown: Who says "there is indeterminism" just says "I don't know how it works", but if you look at everything, it at least seems deterministic (realizing, of course, that you can't look in anyones head and see what exactly determines him - which, however, doesn't mean that he isn't determined).

And even if it were non-deterministic: this would be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof because it would break down the whole house of human knowledge.

As I'm realizing that I'm running in circles and blubbering aimlessly (well, excuse me, but it's deep night over here and I should be sleeping), one final thought:
Something often not realized is that the human mind is not something seperate from reality (which, in extremo, leads to such theorizing of a inseperable soul), but instead in interaction with it: experiences from the environment always reform the patterns constituting the consciousness, which then feeds back into the environment by actions.

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[rhakka]

this is very interesting, and you make some excellent points!

but a few points of clarification;

when I say quantum mechanics "leaves the door open" for non deterministic, "free will"... that's what I mean. It doesn't prove it, but currently it's the only thing I'm aware of that is not conclusively deterministic. You're absolutely right that it very well may be deterministic in a way we don't understand yet! But we haven't proven that yet. And I don't see any reason to ASSUME it's deterministic. There very well may be something BEYOND determinism ENTIRELY.. that we can't really even conceive of yet. Think of the world before the concept of zero was invented... "nothing" would still be there in mind... something is not here anymore, right, that's recognizable... but it was not really UNDERSTOOD the way it is now that we have a concept of zero. likewise, we may have some idea of "random"... but not really understand what it is.

You say it's obvious that intelligence exists. I am not sure. If "intelligence" is just deterministic, then there is nothing I would call intelligence. There is complexity, but provided you knew the "master algorithm", you could predict every action of every person in every situation. Naturally in cases such as in chaotic systems, we can know the algorthim and NOT predict things because we'd still need to know the starting state... so in practical terms, maybe we'd never get to the actual prediction stage.

But whether we can USE it (for prediction) or not doesn't mean much, except perhaps that the day won't come that we all know exactly what's going to happen all the stime... but still, either we are deterministic, partially deterministic, or not deterministic. I think it's obvious we "learn" and therefor, an arguement can be made that we are obviously at least partially deterministic. As you say, "in interaction" with our environment.

I suppose I would term "intelligence" as something that must be non-deterministic in part, not just complex. Otherwise, what is intelligence? If you are just a reactionary automaton, what need is there for any additional descriptor such as "intelligence", you're just a more complicated robot. no? Is "intelligence" then just some arbitrary gradiant from single input cause and effect to what... ten input? a hundred? a million? a hundred million inputs to form one output? In capacity, or in actual usage?

Perhaps... this is a fledgling idea... "intelligence" could be simply a mechanism by which an entity decided when to use deterministic logic of whatever complexity, VS random action? For instance, maybe I apply all I have learned to making this decision.. or maybe I just guess, or flip a coin, literally. Which randomizes my own determinism... in a way. I suppose not TRULY random.. but effectively..

I dunno.. but I can ramble with the best of them too ;)

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[the not-troll]

Unfortunately, it doesn't "leave the door open". It's only that the most "popular" interpretation of quantum mechanics requires "true" indeterminism (i.e. no hidden variables) and the concept of free will "requires" indeterminism (whereas free will is only required to "solve" the Theodicee without weakening the original conditions - which, of course, is impossible, because the introduction of additional axioms doesn't cause the old ones to not be contradictory anymore), this doesn't mean that quantum mechanics enables free will.

Also, the very problem of intelligence (with which, for example, artificial intelligence research has to struggle) is that there is no well accepted definition of it: It's really like your example of zero: we know there is something, but we don't really can put it into words (at least in a way generally accepted). Still, I would not include non-determinism in the definition of intelligence, I'd rather to look for an definition which describes the phenomenon (of course, for my purposes I have one) and only then have a look whether this requires non-determinism or not (which it doesn't seem to need as far as I can see but then, I'm not really an expert in intelligence, be it natural or otherwise).

However, my point is that we cannot allow ourselves to even assume the possibility of indeterminism, for then progress becomes impossible. Thus, we need to assume that mind is non-deterministic. Indeed, I'd really like you (or someone else) to explain to me how one can come to the conclusion that non-determinism might be necessary, because I seem unable to introduce it in any other way than an arbitrary axiom instead of a conclusion from perception (at least none which doesn't immediately break down).

Furthermore, I'd like to ask how you can tell complexity from non-determinism? While there are some cases of complexity where I can (though I tend to think of those cases as simple), in most I can't. As an example, remember chaos theory: It is completely deterministic, yet it is so complex that you can't possibly determine how the pattern you see came to be unless you knew the equations in the first place.

This is very much the point I want to make: There may be a "master algorithm", but it is impossible to know: thus we do not need indeterminism or free will, for this is only "required" to fake a solution to the Theodicee. Even if that master algorithm were knowable, we'd not need the starting state to predict the future - we can do that if we knew the current state of the universe. We'd only need the starting state if we wanted to know everything what happened in the past. But we definitely can't even know the current state: Because either the universe is infinite, in which case we can't know it because we always only have access to a finite part of it. Or it is finite, but then the memory needed would at least be equal to the universe itself (and then it would be the universe itself): This is pretty much why we need really big supercomputers with billions of transistors to calculate the movements of a handful of molecules, not even enough to simulate an actual, individual transistor atom for atom, electron for electron.

Thus, I don't think it matters whether something seems random or truly is random - we can't tell either way. Therefore, the only possible path of action is to assume it is not random and thus set out to find out how it is determined: because if we assume it is deterministic, our attempts will either after some (sometimes very long) time tell us that it is deterministic if it is (though we still have to ask whether we have the right function - that's why science can only get more and more exact, but never perfectly so) while our efforts will never terminate when it actually is indeterministic. But if we were to assume it to be non-deterministic, then our search stops immediately because there is no explaining possible of something which is not explainable by definition (which is why religion pushes such concepts: God lives in the gaps, and while t

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

Evolution will work in any material as well as completely intangible world as well. In a sense, it "evolves" own means (if I am allowed to use that anthropomorphism). Therefore the speed, the sophistication and magnitude of change rate all may (unless it would be detrimental) increase over time up to its natural limits. If there was no DNA-RNA-protein machinery, something else would have had emerged (and probably did so, somewhere else in cosmos, in different environment, or will do so, if given enough time and dynamics - appropriate temperature, or temperature-equivalent span).

Re:Unmentioned in the article

[max_atreides]

I created this accound just to let you know this has been an awesome read.

Sentient Groups & Algorithm Difficulties

[aldheorte]

A Fire Upon The Deep novelizes the potential of sentient consisting of several physically individual members who do not have sentience as individuals, although this runs tangential to the plot.

Everyone with some algorithm design experience knows that you can get complex behaviors (often known as bugs) with a set of simple rules. Unfortunately, the wide range of problems to which we apply computers, generally by business demands, require rigorous certainty. We want to know exactly how many beans were shipped, not an estimate. Individual instances of an algorithm cooperating via simple rules inherently introduces uncertainty or reflects a very inefficient approach to solving a certain problem. This goes against the grain of classical training and thinking about computing.

Collective intelligence may also depend on all individuals having some level of variation, yet cooperating through simple rules. In this case, the emphasis goes to the protocol and not the algorithm. I believe that further research will find that some level of individual variation will become recognized as an essential element of perceived group intelligence, important to breaking recursive feedback loops and deadlocks. Unfortunately, attempts to emulate this in computing will run into the issue that group perceived intelligence may not be determined so much by design, but by fitness for a particular, narrow purpose, with truly remarkable group intelligence requiring many iterations exposed to actual operating conditions or good simulations thereof.

Re:Sentient Groups & Algorithm Difficulties

[Control Group]

I doubt the necessity for individual variance. It may be a factor to consider as one of the rules of setup (each unit can vary X amount from the norm in dimension Y), but I don't think you need it. For example, the ant colony behavior (as described in TFA) doesn't require individual variance. Variance comes from the environment with which the ants interact.

Alternatively, you can replace individual variance with pure randomness - that is, individuals may react to the same stimulus differently, but only according to a probability distribution across the population. So each ant might have a 30% chance of reacting in a given way to a given stimulus - making them all invariant with respect to each other - but introduce the stimulus, and 30% of the population will react that way, while 70% will not (supposing an adequate population size).

I don't see an inherent advantage to actual individual variance as compared to probability distributions.

Then again, from a retrospective point of view, the two may be indistinguishable.

Re:Sentient Groups & Algorithm Difficulties

[aldheorte]

In the article, the ant colonies have specialists. Scouts look for food sources, foragers wait for signals of food sources. Assuming that both start the day in the nest, environment cannot account fully for the variance resulting in this division of behavior.

You have a good point about individual variance expressed as random reaction to stimulus by any individual. However, that's where we deviate from discussing group intelligence to discussing the definition of individual differentiation. Obviously, two individuals are undeniably different in that they consist of different atoms and occupy different coordinates (interestingly, a limitation not logically shared by algorithms on a computer, unless you get into the actual storage of the representative bits in hardware). The question becomes what drives differentiated behavior. Randomness could explain this.

Then again, it could also explain human cognition fully as well if no effort is made to interpret individual stimulus, only the aggregate of past and present stimulus and reaction, equivalent to that considered by an ant waiting for a pheromone drop. Innovation gets full explanation from random copying error and overlapping life spans. Be careful going down this route as it leads to unhappy places, though ironically, if true, you have no actual control over whether you go down this route or not. Some of you will, some of you will not, we just don't k now which of you for sure, and neither do you.

Re:Sentient Groups & Algorithm Difficulties

[bishiraver]

"Everyone with some algorithm design experience knows that you can get complex behaviors (often known as bugs) with a set of simple rules." I'm convinced that JavaScript is the essence of this assertion.

Re:Sentient Groups & Algorithm Difficulties

[aldheorte]

That's because, in addition to poorly defined algorithmic flexibility, JavaScript has a high level of environmental variance.

The brain is a swarm

[DigiShaman]

Would the brain classify as a swarm of neurons?

Re:The brain is a swarm

[SatanicPuppy]

Would your body classify as a swarm of atoms?

Unlikely. A swarm is composed of units that are functioning individuals as well, with their own individual complex behavior patterns.

That's what makes swarm theory so interesting. if they were all working together because they were effectively cogs in the swarm "machine" then the fact that the sum is greater than the parts wouldn't be interesting at all.

Re:The brain is a swarm

[davermont]

You're brain is one system within a particular organism, not a component organism within a hive.

Re:The brain is a swarm

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, the brain does display emergent behavior arising from the simple interaction of small parts. The question I have here is whether the larger organization (breaking the "anonymity" described in TFA) of the brain is important enough to make this not a useful way of thinking about things .

Antsdot

[mhannibal]

Ant colonies sound a lot like slashdot it seems...

Re:Antsdot

[TrappedByMyself]

Ant colonies sound a lot like slashdot it seems...

I disagree. Ants get smarter when put into large groups...

Re:Antsdot

[m0nstr42]

Ant colonies sound a lot like slashdot it seems...

Actually, this is literally one of the main points of the book Emergence by Stephen Johnson. Personally, I didn't like the book, but only based on execution.. it was a good premise.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Wisdom of Crowds

[Anonymous Coward]

In the article is a part on the wisdom of crowds. Essentially every time I read about it an experiment is mentioned where you have children guess the number of beans in a jar and the prediction is that the average will be either the best or a very close estimate of the actual number of beans in the jar. However this experiment was done on the internet and got removed by the author of the book before posting the results (I'm not drawing any conclusions here ;)). So I tried this in 2 statistics 101 classes I teach. Both of the times the actual number of beans in the jar was not even in the confidence interval, both classes had about 50 students, of which at least 5-10 were closer than the average. It's a shame that NG uses some remarks of the other and states them as facts, because they obviously aren't!

Swarm theory nothin'

[Anne_Nonymous]

Yeah but, Smarm Theory made the cover of "OMG-i-heart-ponies Magazine" this month.

Brief Summary

[AikonMGB]

Brief but interesting summary.

Oh wait, scratch that second part..

Aikon-

The speed of the animals/bacterias.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bees's Swarm Optimization >> Butterflies Optimization >> Ants Optimization >> Neural Nets >> Genetic Algorithms.

There is a correlation beetween the speed of the animals/bacterias and the speed of solving its problems.

Signed by J.C.

What a great way to stop an ant population!

[erroneus]

Perhaps some genius chemist will come up with a way to infect or affect an ant's sense of smell/touch/taste in such a way that foragers never go out and thereby starve the colony? It wouldn't be poison in the direct sense and would hopefully be safe for plants, animals and children. It would be like boric acid but better.

Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[simon_hibbs2]

>So I agree that swarms are unlike authoritarian communism. They're unlike authoritarian anything,
>simply because swarms are anti-authoritarian and non-hierarchial - any structure involving a boss
>or a "chain of command" cannot function as a swarm. However, they're definitely not behaving the
>way a free market does, either....

Actualy they are very much more like a free market.

Communism is a tightly hierarchical system in which all decisions are made at the top and everyone has to do what they are told by the chain of command. In a free market system everyone can choose what they do, which means that on the one hand I can work in a team/part/company or other group if I decide that's best, or I can choose to split off and for my own group (political party, company, etc) if I see an opportunity. That is much more like the behaviour of colony insects because each insect makes it's own decisions. It doesn't make decisions just based on arbitrary desires, but then neither do we. Human beings in a free market make decisions based on the information we get from our interactions with others in society, and is self-optimizing in the same way colony insects are.

Communist societies are not self-optimizing at the micro-level and so are inflexible and inefficient.

Simon Hibbs

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[bberens]

Free market economy eventually results in authoritarianism. Someone or a very small group of someones wind up with control of all the [food, oil, fresh water, electricity, etc.].

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[xappax]

Actualy they are very much more like a free market.

Communism is a tightly hierarchical system in which all decisions are made at the top and everyone has to do what they are told by the chain of command.

I don't want to seem snotty or disrespectful, but please read what someone's written before disagreeing with them. You're right. As I wrote above, authoritarian systems - including communism - are not swarms, and in fact are usually set up to deliberately suppress swarm behavior (which undermine centralized power). So swarms are not a good example of communism.

I think, however, you've fallen into the classic trap of thinking that there are only two economic models: communism and free market capitalism. It reminds me of when I was a young kid and thought that if you weren't Christian, it meant you were Jewish :)

There are a ton of socio-economic models which critique and are sometimes opposed to free market capitalism - and only one of them is communism. The rest are things like participatory economics, anarchism, gift economies...I would say that swarms are more closely related to some of these models.

Human beings in a free market make decisions based on the information we get from our interactions with others in society

That's true, but irrelevant. All life forms make decisions based on the information they receive, that has nothing to do with swarms. The interesting thing about swarms is that when you get a bunch of actors together, and each one of them follows a pattern of behavior that has no benefit to the individual, you get an overall emergent result which benefits the whole group. Individual humans in a free market environment base their decisions on what will help their personal interests to the exclusion of anyone else's - that's the hallmark of the system.

Swarms are like a proof-of-concept that when people are able to stop being myopically selfish and participate in a collective "organ" that's larger than them, rewards return to them which couldn't have been anticipated with a free market perspective. In one way, this is a kind of creepy realization, since it suggests that the most efficient mode of socio-economic organization would be some kind of Borg-like hive-mind. Obviously, I don't think that'd be a good thing, but I do think there's room for individuals participating in collective swarms when it comes to important matters (like food,clothes,shelter), and going their own ways when it's not.

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[king-manic]

Swarms are like a proof-of-concept that when people are able to stop being myopically selfish and participate in a collective "organ" that's larger than them, rewards return to them which couldn't have been anticipated with a free market perspective. In one way, this is a kind of creepy realization, since it suggests that the most efficient mode of socio-economic organization would be some kind of Borg-like hive-mind. Obviously, I don't think that'd be a good thing, but I do think there's room for individuals participating in collective swarms when it comes to important matters (like food,clothes,shelter), and going their own ways when it's not.

I thought that was what the US political system was? pick a 1 of two virtually identical sides. Turn the brain off and follow the hive mind till you die.

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[j_w_d]

I think you are suffering from a bit of anthropomorphism and idealism here. Members of swarms "behave" and their collective behaviour shows emergent properties that aren't discernible in ANY of the individual members. You can't legitimately characterize the behaviour of individual members as behaviour that "...has no benefit to the individual." Quite the contrary. It is probably harder to see this among insects where it is more difficult to discern individual self interest, but the example of herd behaviour among caribou threatened by a wolf is pretty clear. The article also includes a very clear example of human swarm behaviour in race track betting. In both of these instances the emergent behaviour is the product of self-interested actions. The caribou herd together and that herding benefits them all. The caribou remain aware of all the nearby herd members and their behaviour. Alerting behaviour signals through out the herd when just one senses a threat. Flight patterns are guided by those nearest the threat, who run away from it. That is all group behaviour predicated on self interested individual survival behaviour. The race track betting behaviour and its manner of collectively estimating odds without negotiation among individuals is similarly guide by simple self interested behaviour. It requires neither leaders nor common ideals for swarm-like properties to emerge in group behaviour, simply common individual goals.

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[ojQj]

Thank you for your excellent response. I've been modded into the ground for my first time at slashdot, probably because I used too much sarcasm without warning people and assumed that a certain amount of economic theory was general knowledge. So I'd like to add to my own entry's self-defense:

From the fifth page of the article:
"Such thoughts underline an important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions."

I know of no other way to "make your own decisions" than enlighted self-interest. Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu have shown that an idealized free market economy can achieve Pareto optimality. Important is that most individuals rationally evaluate which exchanges produce a net benefit for themselves, and accept only those exchanges. This is, in my opinion, a clear case of swarm behavior, since it relies on individual interactions being performed based on a simple set of rules which add up to an optimal solution.

Communism, even in its idealised distributed form cannot achieve the same results since it relies on all decision makers to know not only their own interests and preferences, but those of everyone effected by their decisions. The missing element is not perfect altruism, it's omniscience. This is, in my opinion, the reason why societies which experiment with communism end up with some kind of authoritarianism -- people are more willing to believe that a few elite have the knowledge and intelligence to make optimal decisions than that the masses do. It's just the more extreme version of the "there should be a law" camp.

For more information on Pareto optimality and Pareto efficiency, as well as some fair criticisms for using the principle as an evaluation of economic outcomes, check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[xappax]

Important is that most individuals rationally evaluate which exchanges produce a net benefit for themselves, and accept only those exchanges.

Now we're ranging far off topic, but surely absolute enlightened self-interest requires just as much omniscience as enlightened altrusim? Are you telling me it's possible for me to determine the absolute most beneficial action I should take at any given time? Let's say a guy offers me a pocket knife for $20. Maybe I can evaluate perfectly whether $20 is higher than lower than the current average for pocket knives, but that's not the extent of my self-interest...what if that pocket knife was manufactured in a factory right next to my house that's responsible for lead in my water? The otherwise beneficial transaction is no longer in my absolute self-interest, because the more knives that are bought, the more they'll manufacture, and the more pollution will harm my health, creating a net loss. Or what if the knife is actually manufactured by child slaves in east Asia, who are so abused and impoverished that they're anti-American fanatics who will murder me while I'm on vacation? Again, giving such an enterprise my business turns out to be a net loss for my "enlightened self interest". I may know that my personal preference is to not die, but unless I know every way that everyone I interact with is likely to kill me, I'm incapable of making the decisions necessary to correctly optimize the market.

To bring this back on topic, my point is that there's no such thing as absolute enlightened interest - selfish or altruistic, and theories that are predicated on it are increasingly demonstrating to be as quaint as the old "clockwork" model of the world. That's why swarms are an exciting new thing, because they demonstrate how individuals who don't know much at all can produce a positive outcome if they operate according to a simple set of common rules.

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[xappax]

The article also includes a very clear example of human swarm behaviour in race track betting. In both of these instances the emergent behaviour is the product of self-interested actions.

Good point - in that case the swarm activity is closer to free market behavior, but like I said, almost all the examples slant the other way. While some swarms do have similarities to markets, it's a serious stretch to claim that the phenomenon of swarming itself is a validation of free-market theory.

but the example of herd behaviour among caribou threatened by a wolf is pretty clear

It seems clear intuitively, because each caribou is doing what it would do individually to escape a threat: stop grazing, freeze and be hyper-vigilant, and run at the sign of danger. Only they're doing it as a group, and therefore it's not substantially more advantageous for an individual caribou to bother anymore. Obviously it still needs to bolt when everyone else does, but why stop eating? A self-interested caribou would continue to stuff itself, building up fat and muscle which will help them escape predators more readily, while all the others kept watch for it.

So, I don't think it's as simple as "all the caribou have common individual goals of not getting eaten". They're doing things which hinder their individual interests for the sake of protecting the group. Possibly, this is because they require the group to ensure individual survival, but if so, then the interests of the individual are essentially the same as the group, which is kind of my point.

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[ojQj]

"Are you telling me it's possible for me to determine the absolute most beneficial action I should take at any given time?"

No. I'm just saying you are better at knowing what's best for you than anyone else, and that free market economics leverage that knowledge. Are you saying someone else is better at determining what's best for you than you yourself are?

The cases you are describing are known as market externalities. Market externalities were mentioned in the wikipedia article I linked to, which I considered sufficient reference to them, but again, I assumed too much.

I'm not an anarchist. Market externalities are, in my opinion, legitimate fields for governments to get involved. For example, taxing the knife manufacturer based on the estimated cost of solving health problems from their release of lead into the environment so that the price of your knife legitimately reflects its true costs would be a way of eliminating the market externality without forcing you to consider the knife on any other basis than its quality and cost. Once you get the important market externalities nailed, that's the right time for governments to stop getting involved. That's a difficult point to judge and a legitimate field of debate, but no implementation of communism would even try.

Once you have that point nailed, you've got individual interactions based on individual judgements of utility. The emergent complexity from this system should literally be undeniable. You see it every day. If we can't agree on that, we probably shouldn't even bother to discuss it. That it results in net positive benefits for the group should also be fairly clear. Do you agree on this point?

Human groups have always been swarms -- they are not a "new" thing. The new thing is optimizing the rules for individual interactions for a desirable emergent property and using new models to do so. The ideas about Pareto optimality as an emergent property of idealized free market economics are also proven using mathematical models. They just aren't new anymore. That doesn't mean they don't fit in with the other research in this field. If they didn't fit, the authors of the National Geographic magazine never would have mentioned betting systems as an effective method for combining the information which individuals possess to predict race outcomes. The effectivity of those systems can be proven using essentially the same method.

"...my point is that there's no such thing as absolute enlightened interest - selfish or altruistic, and theories that are predicated on it are increasingly demonstrating to be as quaint as the old "clockwork" model of the world"

And if you can't see that I'm not talking about "clockworks", then you may not be making an honest attempt to understand what I'm writing.

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[NotmyNick]

Thank you for your excellent response. I've been modded into the ground for my first time at slashdot, probably because I used too much sarcasm without warning people and assumed that a certain amount of economic theory was general knowledge.

Are you quite certain of that? Could it be that the swarm has spoken and your post was found wanting?

Re:Swarm Theory and Free Market Economics.

[ojQj]

Ha! Nice response. But based on which rules of simple interactions was the swarm acting?

..except for the regulation

[svunt]

um...free market economics don't rely on unbending regulation at every turn, like the ants in TFA...I'd say this makes a case that 'things sort themselves out if left to do as they please', or self-regulation, are what you see when you aren't looking closely enough, and that in fact regulation helps large systems operate optimally.

Re:..except for the regulation

[Attila Dimedici]

What unbending regulation? The ants in the article respond to stimuli according to their own individual "programming". What external regulation is mentioned in the article? In free market economics, people respond to external stimuli according to their own individual "programming". Now, do I think there are reasons to impose some external regulations? Yes. But there is something to be learned about human economies from the efficiency of an ant economy.

Re:..except for the regulation

[svunt]

fair enough, perhaps my wording sucked. The individual "programming" of the ants is identical for each type (sentry, forager, etc) - which is certainly not the case for humans in a free market.

Can Slashdot be slashdotted?

[BrentRJones]

Has it ever happened? Just curious.

Swam Intelligence

[greywire]

equals God.

Article Missed a Major Point

[CyberGarp]

It said that "Swarm Theory" was being applied to business operations. I call bullshit. A computer model was run at night that provides the orders to all the drivers each morning. This flies in the face of the premise of swarm theory. If each driver were given a simple set of rules to follow for driving then it would be a direct application of swarm theory to operations. However, it's not swarm theory applied to operations, because each driver gets an order from corporate each morning. No local decision are made. It's just another algorithmic approach to combinatorial optimization with centralized management, which till I see a Big O notation, and some papers, I withhold comment on the computer model.

Re:Article Missed a Major Point

[bruckie]

No local decision are made. It's just another algorithmic approach to combinatorial optimization with centralized management, which till I see a Big O notation, and some papers, I withhold comment on the computer model.

It's true that swarm theory isn't being applied directly by the drivers--after all, they're getting instructions from corporate, as you said. However, I think it's unfair to say that swarm theory isn't being applied at all; it's just being used to compute a solution beforehand rather than on the fly. From the article's description, it sounds like the software creates billions of autonomous agents that all follow simple rules and arrive at a solution without any central planning or coordination. That sounds like swarm theory to me.

Re:Article Missed a Major Point

[complexmath]

It's just another algorithmic approach to combinatorial optimization with centralized management, which till I see a Big O notation, and some papers, I withhold comment on the computer model.

There has been a ton of research for applying ant colony optimization to the traveling salesman problem (I have a book on the subject), but last I heard the swarm approach still wasn't as fast as the some of the traditional heuristic algorithms. It's incredibly simple from a conceptual standpoint and seems very promising, but unless things have changed recently, we still have a ways to go before it's truly the best computational means for finding a solution to these problems.

All that work for?

[n9986]

All this talk about ants collecting food their whole lives. I wonder when they actually eat it... And deciding who eats who much... Not fair for hard working ones(Lazy ants could just be sitting around)...

How to Kill the Bad Aliens Now?

[J. L. Nelson]

In Hollywood movies such as "I, Robot" and "Independence Day" a non-swarm organisational structure is assumed and actions by the hero, such as destroying the central processing core or blowing up the mothership, generally puts an immediate and dramatic end to the world's invasive trouble. What would happen in a movie where the invasive enemy had a swarm organisation? I'm not a movie buff at all, so can anyone point out any examples of this? Perhaps Hitchcock's "The Birds" (which I haven't seen) or some killer bee-type movie? On the other hand, movies like "I, Robot" and "Independence Day" also glorify the worth of individual thinking to benefit the whole, but more in terms of exceptional individuals who stand out over the rest, rather than to point out how a group of independent-minded individuals can overcome obstacles. (Again, any examples to the contrary?) Yet, it seems to me that it would be more beneficial to society as a whole to propaganise the swarm organisation. Will Hollywood catch on--with effect--or is Western society too enamoured with the cult of the individual for it to make a difference?

Re:How to Kill the Bad Aliens Now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that you mention it, the Borg weren't defeatable until they had a "spokesperson".
They went down even easier once they had a "Queen".

D.

Re:How to Kill the Bad Aliens Now?

[Anonymous Coward]

I call prior art here :)

Will come in handy when big movie companies complain about "plot-theft".

For a sci-fi perspective

[anirudhvr]

Check out Michael Crichton's Prey http://www.amazon.com/Prey-Michael-Crichton/dp/006 1015725. Very entertaining; inspired me to actually learn about swarming behavior (flock, spread out, etc.) and programming such things into robots...

Where is the intelligence?

[gmuslera]

Individuals are dumb (i.e. in the ants examples), but as a whole seems to be a pattern, some (lets pick correctly the words) "intelligent design" in how the group behaves. But there are not design there, not intelligent choices made by individuals or the group as a whole, just simple (mechanic?) interactions in the group much like sand making dunes. Seeing the the swarm as something intelligent because the dumb interactions seems to have a pattern tells more about the observer than about the swarm.

Swarms are smart?

[Brandybuck]

Swarms are smart? Hah! While they may have emergent behaviors, they are no smarter than their members. I'm wracking my brain trying to think of an example, but there are none. Fish swarm? Dumb. Ant trail? Dumb. Flock of geese? Dumb. Swarm of bees? Dumb. In fact, single bees appear to be much more intelligent than bee swarms.

Re:Swarms are smart?

[the not-troll]

You forgot one: Herd of people.

Really, it's more a thing of scale. More quantity than of quality. All they do is eat, fuck and die.

Strength in numbers just means that the whale who gets the munchies can fill his stomach with one bite instead of having to hunt each fish down individually.

Re:HELP ME PLEASEEEEEE

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off and die.

YouTube proves Smarm Theory!

[rholland356]

Top scientific researchers today announced that analysis of the video content at popular sharing site YouTube has proven the theory that if you collect enough smarmy videos in one location, you can collect a swarm of randy young people that attracts a big, fat Sugar Daddy.

Old News

[wtansill]

I thought that's how /. worked???

Sacrifice me

[Anonymous Coward]

Praise for the swarm!

evolution is the key to swarm intelligence

[wikinerd]

The key to swarm intelligence is evolution and experience over a long time. Individuals who aren't responsible and don't follow the rules get wiped out by predators or accidents (or the society itself), and individuals have strong reasons for following the society's rules (personal survival). The corollary of this is that if we want to make humans behave intelligently within a group, we must make sure they know the rules and that failure to observe the rules would lead to personal and group death.

Re:evolution is the key to swarm intelligence

[m0nstr42]

The key to swarm intelligence is evolution and experience over a long time. Individuals who aren't responsible and don't follow the rules get wiped out by predators or accidents (or the society itself), and individuals have strong reasons for following the society's rules (personal survival). The corollary of this is that if we want to make humans behave intelligently within a group, we must make sure they know the rules and that failure to observe the rules would lead to personal and group death.

Actually, a key idea of evolution is the very fact that some individual *will* break the rules. If a population follows strategy X, and an individual can do better by following strategy X+epsilon, the theory says that the population will tend towards the new strategy. Check out Evolutionarily Stable Stragies, one tool that is often applied to studies of collective behavior.

Re:evolution is the key to swarm intelligence

[wikinerd]

That's correct. In a hypothetical world with a stable environment, the rules would evolve over time to perfectly fit that environment. But in the real world everything is in motion and new threats and opportunities arise every day. The problem is knowing which rules are optimal in any given situation. Considering that the environment is changing all the time, there may be no constantly perfect rules. If a rule says "always follow the leader" it will lead to survival only as long as the leader is a good one; groups with bad leaders would probably do better with rules such as "challenge the leader".

Re:evolution is the key to swarm intelligence

[m0nstr42]

This is just for the sake of conversation. I have studied evolutionary biology somewhat (and work with a few people whose main field this is, particularly with respect to altruism/selfishness and collective behavior), so I find it interesting.

You're right, much of the theory assumes a constant environment or some consistent probabilistic model of one. It still has done quite well as a theory. Also, it's a common misconception to assume that evolution finds a globally optimal strategy - this is in fact not (necessarily) true. Evolution finds a strategy that cannot be invaded by a mutant contingent. You may think of this as a "local" maximum, though it's somewhat different. This was Maynard Smith's brilliance of bringing a game-theoretic approach into the theory; an approach that owes very much to John Nash. One must also be very careful when considering good/bad leadership situations - on the (typically) massive scale of evolutionary action it is average leader, or the statistical distribution of leaders, that counts in some sense.

That said, the question of acting altruistically (i.e. do whatever is best for the group) vs. acting selfishly is a somewhat open research question. There are also several open questions in the area of leadership. I'd be glad to share references if you are interested.

ObPython

[zevans]

Oh. I thought we were an autonomous collective.

good democracies look like this too

[Anonymous Coward]

Such thoughts underline an important truth about collective intelligence: Crowds tend to be wise only if individual members act responsibly and make their own decisions. A group won't be smart if its members imitate one another, slavishly follow fads, or wait for someone to tell them what to do. When a group is being intelligent, whether it's made up of ants or attorneys, it relies on its members to do their own part.

Sounds like what is needed to make voting effective in a republic/democracy.

Wrong!

[neoshroom]

The idea that there is a net benefit for a group from the collective selfish actions of individual actors is closer to what this article is describing as swarm theory.

Actually, the article doesn't say anything about the collective selfish actions of anybody. In fact, in almost all the examples given, the actors are behaving unselfishly.

You are assuming the actors are the individuals, where the selfish actors are the genes. In social insects specific genetic relationships cause altruistic behavior in individuals because it is in the genes best interest for propagation to behave in such a way due to their unusual genetics. Applying, such social systems to human social systems would not be advised. Now applying ant routing mechanisms to route trucks, as in the article, that's a little more sensible.

Re:Wrong!

[xappax]

Applying, such social systems to human social systems would not be advised.

I just thought of something:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

That's totally a swarm algorithm, right? All individuals, with limited information, act according to a simple rule. And it totally applies to social systems - it's not just theory either, it's largely responsible for the emergent phenomenon of stable societies. Sometimes people act nice because of fear of the law, but often they do so simply because that's the way they think people should be treated.

Nomenclature exists, it's just misused here

[theefer]

Not really, the nomenclature exists, it's called swarm intelligence. It's referred to in the article, it's the name of the (few) reference literature, etc. I've never heard it referred to as "swarm theory" or "swarm behaviour", and I took a swarm intelligence course last year, so I'm not sure why it was called like that in the slashdot excerpt in the first place.

Comment Missed a Major Point

[theefer]

The swarm intelligence algorithm is ran offline to determine a solution to the global problem. Indeed, ants "run" the "algorithm" inline as they don't leave the nest with a full plan of action, but the method used is still swarm intelligence, as opposed to, say, standard heuristic-based TSP solvers. The reason why it's not ran inline is that the cost of doing so is larger than the benefit, since the conditions are not very dynamic.

By the way there are many papers on the topic, although it's quite recent, just citeseer for "swarm intelligence".

godel escher bach

[RedOctober]

reminds me of "aunt hillary" in "godel, escher, bach" - the intelligent ant hill that explained how it was she could be smart even if the ants she was made from were as dumb as sin. even had the ant-eater "manage" her ants for her.

one passage described how a flood disrupted a "relative" of hers, and even though the individual ants survived, the "relative" was no more - instead, a different "relative" was born.

it's one heck of a book - recommended for everyone into ai.

Re:godel escher bach

[Anonymous Coward]

I would actually propose the theory that an increase in intelligence in the individuals would probably present a barrier to a succesful swarm system.
As each individual starts thinking about their actions, and thus acting more independently, this breaks the cohesion required for a swarm principle and thus makes the whole thing collapse into a heap of winners and losers, whereby each individual winner is probably worse off than the collective win would have been.

AI already covers Swarm Theory?

[rook2pawn]

Not an expert in either, but expressing Swarm Theory in abstracts and application is basically Machine Learning concepts, such as Reinforcement? And the whole simple-rules-produce complex intelligent output demonstrated in both machine control (ball-balancing, process regulation, game AI, etc) and also the whole Steven Wolfram: A New Kind of Science - cellular automata for more simple-rules goodness?

In Soviet Russia...

[bitRAKE]

...the hive swarms you.

Caribou example

[j_w_d]

"Self-interest" might be a problematic concept. Its pretty clear we're interpreting the same behaviour differently. Also, there's still that lurking element of anthropomorphism. If you disregard caribou "motives" and consider the behaviour as a set of system "weights," my argument might be clearer. All of the caribou are probably weighting environmental factors equivalently including the necessity to eat, building muscle and fat. Evolutionarily, if you are a caribou that persists in eating while a wolf approaches - and you are the nearest caribou, the weighted odds of becoming wolf chow are greatest for you. The nearest caribou is at the greatest hazard and millenia of evolutionary selection have established a tropism to move away from potential hazards. But, if you move away then some other member of the herd is now at greater hazard, so it becomes evolutionarily positively weighted to respond if a neighbor responds. By tracking your movement and copying the direction, they maintain their relative security compared with that of whoever initiated that potential threat response.

The rules are very simple. One is, "move away from unidentified movement." Another simple rule is, "if your neighbor moves toward you, move away." Both of these require a third, "remain aware (of your neighbors and surroundings)." A little evolutionary fine tuning via selection and properties like how close an unidentified movement can be before you respond and proximity versus response intensity (a mile away-keep eating, 100 yards-move away, 20 yards-panic and run) are built into the genome.

"Motives" in the sense of what we think of as "self-interest" and the individual making informed decisions on an action don't necessarily enter into the picture. That in fact is clear in the example of race track betting. Short of secretly altering the nature of the race through nobbling a horse or manipulating the fitness of riders and horses, the collective "intelligence" - if you will - of the bettors is capable of very accurately predicting the placing of every horse in a race. This is despite the fact that every bettor is trying to second guess the outcome and hopes to do better than the handicapped odds.

That is the really interesting aspect of swarm intelligence. Nothing in the nature of the individuals composing the swarm predicts anything about the capacity of the swarm entity itself.