Slashdot Mirror
The Rules of the Swarm
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers are starting to discover the simple rules that allow swarms of thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism. To get a sense of swarms, Dr. Iain Couzin, a mathematical biologist at the Collective Animal Behaviour Laboratory at Princeton University, builds computer models of virtual swarms with thousands of individual agents that he can program to follow a few simple rules. Among the findings are that swarm behavior has patterns common to many different species, that just as liquid water can suddenly begin to boil, swarm behavior can also change abruptly in character, and that just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively by creating a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction. The rules of the swarm may also apply to the cells inside our bodies and researchers are working with cancer biologists to discover the rules by which cancer cells work together to build tumors or migrate through tissues. Even brain cells may follow the same rules for collective behavior seen in locusts or fish. "How does your brain take this information and come to a collective decision about what you're seeing?" Dr. Couzin says. The answer, he suspects, may lie in our inner swarm."
Spawn more overlords.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
You will be assimilated
Researchers are starting to discover the simple rules that allow swarms of thousands of relatively simple animals to form a collective brain able to make decisions and move like a single organism.
Strangely enough, it also explains republican voting habits.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Now we all know, but when will we actually learn...probably never.
Maybe they are each part of the same consciousness? Have you not read Foundation's Edge?
622677120
We are already "cells" of a thing called "economy", for an alien the earth may just look like a single living being.
this guy has been playing wayyyyyyy too much starcraft. i shouldnt talk, i played it for 10 hours a day while in iraq in my stryker :P
Cannibal cricket^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hs on a forced march for protein and salt.
Nobody talks about the swarm.
Have gnu, will travel.
Stephan Wolfram is going "I told ya so."
sounds an awful lot like our "chi"
I, for one, welcome our new Inner Swarm Overlord...
Would it be redundant to say 'slashdot swarm effect?
But seriously --- hunger, fright, spawning, yawning, roosting, cheering, migrating, hibernating, buying lotto tickets...you can't have a 'crowd' effect without a crowd, so discovering there is such a thing seems a bit like finding a bullet hole and then inventing the gun. All sounds a bit medieval if you ask me.
I just want to know where the on/off switch is so I can control it...
1st RULE: You do not talk about THE SWARM. 2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about THE SWARM.
Great new book on Evolution: The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins
Swarm Subtype
A swarm is a collection of Fine, Diminutive, or Tiny creatures that acts as a single creature. A swarm has the characteristics of its type, except as noted here. A swarm has a single pool of Hit Dice and hit points, a single initiative modifier, a single speed, and a single Armor Class. A swarm makes saving throws as a single creature. A single swarm occupies a square (if it is made up of nonflying creatures) or a cube (of flying creatures) 10 feet on a side, but its reach is 0 feet, like its component creatures. In order to attack, it moves into an opponent's space, which provokes an attack of opportunity. It can occupy the same space as a creature of any size, since it crawls all over its prey. A swarm can move through squares occupied by enemies and vice versa without impediment, although the swarm provokes an attack of opportunity if it does so. A swarm can move through cracks or holes large enough for its component creatures.
A swarm of Tiny creatures consists of 300 nonflying creatures or 1,000 flying creatures. A swarm of Diminutive creatures consists of 1,500 nonflying creatures or 5,000 flying creatures. A swarm of Fine creatures consists of 10,000 creatures, whether they are flying or not. Swarms of nonflying creatures include many more creatures than could normally fit in a 10-foot square based on their normal space, because creatures in a swarm are packed tightly together and generally crawl over each other and their prey when moving or attacking. Larger swarms are represented by multiples of single swarms. The area occupied by a large swarm is completely shapeable, though the swarm usually remains in contiguous squares.
Traits
A swarm has no clear front or back and no discernable anatomy, so it is not subject to critical hits or flanking. A swarm made up of Tiny creatures takes half damage from slashing and piercing weapons. A swarm composed of Fine or Diminutive creatures is immune to all weapon damage. Reducing a swarm to 0 hit points or lower causes it to break up, though damage taken until that point does not degrade its ability to attack or resist attack. Swarms are never staggered or reduced to a dying state by damage. Also, they cannot be tripped, grappled, or bull rushed, and they cannot grapple an opponent.
A swarm is immune to any spell or effect that targets a specific number of creatures (including single-target spells such as disintegrate), with the exception of mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects) if the swarm has an Intelligence score and a hive mind. A swarm takes half again as much damage (+50%) from spells or effects that affect an area, such as splash weapons and many evocation spells.
Swarms made up of Diminutive or Fine creatures are susceptible to high winds such as that created by a gust of wind spell. For purposes of determining the effects of wind on a swarm, treat the swarm as a creature of the same size as its constituent creatures. A swarm rendered unconscious by means of nonlethal damage becomes disorganized and dispersed, and does not reform until its hit points exceed its nonlethal damage.
Swarm HD Swarm
Base Damage
1-5 1d6
6-10 2d6
11-15 3d6
16-20 4d6
21 or more 5d6
Swarm Attack
Creatures with the swarm subtype don't make standard melee attacks. Instead, they deal automatic damage to any creature whose space they occupy at the end of their move, with no attack roll needed. Swarm attacks are not subject to a miss chance for concealment or cover. A swarm's statistics block has "swarm" in the Attack and Full Attack entries, with no attack bonus given. The amount of damage a swarm deals is based on its Hit Dice, as shown in the table.
A swarm's attacks are nonmagical, unless the swarm's description states otherwise. Damage reduction sufficient to reduce a swarm attack's damage to 0, being incorporeal, and other special abilities usually give a creature immunity (or at least resistance) to damage from a swarm. Some swarms
When I read the summary my immediate response was that this was old news. It has been known for quite a while that cellular automata with simple rules can form universal Turing machines. That means that they can "form a collective brain" and "make decisions and move like a single organism". The interesting question then becomes; What "program" is your machine running, and how do you make it robust so that it works in the real world (with all the noise of nature)?
The article is a popular science article, but addresses this, more interesting, question much more than the summary. They discuss some of the rules involved in specific situations (ants), and even look at "human swarms" (although that bit is a little cheesy). There is no general theory posited about how to make these rule sets though, apart from trial and error (in simulation if you can). They say that the researchers are starting to see patterns, but don't talk about what those patterns are - pity really, as that would have been very interesting.
reminds me of an old paper from '95 (Consciousness: More like Fame than Television):
http://pp.kpnet.fi/seirioa/cdenn/concfame.htm
"How does your brain take this information and come to a collective decision about what you're seeing?" Dr. Couzin says. The answer, he suspects, may lie in our inner swarm."
Which explains AOL!
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
"... just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively by creating a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction"
Wow, did this remind anyone else somewhat of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the Laughing Man and Individual Eleven cases? Plus there is plenty of discussion throughout the series about how subtle influence by a select few can affect the whole of society, unnoticed. I know it's a bit different, but it's kind of unreal to be hearing about this in the news after having only just recently watched the two seasons of Stand Alone Complex episodes...
This was just in Nation Geographic or Scientific American, one of those rags like that... Fresh articles please
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
"suddenly" boils. There is always a build up of pressure and or temperature.
My inner swarm tells me to suspect the validity of this concept when applied to educated individuals running free-will simulations.
Not to mention my inner hippy.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
There are several very interesting optimization algorithms based on swarm behavior, such as particle swarm optimization and ant colony optimization. These methods have a similar ability for non-linear optimization (and pattern recognition) as neural networks.
- Demosthenes
cynicsreport.com
Cool to see Couzin on slashdot... I coincidentally saw a talk of his last week and gave him a brief lab tour. His own research is somewhat outside my area, but one of the most surprising things I recall from his talk is that marching locust swarms are apparently propelled by cannibalistic behavior. If I'm remembering correctly, baby locusts (before they've grown wings) in a region will feed in a pretty disorderly fashion. However, once salt and protein supplies start running low, they get hungry and start trying to eat each other. The researchers realized this when the locusts in their enclosure seemed to be mysteriously disappearing at a steady rate, due to being consumed by their peers. ;)
In any case, once they start eating each other, the locusts start trying to chase the locusts in front of them, while simultaneously avoiding the locusts behind them trying to eat them. The emergent behavior is that the entire swarm moves as a mass until a new area is found where salt and protein supplies are plentiful enough to cause them to switch out of cannibalism-mode. This presumably has a number of ramification on how to control migration of locust swarms, which are an immense destroyer of food resources in the developing world.
The promise of tax cuts??
Sorry, initial reaction over, back to RTFA.
.
I would like to welcome Slashdot to 1986.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
See the swarm
.
Such is life. John Conway's game of life, that is. And it's been around a lot longer than this rebranded form of cellular automaton called "Swarm Theory" has. Note that Conway also worked at Princeton. Small world, and smaller attribution.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
I didn't RTFA, but I wonder if the guy's work is related to an old artificial life simulation called Boids. The developer of Boids was able to model the flocking behavior of birds by formulating some relatively simple rules. When I first learned about the program, it sounded really neat, and according to Wikipedia it's still used in computer graphics to model flocking behavior.
and that just a few leaders can guide a swarm effectively by creating a bias in the swarm's movement that steers it in a particular direction.
In human populations, we call those marketers.
"Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore, it's always too crowded."
-Yogi Berra
in b4 "what the hell is this", -1 Offtopic, etc. =)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
How the HECK is this news? This is like saying, "researchers believe a collection of simulated neurons to form a virtual neuron network can be used to solve complex problems" NO SHIT! Neural networks have been around since ages and ages and so has this idea of swarm behavior.
This guy should get together with Mr. Wolfram. It sounds like these ideas overlap a lot with the stuff in his (highly recommded) "A New Kind of Science": http://www.wolframscience.com/
11*43+456^2
Isn't this 'boids' again?
http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/
Or perhaps artists...
Imagine that at any given moment, each element of the swarm has:
1) A "desire" to behave in a unique way, with some probability;
2) The ability to persuade some number of nearby elements to follow it, also with a probability.
Might be an interesting simulation problem. The hypothetical link with reality is analogous to human societies; some the desire and persuasive power (and are therefore opinion leaders). And at various times in history, such people have moved entire societies in unexpected directions.
Programs running on humans = religion Hackers = L. Ron Hubbard, Paul of Tarsus, King Josiah, etc.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
I welcome our Next Tenants... whatever.
Think of ourselves as a well succeeded cluster of cells. Think of the cell as a collection of proto-organisms.
We are an undefined life form. Trying to get out of the shell.
Mankind, shoal. Swarm, individual.
Collective consciousness is far beyond particular will.
Me and the swarm of my neurotic friends form a collective brain, it suffers from multiple split personalities
rules of the swarm applies to more than just simple creatures. it probably can be used to study our society, mass hysteria, war, religion.....
Bah! Kids these days!
Although some of the concepts in TFA are interesting, it is certainly building on ideas that have passed before it.
Much work has been done on emergent behaviour in aggregates of simple organisms, for example the early work of Craig Reynolds is a pivotal paper in this area and widely regarded as a key work in this area. When you might ask? 1987 of course. Bonus points that it was done in LISP. (ObXkcd link).
Am I the only one here for whom the word "swarm" has lost all meaning and become a mere phoneme after reading that summary?
TFA was very cool though. I'd love to watch a video on this.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
...cranium rats!
I for one welcome our new insect overlords, and I would like them to know, as a respected TV presenter, that I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
Wherever you go There you are
It's a beowulf cluster!
Currently, Physics Today has an article about the swarming of birds. The studies from the group in Rome are expected to complement current models since currently there is little experimental evidence to back up the models. Using several cameras they take time-lapse pictures of the swarms and then reconstruct the complex trajectories on the computer (a tour de force...).
Are you BORED with just following the SWARM? Do you lay AWAKE at night and WONDER how marketers CONTROL the SWARMS? Do you THINK they have a SPECIAL TALENT? THINK again! You TOO can hone your SUPER SWARM CONTROL skills to PERFECTION by playing LIQUIDWAR for up to THREE hours every night! That's what the BEST marketers do SEVEN days a week! THAT'S RIGHT! You can do it TOO! But DON'T SEND ANY MONEY! We won't bill you! That's right! We won't bill you! Follow this website to LIQUIDWAR RIGHT NOW or just apt-get liquidwar from a trained Debian operators' nearest server! And JOIN the SWARM of LIQUIDWAR players! You WON'T REGRET it!
Stanisaw Lem - The Invicible
My whole being exists in a formless void.
Meccano construction kit kills family, city, country. Government somewhat concerned.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
If we are, this research sure isn't going to help. The same observations could be made by watching any given swarm for about 2 minutes.
the other interesting result is, that the next state of the swarm can depend on states in the past, this leads to spatial memory effect.
I wonder if Hari Seldon predicted this?
Yeah I remember those good old days playing till 4 in the morning, with friends and pizza by my side, wondering how many more flint stones I could use up to ignite the molotove cocktails we had inside the dungeon to disperse the swarms of insects....woot, woot, if only they had played a bit
of D&D with us, they could have figured this out at least 10 years before, and with alot less damage to their budget (roll for initiative...)
Seriously , I wonder how many more interesting facts that D&D could bring up based on the role play and imagination of kids to figure out compulsory behavior in individuals or swarms for that matter...
Speak for yourself, bubba.
Do ants have philosophical debates about ethics? Where's the ants' Bhagavad Gita? The fact that we're discussing "free will" should tell you something...
Sorry but that comment actually says more about how (some) people value "smartness" than anything else. There's more to humans than just our mechanics and organization.
Disney developed swarming algorithms to draw stampeding herds in the Lion King and used it many times since. Others used this for the rash of "bug" movies in the late 1990s and for human crowd scenes, e.g. Massive armies in Lord of the Rings.
It's about time! I shore du miss goatse.x
Rule #1: Do not talk about the swarm.
Rule #2: Do not talk about the swarm.
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
My inner swarm can beat your inner swarm with one swarm tied behind its back. ;)
On a geekier note, how "free" are Lucas's Jedi? Does consciousness and direction of your inner swarm make you more free? (oops, slight brain-lock there.) Does true freedom from the swarm mean death, or just loneliness?
...back to work...
Marvin Minsky made this statement in a much stronger form in the book The Society of Mind, published in 1985 or 1986.
I had forgotten how much cooler teenagers look when they are smoking. Oh, wait
Politicians.
This is one element of the fascinating SF book, Lady of Mazes.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You know, this sounds an awful lot like the book Prey by Michael Crichton.
Oh, for the days when sig's didn't have to be cute...hey, wait a sec.
1. Have beehives.
2. Have strange space meteorite land next to them.
3. ?????
4. SWAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRM!
5. ?????
6. Profit!
More to the point would be Michael Chrichton's "Swarm". That might have something to do with this news article.
Also, on the lines of another thread up here... the Republicans.
I don't think this says so much about the republican party, as it says something about the validity of democracy as a basis for government. Not that I think a tyrant is any more valid -- I just sometimes don't see a difference between a tyrant who rules by force, and a tyrant who persuades tons of people to vote for him (via swarm behavior) and then rules by force.
However, I for one will be the first to recognize our new democratic republic overlords...
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
I do research on the business applications of swarm intelligence and its philosophical and managerial implications for organisational behaviour. Practically, swarm intelligence can help your business make millions, including savings. Using swarm algorithms you can actually find the best ways to route cargo, etc. But there is more in the swarm story... If in the future humans learn how to swarm effectivelly, the new business organisations that will arise then will resemble more the current free software communities than the hierarchical bureaucratic monsters we know today. It is my belief that CEOs must be informed on the latest developments in swarm intelligence and apply it in their businesses, otherwise they aren't good CEOs.
By way of the westernized understanding of "chi" that takes it from being somewhat vauge and meaningless to being entirely so? Sure. Beyond that? No.
I just had the epiphany(i learned that word online)about how scary smart people are becoming.
,no matter who you blame,you can't blame the crumbling of our society and social structure.(actually you could but you choose not too,your choice)
look at the fortune on the bottom of the page.
For some reason this fortune reminds you of marvin someone.
Yes it does because you just said his name.
This article doesn't reveal shit.
I thought I was pretty good at anticipating thoughts .
You know where a good place to study is,chatrooms.
the ideas just keep swayin around.
I don't mind if they want to study us like bugs.
What bothers me is when they infect our society to manipulate us.
if I say the word "fire" online I'm obviously now responsible for all the destruction caused by phenomenom of fire and therefore I must never speak it.
Maybe the four legged creatures are just so smart in maintaining ignorance that we can't understand.
Most people online are so oblivious that their brains are connected to these machines.
It does kind of bother me that the kids are so innocent and naive.
But remember