Facinating article about the nature of living swarms.
Intestinal fluids
13-11-2007, 14:56
Well, we need something to fight about cause i know you wont just read this to just learn something cool so...are you Pro or Anti swarm? Discuss. www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html?_r=1&ex=1352696400&en=0693ae5413eb2a67&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&oref=slogin
Swarms of locusts ate my baby!
Intestinal fluids
13-11-2007, 15:01
I thought the human experiments on how we tend to swarm was interesting as well. Might help explain a few elections :) And i also learned that apparently Mormon crickets have a nightmare life. “All these crickets are on a forced march,” Dr. Couzin said. “They’re trying to attack the crickets who are ahead, and they’re trying to avoid being eaten from behind.”
Curious Inquiry
13-11-2007, 15:09
There should be a poll, so we can vote for/against swarm. Isn't Swarm a McFarlane comic?
Kamsaki-Myu
13-11-2007, 15:34
Well, we need something to fight about cause i know you wont just read this to just learn something cool so...are you Pro or Anti swarm? Discuss. www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/science/13traff.html?_r=1&ex=1352696400&en=0693ae5413eb2a67&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&oref=slogin
I've been talking about complex systems theory as applied to biology to years, so I'd be a proponent of the idea, but I don't think I'm actually in favour of the particular act of swarming or against it. It depends on the context.
Korarchaeota
13-11-2007, 16:58
There was an article about this in National Geographic a few months back, too. http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0707/feature5/
The really interesting part of it is how we can/if we can apply some of the resulting analyses to other complex systems of behavior.
UNIverseVERSE
13-11-2007, 18:23
Hofstadter was writing about stuff like this in Godel Escher Bach. Still pretty cool to see it experimentally confirmed in such a way though.
He also thought that human thought might be the result of applying similar rules to neurons, and the patterns that result are thoughts. Very interesting ideas in there.
Deus Malum
13-11-2007, 19:29
Hofstadter was writing about stuff like this in Godel Escher Bach. Still pretty cool to see it experimentally confirmed in such a way though.
He also thought that human thought might be the result of applying similar rules to neurons, and the patterns that result are thoughts. Very interesting ideas in there.
That's actually an avenue of research into Artificial Intelligence.
If you can statistically model a human brain as a function of largely randomly firing neurons generating emerging patterns, you can apply this model to an artificially constructed brain to, ideally, gain the same effect.
UNIverseVERSE
13-11-2007, 20:12
That's actually an avenue of research into Artificial Intelligence.
If you can statistically model a human brain as a function of largely randomly firing neurons generating emerging patterns, you can apply this model to an artificially constructed brain to, ideally, gain the same effect.
Yes, the AI links were the reason it was included. It struck me as remarkably simple and sensible when I read it, and since then I've generally considered the way forward for AI to be in working out how to make behaviour arise out of lots of simple objects affecting each other, than by trying to code in 'fuzzy logic' or anything of the sort.