[FRIAM] Ants and Bees, Oh My.

[steve smith]

Pamela/Nick/Robert/Josh/PeterMiller/ChrisLangton/ThomasHobbes...

I don't know when it was first noticed that human behaviour, could be 
understood collectively by analogy with living organisms.   My earliest 
reference is Hobbes' Leviathan where he described human societies (or 
all of human society) as a single organism.   Surely there are earlier 
references and few intermediate ones before the Cellular Automata work 
of John Von Neumann, of the work exhibited at Evolution, Games and 
Learning (82?) and the ensuing ALife conferences... 


In many situations, an apt meta-organism to use for the analogy is a 
hive creature.  I cannot drive past a housing development, apartment 
building or skyscraper being built without thinking "Termite Mound".   I 
cannot sit and watch evening rush-hour traffic in a megalopolis 
(especially at dusk when the individual cars are visible but are most 
notably visible by their head and tail lights and blinking turns and 
propogating braking lights) without thinking of ants.    Similarly, I 
cannot watch industrial processes (factory lines, shipping containers 
being brought in by ship, unloaded, moved by rail, then by truck, etc.) 
without thinking of ants or bees.   I cannot watch pedestrians in a big 
city, especially at the nominal noon hour rushing off to errands and/or 
a quick meal or 2 martini lunch without seeing a hive.

Part of this may simply be bacause I saw none of these human activities 
until I was a teenager and even then only briefly.   The target domain 
of my most common metaphor (hive) for understanding large-scale 
collective human behaviour was the ant-hills, bee-hives, termite-mounds, 
hornets nests, prarie-dog colonies,  bird-flocks, were what I was most 
familiar with, long before I ever saw enough humans in one place to 
notice the similarities.

As a child I had occasionally seen pack and herd (and flock and colongy) 
behaviour in humans... a group of cowboys going out to round up some 
cattle (pack) or my schoolmates marching from one classroom to another 
(herd) or playing on the playground (pack or flock, or school) or large 
groups of relative (to me) strangers attending the county rodeo and fair 
(herd, pack, flock, colony).  

I an not an anthropologist or evolutionary biologist or ??? enough to 
say what our primate ancestors were collectively, though I think the 
term Tribe is used often and seems to have aspects of both pack and 
herd.   Later, nomadic humans who lived with herd animals very likely 
learned some of their own social and cultural patterns from the herds 
they followed or kept.   Similarly, groups who lived primarily as hunter 
gatherers very likely were more informed by the pack-like  or pride-like 
patterns of their close competitors (canine and feline groups?)  I don't 
know if there are many human groups who had enough close engagement with 
birds and fish to learn/adopt flock or school like patterns, but we do 
sometimes see those patterns in human collective activities.  I suspect 
this is "emergent" rather than learned.

As we began to become agricultural, it seems like we started down the 
path toward hive.   Packs and herds (in a different way) have their own 
territorial ways of being but the hive is naturally rooted at a location 
and it's entire existence is virtually dependent on owning/dominating 
that location.   Ants are known to have "aphid ranches" and it is not 
very long of a stretch to see the pollinization of flowers by bees (and 
other pollenizers) as a proto-farming...

Our formation of city-states, then nation-states, corporations, 
mega-nationals, etc.   all have deep hive-like patterns, in my informal 
observation.   As we developed language, money, iconic religion, legal 
systems, advertising, etc.   We paralleled the pheremonal and other 
types of signalling and behaviour response in hive creatures.

Rather than focus on a direct link from hive-like behaviours to 
evolutionary benefit, I wonder if we would not do well to hypothesize a 
much more complex set of abstractions for humans than for say bees or 
ants which yield some fundamentally similar patterns?

When dealing with economists, political scientists, and worst of all 
Ad-men (and women) I get the impression that they all *want* us to be as 
simple as ants and bees and do all that they can to keep us operating in 
regimes where we are as predictable and directable as hive creatures.  

I'm not sure there is a spectrum from idealized, individualistic 
motivation and behaviour (say that assumed by anarchists like myself) to 
slightly more idealized collective, but still primarily individualistic 
(say that of libertarians), to somewhat more idealized collective, but 
still motivated by self interest (say that of the 
democratic/free-marketeers), to the significantly more collective 
(socialist/communist) to the downright built-on-the-hive model 
idealization (fascists), but it sure feels like it sometimes!  

Our employers/religious leaders/politicians/marketeers seem to prefer us 
as hive-creatures... highly productive and easily manipulable through 
simple signals (based in the primitive needs of hunger, fear, 
reproductive drive).  Others aspiring to power (aggregated through our 
collective behaviour) but needing us to be more herdlike and packlike 
might be leaders of aspiring gangs, parties, companies, fads , etc...  
who will curry our individualistic tendencies to break us out of the 
trances we are held in by the various cults of politics (Green herds vs 
the Red/Blue cult-hives), religion (evangelical movements to 
disrupt/unseat their parent-cult religions), techno (say Torvalds vs 
Jobs vs Gates), etc.

We poor little individual creatures, so deeply laced with neurochemical 
responses, so highly charged with fear, greed, lust, so heavily steeped 
in religion, politics, socio-economics (as deep as our culture, our 
ethnic-identity usually) and then so full of our own self-image as 
individualistic, highly-evolved, thinking, acting beings.   It is 
fascinating and instructive to watch us and our collective behaviour 
emerging on top of all that as we imagine we are being radical or 
individualistic, striking out in new directions!

Is it possible that both can be true and that perhaps that is what makes 
us such a *potent* species?  We may be so potent as to truly destroy a 
good portion of the biosphere... and it may be because we can respond to 
so many different collective modalities... that within one individual 
there can (perhaps) be the latent ability to self-organize with others 
in so many different ways... that we don't need to wait for *genetic* 
evolution for us to find a new way to organize, try it out, destroy 
another culture or half the planet, then either collapse under our own 
nonsense or transcend the "worst" of that modality and push our 
*potency* down from active to potential...

The good work in the past decade++ in understanding the 
structure/function in complex networked systems seems to be a good start 
toward (maybe) understanding our collective behaviour and it's potential 
for not having to be so (self) destructive.  

Sorry for the long rave... for anyone who made it through this, I'd be 
interested in your ideas/responses.

- Steve


> Thanks, Nick.   In one of his books about warcraft (I forget which) 
> Paul Fussell begins by saying we train young men to be warriors not 
> because that's when they're at their physical peak, but that's when 
> they're most easily molded into groups.  It won't work later.  (When 
> he was writing we were only training young men to be warriors.)
>
>
>
>
> On Jul 7, 2007, at 10:24 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
>> Dear Robert, 
>>
>> Pulling my self up to my full height as an evolutionary psychologist, I
>> assert that:
>>
>> 1.  Things arent so clear about the bees and ants.  In the first place
>> female bees can mate with more than one male;  if they mate with more 
>> that
>> two, then the workers in a hive are LESS closely related than mammalian
>> siblings.  
>>
>> 2. Things arent so clear about the principles underlying group action and
>> self sacrifice.  Relatedness is one of THREE accepted principles, one 
>> other
>> being reciprocal altruism, the other being group selection.  Much of 
>> human
>> behavior seems group seleected and the historical circumstances of human
>> evolution -- extreme unpredictibility in the environment -- would 
>> pull for
>> group selection.  
>>
>> 3.  What appears to be true is that human beings are constantly 
>> balanced on
>> the tipping point from individual directed to group directed action.  For
>> this reason, it is imperative that we think carefully about the 
>> conditions
>> we put people under.  Environmental conditions can trigger 
>> adolescents into
>> group directed behavior (gang formation, etc.) and indiviidual directed
>> behavior (preparing for medical school).  What cues we give our kids 
>> about
>> the nature of the world they are entering and its contingencies may be
>> crucial. 
>>
>> Now I will deflate myself. 
>>
>> thank you for your patience. 
>>
>> Nick 
>>
>>
>>>
>>>    1. Re: Swarm Intelligence in National Geographic (Robert Howard)
>>>
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 1
>>> Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 10:16:42 -0700
>>> From: "Robert Howard" <rob at symmetricobjects.com 
>>> <mailto:rob at symmetricobjects.com>>
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Swarm Intelligence in National Geographic
>>> To: "'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group'"
>>> <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>>> Message-ID: <001301c7bff1$6c3f2690$7401a8c0 at Core2Duo>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>>>
>>> I'm suspicious of the ant and bee analogy for humans. It should (and 
>>> does)
>>> work for routing trucks and autonomous supply chain; but humans?
>>>
>>> Here's my hypothesis. With ants and bees, we expect a random 
>>> individual to
>>> be a female. In fact, only the queen and a few male drones 
>>> reproduce. The
>>> rest exists to propagate the genes of these few elite siblings.
>>>
>>> I see no evolutionary benefit for any ordinary female to "defect" 
>>> from the
>>> collective.
>>>
>>> An ordinary ant has everything to gain from laying down its life for the
>>> queen.
>>>
>>> This is not the case with humans, which is why we observe 
>>> non-ant-and-bee
>>> things like revolts, revolutions, and certain extreme command-structured
>>> governments respond by punishing the children of their subjects for
>> actions
>>> of dissent.
>>>
>>> With humans (and caribou), we expect a random individual to 
>>> participate in
>>> natural selection for the genes that each carry individually.
>>>
>>> When individuals propagate their own genes, predator/prey dynamics 
>>> evolve
>>> within the species; unlike ants and bees.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Robert Howard
>>> Phoenix, Arizona
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   _____  
>>>
>>> From: friam-bounces at redfish.com [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On
>> Behalf
>>> Of Joshua Thorp
>>> Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 8:53 PM
>>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Swarm Intelligence in National Geographic
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Interesting article in National Geographic:
>>>
>>> http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0707/feature5/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> From slashdot with interesting commentary:
>>>
>>> http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/07/07/05/1244224.shtml
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --joshua
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>>
>>> Joshua Thorp
>>>
>>> Redfish Group
>>>
>>> 624 Agua Fria, Santa Fe, NM
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 2
>>> Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 11:30:38 -0600
>>> From: "Bruce Abell" <bruceabe at gmail.com <mailto:bruceabe at gmail.com>>
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Anyone want an older OK computer? Free
>>> To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
>>> Message-ID:
>>> <e89a6f6e0707061030k3a66ce6ap344d890c8ef51e95 at mail.gmail.com 
>>> <mailto:e89a6f6e0707061030k3a66ce6ap344d890c8ef51e95 at mail.gmail.com>>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>>
>>> FRIAMers--
>>>
>>> I've kept my older desktop computer for a spare and thought I might 
>>> use it
>>> to experiment with a different operating system.  But now it has 
>>> become a
>>> back-up spare with the acquisition of yet another one, so I've got 
>>> to find
>>> it a new home or bury it.
>>>
>>> Free.  Just pick it up and pretend it will have a good home.  It works
>>> fine.  I wrote a nice book on it.
>>>
>>> HP Pavilion 6630
>>> Celeron 500 MHz
>>> Win 98 SE
>>> 192 Meg Ram
>>> 10 Gig HD
>>> Ethernet card
>>> Modem
>>> CD R/W drive
>>> Floppy drive
>>> 17-inch CRT monitor--a monster, but it still displays pretty well.  
>>> No one
>>> can take the computer without taking the monitor!
>>> Manuals, OS, etc.
>>>
>>> Send me an e-mail if you're interested.
>>>
>>> --Bruce Abell
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Bruce Abell
>>> 7 Morning Glory
>>> Santa Fe, NM  87506
>>> Tel: 505 986 9039
>>> -------------- next part --------------
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>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 3
>>> Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:59:31 -0400
>>> From: "Stephen Guerin" <Stephen.Guerin at redfish.com 
>>> <mailto:Stephen.Guerin at redfish.com>>
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] Whitfield's PLOS article mentioning Eric Smith and
>>> Dewar
>>> To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>
>>> Message-ID: <E1I6t1f-0000ar-VI at madrid.hostgo.com 
>>> <mailto:E1I6t1f-0000ar-VI at madrid.hostgo.com>>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>>>
>>> Whitfield's PLOS article mentioning Eric Smith and Roderick Dewar's 
>>> work.
>>>
>>> http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-
>>> document&doi=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0050142
>>>
>>> I'm now reading Whitfield's book, "In the Beat of a Heart: Life, 
>>> Energy, and the Unity of Nature" (www.inthebeatofaheart.com 
>>> <http://www.inthebeatofaheart.com>), but it 
>>> appears so far to be much more focused on quarter-power scaling than 
>>> maximum entropy production...
>>>
>>> -S
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 4
>>> Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 16:30:13 -0600
>>> From: "Tom Johnson" <tom at jtjohnson.com <mailto:tom at jtjohnson.com>>
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Anyone want an older OK computer? Free
>>> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group"
>>> <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>>> Message-ID:
>>> <e04090490707061530i53d6dd5cqcd762c169c5c370c at mail.gmail.com 
>>> <mailto:e04090490707061530i53d6dd5cqcd762c169c5c370c at mail.gmail.com>>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>>
>>> Bruce:
>>>
>>> If you don't get any takers, you might try Craig's List.  It has a 
>>> "free"
>>> section.
>>> http://santafe.craigslist.org/zip/
>>>
>>> -tj
>>>
>>> On 7/6/07, Bruce Abell <bruceabe at gmail.com 
>>> <mailto:bruceabe at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> FRIAMers--
>>>>
>>>> I've kept my older desktop computer for a spare and thought I might use
>> it
>>>> to experiment with a different operating system.  But now it has become
>> a
>>>> back-up spare with the acquisition of yet another one, so I've got to
>> find
>>>> it a new home or bury it.
>>>>
>>>> Free.  Just pick it up and pretend it will have a good home.  It works
>>>> fine.  I wrote a nice book on it.
>>>>
>>>> HP Pavilion 6630
>>>> Celeron 500 MHz
>>>> Win 98 SE
>>>> 192 Meg Ram
>>>> 10 Gig HD
>>>> Ethernet card
>>>> Modem
>>>> CD R/W drive
>>>> Floppy drive
>>>> 17-inch CRT monitor--a monster, but it still displays pretty well.  No
>> one
>>>> can take the computer without taking the monitor!
>>>> Manuals, OS, etc.
>>>>
>>>> Send me an e-mail if you're interested.
>>>>
>>>> --Bruce Abell
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Bruce Abell
>>>> 7 Morning Glory
>>>> Santa Fe, NM  87506
>>>> Tel: 505 986 9039
>>>>
>>>> ============================================================
>>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>>>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> ==========================================
>>> J. T. Johnson
>>> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
>>> www.analyticjournalism.com
>>> 505.577.6482(c)                                 505.473.9646(h)
>>> http://www.jtjohnson.com                 tom at jtjohnson.us 
>>> <mailto:tom at jtjohnson.us>
>>>
>>> "You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
>>> To change something, build a new model that makes the
>>> existing model obsolete."
>>>                                                    -- Buckminster Fuller
>>> ==========================================
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>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 5
>>> Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 16:02:50 -0700
>>> From: "Stephen Guerin" <stephen.guerin at redfish.com 
>>> <mailto:stephen.guerin at redfish.com>>
>>> Subject: [FRIAM] local boy makes good
>>> To: <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>>> Cc: 'Dan Kunkle' <dan at redfish.com <mailto:dan at redfish.com>>
>>> Message-ID: <016f01c7c021$c97e7470$6501a8c0 at hongyu>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>>>
>>> Just happened across this news tidbit:
>>> http://tinyurl.com/2b7ywl (Boston Globe)
>>> http://www.physorg.com/news99843195.html
>>> http://plus.maths.org/latestnews/may-aug07/rubik/index.html
>>>
>>> Cool work, Dan!!
>>>
>>> -S
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>
>>> Message: 6
>>> Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 19:59:30 -0400
>>> From: "Phil Henshaw" <sy at synapse9.com <mailto:sy at synapse9.com>>
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] JASSS (and despair)
>>> To: "'Robert Holmes'" <robert at holmesacosta.com 
>>> <mailto:robert at holmesacosta.com>>, "'The Friday Morning
>>> Applied Complexity Coffee Group'" <friam at redfish.com 
>>> <mailto:friam at redfish.com>>
>>> Message-ID: <002c01c7c029$b22bb730$6402a8c0 at SavyII>
>>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>>
>>> I somehow didn't send this to the forum before - and it needed an edit
>>> anyway
>>>
>>> ---------
>>> The ambiguity about whether computer models are thought to be exploring
>>> actual social systems or not is definitely all over the place in the
>>> journal, and not discussed.    That's what I usually take as a sign of
>>> confusion, so I'd have to tentatively conclude that the journal isn't
>>> concerned with the difference and assumes that their theories are the
>>> structures of human societies.   To check exactly what they say, in the
>>> banner of the journal for example, top of the front page, it says
>>> "JASSS....an inter-disciplinary journal for the exploration and
>>> understanding of social processes by means of computer simulation."
>>> That specifically says the exploring of the social system is done by
>>> computer, but maybe the mean that they'd study models of how they think
>>> real systems work to help them study what makes actual systems
>>> different.  That's my method, and could be what they mean to say.
>>>
>>> That view is also hinted at in the article on model realism, "How
>>> Realistic Should Knowledge Diffusion Models Be?" with the following
>>> abstract:
>>>
>>> Knowledge diffusion models typically involve two main features: an
>>> underlying social network topology on one side, and a particular design
>>> of interaction rules driving knowledge transmission on the other side.
>>> Acknowledging the need for realistic topologies and adoption behaviors
>>> backed by empirical measurements, it becomes unclear how accurately
>>> existing models render real-world phenomena: if indeed both topology and
>>> transmission mechanisms have a key impact on these phenomena, to which
>>> extent does the use of more or less stylized assumptions affect modeling
>>> results? In order to evaluate various classical topologies and
>>> mechanisms, we push the comparison to more empirical benchmarks:
>>> real-world network structures and empirically measured mechanisms.
>>> Special attention is paid to appraising the discrepancy between
>>> diffusion phenomena (i) on some real network topologies vs. various
>>> kinds of scale-free networks, and (ii) using an empirically-measured
>>> transmission mechanism, compared with canonical appropriate models such
>>> as threshold models. We find very sensible differences between the more
>>> realistic settings and their traditional stylized counterparts. On the
>>> whole, our point is thus also epistemological by insisting that models
>>> should be tested against simulation-based empirical benchmarks. 
>>>
>>> Here again I find confusion, though, in terms of clear ambiguities not
>>> discussed.    It appears that the 'real world phenomena' are equated
>>> with general statistical measures in terms of 'benchmarks' rather than
>>> behaviors, and these may be "simulation-based empirical benchmarks".
>>> It's like the analysis of that plankton evolution data I studied, where
>>> the complex eruptions of developmental processes in the evolutionary
>>> succession I uncovered were for many years firmly defended as definite
>>> random walks because the statistical benchmark for their range of
>>> fluctuation was within the range reasonably likely for random walks.
>>> Benchmarks,  are sometimes very useful for actual diffusion processes,
>>> of course, and much has been learned with them.   What they are most
>>> definitely misleading for is as indicators of complex system design
>>> (lacking the 'requisite variety' I guess you'd say), and for any
>>> behavior that is pathway dependent.   The whole field of systems and
>>> complexity is really supposed to be about building knowledge of the
>>> pathway dependent properties of nature.   These authors clearly are not
>>> asking about that, so I guess I'd have to agree with you that the
>>> journal is unaware of the difference.
>>>
>>> Is knowledge 'diffusion' pathway dependent?   You bet.   So I guess the
>>> subject it not a 'diffusion' process at all, but a development process,
>>> and nearly any kind of 'benchmarks' will be reliably misleading.    
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>> 680 Ft. Washington Ave 
>>> NY NY 10040                       
>>> tel: 212-795-4844                 
>>> e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com <mailto:pfh at synapse9.com>          
>>> explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/>     
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: rholmes62 at gmail.com [mailto:rholmes62 at gmail.com] On Behalf Of
>>> Robert Holmes
>>> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 8:06 AM
>>> To: sy at synapse9.com <mailto:sy at synapse9.com>; The Friday Morning 
>>> Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] JASSS (and despair)
>>>
>>>
>>> Read the articles and tell me what you think. But I believe the answer
>>> to your last question is "No".
>>>
>>> Robert
>>>
>>>
>>> On 7/3/07, Phil Henshaw < sy at synapse9.com <mailto:sy at synapse9.com>> 
>>> wrote: 
>>>
>>> The task of associating abstract and real things is rather complicated,
>>> and often made more so by using the same names for them, so it appears
>>> that when you're referring to a physical system you're discussing
>>> entirely some network of abstract rules, for example.    Even though you
>>> say the article refers to physical systems, is it possible they just
>>> switch back and forth between ways of referring to things, while being
>>> consistent with an 'information world' model they assume everyone
>>> understands to be the baseline of abstract discussion?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Friam mailing list
>>> Friam at redfish.com <mailto:Friam at redfish.com>
>>> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>>
>>>
>>> End of Friam Digest, Vol 49, Issue 6
>>> ************************************
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>
> "One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, 
> because religion makes men virtuous.  So I am told; I have not noticed 
> it."
>
> Bertrand Russell
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org