[FRIAM] Swarms vs. herds

[Ron Newman]

Nick,
Yes, quick-and-dirty mob decision-making.

I'm interested in what the article described as everyone-at-once weighing
in on opinions.  And I don't see why they require AI - which is in essence
just pattern matching.  It sounds to me like what they're doing in
imitation of bees is a multi-pass compiler, just calculating weights of
opinions and iterating over and over.

I'm thinking about other ways this real-time iterative compilation of
opinion can be done.  Paul Paulus at has come up with an elegant, no-tech
solution called Brainwriting
<https://www.inc.com/magazine/20031001/strategies.html>.  Iterating that
quickly could be one way.

Norman Johnson (is he on this list?) has done a lot of work in how swarm/
Collective Intelligence systems solve for resiliency of the system as a
whole, and how "noise" is necessary to move out of well-worn local minima
in the solution space.  I'm hoping that Trump is just such a helpful noise,
inadvertently solving for eventual resiliency.


Ron Newman, M.S., M.M.E.
Founder, IdeaTreeLive.com <https://www.Ideatreelive.com> Knowledge Modeling
www.RonPiano.com
Blog <https://blog.ideatreelive.com>






On Sat, Dec 7, 2019 at 12:50 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ron,
>
>
>
> Thanks for this.  The idea that the delegation of individual choice to
> “leaders” that occurs in mobs is  a concession to the need for rapid
> concerted action in the face of an incalculable emergency is an important
> one to me.  It’s reminiscent of sexual behavior in which the interests of
> the entire body are temporarily put into the contr
>
> .
>
>
>
>
>
> ol of a very small part of it
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> I love the idea that a swarm of bees is just a bunch of bees going off to
> a quiet place to have a think.   For a fascinating rumination on mob
> behavior please see Among the Thugs.
> <https://www.amazon.com/Among-Thugs-Bill-Buford/dp/0679745351>
>
>
>
> Although I have made it (See attached) I have never been entirely
> comfortable with argument that in an emergency a bad decision be made
> quickly is preferable to no decision.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nick Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Ron Newman
> *Sent:* Saturday, December 7, 2019 9:27 AM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* [FRIAM] Swarms vs. herds
>
>
>
> Interesting take on swarms vs. herds:
>
>
>
> "So in nature it’s interesting to see these different behaviors appear in
> other organisms. You know, in a prey organism where a herd could make bad
> decisions but what’s more important is it can make a kneejerk reaction and
> escape because they’re prey, you could end up with a mob mentality
> emerging. In a swarm, like bee swarms, where what’s more important is
> thoughtful deliberation, the process is parallel rather than serial and you
> end up with a group that can make, I would say, an enlightened decision
> that’s better than the individuals would have made because they have the
> luxury of time to make that decision...
>
>
>
>  And because elections are done by polls rather than swarms, what an
> election will do is it will have the most popular choice emerge that’s not
> necessarily the choice that would maximize the satisfaction of a
> population...
>
> And so this idea of we/us humans make decisions through polling, and it’s
> in a lot of ways far less evolved than the way that birds and bees and fish
> make decisions, which is through swarming. And a swarm will actually find
> that decision that really is the thing that reflects the combined sentiment
> of the population, whereas a poll is such an over-simplification, it’s
> really just what happens to be the largest plurality, but very often that’s
> very far from the answer that actually is the combined sentiment of a
> population."
>
>
>
> full article:
> https://voicesinai.com/episode/episode-61-a-conversation-with-dr-louis-rosenberg/
>
>
>
> My take on it:  https://blog.ideatreelive.com/on-the-importance-of-idiots/
>
>
>
>
> Ron Newman, M.S., M.M.E.
>
> Founder, IdeaTreeLive.com <https://www.Ideatreelive.com> Knowledge
> Modeling
>
> www.RonPiano.com
>
> Blog <https://blog.ideatreelive.com>
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20191207/320e6941/attachment.html>