[FRIAM] stygmergy, CA's, and [biological] development

[Steve Smith]

I do like the *is*/*does* duality you present here.   I also am reminded 
of the "constraint provides form" truism as you discuss niche construction.

Stigmergy, for me, is the background fabric wherein "niche construction" 
is effected, though the "niche" is a higher order abstraction, that I 
*think* trying to use your well-crafted terminology here, an attempt to 
join or at least establish an interplay between is/does.

On 10/20/21 5:01 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
> I think we can distinguish questions in that way, if we think in terms of what we can *do* rather than thinking in terms of what things *are*. Marcus' point is well-received. There are plenty of things like Core Wars that differ from a typical (more purposefully engineered) thing. The distinction between good old fashioned games and hyper- or meta-games is another. Specific vs general intelligence is another. Discussion vs debate is another.
>
> So if we distinguish between niche construction and stigmergy, what can we *do* with that distinction? I'd argue that making stigmergy a compositional part of niche construction would allow us to ask "What non-niche-construction things can also be built from stigmergic systems?" I.e. can we build a system with shared memory and unbound (or schematically bound) manipulation of that memory that does not construct a niche?
>
> My (ignorant) conception of niche construction is that the "freedom" or diversity of the consequent is *different* from the "freedom" or diversity of the antecedent. I say different to avoid the controversy over whether it has to increase or decrease the options available. (And, tangentially, to allow for different types of difference, not more or less, but multiple types.) But niche seems to me to imply that the space of options/behaviors is constrained or limited in some way. So it seems the typical direction for the diversity would be more of it before, less of it after.
>
> But stigmergy seems *less* strict than niche construction. So, if we say that a niche is more constrained, and we can build a system (using stigmergy as a component) where the consequent is less constrained, then we've done a good job distinguishing stigmergy from niche construction, as part to whole.
>
> On 10/20/21 2:49 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
>> When I was a very very little kid, there was a “question” my parents pointed out to me, which they thought might be an important puzzle to work through, but they were busy enough holding life together (more or less like hoping they could keep the various dams from breaking from one day to the next) that they didn’t lose a lot of time on it.  That one was:
>>
>> “Is a tomato really a fruit or really a vegetable.”
>>
>> I wonder if we can give a name to the class of constructions that are of this general kind, and distinguish them from the class of constructions that are of some other kind.
>>
>> Eric
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Oct 19, 2021, at 11:34 PM, Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>>
>>>    I am in danger of confusing it with niche construction.  The concept offers an  alternative to Lamarckian mechanisms for an organism to direct its own evolution.  It's like the inheritance of acquired environments.  I think of it as including such phenomena as squirrels and jays putting acorns in the ground and thus providing an environment rich with food for the winter and also, perhaps, in the very long run, future oak trees.  In some sense, the environment that selects the organism is an environment that is selected by the organism.
>>>
>>> I think the word does have a use, but only if we distinguish between things left behind that positively affect  those that follow.  To my surprise, the word is apparently of recent origin having been specifically invented to apply to ant pheromone trails in the fifties.  So, I suppose we might narrow it's meaning to objects left to convey information and leave niche construction to apply to objects that provide shelter, nutrition or other benefits to  the finder, eg., acorns, beaver dams,