Agent Based Modeling and Biomimicry
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Agent Based Modeling and Biomimicry
 
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I have
noticed that often more men are interested in Agent Based Modeling than women
while more women are interested in Biomimicry than men. I am wondering why
this is? I would like to put out this question to others. Both ABM
and Biomimicry have much to offer. To me Agent Based Modeling takes a very
distant view of dynamic processes, like a five mile high view. This allows a
broader view and greater scope. Individual behavior becomes a matter of probabilities.
Biomimicry on the other hand is a whole mind body empathic, sympathic,
compathic relationship with living beings as species and individuals. By
copying or mimicking living beings, probabilities are not required because
copying existing life behavior and physical properties is highly specific in
design. While vast, the number of possible design solutions is bounded by what
can live. What can live also contains an ethical dimension that grounds and
precepts possibilities. In Agent Based Modeling the death of individuals or
groups is abstracted to be expressed as parameters emerge and recede within the
model. To a large extent, in Biomimicry the death of a species or individual
life is the ultimate determinant of which biological qualities to mimic. I sense
that the Agent Based Modeling approach with its roots in western mathematics
carries forward some of the difficulties and even cul de sacs of western
intellectual life and philosophy. Like imposing platonic solid forms on the
world, there are important similarities that are revealed—a common
language developed for qualities of the physical world. But no individual
contains or expresses these qualities except in often large and varying degrees
of approximation. It can be said that these entities like
platonic solids and other mathematical systems such as Agent
Based Modeling are not alive nor more importantly cannot live.
Of course to this extent they cannot die either which has its benefits. It seems
to me that we need a deeper integration of approaches that are outside the
body but return to reside in the living and in the living body. I would
like to propose a SapphoSocratic approach. But I will leave this for another
message since this one has become rather long already. Ann Racuya-Robbins Founder and CEO World Knowledge Bank® https://www.wkbank.com/knowledge/Agent_Based_Modeling_and_Biomimicry ============================================================ 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 |
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Good questions
Maybe the dreaded left brain right brain synopsis, men being predominantly on the left with la femme on the right As our technology industry is moving more and more to conceptual right brained thinking this is becoming a huge challenge, dare one say " male right brain blindness ' We are using parametric technology that uses reams of feedback from the REAL world in order to visualize " what REALLY is " and major road blocks we see are the individuals sitting on the safe side of the monitor very comfortable in the abstract world forgetting completely that its only a REPRESENTATION of a REAL world. Architects sans Calatrava and Gehry love this void space with the disastrous consequences we see daily Biomimicry as you so rightly identified is closely in tune with natural senses and indeed is impossible to understand unless these same senses are WIDE open and avatar or agent just doesn't get you there ( I haven't seen Wal-E yet and will report back. ) The scariest representation, I have seen, re this issue is Bill McDonough's speech at TED on " How is is possible that engineers and designers could create efficient mass murder killing machines like concentration camps (invented by the British in the Boar war in South Africa ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwWWFQ2tiNY Simple they used abstract models and designs to distance themselves from the blood and gore, no doubt with Strauss resonating nicely in the background. Here is another info piece on the same issue with school designs http://www.ideapete.com/gwendolyn.htm This is the same subject that scared me regarding the comments at last Fridays lecture at SFI " Computational thinking means we do not have to worry about what is we can target whats desired and model that " Totally Orwellian There is an excellent book on this paradigm by a local SF ( Thats Santa Fe not science fiction although we who live here often get confused ) author George Johnson called Fire in the Mind http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Mind-Science-Faith-Search/dp/067974021X with the brilliant LANL scientists charging ahead with the left agent brain and the local Indians perfectly content in the resonant harmonic mystical beliefs that touched their soul and how the scientists are stunned when they get to the quantum and nano level to find whose philosophy REALLY works Cannot wait for Ann's SapphoSocratic sequel, keep it rolling ( : ( : pete
============================================================ 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 |
Re: Agent Based Modeling and Biomimicry
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peter wrote:
> This is the same subject that scared me regarding the comments at last > Fridays lecture at SFI " Computational thinking means we do not have > to worry about what is we can target whats desired and model that " > Totally Orwellian This has been the appeal of programming to me since I was a child: If you can imagine it, you can make it. Orwellian is being told otherwise. ============================================================ 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 |
Re: Agent Based Modeling and Biomimicry
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In reply to this post by Ann Racuya-Robbins-2
Thank you for your email and
your generous offer. I have looked at Tim Weaver’s website http://primamateria.org/index.html and feel a kinship and resonance with his work. I would
be delighted to be a complementary speaker. It is because I think the
internet coupled with technological innovations and the human capacity for good
can change the world for the better that I have dedicated my life to doing what
I can to make sure systems using these capacities serves life to its fullest. After
spending a lifetime of studying, thinking and now my-shoulder-to-the-wheel putting
what I have learned and know to work in the creation a just system I call the
World Knowledge Bank®, I welcome each conversation as it arises. I don’t
mean to imply that I have all the answers but rather to declare openly and
unabashedly that our purpose, myself and the WKBank, is to create and help
others create a more just, humane and joyful world that values each and every
life, human and otherwise. A system that is dedicated to giving voice to the
voiceless that loves life and others’ lives as I love my own. I am prepared
learn, to sacrifice, to listen and to speak. I am not prepared to give up on
life on earth—each and every life. Crazy or not I think I have
found a solid, practical and joyful way to do this. I would like to give you a way to
measure the work of the WKBank, in addition to any other measure you would like
to use, to judge this work. “The way in which individual self interest
and the interests of others is bound together is at every level, a measure of
the strength, the integrity and the beauty of this work.” In turn I would like to invite
you and others who might be interested to join a discussion at the Mission Café,
Carolyn Stephenson proprietor, on the World Knowledge Bank® and in general “Freedom
and the Internet”, Saturday July 26th at 1pm. 239 E De Vargas
St, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (505) 983-3033, or 505-310-8950. Thank you again Steve, for your
generosity towards me. I know I will become a better communicator as I listen to
and learn from you and all at Friam and the Santa Fe Complex. Ann Racuya-Robbins Founder and CEO World Knowledge Bank® From: Steve Smith
[mailto:[hidden email]] Ann - I have
noticed that often more men are interested in Agent Based Modeling than women
while more women are interested in Biomimicry than men. I am wondering why
this is? I would like to put out this question to others. I have not noticed this myself, but this may be a deficiency in my
noticing/experience. For this conversation I will grant that your
observations may reflect the statistics accurately. I wonder if it is not
that more women are interested in B and more men in A, but rather that men are
*more interested* in A than in B and women more in B than in A? Both ABM
and Biomimicry have much to offer. To me Agent Based Modeling takes a very
distant view of dynamic processes, like a five mile high view. I would add that characterizing life (the universe and everything)
as a "dynamic process" is also a bit distant with ABMs being a
simplification beyond that of "dynamic process". This
allows a broader view and greater scope. Individual behavior becomes a matter
of probabilities. Biomimicry on the other hand is a whole mind body empathic,
sympathic, compathic relationship with living beings as species and
individuals. Unfortunately, much biomimickry is again low-fidelity.
Many ABMs are said to bio-mimicking... This is not to say
that the concept of biomimickry cannot be as rich as we choose to make it
(allow it?). By copying
or mimicking living beings, probabilities are not required because copying
existing life behavior and physical properties is highly specific in design.
While vast, the number of possible design solutions is bounded by what can
live. Certainly the biosphere (the one(s) we live in) is vast compared
to the engineered and even biomimicing technologies we have created ourselves
(in a hundred or even thousands of years). What can
live also contains an ethical dimension that grounds and precepts
possibilities. I'm not sure I know what you mean by ethical in this case? I
think of ethics as being a consequence of choice and that the world of
possibilities is much larger than what is "ethical". It is
possible that I can think of "ethics" as an organizing principle for
all-possibilities, but I have to admit to a bias from my culture that says some
(many) possibilities simply are "not ethical" in the sense of being
"unethical" and even more possibilities are somehow outside of the
bounds of ethics (neutral?). In Agent
Based Modeling the death of individuals or groups is abstracted to be expressed
as parameters emerge and recede within the model. To a large extent, in
Biomimicry the death of a species or individual life is the ultimate
determinant of which biological qualities to mimic. I'm not sure I see the distinction. I think of ABMs as
relatively simple computational structures which are most often used to embody
simple biomimetic models (or sociomimetic?). I sense
that the Agent Based Modeling approach with its roots in western mathematics
carries forward some of the difficulties and even cul de sacs of western
intellectual life and philosophy. I think of all computing models to be based in western mathematics
(and philosophy). Do you know of others? Like
imposing platonic solid forms on the world, there are important similarities
that are revealed—a common language developed for qualities of the
physical world. But no individual contains or expresses these qualities except
in often large and varying degrees of approximation. It can be said that
these entities like platonic solids and other mathematical systems
such as Agent Based Modeling are not alive nor more importantly cannot
live. Of course to this extent they cannot die either which has its
benefits. Yes, I think you have touched on the centrality of idealization...
it raises things to a plane of abstraction which often increases it's
utility/effectiveness though often at the cost of it's meaning/relevance... It seems
to me that we need a deeper integration of approaches that are outside the
body but return to reside in the living and in the living body. I work in Virtual Reality for this very reason. I believe
that the many things we have moved entirely into the plane of abstraction can
benefit from returning to the embodied experience... there are fundamental and
probably subtle risks in this concept... and I think maybe you are one of the
few in this mix able/willing to think deeply about such ideas without needing
to judge or jump to a conclusion (pro or con). I would
like to propose a SapphoSocratic approach. But I will leave this for another
message since this one has become rather long already. I will try to follow up on
this term... I can project into it all kinds of interpretations but I assume
there is a body of extant knowledge under that label and that your use of the
term is related to the same. ============================================================ 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 |
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