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:
[hidden email] [mailto:
[hidden email]] 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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