Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA27870 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 13 Aug 2001 15:42:50 +0100 Message-ID: <3B77C29B.234E569D@bioinf.man.ac.uk> Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 13:05:47 +0100 From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk> Organization: University of Manchester X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: Logic + universal evolution References: <3B732E54.31548.1291B56@localhost> <004a01c121cb$97351280$da86b2d1@teddace> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
TD:
Obviously. The question is how the birds manage to maintain the right
distance, particularly when the whole flock turns on a dime. Either the
brain is running an incredbly elaborate motion program or the flock is a
morphic field in which the birds are "particles." While the latter
possibility might strike you as being "weird," the former possibility
would
require neural computing processes unimaginably more powerful and rapid
than
anything humans have ever devised.
JD:
No, just rapid reaction time, and the reaction times of birds, like
their heartbeats, are a lot faster than ours, crerating the illusion
that they are all changing direction at the same time when actually
there is a small reaction time involved.
Have a look round for a boids variant (most have probably seen it
already): Simple sim of birds (from The Bronx I suppose) with a handful
of rules (stay a rough distance from your neighbour, etc.) and they do
most of the things all flocks do - it looks really organic, but needs no
'hand of god' style guiding force. Also I read somewhere (er...) that
the time the turning 'wave' takes to cross the flock is well within the
reaction time of the birds/fish etc. As for the intentionality of the
flock, just watch some crowd violence to see how these para-democratic
decisions are made.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chris Taylor (chris@bioinf.man.ac.uk)
http://bioinf.man.ac.uk/ »people»chris
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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