Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA05838 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 14 Aug 2001 15:02:07 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745FF8@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: Logic + universal evolution Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 14:45:22 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain X-Filter-Info: UoS MailScan 0.1 [D 1] Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
<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.>
>
When a human catches a ball in flight, they actually perform a
complex mathematical calculation that only a pretty good mathematician could
work out on paper. Yet children can catch balls in flight with no knowledge
of the complex maths involved. Indeed, brains operate complex mathemetical
operations all the time to control movements etc. Why's that a problem for
you that needs the MR macguffin? The whole flock appears to us to turn on a
dime. What actually happens is that the lead bird responds to conditions in
flight with a slight turn that resonates rapidly through the flock, bird by
bird, into what ends up looking like a massive sharp turn for the whole
flock. Each bird makes a relatively small turn in relation to the birds
near it. They are not calculating the movement of the entire flock, but
only their own movement in relation to the birds immediately around them
which doesn't require huge amounts of brain power, and can easliy be done by
lots of organisms.
In human society a similar kind of process, albeit kind of in
reverse, is evident in traffic. In heavy traffic, when cars travel too
closely together jams emerge out of apparently nothing. They're called
shockwaves (IIRC), and are the net effect of small acts of braking caused by
cars travelling at different speeds, changing lanes, and climbing hills etc.
in heavy traffic. This works back down the line to result in complete
standstills of traffic. The Jam doesn't stay in one place but moves slowly
backwards, with the jam increasing in size. None of this requires any
collective resonance, but simply the compound result of lots of little
individual responses to individual circumstances (the car in front changes
lanes suddenly making you brake, that compounds down the road behind you to
a mile long tail back).
If you take a solo bird in flight, or a solo car on a road, these
small individual motions don't appear to do anything. Tack a few hundred
birds or cars behind that lead one, and patterns of movement will emerge,
that are merely the product of each individual applying basic rules of
movement. They may look like a lot more that needs remarkably macguffins,
but the really remarkable feature is that they need no more than very basic
rules, and an appropriate environment, to operate.
Vincent
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