No, CAs are not a good model for stygmergy IMHO. Stygmergy is as Wikipedia says a mechanism of indirect coordination through the environment. For example: ants which exploit a food source by following a pheromone trail. Or termites which build a nest. In Cellular Automata there is no clear distinction between agent and environment. They are just a grid of states which evolves step by step by updating the cells with a transition rule or function.The other type of collective intelligence besides stygmergy is swarm formation. The individual member is attracted to the group as a whole but repelled by other individuals. You know the classic Boids rules which govern fish swarms and bird flocks: "stay close to the group but keep away from your neighbors".For more complex things you probably need a code. If the individuals are smart, then a few rules are enough - holy books have typically only a few MB. If the individuals are lifeless molecules, then the code can be several GB (a human genome has roughly 3 GB).Hope that helps a bit? You are lucky to have such a smart grandson! I believe Frank has grandchildren too.Jochen -------- Original message --------From: thompnicks...@gmail.com Date: 10/19/21 20:15 (GMT+01:00) To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam@redfish.com> Subject: [FRIAM] stygmergy, CA's, and [biological] development Friends,Beware. As usual, I am trying to get you to think for me.My grandson is working on a regeneration project in his freshman biolab (Planaria) and his sources and texts are replete with cognitive language like “signal” and “memory” etc., which implies that as the worm regenerates it is influenced by a guiding idea of what it is producing. My basic intuition, as you know, that this doesn’t happen in human cognition, let alone worm regeneration and that processes that produce a functional head from a slice of the rear end of a flatworm have no idea what they are doing even when they are done. Thus I imagine an advancing edge of structure with each new bit influencing the rules by which the next bit . Which, of course, puts me in mind both of stygmergy and of Cellular Automata. So to my questions:Are Cellular Automata a good model for Stygmergy?Is Stygmergy a good model for organismic development? Why? Or Why not? Discuss. Also, is there a good website, citizen-friendly, steep learning curve, where my grandson and I could explore the relation between developmental processes and ca’s. I looked at NewLogo Library and did not find there any models of regeneration, but may not have known where to look. I did find THIS which deep down in the Table of Contents seemed to have three regeneration models including one named “Planaria”, but I could no see how to go further with it. If somebody could have a look at it and give me some tips for how to use it, I would be ever so grateful. Good to be back. Nick Nick ThompsonThompNickSon2@gmail.comhttps://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
.-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
