I do like the *is*/*does* duality you present here. I also am reminded
of the "constraint provides form" truism as you discuss niche construction.
Stigmergy, for me, is the background fabric wherein "niche construction"
is effected, though the "niche" is a higher order abstraction, that I
*think* trying to use your well-crafted terminology here, an attempt to
join or at least establish an interplay between is/does.
On 10/20/21 5:01 AM, uǝlƃ ☤>$ wrote:
I think we can distinguish questions in that way, if we think in terms of what
we can *do* rather than thinking in terms of what things *are*. Marcus' point
is well-received. There are plenty of things like Core Wars that differ from a
typical (more purposefully engineered) thing. The distinction between good old
fashioned games and hyper- or meta-games is another. Specific vs general
intelligence is another. Discussion vs debate is another.
So if we distinguish between niche construction and stigmergy, what can we *do* with that
distinction? I'd argue that making stigmergy a compositional part of niche construction
would allow us to ask "What non-niche-construction things can also be built from
stigmergic systems?" I.e. can we build a system with shared memory and unbound (or
schematically bound) manipulation of that memory that does not construct a niche?
My (ignorant) conception of niche construction is that the "freedom" or diversity of the
consequent is *different* from the "freedom" or diversity of the antecedent. I say
different to avoid the controversy over whether it has to increase or decrease the options
available. (And, tangentially, to allow for different types of difference, not more or less, but
multiple types.) But niche seems to me to imply that the space of options/behaviors is constrained
or limited in some way. So it seems the typical direction for the diversity would be more of it
before, less of it after.
But stigmergy seems *less* strict than niche construction. So, if we say that a
niche is more constrained, and we can build a system (using stigmergy as a
component) where the consequent is less constrained, then we've done a good job
distinguishing stigmergy from niche construction, as part to whole.
On 10/20/21 2:49 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
When I was a very very little kid, there was a “question” my parents pointed
out to me, which they thought might be an important puzzle to work through, but
they were busy enough holding life together (more or less like hoping they
could keep the various dams from breaking from one day to the next) that they
didn’t lose a lot of time on it. That one was:
“Is a tomato really a fruit or really a vegetable.”
I wonder if we can give a name to the class of constructions that are of this
general kind, and distinguish them from the class of constructions that are of
some other kind.
Eric
On Oct 19, 2021, at 11:34 PM, Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com
<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I am in danger of confusing it with niche construction. The concept offers
an alternative to Lamarckian mechanisms for an organism to direct its own
evolution. It's like the inheritance of acquired environments. I think of it
as including such phenomena as squirrels and jays putting acorns in the ground
and thus providing an environment rich with food for the winter and also,
perhaps, in the very long run, future oak trees. In some sense, the
environment that selects the organism is an environment that is selected by the
organism.
I think the word does have a use, but only if we distinguish between things
left behind that positively affect those that follow. To my surprise, the
word is apparently of recent origin having been specifically invented to apply
to ant pheromone trails in the fifties. So, I suppose we might narrow it's
meaning to objects left to convey information and leave niche construction to
apply to objects that provide shelter, nutrition or other benefits to the
finder, eg., acorns, beaver dams,
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