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adiflesher's picture

That Crazy Ant

Submitted by adiflesher on Mon, 07/07/2008 - 2:43pm.

Crazy Ant ManCrazy Ant Man

 


I think that one of the most interesting things about the use of Langston's Ant was how easily we all  attribute human qualities to a triangle on a screen.

To a certain extent I think that our tendency to attribute agency to everything limits our ability to penetrate the governing rules behind certain systems. 

 

This is as it turns out, is a basic human impulse. In a classic experiment in the 1940’s psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel showed people films of geometric shapes moving around. The subjects immediately attributed stories to these shapes. The shapes were not just moving they were escaping, capturing, chasing etc. 

 

Langston’s ant should remind our students (and ourselves) of our overwhelming desire to attribute agency in the world, even when doing so does not necessarily help us to better understand the world.

 

Langston’s ant can also help us see how much of the complexity in the world is emergent from simple equations. Mandelbrot sets are just one stunning example of complex images created from relatively simple computer programs.

 

MandelbrotMandelbrot

 


 

 

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