Blogs

Here's a standard Langton's ant with a few plots that might be of use. Documentation on the page might be a little sparse--ask me or check out the source if anything's unclear. link

Here's a link to a paper written by a few researchers at the 'Logic Systems Laboratory'. The authors describe the behavior of several 'interesting' rulesets of >2-state ants, and then discuss systems with >1 ants. link [pdf]

I was just looking through the book list on the course site. And I noticed that all of the books appear to have been written by white men. I was just wondering if anyone knew of any books written by women/minority scholars, too. I know the book list is a work in progress, and I'd be happy to see if we can flesh it out a little more. But, if Emergence/Complexity is a male-dominated field, that'd be interesting to know, too.

Here is the model with two of Langton's ants

It hit me Monday while sitting in class about how much of it is based simply on perspective. Emergent phenomena could be all around us, but are we too jaded to see most of it? Do we accept it as commonplace and something to be expected simply because we've seen it so much? Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly philosophical, I look around me and see something that I've seen a thousand times and think, isn't that amazing? This happens the most with trees, I suppose. I still can't get over how complex, but simple, they are. When I think of emergence, I feel like I have to "change my glasses" (not that I wear them) and put on something that makes the world fresh again. Something that gives me back that sense of wonder that we all had when we were children.

Yes, yes, I agree with #1, and I understand that simple models may help define certain aspects, as opposed to the whole of a complex issue. I can see that and the utility of using them. But there are still a couple of observations about this model that I’d like to share: 1) My first interpretation of 50% preference was that it would imply no particular preference (which is why segregated results were so surprising when using 50% or less preference for difference), but this assumption isn’t true. After all, the test is still biased to a particular preference, no matter how low the %. It appears that the continuum of preferences would start at one end with 100% preference for similarity, progress on down to 0% preference for similarity, then to 0% preference for difference, on up through to 100% preference for difference at the other end of the scale. So, it seems to me that 0% of either would be truly no preference, and that there really is no surprise at seeing segregation resulting from a low similarity preference setting.

I should preface this post with some warnings. First and foremost, it’ll probably be rather verbose. Second, I anticipate catching much flak for this; I have discussed these opinions with many others in the past and have always received strange looks. Finally, it's 2:30 am and though this is all clear in my head, it may come out as pure incoherent blabber. Last night I watched the movie Pi for probably the 108th time. Yeah, I know it’s just a Hollywood movie sprinkled with inaccuracies…but my love for math, physics, and computer science was born when I saw this movie. It opened up my mind to ideas I would never have fathomed in my wildest dreams. There are redeeming qualities in this movie-—many of which are related to our study of emergence. For those who have not seen it, I highly recommend doing so. Keep in mind that it IS a movie and not completely factual. Anyway, I’d like to post and comment on some of the more illuminating quotes/scenes which pertain to emergence.

Slime Mold Controls ROBOT!!! I just thought this was pretty pertinent given today's discussion about slime mold/sand and emergent properties.

With Doug's help, I posted my tree growing model with some documentation that may be useful. There's a link on the page to download the nlogo file, in case it's of interest. Doug wanted me to document how to post netlogo aps. For BMC students: 1) make sure you have an html folder in your root directory called "public_html" and make sure it and your root directory both have read and execute permissions for everyone. You can also use a subdirectory within public_html - just be sure it has the appropriate permissions. 2) place a copy of your nlogo file in the public_html folder (or whatever subdirectory you want to use within public_html)and open it in Netlogo. You may want to edit the Information tab for your model because Netlogo will place this information in the html it creates when you ask it to save as an applet. Go to File -> Save As Applet... and save the html file it creates with the nlogo file in your public_html folder (or the subdirectory you're using). You can edit the html according to its directions.

”Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.” Alan Turing, found here. When thinking about emergence, my mind ping pongs between three different issues. The first two, my overwhelming distrust of Wolfram and explorations of the top down dichotomy, I will save for another post. Since we are still discussing agent based modeling, I will stick to my third fury. From the first day of class, I have been troubled by the idea that in making computer models, our objective “is to be ‘surprised’, to ‘surprise’ others, to establish that some pattern/phenomenon that is presumed to depend on complexity/planning/a directive element can be produced without that. To show what might be, rather than what is.” This has been a recurring theme in lecture and it just does not sit well with me. Why is it that models cannot be used to solve problems? Why don’t they portray what is? This rankles me. If the modeling method has no utility beyond surprise, then it is little more than an intellectual jack in the box: entertaining and beautiful but not appropriate for solving problems in a science class (see my icon? ).