Science > Philosophy > Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis
| Topic: |
Science > Philosophy |
| User: |
"Immortalist" |
| Date: |
22 Oct 2006 02:56:18 PM |
| Object: |
Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
....Brooks's ideas gelled in a cockroachlike contraption the size of a
football called "Genghis." Brooks had pushed his downsizing to an
extreme.
Genghis had six legs but
no "brain" at all.
All of its 12 motors and 21 sensors were distributed in a decomposable
network without a centralized controller.
The interaction of these 12 muscles and 21 sensors yielded an amazingly
complex and lifelike behavior.
Each of Genghis's six tiny legs
worked on its own, independent
of the others.
Each leg had its own ganglion of
neural cells-a tiny microprocessor-
that controlled the leg's actions.
Each leg thought for itself!
Walking for Genghis then became a
group project with at least
six small minds at work.
Other small semiminds within its body coordinated communication between
the legs.
Entomologists say this is how ants and real cockroaches cope-they have
neurons in their legs that do the leg's thinking.
In the mobot Genghis, walking emerges out of the collective behavior of
the 12 motors.
Two motors at each leg lift, or
not, depending on what the other
legs around them are doing.
If they activate in the right
sequence-Okay, hup! One, three,
six, two, five, four!---
---walking "happens."
In one of his papers, Rod Brooks first laid out his instructions on how
to make a creature walk without knowing how:
There is no central controller which directs the body where to put each
foot or how high to lift a leg should there be an obstacle ahead.
###############################
Each leg is granted a few
simple behaviors and each
independently knows what to
do under various circumstances.
###############################
For instance, two basic behaviors can be thought of as
"If I'm a leg and I'm up,
put myself down, " or
"If I'm a leg and I'm forward,
put the other five legs back
a little."
These processes exist independently, run at all times, and fire
whenever the sensory preconditions are true.
To create walking then, there just needs to be a sequencing of lifting
legs (this is the only instance where any central control is evident).
As soon as a leg is raised it
automatically swings itself
forward, and also down.
But the act of swinging forward
triggers all the other legs
to move back a little.
Since those legs (happen) to be
touching the ground, the
body moves forward.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-g.html
.
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
22 Oct 2006 03:03:24 PM |
|
|
"Where is 'this spirit of the hive'...where does it reside?" asks the
author Maurice Maeterlinck as early as 1901. "What is it that governs
here, that issues orders, foresees the future...?" We are certain now
it is not the queen bee. When a swarm pours itself out through the
front slot of the hive, the queen bee can only follow. The queen's
daughters manage the election of where and when the swarm should
settle. A half-dozen anonymous workers scout ahead to check possible
hive locations in hollow trees or wall cavities. They report back to
the resting swarm by dancing on its contracting surface. During the
report, the more theatrically a scout dances, the better the site she
is championing. Deputy bees then check out the competing sites
according to the intensity of the dances, and will concur with the
scout by joining in the scout's twirling. That induces more followers
to check out the lead prospects and join the ruckus when they return by
leaping into the performance of their choice.
It's a rare bee, except for the scouts, who has inspected more than one
site. The bees see a message, "Go there, it's a nice place." They go
and return to dance/say, "Yeah, it's really nice." By compounding
emphasis, the favorite sites get more visitors, thus increasing further
visitors. As per the law of increasing returns, them that has get more
votes, the have-nots get less. Gradually, one large, snowballing finale
will dominate the dance-off. The biggest crowd wins.
It's an election hall of idiots, for idiots, and by idiots, and it
works marvelously. This is the true nature of democracy and of all
distributed governance. At the close of the curtain, by the choice of
the citizens, the swarm takes the queen and thunders off in the
direction indicated by mob vote. The queen who follows, does so humbly.
If she could think, she would remember that she is but a mere peasant
girl, blood sister of the very nurse bee instructed (by whom?) to
select her larva, an ordinary larva, and raise it on a diet of royal
jelly, transforming Cinderella into the queen. By what karma is the
larva for a princess chosen? And who chooses the chooser?
"The hive chooses," is the disarming answer of William Morton Wheeler,
a natural philosopher and entomologist of the old school, who founded
the field of social insects. Writing in a bombshell of an essay in 1911
("The Ant Colony as an Organism" in the Journal of Morphology), Wheeler
claimed that an insect colony was not merely the analog of an organism,
it is indeed an organism, in every important and scientific sense of
the word. He wrote: "Like a cell or the person, it behaves as a unitary
whole, maintaining its identity in space, resisting
dissolution...neither a thing nor a concept, but a continual flux or
process."
It was a mob of 20,000 united into oneness.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-a.html
.
|
|
|
| User: "Brian Fletcher" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
22 Oct 2006 06:06:38 PM |
|
|
How many light bulbs does it take (to be switched on) for people to realise
that any organism made out of interactive cells, itself, becomes and
"interacticve cell" in a larger organism, driven by the "hive" of the
universal mind?
Answer....one.!
BOfL
"Immortalist" <reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1161547403.983301.301220@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
"Where is 'this spirit of the hive'...where does it reside?" asks the
author Maurice Maeterlinck as early as 1901. "finale
will dominate the dance-off. The biggest crowd wins.
It was a mob of 20,000 united into oneness.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-a.html
.
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
23 Oct 2006 12:03:47 PM |
|
|
Brian Fletcher wrote:
How many light bulbs does it take (to be switched on) for people to realise
that any organism made out of interactive cells, itself, becomes and
"interacticve cell" in a larger organism, driven by the "hive" of the
universal mind?
Answer....one.!
Wrong, since lights can be on or off and people still may or may not
realise such things.
BOfL
"Immortalist" <reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1161547403.983301.301220@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
"Where is 'this spirit of the hive'...where does it reside?" asks the
author Maurice Maeterlinck as early as 1901. "finale
will dominate the dance-off. The biggest crowd wins.
It was a mob of 20,000 united into oneness.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-a.html
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "feedbackdroid" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
24 Oct 2006 01:51:31 PM |
|
|
Immortalist wrote:
...Brooks's ideas gelled in a cockroachlike contraption the size of a
football called "Genghis." Brooks had pushed his downsizing to an
extreme.
Genghis had six legs but
no "brain" at all.
All of its 12 motors and 21 sensors were distributed in a decomposable
network without a centralized controller.
The interaction of these 12 muscles and 21 sensors yielded an amazingly
complex and lifelike behavior.
Each of Genghis's six tiny legs
worked on its own, independent
of the others.
Each leg had its own ganglion of
neural cells-a tiny microprocessor-
that controlled the leg's actions.
Each leg thought for itself!
Walking for Genghis then became a
group project with at least
six small minds at work.
Other small semiminds within its body coordinated communication between
the legs.
Entomologists say this is how ants and real cockroaches cope-they have
neurons in their legs that do the leg's thinking.
In the mobot Genghis, walking emerges out of the collective behavior of
the 12 motors.
Two motors at each leg lift, or
not, depending on what the other
legs around them are doing.
If they activate in the right
sequence-Okay, hup! One, three,
six, two, five, four!---
---walking "happens."
In one of his papers, Rod Brooks first laid out his instructions on how
to make a creature walk without knowing how:
There is no central controller which directs the body where to put each
foot or how high to lift a leg should there be an obstacle ahead.
###############################
Each leg is granted a few
simple behaviors and each
independently knows what to
do under various circumstances.
###############################
For instance, two basic behaviors can be thought of as
"If I'm a leg and I'm up,
put myself down, " or
"If I'm a leg and I'm forward,
put the other five legs back
a little."
These processes exist independently, run at all times, and fire
whenever the sensory preconditions are true.
Brooks' ideas are well-known. However, in your retelling it, the point
you were trying to make in this post wasn't exactly clear. Also, your
characterization "(Things Happen Of Their Own Accord)", and your use of
the term "independently" in several places, isn't exactly accurate.
In fact, the rule that says "if I'm a leg and I'm forward, then ..."
ties all of the legs together, so they aren't really independent of
each other. You don't have a central controller that explicitly
controls all the action, but you do have coupling which greatly
constrains the overall operation of every leg.
This system may fall loosely under the guise of "emergence", but seems
to me, it's a very weak form. Once again, because the co-ordinating
rule is quite explicit. IOW, it seems the behavior that "emerges" is
fairly predictable ahead of time, because of that rule. No?
BTW, I wonder, did anyone else ever repeat and verify this sort of
"gait emergence"? It probably only works if the legs are initialized to
proper (random ??) starting positions, and I wonder how smooth and
coordinated it could be, once gotten going.
To create walking then, there just needs to be a sequencing of lifting
legs (this is the only instance where any central control is evident).
As soon as a leg is raised it
automatically swings itself
forward, and also down.
But the act of swinging forward
triggers all the other legs
to move back a little.
Since those legs (happen) to be
touching the ground, the
body moves forward.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-g.html
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Bret Cahill" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
23 Oct 2006 03:39:21 PM |
|
|
Is this the same thing as the coupling of oscillations post?
Bret Cahill
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
22 Oct 2006 03:04:22 PM |
|
|
Nietzsche coined the terms herd instinct or slave morality, which
represents the kind of morality or ideology produced by a group of
people, such as a culture or a society. The herd instinct is the
inevitable consequence of society, and it is considered extremely
difficult for an individual to take on a value or moral system apart
from the society within which one is embedded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
Suddenly somebody began to run. It may be that he had simply
remembered, all of a moment, an engagement to meet his wife, for which
he was now late, Whatever it was, he ran east on Broad Street (probably
toward the Maramor restaurant, a favorite place for a man to meet his
wife).Somebody else began to run, perhaps a newsboy in high spirits.
Another man, a portly gentleman of affairs, broke into a trot.
Inside of ten minutes, everybody on High Street, from the Union depot
to the courthouse was running.
A loud mumble gradually crystallized into a dread word "dam." "The dam
has broke!"
The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric car, or
by a traffic cop, or by a small boy: nobody knows who, nor does it
really matter.
Two thousand people were abruptly in full flight. "Go East!"A tall
spare woman with grim eyes and a determined chin ran past me down the
middle of the street.
I was still uncertain as to what was the matter, in spite of all the
shouting. I drew up alongside the woman with some effort, for although
she was in her late fifties, she had a beautiful easy running form and
seemed to be in excellent condition. "What is it?" I puffed.She gave
a quick glance and then looked ahead again, stepping up her pace a
trifle. "Don't ask me, ask God!" she said.
This passage from Thurber, although comical, is an apt illustration of
people conforming. One or two individuals began running for their own
reasons; before long, everyone was running. Why? Because others were
running. According to Thurber's story, when the running people realized
that the dam hadn't given away after all, they felt pretty foolish. And
yet, how much more foolish would they have felt if they hadn't
conformed and the dam had, in fact, burst?
The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
.
|
|
|
| User: "Sammybaby" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
24 Oct 2006 11:22:46 PM |
|
|
I love the leaps and examples on this thread. Ok a pseudo devil's
advocate position. When there are examples of conformity and group
think, the examples given often have a high emotional content. The
actors in the examples panic or are racist, etc. But group think and
cultural forces actually tend towards the restriction of emotional
expression and a distrust of intuition. These are seen (perhaps
correctly) as subversive. We are taught not to react and not to create
(except along very narrow lines). Obviously behaviors that go outside
certain lines are punished and restricted, but emotional expression and
intuition are also punished through both subtle and not so subtle
pressures and punishments. Group think while often challenged by
intellectuals is often reinforced when it comes to emotional expression
and intution, both accepted as threatening and bad.
Immortalist wrote:
Nietzsche coined the terms herd instinct or slave morality, which
represents the kind of morality or ideology produced by a group of
people, such as a culture or a society. The herd instinct is the
inevitable consequence of society, and it is considered extremely
difficult for an individual to take on a value or moral system apart
from the society within which one is embedded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche
Suddenly somebody began to run. It may be that he had simply
remembered, all of a moment, an engagement to meet his wife, for which
he was now late, Whatever it was, he ran east on Broad Street (probably
toward the Maramor restaurant, a favorite place for a man to meet his
wife).Somebody else began to run, perhaps a newsboy in high spirits.
Another man, a portly gentleman of affairs, broke into a trot.
Inside of ten minutes, everybody on High Street, from the Union depot
to the courthouse was running.
A loud mumble gradually crystallized into a dread word "dam." "The dam
has broke!"
The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric car, or
by a traffic cop, or by a small boy: nobody knows who, nor does it
really matter.
Two thousand people were abruptly in full flight. "Go East!"A tall
spare woman with grim eyes and a determined chin ran past me down the
middle of the street.
I was still uncertain as to what was the matter, in spite of all the
shouting. I drew up alongside the woman with some effort, for although
she was in her late fifties, she had a beautiful easy running form and
seemed to be in excellent condition. "What is it?" I puffed.She gave
a quick glance and then looked ahead again, stepping up her pace a
trifle. "Don't ask me, ask God!" she said.
This passage from Thurber, although comical, is an apt illustration of
people conforming. One or two individuals began running for their own
reasons; before long, everyone was running. Why? Because others were
running. According to Thurber's story, when the running people realized
that the dam hadn't given away after all, they felt pretty foolish. And
yet, how much more foolish would they have felt if they hadn't
conformed and the dam had, in fact, burst?
The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Chris Degnen" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
24 Oct 2006 06:03:59 AM |
|
|
Immortalist wrote:
The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric car, or
by a traffic cop, or by a small boy: nobody knows who, nor does it
really matter.
Sounds like emotional contagion by splitting and projective identification.
The little old lady splits off her irrational fear and projects it onto the
world where it is obligingly identified with.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
24 Oct 2006 11:47:39 AM |
|
|
Chris Degnen wrote:
Immortalist wrote:
The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric car, or
by a traffic cop, or by a small boy: nobody knows who, nor does it
really matter.
Sounds like emotional contagion by splitting and projective identification.
The little old lady splits off her irrational fear and projects it onto the
world where it is obligingly identified with.
I think the little old lady is an example of a "spark that ignites the
fire of (groupthink_computations)" which are games happening above our
heads so to speak. Whatever starts the trend may be irrelevant since
our innate desire to be right and correct is overriden by our innated
desire to conform to our group.
-------------------------------------
Social Pressure, Perception and Conformity
In some cases when other people unanimously choose wrongly and you
believe they where wrong there is about a one third chance that you
will alse choose wrongly out of group comformity. There is a marked
tendency for individuals to yield reality to consensus pressures, which
is actually what happens in an almost incredible 37 percent of answers
to rigged items in experimental situations.
Imagine yourself in the following situation: You sign up for a
psychology experiment, and on a specified date you and seven others
whom you think are also subjects arrive and are seated at a table in a
small room. You don't know it at the time, but the others are actually
associates of the experimenter, and their behavior has been carefully
scripted. You're the only real subject.
The experimenter arrives and tells you that the study in which you are
about to participate concerns people's visual judgments. She places two
cards before you. The card on the left contains one vertical line. The
card on the right displays three lines of varying length.
The experimenter asks all of you, one at a time, to choose which of the
three lines on the right card matches the length of the line on the
left card. The task is repeated several times with different cards. On
some occasions the other "subjects" unanimously choose the wrong line.
It is clear to you that they are wrong, but they have all given the
same answer.
What would you do? Would you go along with the majority opinion, or
would you "stick to your guns" and trust your own eyes?
In 1951 social psychologist Solomon Asch devised this experiment to
examine the extent to which pressure from other people could affect
one's perceptions.1 In total, about one third of the subjects who were
placed in this situation went along with the clearly erroneous
majority.
After the experiment a small percentage of the conformists claimed to
actually have seen the wrong line as a correct match. If these
participants were telling the truth, we must conclude that private
acceptance was at work. These participants privately accepted the
belief of the majority opinion. They were not simply complying with the
group. About half of the rest of the conformists claimed that they had
seen the lines correctly but that when they heard the majority choice,
they decided that they must have been wrong. They then went along with
the group. Whether this is compliance or private acceptance is
debatable. However, the remaining conformists clearly complied. They
said that they thought their choice was correct but that they had gone
along with the group anyway.
Asch concluded that it is difficult to maintain that you see something
when no one else does. Pressure from other people can make you see
almost anything.
From these and other studies, it becomes clear that our attitudes,
perceptions, indeed our whole pattern of thought, are more effected by
and dependent upon communications, conformity and consensus pressures,
and propaganda than we like to admit. Furthermore, rationality and
truth are no guarantee of protection against these irrational forces
any more than the people in Asch's experiment felt any less pressure
because their temporary inability to make a satisfactory personal
adjustment to their situation was based in rationality. More often, the
function of intellectual process seems to be the fabrication of some
excuse enabling the individual to bring his thought and behavior in
line with outside pressures. To mean anything, rationality must be
disciplined and a prevalent element of the environment.
The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
.
|
|
|
| User: "" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
25 Oct 2006 03:15:10 AM |
|
|
And then Isan, the cooking monk, tipped over the vase with his foot,
and became the new head of Enron.
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Chris Degnen" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
25 Oct 2006 08:40:50 AM |
|
|
Immortalist wrote:
Chris Degnen wrote:
Immortalist wrote:
The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric car, or
by a traffic cop, or by a small boy: nobody knows who, nor does it
really matter.
Sounds like emotional contagion by splitting and projective identification.
The little old lady splits off her irrational fear and projects it onto the
world where it is obligingly identified with.
I think the little old lady is an example of a "spark that ignites the
fire of (groupthink_computations)" which are games happening above our
heads so to speak. Whatever starts the trend may be irrelevant since
our innate desire to be right and correct is overriden by our innated
desire to conform to our group.
I expect the level of irrational conformity in the group is inversely
proportional to how well developed it is. In a developed group
negative
initiators, "sparks," can be interpreted to the group and defused, e.g.
"You're agitated, but there's nothing to worry about."
There can also be positive initiators that help in the development of
the group. I'm not sure if this is a good example though:
"There is always one individual that takes charge of the situation when
trouble arises and things look bad. Very often, that individual is
crazy."
Emperor Norton comes to mind.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
27 Oct 2006 02:54:13 PM |
|
|
Chris Degnen wrote:
Immortalist wrote:
Chris Degnen wrote:
Immortalist wrote:
The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric car, or
by a traffic cop, or by a small boy: nobody knows who, nor does it
really matter.
Sounds like emotional contagion by splitting and projective identification.
The little old lady splits off her irrational fear and projects it onto the
world where it is obligingly identified with.
I think the little old lady is an example of a "spark that ignites the
fire of (groupthink_computations)" which are games happening above our
heads so to speak. Whatever starts the trend may be irrelevant since
our innate desire to be right and correct is overriden by our innated
desire to conform to our group.
I expect the level of irrational conformity in the group is inversely
proportional to how well developed it is. In a developed group
negative initiators, "sparks," can be interpreted to the group and
defused, e.g. "You're agitated, but there's nothing to worry about."
I think it is like Pascal's Wager in that you have nothing to lose if
you believe in god but everything to lose if you don't and god exists.
I think Pascal really discovered how to say the way our cognitive
architecture operates. We jump to conclusions in a way that we don't
lose much if mistaken.
Consider a relatively simple problem of walking through the woods and
fleetingly sensing a slithering object scurry underneath some leaves in
the path directly in front of you. There are two possible states of
reality: either there is a dangerous snake in your path or there is not
a dangerous snake in your path. Given the incomplete and uncertain
information that you have percieved, there are also two inferences you
could make. There is indeed a dangerous snake, and you act to avoid it.
Or you could conclude that there is no snake and continue walking down
the path.
There are also two possible ways that you could be wrong. You could
believe that there is a snake when in fact no snake exists. Or you
could believe that no snake when in fact a venomous rattler is lurking
right in your path. The costs of these two types of errors, however,
are vastly different. In the first case, your belief causes you to
incur the trivial metabolic cost of taking an unnecessary evasive
action. By giving a wide birth to the area that you believe harbors a
snake, you have merely gone out of your way a little, incurring a minor
delay in your walk. In the second case, however, failing to detect a
snake that is in fact lurking in your path can cost you your life. THe
two ways of being wrong carry substantially different costs.
Now imagine that this scenario not only repeats itself thousands and
thousands of times in your liftime, but billions and billions of times
over human evolutionary history. Those who made the first kind of
mistake tended to survive, whereas those who made the second kind of
mistake tended to die. As a result, modern humans have descended from a
line of ancestors whose inferences about the uncertain world erred in
the direction of believing that snakes existed more than they do. These
can be called adaptive errors.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.philosophy/msg/3fe855146b130637?hl=en&
There can also be positive initiators that help in the development of
the group. I'm not sure if this is a good example though:
I agree that we could try to manage this error management instinct
better than it just happens weel on its own.
"There is always one individual that takes charge of the situation when
trouble arises and things look bad. Very often, that individual is
crazy."
Emperor Norton comes to mind.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Chris Degnen" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
02 Nov 2006 10:12:35 AM |
|
|
Immortalist wrote:
Chris Degnen wrote:
I expect the level of irrational conformity in the group is
inversely proportional to how well developed it is. In a
developed group negative initiators, "sparks," can be
interpreted to the group and defused, e.g. "You're agitated,
but there's nothing to worry about."
I think it is like Pascal's Wager in that you have nothing to
lose if you believe in god but everything to lose if you don't
and god exists.
I think Pascal really discovered how to say the way our cognitive
architecture operates. We jump to conclusions in a way that we
don't lose much if mistaken.
Consider a relatively simple problem of walking through the woods
and fleetingly sensing a slithering object scurry underneath some
leaves in the path directly in front of you. There are two
possible states of reality: either there is a dangerous snake in
your path or there is not a dangerous snake in your path. Given
the incomplete and uncertain information that you have percieved,
there are also two inferences you could make. There is indeed a
dangerous snake, and you act to avoid it. Or you could conclude
that there is no snake and continue walking down the path.
There are also two possible ways that you could be wrong. You
could believe that there is a snake when in fact no snake exists.
Or you could believe that no snake when in fact a venomous rattler
is lurking right in your path. The costs of these two types of
errors, however, are vastly different. In the first case, your
belief causes you to incur the trivial metabolic cost of taking
an unnecessary evasive action. By giving a wide birth to the area
that you believe harbors a snake, you have merely gone out of your
way a little, incurring a minor delay in your walk. In the second
case, however, failing to detect a snake that is in fact lurking
in your path can cost you your life. THe two ways of being wrong
carry substantially different costs.
Now imagine that this scenario not only repeats itself thousands
and thousands of times in your liftime, but billions and billions
of times over human evolutionary history. Those who made the
first kind of mistake tended to survive, whereas those who made
the second kind of mistake tended to die. As a result, modern
humans have descended from a line of ancestors whose inferences
about the uncertain world erred in the direction of believing
that snakes existed more than they do. These can be called
adaptive errors.
It's an interesting idea but much "metabolic cost" would be saved
if a group walking through the woods had a leader who would go
out in front and call out "That's just a twig!", "That's a root!",
etc. Then the rest of group could get on with picking berries.
That would be interpretive leadership of the group.
.
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "Chris Degnen" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
25 Oct 2006 10:30:12 AM |
|
|
Earlier I wrote:
I expect the level of irrational conformity in the group is inversely
proportional to how well developed it is. In a developed group
negative initiators, "sparks," can be interpreted to the group and
defused, e.g. "You're agitated, but there's nothing to worry about."
There can also be positive initiators that help in the development of
the group. ...
There's nothing wrong with collective behaviour per se, but it can
be progressive or regressive. In a developed group the members
get to bring their individuality to the group without fear of being
stomped on, and if it's done right that's good for the group and
good for its members.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "N" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
24 Oct 2006 07:19:02 PM |
|
|
Chris Degnen wrote:
Immortalist wrote:
The fear was put into words by a little old lady in an electric car, or
by a traffic cop, or by a small boy: nobody knows who, nor does it
really matter.
Sounds like emotional contagion by splitting and projective identification.
The little old lady splits off her irrational fear and projects it onto the
world where it is obligingly identified with.
Soundz like bollox to me... com'mon lad, if ur education didn't get in
the
way even you could say something vaguely original or intelligent.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "Jan Burse" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1.Genghis |
22 Oct 2006 06:40:44 PM |
|
|
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/staff/pfeifer/newbook.jpg
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html
Immortalist wrote:
...Brooks's ideas gelled in a cockroachlike contraption the size of a
football called "Genghis." Brooks had pushed his downsizing to an
extreme.
Genghis had six legs but
no "brain" at all.
All of its 12 motors and 21 sensors were distributed in a decomposable
network without a centralized controller.
The interaction of these 12 muscles and 21 sensors yielded an amazingly
complex and lifelike behavior.
Each of Genghis's six tiny legs
worked on its own, independent
of the others.
Each leg had its own ganglion of
neural cells-a tiny microprocessor-
that controlled the leg's actions.
Each leg thought for itself!
Walking for Genghis then became a
group project with at least
six small minds at work.
Other small semiminds within its body coordinated communication between
the legs.
Entomologists say this is how ants and real cockroaches cope-they have
neurons in their legs that do the leg's thinking.
In the mobot Genghis, walking emerges out of the collective behavior of
the 12 motors.
Two motors at each leg lift, or
not, depending on what the other
legs around them are doing.
If they activate in the right
sequence-Okay, hup! One, three,
six, two, five, four!---
---walking "happens."
In one of his papers, Rod Brooks first laid out his instructions on how
to make a creature walk without knowing how:
There is no central controller which directs the body where to put each
foot or how high to lift a leg should there be an obstacle ahead.
###############################
Each leg is granted a few
simple behaviors and each
independently knows what to
do under various circumstances.
###############################
For instance, two basic behaviors can be thought of as
"If I'm a leg and I'm up,
put myself down, " or
"If I'm a leg and I'm forward,
put the other five legs back
a little."
These processes exist independently, run at all times, and fire
whenever the sensory preconditions are true.
To create walking then, there just needs to be a sequencing of lifting
legs (this is the only instance where any central control is evident).
As soon as a leg is raised it
automatically swings itself
forward, and also down.
But the act of swinging forward
triggers all the other legs
to move back a little.
Since those legs (happen) to be
touching the ground, the
body moves forward.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-g.html
.
|
|
|
| User: "feedbackdroid" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
24 Oct 2006 01:57:52 PM |
|
|
Jan Burse wrote:
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/staff/pfeifer/newbook.jpg
Looks a little similar to "Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and the
World Together Again", by Andy Clark, 1997 .... "... Clark shifts the
perspective from treating the mental as a realm distinct from the body
and the world to understanding brains as controllers for embodied
activity ..."
.
|
|
|
|
| User: "Immortalist" |
|
| Title: Re: Groupthink Computations (Things Happen Of Their Own Accord) 1. Genghis |
23 Oct 2006 12:08:22 PM |
|
|
Jan Burse wrote:
http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/staff/pfeifer/newbook.jpg
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html
Do you mean that if enough people click on your links that some sort of
meta-entuisiasm will emerge?
In a darkened Las Vegas conference room, a cheering audience waves
cardboard wands in the air. Each wand is red on one side, green on the
other. Far in back of the huge auditorium, a camera scans the frantic
attendees. The video camera links the color spots of the wands to a
nest of computers set up by graphics wizard Loren Carpenter.
Carpenter's custom software locates each red and each green wand in the
auditorium. Tonight there are just shy of 5,000 wandwavers. The
computer displays the precise location of each wand (and its color)
onto an immense, detailed video map of the auditorium hung on the front
stage, which all can see. More importantly, the computer counts the
total red or green wands and uses that value to control software. As
the audience wave the wands, the display screen shows a sea of lights
dancing crazily in the dark, like a candlelight parade gone punk. The
viewers see themselves on the map; they are either a red or green
pixel. By flipping their own wands, they can change the color of their
projected pixels instantly.
Loren Carpenter boots up the ancient video game of Pong onto the
immense screen. Pong was the first commercial video game to reach pop
consciousness. It's a minimalist arrangement: a white dot bounces
inside a square; two movable rectangles on each side act as virtual
paddles. In short, electronic ping-pong. In this version, displaying
the red side of your wand moves the paddle up. Green moves it down.
More precisely, the Pong paddle moves as the average number of red
wands in the auditorium increases or decreases. Your wand is just one
vote.
Carpenter doesn't need to explain very much. Every attendee at this
1991 conference of computer graphic experts was probably once hooked on
Pong. His amplified voice booms in the hall, "Okay guys. Folks on the
left side of the auditorium control the left paddle. Folks on the right
side control the right paddle. If you think you are on the left, then
you really are. Okay? Go!"
The audience roars in delight. Without a moment's hesitation, 5,000
people are playing a reasonably good game of Pong. Each move of the
paddle is the average of several thousand players' intentions. The
sensation is unnerving. The paddle usually does what you intend, but
not always. When it doesn't, you find yourself spending as much
attention trying to anticipate the paddle as the incoming ball. One is
definitely aware of another intelligence online: it's this hollering
mob.
The group mind plays Pong so well that Carpenter decides to up the
ante. Without warning the ball bounces faster. The participants squeal
in unison. In a second or two, the mob has adjusted to the quicker pace
and is playing better than before. Carpenter speeds up the game
further; the mob learns instantly.
"Let's try something else," Carpenter suggests. A map of seats in the
auditorium appears on the screen. He draws a wide circle in white
around the center. "Can you make a green '5' in the circle?" he asks
the audience. The audience stares at the rows of red pixels. The game
is similar to that of holding a placard up in a stadium to make a
picture, but now there are no preset orders, just a virtual mirror.
Almost immediately wiggles of green pixels appear and grow haphazardly,
as those who think their seat is in the path of the "5" flip their
wands to green. A vague figure is materializing. The audience
collectively begins to discern a "5" in the noise. Once discerned, the
"5" quickly precipitates out into stark clarity. The wand-wavers on the
fuzzy edge of the figure decide what side they "should" be on, and the
emerging "5" sharpens up. The number assembles itself.
"Now make a four!" the voice booms. Within moments a "4" emerges.
"Three." And in a blink a "3" appears. Then in rapid succession,
"Two... One...Zero." The emergent thing is on a roll.
Loren Carpenter launches an airplane flight simulator on the screen.
His instructions are terse: "You guys on the left are controlling roll;
you on the right, pitch. If you point the plane at anything
interesting, I'll fire a rocket at it." The plane is airborne. The
pilot is...5,000 novices. For once the auditorium is completely silent.
Everyone studies the navigation instruments as the scene outside the
windshield sinks in. The plane is headed for a landing in a pink valley
among pink hills. The runway looks very tiny.
There is something both delicious and ludicrous about the notion of
having the passengers of a plane collectively fly it. The brute
democratic sense of it all is very appealing. As a passenger you get to
vote for everything; not only where the group is headed, but when to
trim the flaps.
But group mind seems to be a liability in the decisive moments of
touchdown, where there is no room for averages. As the 5,000 conference
participants begin to take down their plane for landing, the hush in
the hall is ended by abrupt shouts and urgent commands. The auditorium
becomes a gigantic cockpit in crisis. "Green, green, green!" one
faction shouts. "More red!" a moment later from the crowd. "Red, red!
REEEEED!" The plane is pitching to the left in a sickening way. It is
obvious that it will miss the landing strip and arrive wing first.
Unlike Pong, the flight simulator entails long delays in feedback from
lever to effect, from the moment you tap the aileron to the moment it
banks. The latent signals confuse the group mind. It is caught in
oscillations of overcompensation. The plane is lurching wildly. Yet the
mob somehow aborts the landing and pulls the plane up sensibly. They
turn the plane around to try again.
How did they turn around? Nobody decided whether to turn left or right,
or even to turn at all. Nobody was in charge. But as if of one mind,
the plane banks and turns wide. It tries landing again. Again it
approaches cockeyed. The mob decides in unison, without lateral
communication, like a flock of birds taking off, to pull up once more.
On the way up the plane rolls a bit. And then rolls a bit more. At some
magical moment, the same strong thought simultaneously infects five
thousand minds: "I wonder if we can do a 360?"
Without speaking a word, the collective keeps tilting the plane.
There's no undoing it. As the horizon spins dizzily, 5,000 amateur
pilots roll a jet on their first solo flight. It was actually quite
graceful. They give themselves a standing ovation.
The conferees did what birds do: they flocked. But they flocked self-
consciously. They responded to an overview of themselves as they
co-formed a "5" or steered the jet. A bird on the fly, however, has no
overarching concept of the shape of its flock. "Flockness" emerges from
creatures completely oblivious of their collective shape, size, or
alignment. A flocking bird is blind to the grace and cohesiveness of a
flock in flight.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-b.html
------------------------------
....The symbol of science for the next century is the dynamical Net.
The Net icon has no center-it is a bunch of dots connected to other
dots-a cobweb of arrows pouring into each other, squirming together
like a nest of snakes, the restless image fading at indeterminate
edges. The Net is the archetype-always the same picture-displayed to
represent all circuits, all intelligence, all interdependence, all
things economic and social and ecological, all communications, all
democracy, all groups, all large systems. The icon is slippery,
ensnaring the unwary in its paradox of no beginning, no end, no center.
Or, all beginning, all end, pure center. It is related to the Knot.
Buried in its apparent disorder is a winding truth. Unraveling it
requires heroism.
When Darwin hunted for an image to end his book Origin of Species-a
book that is one long argument about how species emerge from the
conflicting interconnected self-interests of many individuals-he found
the image of the tangled Net. He saw "birds singing on bushes, with
various insects flitting about, with worms crawling through the damp
earth"; the whole web forming "an entangled bank, dependent on each
other in so complex a manner."
The Net is an emblem of multiples. Out of it comes swarm
being-distributed being-spreading the self over the entire web so that
no part can say, "I am the I." It is irredeemably social, unabashedly
of many minds. It conveys the logic both of Computer and of
Nature-which in turn convey a power beyond understanding.
Hidden in the Net is the mystery of the Invisible Hand-control without
authority. Whereas the Atom represents clean simplicity, the Net
channels the messy power of complexity.
The Net, as a banner, is harder to live with. It is the banner of
noncontrol. Wherever the Net arises, there arises also a rebel to
resist human control. The network symbol signifies the swamp of psyche,
the tangle of life, the mob needed for individuality.
The inefficiencies of a network-all that redundancy and ricocheting
vectors, things going from here to there and back just to get across
the street-encompasses imperfection rather than ejecting it. A network
nurtures small failures in order that large failures don't happen as
often. It is its capacity to hold error rather than scuttle it that
makes the distributed being fertile ground for learning, adaptation,
and evolution.
The only organization capable of unprejudiced growth, or unguided
learning, is a network. All other topologies limit what can happen.
A network swarm is all edges and therefore open ended any way you come
at it. Indeed, the network is the least structured organization that
can be said to have any structure at all. It is capable of infinite
rearrangements, and of growing in any direction without altering the
basic shape of the thing, which is really no outward shape at all.
Craig Reynolds, the synthetic flocking inventor, points out the
remarkable ability of networks to absorb the new without disruption:
"There is no evidence that the complexity of natural flocks is bounded
in any way. Flocks do not become 'full' or 'overloaded' as new birds
join. When herring migrate toward their spawning grounds, they run in
schools extending as long as 17 miles and containing millions of fish."
How big a telephone network could we make? How many nodes can one even
theoretically add to a network and still have it work? The question has
hardly even been asked.
There are a variety of swarm topologies, but the only organization that
holds a genuine plurality of shapes is the grand mesh. In fact, a
plurality of truly divergent components can only remain coherent in a
network. No other arrangement-chain, pyramid, tree, circle, hub-can
contain true diversity working as a whole. This is why the network is
nearly synonymous with democracy or the market.
A dynamic network is one of the few structures that incorporates the
dimension of time. It honors internal change. We should expect to see
networks wherever we see constant irregular change, and we do.
A distributed, decentralized network is more a process than a thing. In
the logic of the Net there is a shift from nouns to verbs. Economists
now reckon that commercial products are best treated as though they
were services. It's not what you sell a customer, its what you do for
them. It's not what something is, it's what it is connected to, what it
does. Flows become more important than resources. Behavior counts.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-g.html
Immortalist wrote:
...Brooks's ideas gelled in a cockroachlike contraption the size of a
football called "Genghis." Brooks had pushed his downsizing to an
extreme.
Genghis had six legs but
no "brain" at all.
All of its 12 motors and 21 sensors were distributed in a decomposable
network without a centralized controller.
The interaction of these 12 muscles and 21 sensors yielded an amazingly
complex and lifelike behavior.
Each of Genghis's six tiny legs
worked on its own, independent
of the others.
Each leg had its own ganglion of
neural cells-a tiny microprocessor-
that controlled the leg's actions.
Each leg thought for itself!
Walking for Genghis then became a
group project with at least
six small minds at work.
Other small semiminds within its body coordinated communication between
the legs.
Entomologists say this is how ants and real cockroaches cope-they have
neurons in their legs that do the leg's thinking.
In the mobot Genghis, walking emerges out of the collective behavior of
the 12 motors.
Two motors at each leg lift, or
not, depending on what the other
legs around them are doing.
If they activate in the right
sequence-Okay, hup! One, three,
six, two, five, four!---
---walking "happens."
In one of his papers, Rod Brooks first laid out his instructions on how
to make a creature walk without knowing how:
There is no central controller which directs the body where to put each
foot or how high to lift a leg should there be an obstacle ahead.
###############################
Each leg is granted a few
simple behaviors and each
independently knows what to
do under various circumstances.
###############################
For instance, two basic behaviors can be thought of as
"If I'm a leg and I'm up,
put myself down, " or
"If I'm a leg and I'm forward,
put the other five legs back
a little."
These processes exist independently, run at all times, and fire
whenever the sensory preconditions are true.
To create walking then, there just needs to be a sequencing of lifting
legs (this is the only instance where any central control is evident).
As soon as a leg is raised it
automatically swings itself
forward, and also down.
But the act of swinging forward
triggers all the other legs
to move back a little.
Since those legs (happen) to be
touching the ground, the
body moves forward.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-g.html
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
