Re: [Swarm-Modelling] Crichton's "Prey"

[James Marshall]

Steve,
  you may find the following interesting, although I believe whether 
associations between individuals changes over time is something my 
colleagues are only just starting to look at.
  Regards,
        James

Langridge EA, Franks NR, Sendova-Franks AB
    Improvement in collective performance with experience in ants
    BEHAV ECOL SOCIOBIOL 56 (6): 523-529 OCT 2004

Steve Railsback wrote:
> Someone just gave me Michael Crichton's 2002 book "Prey". (I would bet a 
> lot of money that he wanted to name it "Swarm" but his lawyers told him 
> not to...too bad, could have been a nice fund-raiser for us.)
>
> Am I nuts, or is a central assumption of the book nonsense? He has a 
> swarm of independent, persistent, artificial organisms; and the swarm 
> could learn very rapidly. Our brains can learn rapidly, but the 
> connections are all hardwired; a population of simple organisms can 
> "learn" but only  via evolution, which requires birth and death and 
> selection... Is there any way a collection of independent agents, 
> interacting locally with a changing set of neighbors, can "learn" 
> without evolution?
>
> Steve

--
Dr James A. R. Marshall
Department of Computer Science
University of Bristol
http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/home/marshall