Stigmergy and The Soul of the Ant

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Termite Mound

Termite Mound by Razmataz

When I was a kid, one of the books I read that stimulated my sense of awe and wonder in nature was “Die Siel van die Mier”, which in English is “The Soul of the Ant” – written by an important figure (I now realise) in ethology, Eugene Marais. I can still remember his descriptions of how magnificent a termite’s nest is, how comparatively small a termite is, and the questions he asked around how it was possible that such a stupendous, high structure with its intricate pathways and symmetries could be architected by these creatures.

How did they communicate and agree on what to build and how to build it?  How did they work together, and coordinate themselves?

I believe he attributed it to some invisible guiding force from the queen.  Other people attribute it to some kind of innate intelligence.  But another word describes it better: stigmergy.

Stigmergy

Stigmergy refers to how an animal modifies its environment as part of some action or stimulus – and how that environment modification can in turn influence other animals.

So for example an ant might detect some food, and then secrete a pheromone trail back to the nest.  The ant has modified the environment – and now other ants will magically start trundling to the food.  Presumably ants have some simple, default mechanism of “follow the pheromone lad” kind of behaviour – it’s a simple behaviour, but it’s queued on an environmental modification.

From Theraulaz and Bonabeau

Another example is given in a paper by A Brief History of Stigmergy (PDF) by Theraulaz and Bonabeau. These poor wasps are trying to build a funnel, but at some point, just before they’re finished, a researcher creates a little hole near the top of the funnel (S1).  That’s the same stimulus that drove the wasps to create the funnel in the first place – so what do they do?  Well, they go and create another one at that spot.

Stigmergy and algorithms

The behaviour is deviously simply, very mechanical, very algorithmic – with a lovely feedback mechanism.  That same paper has a nice analysis of how a particular species of wasp coordinates to create a hive.  The algorithm is something like: create a new piece of comb at some location that has the most walls.  This will result in a nice comb being constructed, instead of a straight line of cells.

I find a deep beauty here – in how evolution has led to these creatures using simple, local rules to create vast and complex structures and behaviour.  The behaviour emerges from the simple algorithm.  That got me thinking about boids.

Other Emergent Behaviours

One way I look at this stigmergy is that the complexity behind the physical object arose from the interactions of individual agents. The behaviours accreted a physical manifestation.  I suspect boids are another example of this – except the physical manifestation is absent, or rather it’s temporal.

Have you ever seen birds flocking? Or the amazing wheeling of a school of fish.  How is it coordinated?  It turns out that individuals need to do very little, perhaps just obey three simple and localised rules: separation, alignment and cohesion.  If they do, the behaviour of flocking simply emerges out of the group.

Craig Reynolds developed an artificial life program (called boids), which demonstrates these simple laws in action.  Here’s a look at a simple animation based on the algorithm.

Again, I marvel at this reverse engineering.  The amazing swirling, whirling and acrobatic displays of swarm birds and bats can be reduced to three simple, local rules – that if any one individual obeys, will result in the collective whole taking on an incredibly beautiful behaviour.

Stigmergy and culture

I wonder how we, humans, are affected by these kinds of things.  What kind of traces do we leave in our environment that causes us to perform certain behaviours which may in turn lead to….?

That question makes me think of culture – which increasingly I realise is the source of much of what we do and how we think.

Perhaps another way of looking at culture is simply that of a stigmergic trail that we leave behind us.

Signalling Theory, The Handicap Principle and Conspicuous Consumption

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Gazelles sometimes stot or pronk, that is they jump straight up on all four legs instead of run away, when pursued by a lion. The theory behind this is that they are signalling to the lion, effectively saying “hey dude, I’m healthy – I can jump over a metre high – go chase someone else.”  

This is an example of larger signalling theory that looks at communication between individuals.  (In the above example, you can think of it as an interspecies communication.)

Honest and dishonest signals

One aspect of signalling theory is determining whether a signal is honest or dishonest.  For example, a gazelle wouldn’t be able to jump straight up if seriously injured.  Bench-pressing a heavy weight is an honest signal of strength – you can’t fake it.

Driving around in a Lamborghini Gallardo may be seen as an honest signal of wealth.  Then again, the driver could just be a lackey taking it to the car wash – or perhaps the driver sold his house and is in debt on the repayments.  It could well be a dishonest signal.

Conspicuous consumption and the handicap principle

You can take these example a little further when applied to humans with the delightfully named conspicuous consumption - spending wealth on luxury goods is not really for the sake of the luxury good, but rather as a signal to others that you have the wealth to do so.  It’s a public display of wealth – probably for the sake of status.  As an aside, folk have even proposed a luxury tax on such consumption.

Thorstein Veblen proposed this in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class – together with other terms like conspicuous leisure – here’s a nice quote that sums this up:  ”Time is consumed non-productively … as an evidence of pecuniary ability to afford a life of idleness”

There’s a whole game-theoretic side to signalling theory, some of which you can find in the handicap principle, which proposes that honest signals must be costly to produce and send (they’re handicaps) – and looks at the evolutionary conditions for such a system. 

In everyday life

Perhaps this explains, to some degree, why my neighbour drives that big car he does, why that woman buys her Louis Vuitton bag, and why some of my Twitter network do nothing other than retweet famous people. Perhaps they’re all signalling something – in this case status (either via wealth or association).

I’m sure it’s a little more complex (who you signal to is probably limited to those within your social class, close to yourself in the social hierarchy) – but nevertheless, I hope you agree that it’s fascinating stuff.

Detecting minds where there are none

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You’re sitting in your bedroom and hear three sharp raps at your window. Rat tat tat. Ten seconds later, you hear it again. Rat tat tat. More than likely, you’re going to imagine an agent – a mind – is behind that rapping. That’s agency detection.

This happened to me a few years ago. It was, after investigation, just the wind – but the pattern was such that my mind assumed there was someone was there, rapping on the window. The branch had probably knocked against the window countless times – but my brain only said “oh hai Jon” when something (unconsciously) registered that there was something more than chance at play – a possible agent.

Humans are pretty good at agent detection, and probably lean towards detecting many false positives, as I did with the branch. It’s better to misinterpret the rustling leaves as an approaching lion and live to tell the tale, than to ignore them, and be eaten. (There are, I believe, many scientists examining this phenomenon, and just how sensitive we and other animals are to it.)

I once read about a wonderful term, a Hyperactive Agent Detection Device (HADD). The determination of agency where there is none – can be seen as a symptom of HADD. Our brains are wired to be a little too sensitive, a little hyperactive.

As a result, we’re prone to see agency where there is none. This is an example of a human bias.

Some possible examples, based on my loose definition:

  • You can well imagine a host of gods being created to explain crop failures, rains, earthquakes and other natural disasters. In fact, some modern American preachers appear to still believe this.
  • I wonder if this extends to fabricated constructions too. I once heard someone say “My company doesn’t like me” – somehow anthropomorphising 2000 people and processes – making a single agent out of them.
  • Spirits, ghosts fall into this category too. The evil spirit is especially interesting. People are imagining an agent inside another one.

We all have, and we’ve probably all experienced, agent detection. Pay attention to those around you and see if you can spot them using HADD – fabricating agents where there are none.

Essentialism: Basing decisions on beliefs

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“The pleasure we get from all sorts of everyday objects is related to our beliefs about their histories.” – that’s a line from Paul Bloom’s book, How Pleasure Works.

It’s so obvious, yet I’d never thought of it like that before – not so precisely. Our pleasure with respect to objects is tied to beliefs. Just imagine how much you appreciate a Van Gogh painting after finding it to be a forgery – no matter how accurate – no matter how beautiful you thought it was before you found out.

Or, say you lost the wedding ring (and imagine it’s a mass-produced variety) – you would probably find that both you and your partner wouldn’t go out and buy a duplicate and think of it as “the same ring”.

Why do we treat these duplicates differently to their originals?  It’s because of those beliefs.

Intangible beliefs and essentialism

That intangible set of beliefs around objects has a name in some circles – its essence. It turns out humans are natural essentialists: essentialism can be shown to occur from early childhood.

Essentialism skews how we reason – it creates reasoning biases – and of course it determines how we categorise things.

For example:

  • Essences can be lost.  When that wedding ring was lost, it wasn’t just the physical ring that was lost – its essence was last as well.  That’s why a physical duplicate just won’t cut it.
  • People believe that there is some unobservable property that causes things to be the way they are. For example, the butterfly is a butterfly even through its pupal stage.  I suppose people are people even through their baby stage too – and wonder if essentialism plays a role in some people’s objection to abortion and the concept of a soul.
  • Essences can be transferred. For example, people would pay for Robbie William’s clothing.  They’d pay even more if he wore them, and even more if he sweated in them.

Essentialism and eating

Human history has many examples of people believing they can acquire the essence of something by eating its embodiment.  Think:

  • Chinese “medicine” (a misnomer) and the belief that eating tiger penis would help with erectile disfunction.
  • Catholics believe that the Eucharist physically changes into the body of their Christ.  (I understand that if you’re Catholic and don’t believe that, you’re not really Catholic.)
  • Cannibals
  • “Natural foods” – people think they’ll be healthier, more vital, more “attach whatever belief you’ve attached to natural” when they eat natural foods.

There is also evidence that our beliefs, this essentialism, play a role in our experience of the sensation (when eating, say).  If you believe Perrier water tastes better than tap water, it probably will. There’s a feedback loop there, based on your essentialist beliefs. If you believe the Van Gogh authentic, you’ll appreciate it more.

Effort contributes to history

How much effort you put into something (or someone else put into something) affects our essentialist beliefs about the object.  The effort adds to that history, adds to whether we like them or not.  Some examples:

  • The Joshua Bell experiment – here the violinist played without the context of a big hall and much applause – without the context that contributes the history.
  • Apparently 1950 cake mixes were unpopular, not because of taste, but because they didn’t require much work.  Just add milk.  When folk had to instead beat and add an egg – expend effort – they became better products.  This is called the IKEA effect (PDF) - “… labor leads to increased valuation only when labor results in successful completion of tasks”.  (The paper is a good read.)

Summary

Essentialism is pretty interesting – it appears that we’re all natural essentialists – and there is evidence that we gain this essentialism at a pretty young age (see The Essential Child: Origins of Essentialism in Everyday Thought – I don’t have a copy, but it appears to be pretty interesting and relevant).

Thinking about how people construct histories of beliefs, and base their reasoning and even sensual pleasure on them, opens up doors to many human biases and behaviours.

Believing something is right because we’ve always believed it

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Some parts of daily life seem so natural, benign, and commonplace that we don’t consider them to be as awful as they really are. Perhaps we so easily believe something is right, just because it has always been so. Take for example, circumcision.

Circumcision as genital mutilation

To be clear, I’m referring to male circumcision here, and circumcision performed outside of a medical necessity.

For many years, I considered being circumcised, and the act of circumcision, to be relatively benign. It’s ubiquitous, it’s commonplace. I’ve not heard a man complain, nor sue his parents, because of it.

Really though, circumcision is a form of genital mutilation forced upon children.

I read words to that effect a few years ago, and it made me stop in my tracks. Oh. I’d never thought of it like that.

It’s generally children that are circumcised, babies even. It’s forced – probably by a parent or church, carried out by the scalpel of a surgeon if you’re lucky. It’s forced in the sense that the child doesn’t have a say, is not informed or asked for consent. It’s a genital mutilation – an act that removes flesh from the body – yet one that doesn’t appear to be a mutilation because it’s so commonplace.

Years ago one of my friends expressed revulsion at an interesting fellow with a nose ring. I clearly remember thinking that my friend was a little confused – could he not see all the women around him that had earrings? Somehow the one piercing of flesh had become some commonplace that he no longer saw it for what it was.

Why

Why are parents so happy to have their children circumcised? There’s no malice. Rather, it’s probably because of what everyone else was doing, it’s what because of what their culture has led them to believe was the appropriate thing; recently perhaps because they thought there was a health benefit – though even that is in serious doubt.

Primarily though, it’s probably because of what a religion has ordained, for example the Jewish brit milah or the Muslim Khitan.

The Germans

A German court has recently ruled that circumcision is grievous bodily harm. According to the ruling:

the fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighs the fundamental rights of the parents

It’s unfortunately not yet law, but it makes a lot of sense. It feels very much like the correct and moral stance to take. And it’s progressive – few countries, if any, ban circumcision because of the power of religious bodies.

Unsurprisingly, there are many religious parties that object, calling it an intrusion on religious freedom. What awful and barbaric rhetoric comes from these religious folk – believing that their culture, their beliefs, trump the bodily integrity of children.

Changing

That is malice coming from the religious groups – and you have to wonder what its source is. A vested interest in protecting their religion perhaps?

But I wonder whether the average man on the street being exposed to thinking about circumcision as bodily harm would agree, would continue to condone it? Or would they be swayed by the rhetoric of their religion – unthinkingly. Would they consider the truth, or would they simply take it as an affront on their identity, their tribe, their religion? That would be a blind belief in authority.

I wish there were epidemiological studies of the spread of ideas like this – ideas that touch on something so fundamental (body integrity and religion).

I also wonder whether it really does take the actions that are happening in Germany – the slow painful process of someone being sued, higher courts getting involved, someone thinking and lobbying, inter-lobby fighting and political gain, ruling, fighting and subsidence, wash, repeat – until there is consensus, and a wide enough spread of awareness to make the change stick. History is filled with this change – big instances being the racial and gay movements.

It’s so slow, so painful, so inter-generational.

How do you change folk from believing something is right because they always have believed it, and rather have them think about the act, and take a stance on what is right, not just what is common. How can society change more quickly, or is that an impossible pipe dream?

A Lady Stole My Heart Today

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At the gym.  Sitting right next to me in our spin session. A lovely lass – she pushed the right buttons and stole my heart.

Well, my heart rate, to be specific.

Just before the gruelling hour of spinning began, she tried to get the new electronic device attached to her bike to sync with her heart rate monitor, and instead it picked up mine – which we both noticed.  But then we were into standing sprints, and nothing could be done about it.

So for that entire hour, she was an intimate observer of my performance .  It was intriguing: I felt compelled to try even harder – I was being monitored after all – but then I also realised the compulsion and tried to ignore it.   Mostly failing.

That was an interesting pressure, peer pressure – and the pressure to impress, or at least not to appear as a total slacker.  Moreover, that pressure was to a complete stranger.

It also got me thinking a little about privacy and self instrumentation.  This was a data privacy breech, albeit a little unusual.  I’ve had some of my DNA genotyped over at 23andMe - which often has me thinking about privacy.  As someone pointed out, someone knowing your DNA also gives that someone access to some of your children’s DNA. It’s a data privacy breech with hereditary consequences.

However, it’s not particularly predictive, and really, I think there’s more benefit (to the human race) than disadvantage. Opening up my DNA (in the sense of something like the Creative Commons Zero license) would let others potentially benefit – and efforts to really open it up are underway at places like openSNP.

My genome, my heart rate, and everything in betwen.  How much of ourselves should we be prepared to give away like this, to complete strangers?  What actions would it make us perform, what are the advantages and disadvantages?

I’m intrigued by the questions.  For now though, here’s the captured heart rate:

Spin

What has this to do with reason? Even though I was actively aware that I would probably be stressed into performing more than average, I couldn’t help myself. I still did. Either that, or I simply had an elevated heart rate that day…

Confirmation Bias and Free Will

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I’ve been thinking about free will, which has in turn got me thinking about all the flaws we all have in our abilities to reason.  We all have them to a lesser or greater extent – and they’re often surprisingly subtle.  The subtly disturbs me – it leaves the door wide open for bad reasoning, and smashes at the notion of free will.

An Example: Confirmation Bias
The errors in our reasoning that I’m talking about here are not mistakes we make while doing math in our head, but rather errors we make when supposedly reasoning towards a truth.

These errors in our reasoning abilities are often called human biases. A favourite of mine is the (motivated) confirmation bias – it’s ubiquitous, subtle, and scares the living hell out of me as a result. Here’s a nice definition from Wikipedia:

Confirmation bias is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.  People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

This is unconscious, which makes it all the more pernicious. It’s “motivated” as people are motivated to defend a belief or hypothesis that they already hold, unwittingly selecting information to support it.

For example, if you believed in “alternative medicine” – your belief may be unconsciously bolstered whenever you read about the case of some poor child recovering from a dreadful disease after being dosed with a sugary homeopathic remedy.

Hypothesis-Determined Information Seeking and Interpretation

But what about the other facts: the number of people who died from the disease, the number of people who recovered without any medication whatsoever, and so on.

These hint at some of the theories scientists (see below for reference) are developing as to why we have a confirmation bias.

For example:

  • “Restriction of attention to a favoured hypothesis” (it wasn’t chance, or a different medicine that saved them – its as the homeopathic medicine)
  • “Preferential treatment of evidence supporting existing beliefs” (the people who recovered without the homeopathic medicine probably had some homeopathic trace elements in their food – and look, the ones that took it recovered.  Amazing.)
  • “Overweighting positive confirmatory instances” (ZOMG look, 50 cases of recovery!  It must be true. (Ignoring the 1000 cases that didn’t, not even seeking them out.))

See the reference below for the science behind these, and experiments which appear to indicate that these are mechanisms behind confirmation bias.

Thoughts: Consistency and Religion and Free Will

  • What scares me about the confirmation bias is that we’re all susceptible, it’s unconscious, and it leads to us draw false conclusions (such as earnestly believing in something that’s demonstrably false, such as homeopathy).  I wonder to what extent I am biased in this way.
  • The scientific method is one way in which we try and ascertain truths without bias.  That doesn’t mean scientists are not without confirmation bias. But at least science has mechanisms to avoid them.
  • This is very much related to consistency as well – as I wrote in Being Aware of Rationalising. I wonder if we have particular confirmation biases to maintain a consistent experience.
  • I wonder to what extent the confirmation bias leads to someone continuing to believe in a religion.  Restriction of attention is evident in many believers, blithely turning an eye to contradictions (or other religions), as are preferential treatment of evidence and so on.  I guess we can be lenient here on what counts as evidence.

Finally, having a bias such as a confirmation bias severely undermines our notion of free will.  I’m not the conscious author of an opinion or reason here – it’s even more of an illusion if my own brain is filtering information behind my back, so to speak.  Where’s the free will in that?

References

This paper is awesome, and the source for my second section title: Confirmation Bias; A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises”, Review of General Psychology (Educational Publishing Foundation) 2 (2): 175–220 (PDF)