5 ms·

Nice for the amoeba, but slime molds have first mover advantage. They solved the travelling salesman problem in 2013, and they managed 20 cities [0]. [edit: my

Nice for the amoeba, but slime molds have first mover advantage. They solved the travelling salesman problem in 2013, and they managed 20 cities [0]. [edit: my bad: the two reports referred to amoeba and slime molds but are actually discussing the same species (Physarum polycephalum)] [edit 2: it's been pointed out that the 2013 creature I referenced wasn't even real, just a sim. However, real slime molds can model Canadian transport networks [1] and can use slime trails to navigate around obstacles [2]] [Edit 3. The Vice article says 'Amoeba' but references a Royal Society [3] story that says 'slime mold'. Wikipedia [4] says that slime molds comprise the mycetozoan group of the amoebozoa. So slime molds are in fact amoeba, but not all amoeba are slime molds.] [0] https://phys.org/news/2013-03-blob-salesman.html https://phys.org/news/2013-03-blob-salesman.html [1] https://phys.org/news/2012-03-slime-mold-mimics-canadian-highway.html#nRlv https://phys.org/news/2012-03-slime-mold-mimics-canadian-hig... [2] https://phys.org/news/2012-10-slime-molds-spatial-memory.html#nRlv https://phys.org/news/2012-10-slime-molds-spatial-memory.htm... [3] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.180396 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.180396 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slime_mold

yorwba 8y ago
The work in 2013 appears to have been a simulation of slime mold/amoeba behavior, not an actual living organism.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  One slime mold to another: It just might be that these artifacts of quantization we see are proof we are living in a simulation. In fact, there is this argument to be made that the chances that we live in a simulation are bigger than that we do not. Here, let me show you...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >It just might be that these artifacts of quantization we see The artifacts of quantization that we see are of the kind that come from continuous differential equations, not the kind that come from a lattice. Even the qbits in a quantum computer are found on a continuous Bloch sphere, instead of a discrete zero or one state space.
colordrops 8y ago
The article you linked is a simulation rather than living amoeba. Furthermore, both this and the main article are about finding suboptimal solutions, which is fun but not groundbreaking.
web007 8y ago
Slime molds (by name) do have first-mover advantage, back to 2010 for the Tokyo subway system: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121141051.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121141051.h... ... the slime mold connected itself to scattered food sources in a design that was nearly identical to Tokyo's rail system.
drak0n1c 8y ago
They used a plasmodium "true slime mold" amoeba in this experiment. Here is the more technical PhysOrg source that Vice relied on: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-amoeba-approximate-solutions-np-hard-problem.html https://phys.org/news/2018-12-amoeba-approximate-solutions-n...

yorwba 8y ago

The work in 2013 appears to have been a simulation of slime mold/amoeba behavior, not an actual living organism.

jacquesm 8y ago
One slime mold to another: It just might be that these artifacts of quantization we see are proof we are living in a simulation. In fact, there is this argument to be made that the chances that we live in a simulation are bigger than that we do not. Here, let me show you...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >It just might be that these artifacts of quantization we see The artifacts of quantization that we see are of the kind that come from continuous differential equations, not the kind that come from a lattice. Even the qbits in a quantum computer are found on a continuous Bloch sphere, instead of a discrete zero or one state space.

colordrops 8y ago

The article you linked is a simulation rather than living amoeba. Furthermore, both this and the main article are about finding suboptimal solutions, which is fun but not groundbreaking.

web007 8y ago

Slime molds (by name) do have first-mover advantage, back to 2010 for the Tokyo subway system: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121141051.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100121141051.h... ... the slime mold connected itself to scattered food sources in a design that was nearly identical to Tokyo's rail system.

drak0n1c 8y ago

They used a plasmodium "true slime mold" amoeba in this experiment. Here is the more technical PhysOrg source that Vice relied on: https://phys.org/news/2018-12-amoeba-approximate-solutions-np-hard-problem.html https://phys.org/news/2018-12-amoeba-approximate-solutions-n...