4 ms·

Swarm intelligence

burgerbrain 16y ago
That article has been there for years. Is there any particular reason why you think its worth posting on HN now? There are thousands of really cool wikipedia articles but HN will be a mess if people just start randomly linking to them.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
  Yes. Recently there have been articles about "genetic" evolution of cars, "genetic" evolution of robots, optimisation with intelligent water, and more. People seem interested in the subject, so I thought I'd put in a link to an article summarising some of the more interesting techniques, especially since it, in turn, has links to other items on optimization. In addition, I'm still making observations about what people on HN now want to see. Although this item may yet be flagged to death, it's also getting a lot of up-votes, showing that there's a segment of the current population that finds this sort of thing useful or interesting. I find it rather depressing that stuff I've written and recently submitted [1] has sunk entirely without trace, and yet a hackneyed link like this is doing so well. Clearly I don't know what HN wants. I continue to make observations to try to make more useful contributions. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123469 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123469 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126890 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126890 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2127187 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2127187 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2130519 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2130519
  - burgerbrain 16y ago
    My theory is upvotes are all about the title. People vote things up on the mainpage without looking at the actual article, or the comment section. "Swarm Intelligence" gets voted up because hey, who doesn't like swarm intelligence? If you had called it "Swarm Intelligence Wikipedia Article" I'm willing to wager it would have received less upvotes. EDIT: This is probably a theory that is somewhat open to testing. Hmm...
    - dhimes 16y ago
      I upvote first on comments. I often don't even read the linked articles, but I never upvote without either reading comments (or submitting one, if I'm the first) or reading the article.
- coderdude 16y ago
  With moderation this isn't an issue. Not too many WP pages are submitted anyway. Besides, there are more than enough TechCrunch articles submitted to HN and those are usually just lame linkbait that are light on the tech. Why not ask if there is any reason to submit those?
  - burgerbrain 16y ago
    The omission of my complaint does not indicate my approval. Though, at least in the cases of TechCrunch articles, those are actually news (in some sense of the word), not static content that anyone in the past few years could find in seconds if they cared enough to.
    - coderdude 16y ago
      I have found that some of the most fulfilling content on HN is neither news nor created just recently. There have even been Wikipedia pages that I had never thought to look-up myself but happened to find very timely and informative.
albertcardona 16y ago
A popular Soviet SF writer Sever Gansovsky in his short story "The Host of Bay" (1962) described a sea monster consisting of microscopical particles which can self-organize themselves into a unity for hunt. There's a sea colony animal--siphonophore--that can change shape from a broad, amorphous colony mass into a streamlined compact cylinder, for swimming. The colony members are not free-living; the colony develops by budding. If the members were separate and assembled later on, science fiction would have been beaten again by a living organism. Does anyone know of an example of a species in which separated individuals assemble into a colony? There are descriptions of sponges, where dissociating the sponge cells, passing them through a sieve, and then letting it sit for a bit results in the cells reassembling. But the sponge doesn't look menacing neither predates.
x0ner 16y ago
http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Swarm-Understanding-Colonies-Communicating/dp/1583333908 http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Swarm-Understanding-Colonies-Com... Great book on animal/insect swarms and how we can learn from them.
- mindcrime 16y ago
  There's also this[1] which is a great introduction to Swarm Intelligence and it's relationship to Evolutionary Computing, Genetic Programming, Genetic Algorithms, etc. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolutionary-Computation/dp/1558605959/ref=pd_sim_b_2 http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolution... And anybody who's really into this stuff should probably poke around at: http://www.swarm.org/index.php/Main_Page http://www.swarm.org/index.php/Main_Page and http://santafe.edu/ http://santafe.edu/ as well.
speek 16y ago
Computational Intelligence (Swarm Intelligence, genetic algorithms, wavelets, emergence, etc) seems to be making a resurgence. This is good, there could be a lot more research happening in these topics :-)
mark_l_watson 16y ago
One of my publishers Morgan Kaufmann sent me a free copy of "Swarm Intelligence" (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Evolutionary Computation) about ten years ago. A bit interesting but I didn't see any applicability to any work I do for my customers so I didn't really get into it.

That article has been there for years. Is there any particular reason why you think its worth posting on HN now? There are thousands of really cool wikipedia articles but HN will be a mess if people just start randomly linking to them.

RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
Yes. Recently there have been articles about "genetic" evolution of cars, "genetic" evolution of robots, optimisation with intelligent water, and more. People seem interested in the subject, so I thought I'd put in a link to an article summarising some of the more interesting techniques, especially since it, in turn, has links to other items on optimization. In addition, I'm still making observations about what people on HN now want to see. Although this item may yet be flagged to death, it's also getting a lot of up-votes, showing that there's a segment of the current population that finds this sort of thing useful or interesting. I find it rather depressing that stuff I've written and recently submitted [1] has sunk entirely without trace, and yet a hackneyed link like this is doing so well. Clearly I don't know what HN wants. I continue to make observations to try to make more useful contributions. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123469 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2123469 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126890 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2126890 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2127187 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2127187 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2130519 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2130519
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  My theory is upvotes are all about the title. People vote things up on the mainpage without looking at the actual article, or the comment section. "Swarm Intelligence" gets voted up because hey, who doesn't like swarm intelligence? If you had called it "Swarm Intelligence Wikipedia Article" I'm willing to wager it would have received less upvotes. EDIT: This is probably a theory that is somewhat open to testing. Hmm...
  - dhimes 16y ago
    I upvote first on comments. I often don't even read the linked articles, but I never upvote without either reading comments (or submitting one, if I'm the first) or reading the article.
coderdude 16y ago
With moderation this isn't an issue. Not too many WP pages are submitted anyway. Besides, there are more than enough TechCrunch articles submitted to HN and those are usually just lame linkbait that are light on the tech. Why not ask if there is any reason to submit those?
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  The omission of my complaint does not indicate my approval. Though, at least in the cases of TechCrunch articles, those are actually news (in some sense of the word), not static content that anyone in the past few years could find in seconds if they cared enough to.
  - coderdude 16y ago
    I have found that some of the most fulfilling content on HN is neither news nor created just recently. There have even been Wikipedia pages that I had never thought to look-up myself but happened to find very timely and informative.

albertcardona 16y ago

A popular Soviet SF writer Sever Gansovsky in his short story "The Host of Bay" (1962) described a sea monster consisting of microscopical particles which can self-organize themselves into a unity for hunt. There's a sea colony animal--siphonophore--that can change shape from a broad, amorphous colony mass into a streamlined compact cylinder, for swimming. The colony members are not free-living; the colony develops by budding. If the members were separate and assembled later on, science fiction would have been beaten again by a living organism. Does anyone know of an example of a species in which separated individuals assemble into a colony? There are descriptions of sponges, where dissociating the sponge cells, passing them through a sieve, and then letting it sit for a bit results in the cells reassembling. But the sponge doesn't look menacing neither predates.

x0ner 16y ago

http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Swarm-Understanding-Colonies-Communicating/dp/1583333908 http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Swarm-Understanding-Colonies-Com... Great book on animal/insect swarms and how we can learn from them.

mindcrime 16y ago
There's also this[1] which is a great introduction to Swarm Intelligence and it's relationship to Evolutionary Computing, Genetic Programming, Genetic Algorithms, etc. [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolutionary-Computation/dp/1558605959/ref=pd_sim_b_2 http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Morgan-Kaufmann-Evolution... And anybody who's really into this stuff should probably poke around at: http://www.swarm.org/index.php/Main_Page http://www.swarm.org/index.php/Main_Page and http://santafe.edu/ http://santafe.edu/ as well.

speek 16y ago

Computational Intelligence (Swarm Intelligence, genetic algorithms, wavelets, emergence, etc) seems to be making a resurgence. This is good, there could be a lot more research happening in these topics :-)

mark_l_watson 16y ago

One of my publishers Morgan Kaufmann sent me a free copy of "Swarm Intelligence" (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Evolutionary Computation) about ten years ago. A bit interesting but I didn't see any applicability to any work I do for my customers so I didn't really get into it.