5 ms·

By definition and pedantry: yes. Humans are animals.

tmh88j 6y ago
No one would argue that humans aren't animals, but do all animals swarm? Genuinely curious, not trying to be a smart-ass.
- odomojuli 6y ago
  Because you're curious you get my curious answer. Philosophically I would argue yes, all organisms are capable of swarming. I do not think any species has been able to sufficiently adapt or evolve unless in copious and sufficient populations which requires some kind of implicit understanding of sheer numbers. Swarming only requires computation at the local level. Which is to say, swarming is an emergent behavior from being able to self-organize. I would imagine most organisms have some kind of drive for attraction and repulsion, whether its mates or predators. Those two instincts can drive the computation for swarming. I'm kind of applying some semantic flourish here but avoidance is kind of vaguely high-level concept for computational behavior. It's definitely not as cut and dry as what I said but you can certainly program it that way if you have a high-level language. I'm not saying it's difficult to understand by the way, I'm saying it's hard to write out predict complex behavior from simple rules because it's hard to simulate those systems. Self-organization falls into like, computational reality theories that are way above my head but a good place to start is cellular automata's theories of complexities. Shorter answer: almost everything living on this planet is still here because it exploits some kind of metaheuristic that increases its advantage from there being more of it. To massage your statement, I think almost everything exhibits some kind of swarm intelligence. I think it's philosophically simpler to argue the following procession of ideas that swarm intelligence is a metaheuristic algorithm, all life is capable of computing these algorithms, but then ask the question what the hell is life exactly? I'm being handwavy here because I don't have a rigorous definition for life and therefore can't answer you directly. Some kind of computational substrate that mutates and replicates? That's von Neumann's definition I think. You could probably do without mutation! Death and radiation already provide those conditions for you. Again, I'm curious as to how we self-organize in the first place. The hard part isn't how do we know how to fit ourselves into a larger system, but how do we reduce ourselves to a single unit? What makes an individual organism at a higher-level of abstraction one cohesive thing when it's actually made of layers and layers of processes? Do viruses swarm? If you follow what I just said, that's if viruses compute the algorithm. But do they compute at all if they're technically just data? Is information itself a computer? What are we but games within games within games? Nature really is the best computer science teacher if you want to be brutally effective at being inefficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metaphor-based_metaheuristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metaphor-based_metaheu...
  - KineticLensman 6y ago
    > I think almost everything exhibits some kind of swarm intelligence ... I'm being handwavy here because I don't have a rigorous definition for life Perhaps before getting too philosophical about defining life it would be useful to provide a rigorous definition of 'swarm'. Then we can debate whether specific organisms swarm or not, as opposed to just being alive and in groups of two or more individuals. For example, my intuition is that orangutans never swarm in the way that starlings or anchovies do.
  - AnonHP 6y ago
    > Nature really is the best computer science teacher if you want to be brutally effective at being inefficient. And at the same time, it also creates enduring and resilient organisms that propagate and thrive over time scales we cannot really and truly comprehend.
  - andygcook 6y ago
    By the prose formation, this seems like a GPT-3 generated comment.
c3534l 6y ago
I think the more important word there is "swarming" and, no, the word "swarm" does not automatically imply animals as the word is used in other contexts, too.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  What other contexts? As far as I know, it's only used by way of analogy to animal swarms: e.g. Docker Swarm.
  - techbio 6y ago
    May be rooted in the natural world, eg. locusts, but there was a Michael Crichton (author of Jurassic Park) book titled Swarm, about a nano-drone apocalypse (fictional novel treatment of something like Bill Joy's gray goo). I believe the accepted understanding is that a swarm operates with emergent behavior above and beyond that of its mostly ignorant constituent individual organisms, be they ants/bees/locusts/people or HFT algos.
    - nfkro 6y ago
      Of course it’s rooted in the natural world. Even technical language is analogy and metaphor to natural phenomenon. Any reputable scientist will tell you just that. Using swarm in the context science fiction bugs is indirection. It could be conceptualized otherwise but in writing at large it’s almost always used as an analogy to animal behavior (like a swarm of $natural_being). I believe what you believe the accepted understanding is is just your opinion. It’s not my understanding of it at all.
      - techbio 6y ago
        If my understanding, or belief, is only just an internet opinion, so unacceptable as to provoke this reply, would you mind sharing what yours is as a counterpoint?
keiferski 6y ago
The implied meaning is ‘other animals’ which is obvious to all the non-pedants in the world.

No one would argue that humans aren't animals, but do all animals swarm? Genuinely curious, not trying to be a smart-ass.

odomojuli 6y ago
Because you're curious you get my curious answer. Philosophically I would argue yes, all organisms are capable of swarming. I do not think any species has been able to sufficiently adapt or evolve unless in copious and sufficient populations which requires some kind of implicit understanding of sheer numbers. Swarming only requires computation at the local level. Which is to say, swarming is an emergent behavior from being able to self-organize. I would imagine most organisms have some kind of drive for attraction and repulsion, whether its mates or predators. Those two instincts can drive the computation for swarming. I'm kind of applying some semantic flourish here but avoidance is kind of vaguely high-level concept for computational behavior. It's definitely not as cut and dry as what I said but you can certainly program it that way if you have a high-level language. I'm not saying it's difficult to understand by the way, I'm saying it's hard to write out predict complex behavior from simple rules because it's hard to simulate those systems. Self-organization falls into like, computational reality theories that are way above my head but a good place to start is cellular automata's theories of complexities. Shorter answer: almost everything living on this planet is still here because it exploits some kind of metaheuristic that increases its advantage from there being more of it. To massage your statement, I think almost everything exhibits some kind of swarm intelligence. I think it's philosophically simpler to argue the following procession of ideas that swarm intelligence is a metaheuristic algorithm, all life is capable of computing these algorithms, but then ask the question what the hell is life exactly? I'm being handwavy here because I don't have a rigorous definition for life and therefore can't answer you directly. Some kind of computational substrate that mutates and replicates? That's von Neumann's definition I think. You could probably do without mutation! Death and radiation already provide those conditions for you. Again, I'm curious as to how we self-organize in the first place. The hard part isn't how do we know how to fit ourselves into a larger system, but how do we reduce ourselves to a single unit? What makes an individual organism at a higher-level of abstraction one cohesive thing when it's actually made of layers and layers of processes? Do viruses swarm? If you follow what I just said, that's if viruses compute the algorithm. But do they compute at all if they're technically just data? Is information itself a computer? What are we but games within games within games? Nature really is the best computer science teacher if you want to be brutally effective at being inefficient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metaphor-based_metaheuristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metaphor-based_metaheu...
- KineticLensman 6y ago
  > I think almost everything exhibits some kind of swarm intelligence ... I'm being handwavy here because I don't have a rigorous definition for life Perhaps before getting too philosophical about defining life it would be useful to provide a rigorous definition of 'swarm'. Then we can debate whether specific organisms swarm or not, as opposed to just being alive and in groups of two or more individuals. For example, my intuition is that orangutans never swarm in the way that starlings or anchovies do.
- AnonHP 6y ago
  > Nature really is the best computer science teacher if you want to be brutally effective at being inefficient. And at the same time, it also creates enduring and resilient organisms that propagate and thrive over time scales we cannot really and truly comprehend.
- andygcook 6y ago
  By the prose formation, this seems like a GPT-3 generated comment.

c3534l 6y ago

I think the more important word there is "swarming" and, no, the word "swarm" does not automatically imply animals as the word is used in other contexts, too.

ForHackernews 6y ago
What other contexts? As far as I know, it's only used by way of analogy to animal swarms: e.g. Docker Swarm.
- techbio 6y ago
  May be rooted in the natural world, eg. locusts, but there was a Michael Crichton (author of Jurassic Park) book titled Swarm, about a nano-drone apocalypse (fictional novel treatment of something like Bill Joy's gray goo). I believe the accepted understanding is that a swarm operates with emergent behavior above and beyond that of its mostly ignorant constituent individual organisms, be they ants/bees/locusts/people or HFT algos.
  - nfkro 6y ago
    Of course it’s rooted in the natural world. Even technical language is analogy and metaphor to natural phenomenon. Any reputable scientist will tell you just that. Using swarm in the context science fiction bugs is indirection. It could be conceptualized otherwise but in writing at large it’s almost always used as an analogy to animal behavior (like a swarm of $natural_being). I believe what you believe the accepted understanding is is just your opinion. It’s not my understanding of it at all.
    - techbio 6y ago
      If my understanding, or belief, is only just an internet opinion, so unacceptable as to provoke this reply, would you mind sharing what yours is as a counterpoint?

keiferski 6y ago

The implied meaning is ‘other animals’ which is obvious to all the non-pedants in the world.