From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Sat Feb 26 2000 - 10:19:19 MST
mjg223 wrote:
> The ant colony optimization article you mention is a perfect example:
> put a bunch of idiot state machines together and perfection emerges.
Not so much perfection, as a system highly tolerant of imperfection.
[Get it? tolerANT]
ahem. Years ago I was watching ants and became
obsessed with them. (surprise!) I wanted to see what would
happen if you took one single ant, isolated her in an ant farm with
plenty of food and water. Would she make a single tunnel
like on the BC comics, with one chamber? Or would she try
to make an entire tunnel system like the many, only slower?
Or would she just kick back, do nothing, go around looking
for something to bite, what?
I did make a really cool ant farm with sheets of glass one meter
by .61 meters (golden ratio). I isolated one ant. She died. I
took another. She died. I tried the experiment with two ants.
They both died. Now all I know is how to exterminate ants. spike
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