Re: [Swarm-Modelling] lifecycle requirements

[Scott Christley]

On Nov 27, 2006, at 8:13 PM, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

> Scott Christley wrote:
> > On Nov 27, 2006, at 11:55 AM, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
> >
> > > It's not the collective that I'm trying to get at, it's the post- 
> > > facto
> > > naming of the object that I'm after.  The collective gets  
> > > together in
> > > some pattern, an external agent perceives this collective and  
> > > _labels_
> > > the pattern as, say, a "whirlpool".  That external agent should  
> > > then be
> > > able to act upon that whirlpool without explicit knowledge of how  
> > > to act
> > > on any given constituent of the whirlpool.
> >
> > If you can "perceive" this collective then slapping a label onto  
> > it and interacting with it becomes easy.
> Suppose you are watching a time sequence of aggregate index prices  
> from a stock market.  The index is heading up steadily, and you  
> want to get in and make some money before the bubble pops.  What do  
> you do?   You need some way to place a bid and you need source of  
> money and you need an idea of what is best to buy (but perhaps  
> anything will do).    The mechanisms for interacting in a  
> collective (the bubble) aren't necessarily suggested from the  
> perception of it.

True.  I meant that once you have a label on the phenomena then the  
"ability" to interact becomes easy, because now you have a semantic  
label which you can use for referential identity.  Of course, knowing  
what type of interactions to perform is not easy and depends greatly  
upon the agent's capability, some may be able to learn how to interact.


Scott