2-FEB-2003 YON
See Also: Book Notes,
Swarm Intelligence
by James Kennedy, Russell C. Eberhart, with Yuhui Shi
Table of Contents
The is a very beefy book that has a ton of summaries of papers and concepts
and is a rich read, even for a layperson such as myself.
The thesis: "Thinking is Social"
There is one minor disappointment - no mention of Kevin Kelly and Out Of Control, which was talking
about swarms and the "hive mind" close to a decade ago.
The other more serious detriment is that intelligence itself is not properly
defined. There is no mention of Multiple Intelligences. The thesis that there
are several ways to be intelligent: Linguistic, Logical-mathematical, Spatial,
Bodily-Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Naturalist, and
perhaps even Emotional Intelligence (book: Daniel Goleman). A casual glimpse
of the net selects this as a good starting point for multiple intelligence:
http://www.thomasarmstrong.com/multiple_intelligences.htm
On to the good things. The book spend the first few chapters reviewing basic
genetic and adaptive algorithms in enough detail to shed light on how they
will be useful. This is the whole "complex behavior from simple rules" thing.
It then follows the work of practitioners to layout the thesis. That the
things we are smart about develop because we exchange information in a social
context.
On page 93, there are several profound statements:
"it may be impossible for humans to really extract ourselves from our egoistic
perspective, to see ourselves as disposable stepping stones for some bigger
or littler entities progress and survival."
"Our role in nature, whether it is to pass on genes or mitochondria, to support
our group, to maintain the Gaia-sphere, or even to provide for the survival
of the individual organism, involves our ability to minimize error in our
adaptations to the environment."
Perhaps it is just because I was reading the Upanishads when I read
this section, but add Gaia
and I'm there. It reminds me of how in Stephenson's Snow Crash,
he talks about religion being a virus who's sole purpose is self perpetuation.
Here are some other really cool things:
Kurt Lewin's field theory and "life space" - a geometry of the individual
in relation to its surroundings. I'm always a sucker for that - check out
Gärdenfors Conceptual Spaces.
http://fates.cns.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/lewin.htm
Albert Bandura's social learning in which there is vicarious learning. That
stimuli and response are not what they seem. In fact, in social situation,
the behavior causes the stimuli - take that Skinner.
Robert Boyd and Peter Richardson's evolution cultural model. This is a mathematical
model for how cultures adapt based on social learning, individual learning.
Both are needed, but, evolution will favor those who can learn from other's
mistakes. Also, Latane talks about the strength of influence of groups by
distance and size. Modeling of this results in a society which maintains
some minorities.
Kaiping Peng & Richard Nisbett review notions of culture and the history
of science and come up with these differences between Chinese/Eastern cultural
beliefs:
* Principle of Change (Reality is changing 24/7) (Process Theology)
* Principle of Contradiction - opposites exist, get used to it.
* Holism - sum of the parts, etc. It is not en ought to understand something
in isolation.
Western beliefs:
* Principle of Identity - I am what I am
* Law of noncontradiction - A cannot equal NOT A
* Law of the Excluded Middle - between two members of a contradiction there
can be no middle term.
Conclusion
The book seems packed with useful stuff that would help implement a nontrivial
model of social groups, such as the MASSIVE model used
for the Lord of the Rings battle scenes. From WIRED news:
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,56778,00.html
In Massive, agents' brains -- which look like intricate flow charts -- define
how they see and hear, how fast they run and how slowly they die. For the
films, stunt actors' movements were recorded in the studio to enable the
agents to wield weapons realistically, duck to avoid a sword, charge an enemy
and fall off tower walls flailing. [later "We set off the simulation, and
in the distance you could see several guys running for the hills."]
This year's GEEK book - The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision , by Martha
J. Farah