CS 1025 Emergent Patterns, Turtles as Agents, Decentralization

Guidelines for online discussion

We will do group discussions and presentation on Monday during the final exam period - have your hand-written notes/ideas ready to type in and/or to share in small groups.


http://ccl.northwestern.edu/papers/MEE/

Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams Decentralization pages.

Rough draft and rambling ideas to create raw materials 
      for thinking 
      and rapping
      and rhyming 

 about CS 1025 and 
 about the emergence of aggregate behavior 
 from interaction of individual agents.  
 NetLogo SLIME model.  2012 elections.

    Author: Mark Jacobson
    Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 6:32:14 PM CDT
    Subject: Online Discussion Assign #1: Thread on Emergence and Decentralization...

    Assignment #1: Discussion Thread on Emergence and Decentralization...

    Read the page at the following URL: http://ccl.northwestern.edu/papers/MEE/
    
    The title of the page is: "Modeling Nature?s Emergent Patterns with
    Multi-agent Languages"

    Write down your questions, confusions, new insights, favorite examples. 
    
    Try out and experiment with one or more of the examples in NetLogo. 
    
    Read the Foundations Chapter of Turtles, Termites, and TrafficJams. 
    Introduction pages 3-6 and The Era of Decentralization page 6-22.

    Share in two or more paragraphs some of the questions,
    confusions, insights or ideas you have as a result of your readings 
    of the textbook chapter one and the Modeling Nature's 
    Emergent Patterns with Multi-agent Languages web page.  
    
    NetLogo is a MULTI-AGENT (many turtles) Language.

        http://ccl.northwestern.edu/papers/MEE/


A few thoughts about emergence and agents.  
Agents, individual agents following  certain rules.  
Aggregated behavior emerging from the local interactions of
  the agents.  
  
  Emergence.  But no central plan or leader.  Rather 
  decentralized, local interactions giving rise to the overall, 
  surprising larger behavior of the collection of agents.  
  Slime mold and slimers.  ...(Ghostbusters movie has SLIMERS!)...

Poetry search for poems with the term "emerge".

Part of Speech: 	verb
Definition: 	come out, arise
Synonyms: 	appear, arrive, become apparent, become known, 
    become visible, come forth, come into view, 
    come on the scene, come to light, come up, crop up, 
    dawn, derive, develop, egress, emanate, flow, gush, 
    issue, loom, make appearance, materialize, originate, 
    proceed, rise, show, spring, spring up, spurt, steam, 
    stem, surface, transpire, turn up

Antonyms: 	disappear, fade, go away, leave

Emerge, arise out of the interaction of agents, appear 
     or become apparent as we adjust the sliders in the NetLogo model.

A new pattern becomes apparent, appears, arrives.  
Something develops, arises. issues forth, shows itself.

Poem link:  http://hellopoetry.com/poem/what-are-the-chances-1/ ;
  Poem containing the word "emerge" by A. Thomas Hawkins

Decentralization - separate agents.  two separate agents, 
      not necessarily turtles, rather human beings.
      
A. Thomas Hawkins:  together (separated, separate, 
   "starting off so far far away", 
   like the waggle dancing bees returning from
   different distances and different directions 
   to debate where to relocate to, 
   where to be harvest richest nectar at).

Contrast "far far away" to "by my side".   
Emerge from the darkness and into the light.  
Chances.  Randomness.  Chances.

Starting off far far away from the subject, 
   thinking its not for me, its something to get through, 
   its not fun, not enriching.  
   
   Falling for it, discovering it has something that you lack,
   that it adds to your life, makes you whole, more complete, 
   more capable of appreciating all things, and able to add more.  
   Walking with science, waking with math, by your side, 
   within you, enjoying, seeing with new eyes, broader vision.

Emily Dickinson Secrets is a Daily Word:
    http://hellopoetry.com/poem/secrets-is-a-daily-word/

"remits surmise"   
desist from making suppositions about secrets, 
refrain from surmises, lay aside surmising.

"Dungeoned in the Human Breast, doubtless secrets lie----"

"Nothing with a Tongue or Ear"   
will emerge to tell of the secrets locked up there.  
Emergence.  Agents.  Secrets.

Simulation and modeling and finding evidence 
to confirm something as true, or better yet 
to uncover, reveal, make visible, 
allow to come forth some new discovery 
never even surmised as true.  

Surprised by truth.

sur·mise/sərˈmīz/

Verb: 	
Suppose that something is true 
without having evidence to confirm it: 
"he surmised that something must be wrong".

Noun: 	
A supposition that something may be true, 
even though there is no evidence to confirm it: 
"all these observations remain surmise".
Synonyms: 	
verb.  guess - conjecture - suppose - assume - presume - suspect
noun.  conjecture - guess - supposition - presumption

Conjecture and the 2012 elections.  
All these observations remain surmise.
What role could simulation and modeling play 
in the debate about the economy?  
About global warming?
About the environment?  
About past events?  
Would more communication occur?

How could models and simulations raise the level of the debate 
           and thinking on national and international problems?
What limitations would this have?

Less surmising and more simulating with complex and sophisticated models...  
Helpful, or not?  Realistic?

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/poem/ ;  Poem by Louise Gluck

In the early evening, a now, as man is bending
over his writing table.    ...
...
...
then always the transparent page
raised to the window until its veins emerge
as words finally filled with ink.

BIction.  BIC pens with transparent cases.  
What is the rate of consuming INK?  
                   1/4 inch per week.  1/2 inch per week.

                   Double your rate of BICTION.  
                   If the ink don't flow, 
                   the understanding don't grow.

                   The last 3 letters of the word THINK?
                   
                   INK.  Let it flow!  :-) 


An excellent book on emergent behavior is "EMERGENCE - The connectedlives of ants, brains, cities, and software" by Steven Johnson.

Emergence is what happens when an interconnected system of relatively simple elements self-organizes to form more intelligent, more adaptive higher-level behavior. It's a bottom-up model; rather than being engineered by a general or a master planner, emergence begins at the ground level. Systems that at first glance seem vastly different--ant colonies, human brains, cities, immune systems--all turn out to follow the rules of emergence. In each of these systems, agents residing on one scale start producing behavior that lies a scale above them: ants create colonies, urbanites create neighborhoods.