28 March, 2013

How the Science of Swarms Can Help Us Fight Cancer and Predict the Future | Wired Science | Wired.com

How the Science of Swarms Can Help Us Fight Cancer and Predict the Future | Wired Science | Wired.com:
For example, when Couzin flashes light over the shiners, they move, as one, to shadier patches, presumably because darkness equals relative safety for a fish whose main defensive weapon is “run away.” Behavior like this is typically explained with the “many wrongs principle,” first proposed in 1964. Each shiner, the theory goes, makes an imperfect estimate about where to go, and the school, by interacting and staying together, averages these many slightly wrong estimations to get the best direction. You might recognize this concept by the term journalist James Surowiecki popularized: “the wisdom of crowds.”

But in the case of shiners, Couzin’s observations in the lab have shown that the theory is wrong. The school could not be pooling imperfect estimates, because the individuals don’t make estimates of where things are darker at all. Instead they obey a simple rule: Swim slower in shade. When a disorganized group of shiners hits a dark patch, fish on the edge decelerate and the entire group swivels into darkness. Once out of the light, all of them slow down and cluster together, like cars jamming on a highway. “That’s purely an emergent property,” Couzin says. “The sensing ability really happens only at the level of the collective.” In other words, none of the shiners are purposefully swimming toward anything. The crowd has no wisdom to cobble together.