Heursitics for decentralised thinking
(Michael Resnick, ‘Turtles, Termites and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds’ MIT Press, 1994, p134ff)
1. Positive feedback can be good
Take-off effects 2. Randomness can help create order
comined with positive feedback -> self-causation shakes off local minima (annealing) prevents worst excesses of exploitation in exploitation-exploration dilemma 3. & 4. Emergence
Need to distinguish between levels Not all properties of a system have to be explicitly built in Emergent objects may have different properties than their subunits 5. The Environment is Active
Intelligent behaviour doesn’t just rely on agents. The environment is dynamic and a source of complexity
Shalizi review of TT&TJ