There are a lot of terrible things happening in the world today: bombs in cities, conflict, thousands of people being displaced or dying. I don’t usually feel comfortable expressing an opinion on this because (a) I don’t know all the facts and (b) I am reluctant to sit in relative safety pontificating about people who are enduring hardships that I could never begin to understand or face. But I did have a thought today which I would like to get off my chest.
There is a phenomenon called ‘emergence‘ or ’emergent behaviour’. This is when a large number of quite independent agents act together to produce an effect which has the appearance of some overall purpose or some overall management.
As a slightly failed bird watcher* I can explain this best by using the example of a murmuration of starlings. In certain places in the UK (and, I guess, elsewhere) starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) roost overnight in large numbers. Before they settle to roost, the whole flock performs stunning aerial displays – see the photo on the previous link. They appear as a black cloud, of ever-shifting shapes. Eventually, some birds descend into the roost and the rest then follow, like water being poured through a funnel.
Watching all this it is very tempting to believe that all the birds are communicating by some strange psychic power, telling them all what shapes to form and when to descend into the roost. But the answer is probably much simpler: each bird acts completely independently, obeying simple rules like keeping a certain distance from your neighbours, not moving too far from the roost, avoiding possible predators, and so on. Some birds will eventually decide that the roost is safe and descend; the rest will follow according to the ‘keep with your neighbours’ rule.
There has been a lot of discussion lately about how terrorist atrocities are planned and to what extent there is some dark power co-ordinating it all. There may be some central planning, of course, but I wonder if some of this is emergent behaviour on the part of individuals, or perhaps small cells. OK, they may be working within rules created by some central authority but that authority may not need to manage individual actions.
This sounds a bit like idle musing but it could be important. The actions of our politicians and military seem to spend a lot of time trying to identify and eliminate the ‘leaders’ – ‘cutting the head off the snake’ is one expression. But if there is a high degree of emergent behaviour here then that won’t work.
* I should explain ‘failed bird watcher’. I enjoy watching birds and freely admit to having spent time sitting in a hide in an anorak and woolly hat, with binoculars and a flask of coffee. But most of my outdoor activity nowadays includes a wife and more recently a dog, neither of whom want to stay still for long. And that is not conducive to watching birds, although I do try to keep my eyes open for anything interesting, even to the extent of walking into trees occasionally while distracted by a glimpse of something interesting.
Grumpy Old Scientist 