June 9, 2008 – 11:03 am
Okay, I work at an acad3mic inst1tut10n, so as I write a note to the internet, a search of the literature will internalize state of the art. Leads also to swarm logic.
Interesting. Mostly talk about laying down pheromone trails and reinforcement thereof leading to optimized routes to food from a random wandering of ants.
Great, but not as cool as the behavior of army ants, where the first ants to a break in a trail will form a living bridge for the rest of the swarm to cross. The living bridge ants then rejoin the swarm at the back.
I heard the words “Ant Logic” and found myself noticing human behavior where the application of altruistic ant behavior would increase the efficiency of accomplishing a group task.
Two people entering a building through a double door airlock will often hold the doors for each other. First opens first door, holds for second who opens second door, which he holds for first.
One such group task is the boarding of a city bus by sixty odd high school students, only some of whom carry the Charlie card. Charlie card is our Metro Boston Transit Authority smart fare card. Mine is a perk from R-vard and gets me on bus and subway. Card in wallet to target, beep, and in two seconds I’m on the bus.
The sixty students took about fifteen minutes to board the bus. About half of them had a card, and half of them had to insert coins or bills into the slots. How to apply ant logic, and what is the time savings? One is to have the students pair up, one with and one without the Charlie card. Beep, beep, five seconds for two, about two and a half minutes. Another is to have the teacher with all sixty fares on one card, beep x 60, a minute and a half, perhaps. As fast as getting on the bus, anyway. So a minimum time savings of ten minutes, taking them twice the time just because they are teenagers, and have to sort themselves into groups once on the bus, holding up the line a bit.
So the real question is, are humans in a group less intelligent than ants?
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