Previous studies of flocks, swarms, and schools suggest that animal societies may verge on a "critical" point -- in other words, they are extremely sensitive and can be easily tipped into a new social regime. A new analysis of pigtail macaque monkeys sheds light on these social 'tipping points' in animal societies. (Science Daily: Monkey fights help explain tipping points in animal societies)
But exactly how far animal societies sit from the critical point and what controls that distance remain unknown.
- SD
Ed: is this about monkeys or the French Revolution?
Both but that's not the revolution in question, is it.
Now an analysis of conflicts within a captive community of pigtail macaque monkeys has helped to answer these questions by showing how agitated monkeys can precipitate critical, large-scale brawls. In the study, fights were often small, involving just two or three monkeys, but sometimes grew to be very large, with as many as 30 of the 48 adults in the society. Bryan Daniels at the ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, together with David Krakauer and Jessica Flack of the Santa Fe Institute, used ideas and models from statistical mechanics to ask whether the monkeys' conflict behavior was near a critical point. They report what they found in this week's Nature Communications.
- SD
The typical political situation in America is when there are some items and those who would be leaders squabble over them. For example, someone says high-speed trains are a good idea and Jason Chaffetz responds 'the rest of the world is wrong.' Those sorts of exchanges are boring political poppycock but politicians enjoy them, largely due to the exorbitant salaries they're paid to waste time in such a manner.
In the latest situation and on a global basis, politicians are starting fights on everything possible. It's usually racist but they will fight about anything in a spiraling effort to trivialize politics as much as they can manage. What they're doing looks to some like leadership but is actually nothing more than prosaic authoritarian dogma delivered down the barrel of a gun.
Daniels, Krakauer, and Flack discovered that the distance from the critical point can be measured in terms of the "number of monkeys" that have to become agitated to push the system over the edge. Daniels says that in this system "agitating four or five individuals at a time can cause the system to destabilize and huge fights to break out." However, Daniels says, each monkey makes a distinct contribution to group sensitivity -- and these individual differences may allow distance from the critical point to be more easily controlled. Group members that break up fights can move the system away from the critical point by quelling the monkeys that contribute most to group sensitivity. Other group members, by targeting and agitating these individuals, can move the system towards the critical point and ready it for reconfiguration.
- SD
There's a classic non-monkey example of that from yesterday with Bill Maher playing the stereotypical short-sighted agitator, Piers Morgan playing the conciliatory but patronizing statist tool, and Jim Jefferies punching Morgan's smarmy sycophancy in the face. (Ithaka: Jim Jefferies Flips Off Piers Morgan in Fine Style)
Jefferies is greatly admired at the Rockhouse but he only got a partial score since he should have punched out Bill Maher as well for being one of the loudest of the political groundhogs but it was prime time seeing him spanking Morgan in any case.
Here's the kid who owned the monkey fights yesterday.
Animal societies may benefit from the group sensitivity that lets them cross critical social thresholds. Being sensitive allows for rapid adaptation -- think fish switching from foraging mode to escape mode -- but it can also make a society less robust to individuals' mistakes. This tradeoff between robustness and adaptability is related to distance from the critical point.
An open question is whether animal societies collectively adjust their distance from criticality, becoming less sensitive when the environment is known and more sensitive when the environment becomes less predictable. Daniels says, "I think we've just scratched the surface."
- SD
The Rockhouse doesn't like cliche like 'tipping points' since the precedents are the key to tipping anything and studying only the collapse doesn't tell that much about what did it. America is being pushed to the point of collapse, as is the world, by simple authoritarianism but Trump didn't invent that although the other monkeys, particularly with Bill Maher, Michael Moore, etc, are screaming Trump is the source of all of it.
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton plays passive / aggressive as one of her fops said yesterday Clinton had not expected to win. Yah, right. That didn't get so craven as to whine, oh, noooo, she knew she had no chance due to Russian hacking but it wasn't true in any case so what was the point beyond trying to further destabilize the situation.
Ed: is there any type of actual point to this?
Unless the Democrats stop their meaningless monkey fighting long enough to analyze and understand their own failure, nothing will get any better since the Democrat monkeys are fighting with each other and there's never any strength in that.
Ed: do you think the Clintons murdered democracy in America?
It's not murdered; it's severely wounded but it's not dead. Any political situation in which half or more of the people do not participate in it, as with America, is already halfway to the graveyard but it still isn't dead yet.
But exactly how far animal societies sit from the critical point and what controls that distance remain unknown.
- SD
Ed: is this about monkeys or the French Revolution?
Both but that's not the revolution in question, is it.
Now an analysis of conflicts within a captive community of pigtail macaque monkeys has helped to answer these questions by showing how agitated monkeys can precipitate critical, large-scale brawls. In the study, fights were often small, involving just two or three monkeys, but sometimes grew to be very large, with as many as 30 of the 48 adults in the society. Bryan Daniels at the ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, together with David Krakauer and Jessica Flack of the Santa Fe Institute, used ideas and models from statistical mechanics to ask whether the monkeys' conflict behavior was near a critical point. They report what they found in this week's Nature Communications.
- SD
The typical political situation in America is when there are some items and those who would be leaders squabble over them. For example, someone says high-speed trains are a good idea and Jason Chaffetz responds 'the rest of the world is wrong.' Those sorts of exchanges are boring political poppycock but politicians enjoy them, largely due to the exorbitant salaries they're paid to waste time in such a manner.
In the latest situation and on a global basis, politicians are starting fights on everything possible. It's usually racist but they will fight about anything in a spiraling effort to trivialize politics as much as they can manage. What they're doing looks to some like leadership but is actually nothing more than prosaic authoritarian dogma delivered down the barrel of a gun.
Daniels, Krakauer, and Flack discovered that the distance from the critical point can be measured in terms of the "number of monkeys" that have to become agitated to push the system over the edge. Daniels says that in this system "agitating four or five individuals at a time can cause the system to destabilize and huge fights to break out." However, Daniels says, each monkey makes a distinct contribution to group sensitivity -- and these individual differences may allow distance from the critical point to be more easily controlled. Group members that break up fights can move the system away from the critical point by quelling the monkeys that contribute most to group sensitivity. Other group members, by targeting and agitating these individuals, can move the system towards the critical point and ready it for reconfiguration.
- SD
There's a classic non-monkey example of that from yesterday with Bill Maher playing the stereotypical short-sighted agitator, Piers Morgan playing the conciliatory but patronizing statist tool, and Jim Jefferies punching Morgan's smarmy sycophancy in the face. (Ithaka: Jim Jefferies Flips Off Piers Morgan in Fine Style)
Jefferies is greatly admired at the Rockhouse but he only got a partial score since he should have punched out Bill Maher as well for being one of the loudest of the political groundhogs but it was prime time seeing him spanking Morgan in any case.
Here's the kid who owned the monkey fights yesterday.
Animal societies may benefit from the group sensitivity that lets them cross critical social thresholds. Being sensitive allows for rapid adaptation -- think fish switching from foraging mode to escape mode -- but it can also make a society less robust to individuals' mistakes. This tradeoff between robustness and adaptability is related to distance from the critical point.
An open question is whether animal societies collectively adjust their distance from criticality, becoming less sensitive when the environment is known and more sensitive when the environment becomes less predictable. Daniels says, "I think we've just scratched the surface."
- SD
The Rockhouse doesn't like cliche like 'tipping points' since the precedents are the key to tipping anything and studying only the collapse doesn't tell that much about what did it. America is being pushed to the point of collapse, as is the world, by simple authoritarianism but Trump didn't invent that although the other monkeys, particularly with Bill Maher, Michael Moore, etc, are screaming Trump is the source of all of it.
Meanwhile Hillary Clinton plays passive / aggressive as one of her fops said yesterday Clinton had not expected to win. Yah, right. That didn't get so craven as to whine, oh, noooo, she knew she had no chance due to Russian hacking but it wasn't true in any case so what was the point beyond trying to further destabilize the situation.
Ed: is there any type of actual point to this?
Unless the Democrats stop their meaningless monkey fighting long enough to analyze and understand their own failure, nothing will get any better since the Democrat monkeys are fighting with each other and there's never any strength in that.
Ed: do you think the Clintons murdered democracy in America?
It's not murdered; it's severely wounded but it's not dead. Any political situation in which half or more of the people do not participate in it, as with America, is already halfway to the graveyard but it still isn't dead yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment