Mindlessly Complex Ants

Yet another post stemming from my earlier thoughts on Emergent Complexity and Complexity and Creation.

As discussed, the basic idea is that simple rules can combine to produce complex things. These complicated objects might look like they were designed by some grand intelligence, but in reality no single entity needs to understand what is being produced.

I think that ants provide a great example of how this happens in the real world. Some time ago I visited an exhibit at the Smithsonian that was dedicated specifically to ants. In the exhibit, there was an aluminum cast of a Harvester Ant colony that was made by a professor at Florida State University (apparently he dumped molten aluminum into the ant-hill, waited for it to cool, and then exhumed the model).

I was fascinated by the model. It stood over six feet tall and was comprised of three main tunnels that branched off from the opening above ground. Each tunnel wound in a consistent spiral down into the ground, with rooms attached most regularly at the top and more sparsely as the tunnels progressed deeper underground. The colony design was intricate, as if it were designed by ant engineers, laid out by surveyor ants, and built by contractor ants who supervised the workers.

Of course, we know that there is no such thing as an "engineer ant." In fact, I think that it is safe to say that no single ant had the capability to comprehend the whole of the colony. No ant decided to put a certain tunnel here, another there. No ant made an executive decision about where the individual rooms should be. The ants probably never knew that they were even building a colony at all - they simply executed a complicated script and the result was a functioning colony.

The tie-in to emergent complexity is that no single ant understood fully what was happening (if at all), but they were able to produce a complex, functional colony anyway. The simple rules, or laws, are the ants themselves - uncomprehending, unintelligent. They individually act out a script, and when they all come together they are able to build an impressively complex and ordered structure. No omniscient queen ant required.

Complexity and Creation

This post is an extension of my previous comments on Emergent Complexity. In the aforementioned post, I talked about how sets of simple laws (or rules) can be combined to produce complex things. One of the implications of Emergent Complexity is that complexity itself does not necessarily suggest the existence of a designer - no single entity has to have a complete model of the object being produced in order for the object to exist. Individual laws and rules can produce amazing things without "knowing" anything about what they are doing.

For example, in Conway's Game of Life, collections of cells can form complex objects like gliders and pulsars. While these objects look like they were designed by someone or something, they really weren't. No entity inside the simulation knows that a glider was produced. No cell knows that it is part of a glider. It just happens that the rules of the simulation combine in a fashion that makes gliders and pulsars stable objects.

The real-world analog is that the existence of, say, a tree, does not necessarily suggest that the tree must have been designed by something intelligent. Like a glider in the Game of Life, a tree is a stable structure whose existence is made possible by the combination of a set of comparatively simple rules.

There is a common argument favoring Creationism that says that if something is complex, there must have been a designer. We stumble into a tree and say, "this tree is complex and ordered. It is hard to conceive that it is an 'accident'. It must have been designed. There must therefore be a God." The concept of emergent complexity demonstrates that there is a plausible alternative explanation. As marvelous and mind-boggling as it is, there needn't be a designer.

Let me clarify that I am not attacking Creationism itself. I only attack the arguments in its favor that simply don't hold water. My own religious views will surface in later posts, I'm sure.

Emergent Complexity

Don't be scared away by the title - the idea of "emergent complexity" isn't itself complex. It is (to me) one of the most fascinating and awe-inspiring properties of our universe. The idea is that sets of small, simple rules can be combined to produce complex, intricate things. The complexity is called "emergent" because it isn't clear how the individual rules, simple and straightforward as they are, can produce things that are so complex. It is almost magical.


The idea is illustrated well by John Conway's Game of Life. The Game of Life isn't a game at all, but a simulation. In it, the world is represented by a two-dimensional grid of cells that are either "alive" or "dead" at any particular instant in time. At each iteration of the simulation, cells can be "born," they can "die," or remain in their current state (alive or dead). What they do at each iteration is based only on four simple rules (see the above link if you want to know what they are).

What makes the Game of Life interesting is that even though the rules are very simple, complex structures emerge when the simulation runs. Some configurations of cells evolve and at length disappear. Others settle on stable shapes like circles or pulsating masses. Still others travel across the screen like "gliders." It looks as if there is some kind of omniscient programming that is trying to bring order to the system. The truth, though, is that the individual rules operate independently and rather stupidly (if you will). It just happens that when they are combined, stable, complex structures happen to emerge. There is something deep and as yet undiscovered about how and why this happens.

At first glance, Conway's Game of Life might seem like irrelevant academic gas, but the philosophical and scientific ramifications are, I think, earth-shattering. The Game of Life demonstrates that ordered, complex things can emerge from unordered, simple things. It shows why evolution is reasonable, and it shows why the universe can continue to exist as we see it today.

In a sense, the universe is like a giant Game of Life. It is like the Game of Life with its four simple rules replaced by hundreds of thousands of more sophisticated ones. The stable structures that emerge in this giant Game of Life are... us, and everything around us. In a very real sense, everything we are and everything we know is the product of many simple rules operating mindlessly in the background.

This post is overlong. There are some specific examples I would like to explore that are absolutely fascinating, but they will have to wait for a future post.

A Beginning and an End

Everything in our mortal experience has a beginning and an end. Our mortal life begins at birth and ends at death, a day begins with the rise of the sun and ends with its setting, nations are born in history and inevitably die. Since everything we know and understand is finite, it is hard to comprehend something that is infinite, something that has always been and ever will be. God, matter, energy, universe-governing laws. Will we ever understand any of these things perfectly?

Tunnel Vision

I think that human beings are naturally self-oriented, not necessarily because we are "evil," but because we aren't equipped to perceive the world through eyes other than our own. All of our senses are personal by their very nature, and it is only through extra imagination that we can guess what other people might be thinking and feeling.

I have to confess that as I interact with other people, they are never as real to me as I am to myself. The logical, conscious part of myself naturally recognizes that they are as "real" as I am (if I stop to think about it), but I don't think that it registers on a subconscious level. My thoughts and emotions will always be more real than theirs because I can't feel what they are feeling. On the other hand, my dreams, my secret insecurities, and my physical senses are an omnipresent reality whether I choose to think about them or not.

It is only natural, then, that how I perceive people is often based on how I think they perceive me. I like them if they seem to like me. I gravitate toward people who make me feel comfortable. I look up to people that have characteristics that I would like to see in myself.

All these people who I choose to "like" aren't necessarily more deserving of my respect and attention than other people. My regard for them is based largely on my regard for myself. I suspect that this is common - I like to think that I am as human as the next guy.

Writing

Sometimes I just want to write. I'm not sure why, but something about the process feels meaningful and satisfying to me. Perhaps writing satisfies in inborn desire to create, or maybe seeing a finished essay compliments my vanity. Whatever the case, I enjoy writing enough that it has become a favorite evening activity. I'll sit down at night, fire up iTunes with some light jazz, and write.

The subject-matter is less relevant than the process itself. I could feel satisfied writing about just about anything - the rubber band sitting on my desk, the damned pen that just stopped working, the color of the trees... it doesn't matter. It is fortunate for me that I enjoy writing regardless of the content, because I don't expect that I produce anything truly original or even interesting. It is hard to have a unique thought.

I have no illusions about the quality or depth of my writing. The object of this blog is not to amaze people or revolutionize human thought, but simply to provide a structured outlet for my habit.

The blog title might change. I started with "The Human Condition," because I often find myself writing about people and speculating about why they do what they do. Maybe as I continue to write, a more descriptive title will be in order.