There are four distinct facets of distributed being that supply vivisystems their character:
* The absence of imposed centralized control
* The autonomous nature of subunits
* The high connnectivity between the submits
* The webby nonlinear causality of peers influencing peers.
Benefits of Swarm Systems
Adaptable - A whole containing many parts can allow a whole to persist while the parts die off or change to fit the new stimuli.
Evolvable - Systems that can shift the locus of adaptation over time from one part of the system to another(from the body to the genes or from one individual to a population) must be swarm based.
Resilient - Because collective systems are built upon multitudes in parallel, there is redundancy. Big failures are held in check by becomig merely small failures at the next highest level on a hierarchy.
Boundless - By incrementally extending new structure beyond the bounds of its initial state, a swarm can build its own scaffolding to build further structure. Spontaneous order helps create more order.引自 Hive Mind
And mostly important feature - novelty:
1) They are sensitive to initial conditions, so they can make a surprising mountainout of a molehill.
2) They hide countless novel possibilities in the exponential combinations of many interlinked individuals.
3) They do not reckon individuals, so therefore individual variation and imperfection can be allowed. In swarm systems with heritability, individual variation and imperfection will lead to perpetual novelty, or what we call evolution.
Apparent Disadvantages of Swarm Systems
Nonoptimal;
Noncontrollable;
Nonpredictable;
Nonunderstandable;
Nonimmediate.
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