A key piece of these models is that you're not defining global rules. You're defining local interactions between the agents and the environment. Agents might be able to sense their local environment, but they don't have the knowledge of what's happening everywhere in the simulation. The reason to program these local rules is mimicking some of the limitations we have as biological agents.
One of the things that make complexity science so fascinating is the diversity of the systems that it applies to. In this series so far, you've learnt about everything from ecologies to economies, tipping points in ecologies and economies, to power and influence in the 1400s, and even the spread of coronavirus in the lungs and the thing that brings all of these different topics together is complexity. This means that we can study one system to help us understand other systems — including bees.
In today's episode, Orit Peleg, Faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, explains how bees self-organise and produce sophisticated behaviour. In this case, you'll hear how thousands of bees can work out where their queen is at any given point.
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This show is produced in collaboration with Wavelength Creative. Visit wavelengthcreative.com for more information.