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Out-of-Sync ‘Loners’ May Secretly Protect Orderly Swarms


Responding to an article in Quanta, Out-of-Sync ‘Loners’ May Secretly Protect Orderly Swarms:

Wasn't this always obvious? Maybe not.

I've been reading more in complexity and systems, and as most people do, toy with ideas about evolution, but this seems applicable. in the same way that not all humans show the same level of conformity nor rebellion, humans vary in their level of collective action, and in some cases, being the outsider can pay off with reproductive success, particularly if the herd is dominated by a few top-level reproducers. In some ways it can produce more robust offspring, and facilitate species survival.

One book I read that explored this was Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life, and from that, the idea of modeling a group and randomizing initial behavior, then using a genetic algorithm to 'reproduce' could easily wind up with the article's scenario, provided the 'environment' was sufficiently varied. If one only has a single and unvarying environment, then likely one trait will dominate, even push out completely the lesser trait, but real life is messy...
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