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This is neat. Did they ever figure out why Thailand fireflies do this, instead of just how?
I suspect it helps avoid being eaten. Anything trying to eat them is presented with too many bright spots to track, then nothing to see.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect it helps avoid being eaten. Anything trying to eat them is presented with too many bright spots to track, then nothing to see.
Wouldn't that also be true of normal fireflies? It's pretty hard to track a single firefly if there's a bunch of them in the area.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't that also be true of normal fireflies? It's pretty hard to track a single firefly if there's a bunch of them in the area.
Not so much, there's no competition, so it's easier to track. I used to collect freflies in a jar as a kid. Seems like a similar idea to schools of fish, herds of antelope, etc. Stay together (even if defenseless) and predators have a hard time picking an individual to hunt.
If you changed the grid geometry, changed the action radius, or added a more complicated decision mechanism, it is likely to result in a completely different outcome. It is more like a cellular automaton than a sociological model, compounding design choices, not agent choices.
It should probably be called Parable of the Quantization Error instead and held up as an example of an explorable explanation being misused for propaganda purposes, using its medium to present a false image of impartiality.
Parable of the polygons is extremely questionable. For one, it attempts to have its cake while eating it too, by pretending it's an abstract demonstration about choices while explicitly calling out to hot topics in diversity, implying a clear causal link. For another, the model involves discrete agents on a discrete grid making decisions based on their immediate 8 square neighborhood, with no persistence or hysteresi…
Your objection is just that the model is too simple, but everyone knows linear regression predicts quite a lot, quadratic polynomials estimate physical motion very well, etc.
On the other hand, I don't think the authors make the claims about faithfully and objectively measuring reality that you say they do. You're building up a straw man there.
Yay ncase did it again! Don't forget to (re)view his project on The Parable of the Polygons: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8716538 Playable posts are amazing. Interactivity in texts is amazing. <3
I think the example works more quickly than it should due to the line "if(ff.clock>1) ff.clock=1;" Every time the clock goes over 1, wouldn't you mod the clock value, not set it to 1 exactly?
It does make (intuitive) sense, though, because the only time that makes a significant difference is when a lot of fireflies flash around one firefly simultaneously, in which case the firefly wouldn't decide to flash twice in a row but instead interpret it as a singular flash. And if a firefly sees another one flash when it's about to, it would naturally want to synchronize its flashing with the other.