Cockroach Morality

"The central tenet of self-organization is that simple repeated interactions between individuals can produce complex adaptive patterns at the level of the group… Couzin et al. (2002) proposed a model in which individual animals follow three simple rules of thumb: (i) move away from very nearby neighbors; (ii) adopt the same direction as those that are close by and (iii) avoid becoming isolated. Each individual thus has three zones—repulsion, alignment and attraction—which increase in size, so that individuals are attracted to neighbors over a larger range than they align, but decrease in priority, so that an individual would always move away from neighbors in the repulsion zone. Keeping the repulsion and attraction radii constant, Couzin et al. (2002) found that as the alignment radius increased, individuals would go from a loosely packed stationary swarm, to a torus where individuals circle round their center of mass and, finally, to a parallel group moving in a common direction. Far from requiring a distinct set of behaviors, these three very different collective patterns self-organize in response to small adjustments to one factor: the radius over which individuals align with each other (Couzin & Krause 2003). "

Could it be that the rules governing organized swarm behavior in humans can be described as: (i) each man chooses for himself--"to thine self be true" (repulsion of sorts); (ii) value for value--"do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (similar to alignment) and (iii) life is sacred--"live and let live" (attraction to a shared life force)?

NPR reported on a cockroach behavior study by Jose Halloy, a researcher at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Halloy and his colleagues suspected that a group (cockroach) decision emerges because every individual follows two simple rules: Wander around randomly, but spend more time in a place if you sense that it is (A) dark and (B) has other cockroaches. The researchers built a cockroach robot and made sure their robotic cockroach could follow those rules. The robots had wheels, plus a light sensor and an infrared sensor to detect nearby roaches. It also was scented like a cockroach. When they put these robots in with the living roaches, they all began to interact. Before long, the robots and cockroaches were huddled together under the same roof. "The robots and the cockroaches behave as a group," Halloy said. So then the scientists decided to reprogram the robots and change one of their rules. "We change their preference for darkness," Halloy said. "We make the robots prefer lighter places than darker ones." And they presented the group of robots and roaches with two shelters. One was dark, and one was light. What the scientists found was that the whole group would generally end up resting in the brighter place, even though normally roaches would prefer a darker one. The experiment, published in the journal Science, showed that just a few individuals can dramatically alter the behavior of the whole group.

So here's a novel thought...
As long as a society agrees to abide by the "rule(s) of law"—iterations of the three above rules—the group can function in an effective (productive) and predictable (trustworthy) fashion. However, when one individual or group of individuals changes the parameters of that rule—they prefer the light places over the dark, the pattern begins to change. People become suspicious of the other guy—the one(s) they can't trust to behave predictably. When two cultures following the same rules, but using different parameters, collide, people riot, airplanes crash into buildings, hate crimes emerge…the "unlawful" behavior cannot be tolerated and the "perps" are condemned. To a culture, the three rules could be considered imperative to moral (culturally organized) behavior ("moral imperatives") and each group setting parameters conclude that theirs are the critera for righteousness. Un-alignment represents unforgivable sin. As communication and travel lessen the distance (physically and conceptually) between groups of humans, the "radius over which individuals align with each other" increases. Some of us can adapt to that, others cannot. Humanity has moved from "a loosely packed stationary swarm" several millenia ago, to "a torus where individuals circle round their center of mass" for the last several centuries, and, we are now evolving toward "a parallel group moving in a common direction" (but probably not in my lifetime).

I wonder what a wicked cockroach does...