Herbert Simon discussed the parable of an ant searching for food on a beach. If you were to plot the ant's path, it would appear meandering and intricate. Without any context, you might be impressed by the ant's journey. However, if you also had a picture of the beach, you would understand that the ant's path is not extraordinary.
Ant’s Behavior Complexity
In Herbert Simon’s parable, the complexity of the ant’s behavior can be explained by the conditions the ant experiences during its journey. There are obstacles, or constraints, that the ant must navigate around in order to achieve its goal of reaching food. Due to the ant being small, and possibly not being able to see above or around the curvy obstacles, the ant must follow a rules-based navigation system that is reliant on its immediate sensory inputs. This is a local decision making process that depends on the presence of environmental constraints in order to chart the ant’s trajectory. In the provided image, the obstacles appear to be amorphous blobs that don’t exist in the real world. However, the parable still holds water that an ant could navigate around sand, rocks, water, plants, or other animals, and the path would seem just as complex and curious when examined in isolation. Without the knowledge of the existence of these obstacles, the path alone would appear inefficient. With the appearance of environmental barriers that the ant navigates around, the path does not appear ineffective anymore.
Ant’s Cognition vs. Human Cognition
When compared to human cognition, the ant’s cognition is confined. From this example, it can be understood that an ant makes decisions based on its instincts and simple rules based on goals such as finding food. These individualistic decision-making in ants, which rudimentary, actually collectively results in efficient group behavior such as making a nest, delivering food, or protecting the colony. A human on the other hand, plans and reasons before executing a complex behavior such as reaching a destination, making a meal, or any other seemingly simple action. These behaviors in humans can vary from person to person, and can lead to conflicts in groups when it comes to having to decide how to achieve a goal.
Despite this contrast, humans can closely resemble the simplistic cognition of ants in several ways. In heavy traffic, individual drivers may make quick decisions to change lanes or adjust their speed. If tracked on a map or a graph, this behavior would look nonsensical without the context of the dynamic conditions the driver experienced. This example easily carries in a situation where a human must work its way through a crowd.
At the grocery store, humans often collect items from a list. Despite having a general knowledge on where items are in a grocery store, they have to retrace their steps to pick up a forgotten item or browse different options for an item on the shelf, resulting in small back and forth paces. Further, grocery stores may rearrange items to affect shopper behavior by exposing them to new product in search of the item they needed. Once again, these actions seem strange without the context of the search, layout of the store, and changing preferences.
In these examples, as in the case of the ant, complex behavior arises from the interaction of individual agents such as drivers, pedestrians, and shoppers making local decisions in response to their immediate environment and goals, such as obstacles, behaviors of other people, or intentions. While these behaviors may appear inefficient when viewed in isolation, they are often adaptive and functional within the context of their respective situations.
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