I was intrigued by this article from Scientific American, which describes various experiments that have been conducted on Slime Mold, a singled-celled organism whose properties and behaviors scientists are just beginning to understand.
In these experiments, slime mold has managed to do some impressive stuff like solve mazes and accurately recreate transit systems by connecting "cities" made of slime mold chow. There's even a slime mold-controlled robot!
This made me think about how humans might solve a maze differently from slime mold. As described in the video above, slime mold branches out across the entire maze, and in some place finds food. Later, the branches that found dead ends retract back to the main, leaving behind only the most efficient path from point A to point B.
A person walking through a labyrinth does effectively the same thing. The only difference is that we do it in a linearly: Walk around a few turns, come to a dead end, go back to the previous fork and try a different direction. If we were able to see around corners, and if we were able to do so around multiple corners simultaneously, we'd be doing the exact same thing with our sense of vision that slime mold does with its sense of... slime.
It also made me think of computing models. In network computing, we would say that the slime is using an Open Shortest Path First protocol. Yet, we don't say that the packets are "intelligent." We don't usually describe the central controller of such a system as intelligent either. They're just executing a complex but dumb algorithm.
It's usually about now that my brain starts to do one or more of the following. In this case, I've decided to do all three:
Meditate
Think on it. Sleep on it. Ponder it. "It" being (in this case) the diversity of life on Earth, the scientific method, and the nature and definition of "intelligence." Do this until A) I have an epiphany or B) I remember that I have a family or a project or some personal hygiene to attend to. It's usually B, which I suspect is preventing me from living a life of eccentric genius, for better or worse.
Science
Improvise crude but functional experiments in my kitchen in an attempt to A) gain a deeper understanding B) teach my kids about science and/or C) make a mess and have fun.
In this case I'm curious: What does the mold do if the food source it was optimized for disappears? Does it re-try the paths it'd blocked off? What if you keep extending the maze, say 5 or 10 or 50 times, but then suddenly move the food to the beginning? How long is slime mold's "memory" and how complex a pattern can it tolerate?
Design a Game
There's a deep sense of satisfaction that comes with grasping something fully enough that you begin to recognize the patterns that emerge. Creating an abstract representation of a system is one of the best ways I know to discover, demonstrate, and reinforce understanding. Game designer Andrew Looney said, "The ideas just seem to pop fully-formed into my brain." Some of my best game ideas have just popped into my head, but the ones that are "fully formed" leave nothing for me to tinker with, so I ignore them. This one, though, promises to be some fun.
Updates on 2 of these will come in the near future. In the meantime, if anyone knows a good source of slime mold in the lower Hudson Valley, ping me!
