Harvard Magazine
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2017–2021
0:39 · 800K views · Mar 30, 2010
A one-minute clip of slime mold placed on a map with food at the cities around Tokyo, growing a network that approximates the Tokyo-area railway system.
Referenced as a vivid illustration of explore-then-exploit optimization and decentralized network design.
5 comments from Hacker News
This is a video of a slime mold finding food: this video It seems to be operating in something like 2 main phases: an initial exploratory phase in which it expands almost in every direction and then a second "optimization" (simplification) phase in which it just keeps the links between the food sources. I think we operate in a similar way. We learn by exploring and then we optimize when "exploiting". Everyone is different though, some like exploring more, others like optimizing more, and there's a big range in between. It also depends on the subject or activity. I personally almost exclusively enjoy the exploration part (learning about things), and don't have much interest in the optimization part (executing repetitively the same thing for gain).
Reminds me of this slime mold video: this video The mold “operates” in roughly two modes: exploring and exploiting. It explores to find the food and then it exploits the best paths to the food to consume it. I feel our minds work in a similar way, we explore when learning new stuff and then we exploit when using what we learned to accomplish something. Probably most of the work that majority of people do is mostly exploiting previously learned stuff, with some limited exploration sprinkled into it every now and then.
This video shows a slime mold doing exploration/discovery and then exploitation: this video Relating it to the article, it seems we function in a similar way to the mold, but our balance between exploration and exploitation changes as we grow up. Also reading other comments, it seems like different people have different balances or proportions between the exploration/exploitation modes. I personally am very imbalanced towards exploration; exploitation makes me demotivate and stop doing very quickly.
Your description made think of the slime mold map of the Tokyo transportation system [1] albeit with a different set of inputs. As with any organic, self propelled, system.. it matures and growth turns to maintenance, and eventually decay. Is the general argument here that SV has become a victim of it's massive organic growth, has it eaten up one of it's resources (housing, healthy diversity, etc) to the point where another city/system can now flourish?? [1] this video
Slime mold is interesting. There's one species that, if you assemble food sources in the population densities found in Tokyo, will grow to look very similar to the Tokyo subway system: this video