Michael Levin: belief

Transcript context

…But once you choose bubble sort, that digit is sticking with bubble sort. It’s sticking. We haven’t done the thing where they can swap between… no. But they’re sticking to it, right? You label them and they’re sticking to it. The first thing we learned is that… Well, the first thing we learned is that distributed sorting still works. It’s amazing. You don’t need a central planner when every number is doing its own thing, it still gets sorted. That’s cool. The second thing we found is that when you make a chimeric algorithm where actually the algorithms are not even matching, that works too. The thing still gets sorted. That’s cool. But the most amazing thing is when we looked at something that had nothing to do with sorting, and that is we asked the following question. We defined… Adam Goldstein actually named this property, and I think it’s well-named. We define the algotype of a single cell. It’s not the genotype, it’s not the phenotype, it’s the algotype. The algotype is simply this: What algorithm are you following? Which one are you? Are you a selection sort or a bubble sort, right? That’s it. There are two algotypes. And we simply ask the following question, “During that process of sorting, what are the odds that whatever algotype you are, the guys next to you are your same type?” It’s not the same as asking how the numbers are sorted because it’s got nothing to do with the numbers. It’s actually just whatever type you are. It’s more about clustering than sorting.…

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