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Slime mold form a map of the Tokyo-area railway system

Harvard Magazine · 800.3K views · 2010-03-30 · 0:39

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

Referenced as a vivid illustration of explore-then-exploit optimization and decentralized network design.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2017–2021

Topics

Animals & natureBiology & biotechnologyTransit, cities & urban planning
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slime moldtokyo railwaynetwork designexploration vs exploitationbiology

What people said

ta1234567890 · 2021-04 · Reference

Reminds me of this slime mold video: [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.

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ta1234567890 · 2020-08 · Reference

This video shows a slime mold doing exploration/discovery and then exploitation: [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.

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ta1234567890 · 2019-11 · Reference

This is a video of a slime mold finding food: [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).

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Sources

Video by Harvard Magazine, played through YouTube.

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