A New Theory for Systems That Defy Newton’s Third Law

Re:A New Theory for Systems That Defy Newton’s Third Law by angelzen on Friday November 12, 2021 @07:46PM (#29206276)

They had to build a fleet of robots to study emergent behavior?! Have they heard of this amazing tool that can simulate pretty much any physical behavior for pennies on the dollars called "computer"?

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Re:A New Theory for Systems That Defy Newton’s Third Law by akyu on Saturday November 13, 2021 @01:17AM (#29207855)

Considering that the next figure is a computer simulation from the same citation, yes I believe they have heard of such an amazing tool.

I chalk up the physical robots to a bit of a PR stunt. Cool little robots is quite a bit more endearing than arrows on a computer screen. But that said, implementing such a system in physical robots could also be a kind of sanity check to ensure you aren't cheating the simulation by some kind of fault in your simulation. It's quite easy to share information between agents that you don't want being shared without realizing it. Something as simple as being a little careless with global variables could spoil the whole thing.

I wouldn't get so worked up about it.

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Re:A New Theory for Systems That Defy Newton’s Third Law by angelzen on Saturday November 13, 2021 @08:23AM (#29209525)

Ha. I stopped at the gif with rotating robots.

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Re:A New Theory for Systems That Defy Newton’s Third Law by narrator on Friday November 12, 2021 @07:55PM (#29206320)

Stephen Wolfram did this emergent behavior stuff with a computer in his book "A New Kind Of Science."

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