What is Emergent Behavior?

Emergent behavior is a global pattern or behavior that arises in a system of entities each acting based on simple rules that describe its interactions with its surroundings.

A classic example of emergent behavior is flocking. Consider a system of "animals" that acts according to the following rules:

  • Don't hit the animals around you
  • Try to get close to your nearest neighbors
  • Try to go the same speed/direction as your neighbors

The behavior which emerges from these rules is flocking; the animals (called boids) will travel in a large mass, even though this is not immediately obvious from the rules. Craig Reynolds, the creator of boids has a java applet demonstrating this behavior here.

Other examples of systems that show this type of behavior are traffic patterns and grassroots organizations. This type of behavior is interesting because if a system is designed to exhibit emergent behavior, it is likely to be scaleable and fault tolerant, as there is no centralized control.

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