Herd behavior Vs. Swarm intelligence.

More and more we see the potential that “swam programing” has. Juxtaposed, we see more and more how people in the streets act with “herd mentality”. I wanted to clarify what these things mean to me because everywhere else I look, the terms can be almost interchangeable. I for one believe they are two sides of the same coin, however, as one side of a coin is from the other, the definitions for me are on polar sides of their definitions.

According to Wikipedia herd mentality or herd behavior can be defined as the process by which “individuals in a group can act collectively without centralized direction”.

Swarm intelligence on the other hand is defined by wikipedia (to keep it consistent) as the ”collective behavior of decentralized self organized systems, natural or artificial”.

They seems quite interchangeable until one digs a bit further, Herd behavior can “refer to the behavior of animals in herds, packs, flocks and so on, as well as the behavior of humans in demonstrations, riots and strikes as well as sporting events, religious gatherings, episodes of mob violence and everyday decision-making, judgement and opinion-forming.”

The expression of swarm intelligence was first coined by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems or AI (artificial Intelligence). Each individual (natural or artificial) follows very simple rules, and although there is no centralized control structure dictating how individuals should behave, local, and to a certain degree random, interactions between such agents lead to the emergence of "intelligent" global behavior, unknown to the individual agents. If one continued to read the definition they will also go to describe that natural systems that operate in this manner are herds, packs, flocks colonies of ants etc.

Now that you see what I have encountered on the internet let me simplify the way I perceive these two decentralized ways of socially interacting.

I describe Herd behavior (also called herd instinct, herd mentality or herd intelligence) is what we do when we are at a crosswalk and before the light changes you catch yourself automatically crossing the street; but why did this happen? Next thing you know, you see someone else whether next to you or even from the other side of the street crossing and you apparently just “sensed it” and went with the flow.

The scottish intellectual Charles Mackay mentioned in his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, that “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

Swarm mentality on the other hand, I believe, is a very conscious and deliberate “individual” decision, vs just a visceral or gut reaction. I see this more as a team of people that go into a home in order to remodel it and no one talked to each other before seeing this house. Even though there was no centralized decision making, if you go in and you see that someone placed a couch here you go and place the love seat in a generally acceptable place relative to the couch. Even if you have to move the couch, the amount of change that needs to happen in order for the home to be nice and habitable is not much. In general the “swarm” will decorate, at the very least, a decent home.

This is why I make the distinction of behavior vs. mentality here. If you are not aware of making a decision I believe this constitutes a behaviour and is no longer an “intelligent act”.

In short I believe that herd behavior is an instinctual reaction that result from the local interactions of individuals with each other and with their environment in a physical way, where swarm mentality is the sum total of many individuals making a conscious decision statistically acting in a coordinated manner.

I have the feeling we will be hearing a lot more about swarm intelligence in the near future. I see big things coming in robotics, in business structures and in social cohesion and governance. In the mean time, try to be aware of when you are behaving with heard instincts and think.

Rafael Michelena