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Comment by srean

8 hours ago

In A Flight of Starlings

https://books.google.co.in/books/about/In_a_Flight_of_Starli...

Murmurations. They are local movements in comparison, but no less fascinating.

Seen a photograph of starlings when the flock takes on the silhouette of a giant bird. I've always been fascinated by that kind of (apparent?) collective intelligence. There's seemingly no leader, but from the interactions of swarms of independent actors emerge (what seems like) a larger mind. Surely we humans exhibit such behavior also, when seen from a certain elevated perspective like statistics.