My Mom is a beekeeper so I've been reading articles on how bees live and work. Much about bee life is very interesting and relevant in other contexts: their teamwork, how they relate to their CEO (queen bee), division of labor, and more. Below's a fascinating excerpt from a recent academic paper on how honey bees select their nest. They employ a blend of individual, independent assessments of quality nest sites and consensus-driven deference around the most promising, emerging nest sites. With a right combination of independence and interdependence, they are able to make a decision that draws upon collective wisdom while also avoiding groupthink.
Without interdependence, the rapid convergence of the bees' dances to a consensus would be undermined; there would not be a ‘snowballing’ of attention on the best nest site. Without independence, a consensus would still emerge, but it would no longer robustly be on the best nest site; instead, many bees would end up dancing for nest sites that accidentally receive some initial support through random fluctuations. It is only when independence and interdependence are combined in the right way that the bees achieve their remarkable collective reliability.
(hat tip Paul Kedrosky)
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