Scientists Crack the Mathematical Mystery of Stingless Bees’ Spiral Honeycombs
smithsonianmag.comLearning that surprisingly complex behaviours can emerge from simple rules was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me. The Game of Life is the premier but Schelling's segregation model is one of my favourites.
There are a bunch of these models available in the standard library that ships with NetLogo.
I vaguely think that the lesson is not that complex behaviours can emerge from simple rules, but that some behaviours aren't as complex as they seem. There's a sense in which those beehives are actually very simple, but we don't see them that way.
They're not complex in a Kolmogorov sense, for sure.
What's more of a mystery to me is what metric we instinctively use for complexity.
Good point!