Monday, August 18, 2014

Interesting knowledge about animal's collective behavior

Recently someone shared with me about a talk that he attended on animal's collective behavior. Have you ever seen a large number of fish swimming to the same direction? Yeah, something like that.



Yesterday when the BBC channel was on while I didn't pay attention to the TV, I saw this scene of a large number of fish swimming to the same direction. I  'screamed', "hey is that the guy (the researcher) that gave the talk in the conference that you attended?" and...aha! The same guy!


This paper told us the importance on how both information and social cohesion play an important role in the collective-decision making in animals. Interestingly, this often happens in our society too. We assume that most people know about the direction of the 'leader' is. However, this may not be the case. A few strong 'leader' are sufficient to direct a group with individuals that do not have sufficient information. Therefore, it is very important to have the knowledge and to educate each individual.

Last Saturday, the topic of the talk in the recollection that I attended was on 'formation'. Unlike 'information', formation is beyond theories. It is something that we learn yet it should transform our lives. (eg. it's not only about 'knowing' that french fries is unhealthy, but to be 'formed' is to decide to eat french fries less frequently because you know how unhealthy). In spiritual life, it's not enough to say 'the Bible says so'. The faith is beautiful and rich, and knowing more about the faith influences how we behave in our daily life, including in our profession and family life. Sadly, what's happening in the spiritual life of many individuals now is an 'uninformed' state that makes us easily swayed to the wrong direction by certain groups of people, towards certain groups' agenda that may not be for the good of the society.

Well, this post may not be detailed enough to talk about this topic of collective behavior. Do read up the full paper to find out more. Some other pyschology researchers have investigated this issue collective behavior in humans.

What I'd like to highlight is there is a real danger of being ignorant. In a positive way to say it, there is a high importance to inform ourselves and help others to learn more about the truth, so we can bring the society to the right direction, to a direction that is more humane =)

Have a great week ahead!

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