Swarm intelligence/Individual vs. Systems Performance

Individual vs. Systemic Performance
Individuals of swarm can operate in a pure competetive mode in a system. The top priority is to maximize the individual benefit and performance. If the competetive individuals in the swarm begin to sacrifize a fraction of their individual performance for improvement of the swarm performance, then there is a individual loss that can be considered as negative assessment of that strategy. Why is it so difficult for human to sacrifice individual benefits for systemic benefit of the swarm? Where do we need swarm intelligence and where do we find individual preferences and where to find the systemic preferences for swarm intelligence and systemic optimization in social, scientific, ecosystems, economy, ...? Analyse the diagram on the right and write a short summary for yourself to your key insights you gained or the key features that are not expressed in the diagram?

Compare Local and Global Performance


If we regard the Swarm Intelligence as a methodology to solve complex problems, then a scientific approach is to measure performance indicator of a system, even if it impossible to describe all the systemic aspect of a complex systems by performance indicators. In general there are more than one performance indicators (e.g. economic benefits, public health benefits, environmental benedits,...) that uses performance indicators. The swarm consists of individuals that are divers to some extend. If they look on their specialities and their own local performance indicators the decision makers as individuals in a swarm may reduce systems performance even if they improve their own performance indicators.

Analyse the following diagrams and write a small summary of ideas you can derive from the knowledge you aquired. Apply this knowledge to your individual expertise (e.g. manager of a company, environmental scientist, public health agency and even a NGO that support cutural heritage of land management of indigenous population)