Swarm Intelligence

for all selected pairs. Thus when an individual and its neighbor were se-

lected they interacted, regardless of their similarity, with the individual

changing one of its nonmatching elements to be the same as the neigh-

bor’s. These trials resulted in unanimity (see Figure 6.3). All 20 trials run

to stability in a 10 × 10 population resulted in uniform populations of

individuals with identical features.

Interestingly, the effect of similarity as a causal influence in Axelrod’s

model is to introduce polarization: dissimilarity creates boundaries between

cultural regions. Interindividual similarities do not facilitate conver-

gence, but rather, when individuals ...