If a colony is released into an empty room (low/no information) they will fan out in increasingly random patterns. Introduce an apple (valuable information) and they will quickly converge upon it. Interestingly, most but not all of the ants will seize on the “sure thing” the fruit represents. Their built-in algorithms ensure that some percentage of their membership continues to look for the next big thing.36 This harkens back to Taleb’s barbell strategy. When we have a sure thing on our hands, we should deploy most but certainly not all of our resources there. When we don’t know what’s going
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