Ubiquinomics: A Graph-based Agent Model of Frugal Coordination

In cybernetics, Ashby's long-standing 'Law of Requisite Variety' expresses the idea that an agent must have a minimum level of internal complexity in order to successfully achieve control in an environment of a certain complexity. The idea I present of a 'frugal coordination principle' states that agents will strive to follow Asbhy's law but also strive to minimise the cost of coordination in an environment. We then end up with the idea that agents will increase or decrease their complexity to match the changing complexity level of the environment. I will show why I think that this principle is ubiquitous in nature and give examples from different domains and time-scales, leading to the term 'ubiquinomics': my term for a frugality principle that is found almost everywhere you look. In the talk I will go on to discuss and demonstrate a proof-of-concept of a graph-based agent model of the dynamics of frugal coordination using working code examples built in the graph database Neo4j, written in its graph query language, Cypher.