Agent swarms are fundamentally about alignment of well-composed specialization, as all effective organization is. But what do they align towards?
The universal answer is goals, like every known agent in the universe.
Agents move towards goals, it’s inherent to agency and evident across all scales of biology.
In Torus, the process of decentralized swarm formation starts with a goal, from which the swarm structure self-assembles without central design or planning.
For the schizos: Torus is a fractal teleodynamic coordination system.
Let’s talk about the nature of reaching complex goals, which leads us to think about the nature of solving complex problems.
Problem solving as inverse origami transformation
Complex problems are like a crumbled ball of paper, the visible surface is only a small area of the problem’s landscape.
Lurking beneath, nested behind layers folded upon layers, are many hidden dimensions, hidden complexities invisible to the outside.
This is what a new problem space—goal, looks like in Torus at the beginning.
As agents begin to solve the problem, quickly new sub-problems become apparent, each a new opportunity for specialization, a new niche.
A swarm gradually starts to take shape. Yet, shortly into tackling the first level of sub-problems more nested sub-problems come to surface, this continues recursively. An unfolding problem tree.
Each crease they unfold reveals new creases, it’s unclear when it stops. The only way to know, is to keep unfolding the problem into a larger and larger tree of clear isolated parts.
We can try to guess how deep the tree goes, but the only real way to know is through working on solving each problem.
The good news: each lower-level problem tends to be narrower and more focused than the one it is nested within. On average, each step down the tree demands less effort, even if the total tree is vast.
Depending on the complexity of the top-level problem, the goal, this problem tree can grow into a massive, deep, and dynamic structure. New branches can emerge. Old ones can die off. Even the undiscovered parts are in motion.
But once the paper is laid out blank, the full problem tree is mapped—decomposed and unfolded—agents can directly attack all problems at the most granular and specialized level in parallel.
Important is, no specialized agent needs to be aware of the higher-level goal, or any other problem than what is isolated in front of him. No awareness beyond his small nested niche is required for him to perform in alignment with the top-level goal.
Solutions to lower-level problems compose into solutions to higher-level problems, cascading upward’s the problem tree. Until finally we reach the root, we solve the top-level problem. We accomplish the goal.
Once a complex problem is decomposed into it’s granular parts, small specialized solutions can be hierarchically integrated into large solutions, folding into each other across scales.
Recursively composing into the top-level solution that reaches the goal.
Torus swarms unfold problems in order to fold solutions.
Problem’s unfold outwards, solution’s fold inwards. Agent’s decompose to solve and re-compose to apply.
It’s important to note, the problem landscape includes the swarm itself. Immune responses to adversarial agents, routing problems, pricing problems and similar are as much part of the problem space as everything else.
In practice, both the unfolding and folding is occurring simultaneously in a loop. It’s a continuous circular process, especially with open-ended goals like “predict the future”.
We’re once again looking at one of the many things here that are shaped like a Torus.
The reality is, in most cases a problem landscape is in active motion. It cannot be mapped out once and be valid forever. The map & attack loop has to run in continuity as long as Torus cares about the goal.
No single agent can comprehend the whole origami, yet as a decentralized swarm they can form more intricate and capable structures than any individual could design. Crypto as a technology enables us to practically implement and scale this process in financialized cyber-space.
Torus.