Unexpected Behaviour and non-determinism

[Michael Sedbon]

Hi Everyone!

I am new in the world of Slime Molds and this is my first post so pardon the newbie character of my question :)

I am student in Interaction Design based in London and I am currently working on non-deterministic machines. I would like to use a slime mold as a computational device. To get out of determinism, I need to map the slime mold unexpected behaviors to my program.

As it appears clear that the slime mold can do a lot of computations operations (as seen in different papers and research), but I am asking myself about the things that we don't know and behaviors that we don't (fully) explain.

Can slime mold generate random responses to stimulus? if yes, then which one? What would be the range of "unexpectedness" and how to measure it (does it goes by a change in electrical potential, or is it something that is embedded in its locomotion etc...)

Thank you very much for your inputs :)

[ian]

Hi

One of the things they rarely mention in papers on computation with physarum is how often it doesn't work - about a quarter will not do as intended by going the wrong way,  crossing a barrier or just sitting there.  If you give them a blank canvas so to speak they'll wander off in an apparently random directions - is it really random or is it following some subtle gradient we don't know is there though?