Milk also solves the maze

Water and milk can solve the maze faster than the slime mould.
水も迷路を解けます。しかも粘菌よりも速く。
It is a counter-example to the advocacy that the slime mould may be intellectual.

Ingredients: Lego #6177 x 1, Lego #628 x 1, milk 500 ml, water 2 litre, and new ipod touch.

The maze is machine-generated by the maze generator http://www.xefer.com/maze-generator?ndkfjgffnmkdnodnodni .

Note that this is NOT the evidence for the fact that water and milk are more intellectual than the slime mould, but showing that solving a maze is an easy (i.e. non-NP) problem.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• water
• slime
• slimemould
• solve
• maze
• milk
• lego
• intellect
• counterexample

[chemicalsymphony]

Other experiments have been done that show slime recreating highway layouts between "cities" (aka food) which are fairly close replicas to the real highway layouts. Milk can't do this, so arguably the slime is more intelligent than the milk.

[vitroid0]

@chemicalsymphony Such a problem can also be solved mechanically, i.e. without an intelligence (I'm not sure milk is the best material to solve it though).

[vitroid0]

Haha:-)

[vitroid0]

So does the slime. Slime "flows" from start to goal. That is not a real flow, but both are a kind of a variational principle. If you develop a shrink-wrap film along all the paths and brow it by a heat gun, for another example, the film will shrink and be squashed along the shortest path. Do you still think the film is intelligent? No way.

[vitroid0]

Common thing is that the solving a maze is not a complex task but a mere O(N) problem. Moreover, in the initial condition of the slime mould experiments, slime is developed over the whole maze area. That makes the problem easier, because the slime does not need to *scan* all the possible paths beforehand. You know, when a mouse solves the maze, he does not know anything about the whole topology of the maze at initial condition, that is why solving this problem takes time and looks hard.

[vitroid0]

It is a technical demonstration to solve the maze by fluidics. You can tune parameters to solve different types of maze. For example, if there are two routes and you want to get the shorter one only, make the friction larger, i.e. let the paths narrower and use more viscous liquid. That will avoid the longer route.

[apismel1ifera]

@vitroid0 actually the video you responded to did not have the organism covering the bottom of the dish

[SupDocOck]

HOLY SHIT, MILK IS SMARTER THAN I THOUGHT

[keoni29]

It just follows the path of the least resistence towards the exit. Close the hole and put an oreo cookie at the end. Lets see if the milk can find it!

[ilius1987]

WOW! so you mean milk is actually intelligent? I always knew it. it must gain its intellect in an entanglement with the milking cow (since they are obviously the same organism). about the shrink wrap, could it be because it is organic material?

[concinnus]

The milk didn't "solve" crap, it just flows quickly down the flow path and diffuses slowly along the stagnant directions. The water flows where it can lose potential, the milk marks out the flow. Whooptie-doo.