Ants and emergent utility

I have been studying various economic principles and Markov models, as well as cellular automatons. I was playing with Langston's ant and that is an interesting case of emergent structure and attractors. Tyranny of small decisions seems to be a good example and many others apply. It is easy to see where these principles can be applied as an individual and in groups to benefit everyone just from understanding of the outcome of simple steps. These subjects are well worth knowing and have many applications. The ability to apply them with matrix methods makes them simple to employ. It is very surprising what complex results can be obtained with simple rules.

One surprising result is that it implies that if people could understand the emergent property of cooperative behavior they would most likely be walking the stars like stepping stones.