Marks of many hands

Many hands make light work.

The sound of many hands clapping.

n audience expresses appreciation for a good performance by the strength and nature of its applause. The thunder of applause at the start often turns quite suddenly into synchronized clapping, and this synchronization can disappear and reappear several times during the applause. The phenomenon is a delightful expression of social self-organization that provides an example on a human scale of th...

The Problem of Many Hands: Climate Change as an Example

In some situations in which undesirable collective effects occur, it is very hard, if not impossible, to hold any individual reasonably responsible. Such a situation may be referred to as the problem of many hands. In this paper we investigate how the problem of many hands can best be understood and why, and when, it exactly constitutes a problem. After analyzing climate change as an example, w...

Synaptogenic Proteins and Synaptic Organizers: “Many Hands Make Light Work”

Synaptogenesis is thought to be mediated by cell adhesion proteins, which induce the initial contact between an axon and its target cell and subsequently recruit and organize the presynaptic and postsynaptic protein machinery required for synaptic transmission. A new study by Linhoff and colleagues in this issue of Neuron identifies adhesion proteins of the LRRTM family as novel synaptic organi...

Many Hands Make Light Work: Further Studies in Group Evolution

When niching or speciation is required to perform a task that has several different component parts, standard genetic algorithms (GAs) struggle. They tend to evaluate and select all individuals on the same part of the task, which leads to genetic convergence within the population. The goal of evolutionary niching methods is to enforce diversity in the population so that this genetic convergence...