The Five Rules of Roam

Or how to grow a digital jungle

In this installment of [[Roaming Writing]] newsletter, we talk about self-organized systems, antifragility, optionality, principles, and rules — with special appearances of ants, organs, gardens, jungles, desires, fishes, and baits. This diversity of topics — chaos? — is a consequence of writing on Roam.

«I myself, while writing these lines, try to avoid the tyranny of a precise and explicit plan, drawing from an opaque source inside me that gives me surprises.»
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile

Ants are better than organs

Ants are very captivating creatures. They can produce complex, apparently intelligent structures, without planning, control, or even direct communication between the ants. This self-organization works efficiently without the need for memory, intelligence, or awareness of the ants — to themselves or to each other.

Self-organization works with extremely simple agents, simple rules, and local interactions between elements of a disordered system. Some form of overall order arises from underlying chaos.

These characteristics have a lot of advantages — no need for procedures, manuals, bosses, directives, policies…

Every ant or agent in a self-organized system guarantees the survival of the system itself…