Bacteria Provide New Insights Into Human Decision Making

In this article from Science Daily , Math, Biology, and decision making are all put to the test. Bacteria, who live in giant colonies, can communicate with each other all most instantly. When conditions get bad in the colony, such as starvation or poisoning, the exact conditions are given out to all members of the colony. Then the bacteria have a choice, they can retreat into a spore, or go into a different state called competence. If the bacteria goes into a spore, they store their DNA in a capsule, which breaks open when conditions are better. The original bacteria dies, but one takes its place at another time. If the bacteria goes into competence, it stays alive through the struggle, using its dead brothers, the ones who became spores, as subsistence. The advantage of this is no one dies, so the bacteria can continue with the colony while the others are in spores.

Now here is where the math comes into play. Scientists want to use all the data gathered from watching how the bacteria respond to each others choices, and not only try and learn more about human decision making, but by trying to put a mathematical model to certain situations, such as who goes out and gets a vaccine compared to how many people in the entire population do. Ben Jacobs, a physics professor at Tev Aviv and part of the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, had this to say.

"What each bacterium is doing is the equivalent if each individual on earth was able receive the exact information about the rate of spread of this new virus, the exact information about the intentions, to be vaccinated or not, by each person on the planet, and in addition the exact information about the health risks of side effects or being infected, a decision is then made in the context of this vast amount of information."

I think this article is interesting, mainly because of how impossible I think it would be to make a mathematical model that would accurately show the decision making of a group of humans.