The answer was great, thanks. And this, I totally agree with! Plus, I found the message beautifully written and it was enjoyable to see cognition condensed into least action + dissipation.

The formalism seems essentially the same to me: at each time step of the dissipation dynamics, you compute fluxes via Kirchhoff's and Poiseuille's law, which pop up from the Lagrangian. What other insight does the action give?

Thank you in advance!

However, I am struggling to see the difference between your work and instantaneous energy dissipation, as in e.g., this paper: journals.aps.org/prresearch/a... (I am referencing it because I am sure about its content, but similar results are in its bib).

Because of the timescale separation, at each instant the flows minimize dissipation subject to conservation laws, hence Poiseuille's law. However, the morphology of the slime mold is determined by dissipation, rather than a time-integrated least-action principle. Timescale separation is reasonable.

Hi Ricard, I read this work and I have a question. Since you separate time scales between conductances and fluxes, is the action minimization really the "foundation of the [Physarum] adaptive organization"?

slides: aleable.github.io/files/lonard...
paper: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
and code: github.com/nickruggeri/...

are also freely available!

If you're in London, interested in the project or my research, or just want to chat about complex systems (or anything else), let's connect :)

Are there bottlenecks in bicycle tracks causing cyclist congestion? Or are there disparities in the quality of service across the city's neighborhoods?

We (@mszll.datasci.social.ap.brid.gy, Caterina De Bacco, and I) answer these questions in our new work:
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Are there bottlenecks in bicycle tracks causing cyclist congestion? Or are there disparities in the quality of service across the city's neighborhoods?

We (@mszll.datasci.social.ap.brid.gy, Caterina De Bacco, and I) answer these questions in our new work:
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...