Can local nudges pull clocks with different periods into one flashing rhythm? Yellow fireflies are flashing; each flash lasts 2 ticks.
Try this Set nudge to 0 while it runs (it takes effect live): synced-share drops to about 31% on average, the level random phases give. Then set nudge to 8: it only reaches about 40%.
About this model Where it ends up
A MathPets take on firefly synchronization with posting as the flash, seeded from aggregate X statistics (no post text is used). Each firefly flashes when its clock completes a cycle, and flashes nudge nearby clocks forward, as in pulse-coupled oscillator models. You are one of the fireflies. The run lasts 240 ticks, one per hour.
Each firefly's period is 48/posts-per-day ticks (at least 6, which is also the value at the default 8 posts a day) plus or minus up to 2, never below 6. A firefly flashes for 2 ticks after its clock wraps. A dark firefly past the middle of its cycle, with a flashing firefly within sense-radius, advances its clock by nudge × its sensitivity, with a chance of about 50 to 100% that night-share lowers before 6 a.m. reply-share percent of fireflies are extra sensitive. Your peak-hour only sets your starting phase.
Unlike the identical oscillators in Mirollo and Strogatz's model (1990), which almost always end up flashing together, periods here differ by up to 2 ticks and nudges come in whole ticks, so the fireflies never settle into one beat. With nudge at 0 about 31% of them are flashing at any moment, from random phases alone; at the default nudge of 2 that rises to about 38%, and it stays near 40% however strong the nudge. You are drawn like every other firefly.
