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Physarum solves a maze by pruning paths, but it does not prune all of them. It keeps a few loops that are longer than optimal.

Transit planners keep loops too, and get criticized for it. The overlap is suggestive. It is not evidence.

Bacteria wait until enough neighbours are present before switching behaviour. The switch is sharp, not gradual.

Product adoption curves are usually drawn as smooth. Some of them may only look smooth because we average across regions that each flipped.

Synaptic pruning removes connections on purpose. Memory is partly a deletion system.

Most organizations have no deletion system. Documentation accumulates until it stops being consulted, which is deletion by other means.

Reticulate venation costs more material than a branching tree would. The payoff appears only when a vein is cut.

The interesting question is what the local damage rate has to be before the extra cost pays. That number probably transfers; the metaphor probably doesn't.

At high density, ant traffic keeps flowing where car traffic collapses. Ants do not overtake, and they accept lower individual speed.

The analogy is often used to argue for autonomous vehicles. It seems to argue instead for uniform behaviour, which is a harder thing to ask of drivers.

Thermoregulation is partly feedforward: the body responds to expected load, not just measured temperature.

Almost every dashboard I have seen is feedback-only. It would be interesting to know what a feedforward dashboard looks like.