One would need to acknowledge all the lower-level elements involved in
the implementation for this to be accurate.
Is the total range of elements knowable in complex systems involving
humans?
On Sep 6, 2009, at 9:28 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
So the insight you have brought to the world is
that the best way to understand emergence is through
the lens of implementation - emergent properties can
be described as a high level abstraction which is
implemented by low level elements. Right?
It seems to me that you have just invented a new
word for emergence: instead of saying a flock emerges
from a number of birds you say the birds implement
a flock, and instead of saying foraging trails
emerge from an ant colony you say an ant colony
implements a foraging trail.
For engineers it is in fact useful to understand
emergence as an implementation, because if they
want to produce an emergent property, they must
implement it somehow. Is this revolutionary?
To implement a behavior for a group of agents
means to implement a distributed alogithm. You
know how difficult this is. The "implementation"
insight is not very useful if we don't know how
to implement a particular emergent property,
or how to find the right distributed algorithm for
the problem at hand.
The interesting question is more how to implement
emergence (how do we organize a system which
organizes itself, the ESOA and ESOS problem).
There are methods to do it, for example genetic
algorithms or "Synthetic Microanalysis" (i.e.
the scientifc method for the engineer which
means rapid prototyping and agile development)
http://wiki.cas-group.net/index.php?title=ESOS
Another interesting question is why it is so
hard to find "emergence" in computer science.
Implementation means writing code, and code is
the foundation of everything in software development.
Therefore if you ask where emergence is used
in computer science, you have to say "nowhere"
- programmers hate unintended consequences
and try to avoid them - and "everywhere" -
it is just code which we use all the time.
-J.
----- Original Message ----- From: Russ Abbott
To: [email protected] ; The Friday Morning Applied
Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2009 11:18 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] emergence
I don't want to leave the impression that I think that emergence is
a difficult concept to understand and that I but hardly anyone else
understands it. Emergence is what happens when components of the
"emergent entity" act in such a way as to bring about the existence
and persistence of that entity.
When "boids" follow their local flying rules, they create
(implement) a flock. It's not mysterious. We know how it works.
That's all emergence is: coordinated or consistent actions among a
number of elements that result in the formation and persistence of
some aggregate entity or phenomenon. The "coordination" doesn't have
to be top-down. In flocking, for example, there is coordination. The
flying rules depend on the boids seeing neighboring boids. One can
even say that there is some overall coordination: namely that all
the boids follow those same rules. Emergence is the term we have
come to use for that process/effect.
In the introduction to Bedau and Humphreys they speak of emergence
as some mysterious, perhaps even incoherent phenomenon. It's not. It
happens all the time all around us. Our bodies are the emergent
result of the actinos of our cells. A country is the emergent result
of the actinos of its citizens. This group is the emergent result of
the actions of its participants.
It's worth pointing out that in biological and social emergent
entities, the comonents may come and go while the entity persists.
What emerges is a pattern of activities, not a physical thing.
That's one of the reasons people get confused. (And that's why
subvenience is not particularly useful in these cases.)
But if you just think about emergence as a persistent pattern of
activities, that pretty much takes care of it. It's the fact that
the pattern persists that matters, not the elements that are acting
to produce the pattern.
-- Russ
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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
