Emergence blindness as an Adaptive Trait

[Nick Thompson]

All, particularly those in the Home Church.

On Wednesday, we got into it about emergence and so I thought I would offer the attached file  from a few years back, when the Bush administration was still an ugly rumor.

.  Here is the abstract, in case you aren't awash in free time.

Nick
 
ABSTRACT. We [me and two reluctant colleagues] hypothesize that, because human minds are ill prepared by natural selection to perceive emergence, the achievements of groups that arise from their good functioning as groups easily goes unnoticed. This perceptual flaw has been an obstacle for developmental science, as  it has been  for biologists who want to look at the productivity of groups as opposed to the productivity of the individuals that make them up.  Humans tend either (1) to attribute the non-additive productivity of the group to one of its members, investing him or her with special powers of ?leadership?, or (2 ) to invent an additional supernatural member of the group -- a spirit or god -- to account for its hyper-productivity.   Either method of resolving the cognitive problem posed by emergence is likely to make the group?s individuals more readily subject to the demands of group members who appear to embody or speak for the source of this hyper-productivity.  Thus, selection at the group level will favor such cognitive misattributions because they make groups more coherent and enhance their emergent qualities.  
 




Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthompson at clarku.edu)
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
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[Phil Henshaw-2]

Thanks Nick, a rather accurate depiction I think.   But as the complaint
displays, the fact that some individuals can see the perceptual problem,
that people are more or less blind to emergence for some deep reason,
does not in itself generate a solution, like learning how to see.
That's what puzzles me about why absolutely no one asks me about my
rigorous scientific method of identifying emergent systems as
individuals and closely watching their evolving structures .   Yea,
well, it involves a slightly different set of questions.   What would
you expect!    
 
Learning questions is messier than learning answers perhaps.   What I do
is start by picking questions according to whether they can be answered.
That's just more productive.   Asking when where and how the animation
of local events begins and ends is one of them.  That turns out to be
emergence, and I think all the disciplinary models fit as
interpretations of that from different perspectives.  
 

Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
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-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2007 12:39 AM
To: Friam at redfish.com
Subject: [FRIAM] Emergence blindness as an Adaptive Trait





All, particularly those in the Home Church.
 
On Wednesday, we got into it about emergence and so I thought I would
offer the attached file  from a few years back, when the Bush
administration was still an ugly rumor.
 
.  Here is the abstract, in case you aren't awash in free time.
 
Nick

 

ABSTRACT. We [me and two reluctant colleagues] hypothesize that, because
human minds are ill prepared by natural selection to perceive emergence,
the achievements of groups that arise from their good functioning as
groups easily goes unnoticed. This perceptual flaw has been an obstacle
for developmental science, as  it has been  for biologists who want to
look at the productivity of groups as opposed to the productivity of the
individuals that make them up.  Humans tend either (1) to attribute the
non-additive productivity of the group to one of its members, investing
him or her with special powers of ?leadership?, or (2 ) to invent an
additional supernatural member of the group -- a spirit or god -- to
account for its hyper-productivity.   Either method of resolving the
cognitive problem posed by emergence is likely to make the group?s
individuals more readily subject to the demands of group members who
appear to embody or speak for the source of this hyper-productivity.
Thus, selection at the group level will favor such cognitive
misattributions because they make groups more coherent and enhance their
emergent qualities.  

 

 
 
 
 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University
(nthompson at clarku.edu)
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
 
 



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