Posted by
Jochen Fromm-4 on
Sep 06, 2009; 3:28pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/emergence-tp3586728p3592900.html
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=ESOSAnother 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:
[hidden email] ; 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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