Posted by
Ted Carmichael on
Apr 11, 2010; 10:22pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/leadership-in-flocks-tp4868514p4887317.html
Well, I don't know if the feedback is sufficient to produce emergence, but I would guess that it is necessary, particularly in a complex system.
In regards to the SAT, aren't the grades the emergent property? Basically, we get a bell-curve around a mean score ... the bell curve emerges, doesn't it? And as the students learn more about the test, and effective test-taking strategies emerge, the mean rises. It's not perfect, of course, but the feedback definitely represents a force towards an emergent property. And the test itself changes over time, so that the mean tends to be around a certain score, or within a certain range. I think the SAT was 'adjusted' in the 90's, so that the mean was closer to the traditional range.
Static examples are more difficult. But I think it can still work. We talk about the strength of the bond as the emergent property. So ... something has to test that strength, right? And when it does, the molecule resists in a correlated way, preserving (or trying to preserve) the emergent structure.
I guess a counter-example would be a pool table, with - let's say - frictionless balls bouncing around. When one ball strikes another ball, they both change direction; but all the collisions between various balls are not really correlated, and so the system is chaotic, and remains that way. Something else - some sort of correlated force - would have to be introduced into the system to allow for recognizable patterns to emerge.
Part of this is just thinking out loud, as it were. I certainly recognize that there are levels of complexity, and issues of scope, and a lot of it comes down to identifying the interesting patterns. Sometimes it's more art than science, especially in the human systems that have so many more factors to consider.
I wouldn't claim that chaos is an emergent feature, but I also wouldn't necessarily describe a panicked theater as purely chaotic. To the extent that the feedback among the people is correlated in some way - say, towards the exits - then emergent patterns emerge, and the people stream out of those exits. But if by "panic" you mean the feedback isn't really correlated, and the people are crashing into each other, running pell-mell in any direction, then the system is chaotic and emergent streams of people towards the exits don't form. So, I think in that example, the characterization of correlated feedback still works.
-t
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Russ Abbott
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Correlated feedback? The example given is that of a pack of dogs chasing a rabbit and keeping it running in a straight line. The straight line is the emergent property. A similar example is a thermostat -- or a bunch of thermostats distributed around an area. (If you like they can control independently operating heating sources.) The emergent property is that the temperature remains within a given range. But what about static examples, e.g., chlorine and sodium combining to produce salt or carbon atoms put together to create a diamond? Would you want to dismiss these as emergent -- or find a way to think of them in terms of correlated feedback?
Part of the problem I'm having with correlated feedback is that it seems, perhaps, correlated with emergence but neither necessary nor sufficient. As an example where it's not sufficient how about the grades of students taking a nationwide test, e.g., the SAT. This is feedback, and there are certainly correlations, but I'm not sure what the emergent property is. It might be a teach-(or study)-to-the-test phenomenon. But then we seem to be saying that virtually anything that exhibits correlated feedback is emergent by definition.
Looking a bit more closely, feedback implies an agent that is has some control over its actions and that makes decisions about those actions on the basis of some feedback. So a market, for example, has lots of correlated feedback. People buy or sell more or less depending on the current price, which itself varies with the actions of the participants. Generalizing from that example, one would then have to say that any collection of interacting agents whose actions depend in part on the actions of the other agents produces emergence. Perhaps. But it doesn't seem to be telling me much to say that. Worse, it doesn't give me any means to determine what the emergent phenomenon is. It may look like chaos.
But then perhaps you will want to say that the chaos is an emergent phenomenon--as in the response to shouting FIRE in a crowed theater. Lots of correlated feedback resulting in the emergence of chaos.
-- Russ Abbott
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California State University, Los Angeles
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On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Ted Carmichael
<[hidden email]> wrote:
No, it's a good question, Tory. I said I wasn't sure about the label "emergent" being applied to suppression, and I'm not. Thinking about it more, it's a good idea to clarify the terminology.
Let's see ... a single act of suppression is feedback that helps to preserve the emergent feature of a leadership hierarchy. A single action is not emergent (at least, in this scope). But I'll have to agree that the term "suppression" could easily represent
correlated feedback among many agents, and is thus also an emergent feature. I guess I was just thinking of suppression as part of the leadership "basin of attraction."
I mean, it's the same thing from a different perspective, isn't it? Kind of like: do you call mud "dirty water," or "wet dirt?" The water is part of it, the dirt is part of it, but it's easier to just call the whole thing "mud." In this case, the leadership hierarchy persists, the correlated feedback is part of it, and it's all emergent.
So, I reckon we're talking about the same thing.
In regards to the observer's value system, I would say that traditionally, we tended to view things like slime mold and ant colonies through the prism of human hierarchical systems. Keller, and Segal showed that - in the case of slime mold - a distinct "pacemaker" cell (i.e., a leader) was not necessary to produce the emergent property. This helped a lot, since the pacemaker cells had never been found.
But certainly I would agree that our observations and value judgement may be flawed. I think that is the benefit of this whole field of study: we no longer have to rely on a single model of hierarchical structures. We now have distributed models that can also work, and we simply select whichever model fits best.
I, too, am enjoying this conversation.
-T
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 4:49 PM, Victoria Hughes
<[hidden email]> wrote:
But by your own definition,
an emergent property requires correlated feedback in the system
supression is as likely to emerge as leadership, and thus we revert to the question in earlier conversations about the value systems of the observer fabricating the label of emergent or not. Right?
Or, seconding Dr B, am I just not used to your terminology?
Certainly am enjoying this.
Tory
On Apr 10, 2010, at 2:41 PM, Ted Carmichael wrote:
Comments below...
On Sat, Apr 10, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Wow, wait a second,
If the object in motion has a group of followers I don't see emergence,
Remoras follow sharks or any other moving object, there is no dynamic social
system. My Wolfhounds follow rabbits, horses, snowmobiles, bicycles etc at
very high speeds. If they were displayed on a radar screen you might mistake
five wolfhounds as worshipful devotees of a single leader, running in
absolute terror. If they all came to a stop on the radar screen you might
surmise the group fell into disarray as the result of a leadership dispute.
Perhaps one might think there was a socially repressive regime at work when
the blips resolved as five instead of six, and the pace slowed down.
Emergence is a tough concept. My understanding is, an emergent property requires correlated feedback in the system. A pack of dogs following a single rabbit, say - with the rabbit's actions influencing the dogs, and the dogs' actions influencing each other - may display emergent properties. For example, in an open, flat field, the rabbit may be more likely to run in a straight line, with individual dogs occasionally keeping the rabbit from diverging to the left or the right. The straight line would be the emergent property. The dogs are both trying to catch the rabbit and avoid crashing into other dogs, producing a "flock" of dogs.
"Merle Lefkoff wrote:
Regardless of whether leaders act because of endogenous traits or a
circumstantial opening, they are indeed emergent throughout the system.
In human systems, however, unlike flocks, over-determined structures
suppress this emergent property of the system. Rather than stepping
aside to allow emerging leaders to bring requisite variety to the
"flock", elite hierarchies/patriarchies suppress distributed leadership
and generally prevail for long periods of time."
It looks like the first sign of legitimate "emergence" is the Hierarchy that
perceives the front man as a leader and attempts later to suppress it,
whether it is a leader or not makes no difference. The act of suppression
emerges complete based on its own belief system.
The belief system must have been in place prior to the flock being created,
the leader was accidental (Circumstantial) but suppression is truly
emergent, or is it?
I'm not sure I would label 'suppression' as emergent. Depends on exactly what you are referring to. Perhaps a better label is "feedback?"
What's interesting about the leadership hierarchies, in human systems, is that the structures themselves are an emergent property. Persistent patterns, changing components. The leadership hierarchy becomes a "basin of attraction," with it's own support structures and correlated feedbacks, even as the people within the hierarchy change over time.
-t
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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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
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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