It is possible this is topic going astray, due to my use of language, so let me first apologize.
A troop of a dozen Gaze hounds is a mob, at least from my view point just over 6 feet. Nothing is straight about it, ever. The Jack is a mad pin ball changing vectors as fast as possible in an effort to spread a full 12 dog troop over a dozen acres. It is a strategic game of trying to cause crashes as often as possible until all the players are splayed out. It is a high speed war in 2 sometimes 3 dimensions only rarely does anything like a leader appear. Quite often the Jack is under the tall legged dogs. Sometimes it is actually running across their backs. The Jack uses terrain, the dogs use flat out speed and teeth. Some dogs are smart and use their feet first and try and flip a Jack some will use their tails and swat backwards Jacks are not really rabbits they are Hares and very fast and maneuverable and they do not have to worry about colleagues that weigh in over 100lbs up to 140lbs. This is a chess game with very few rules. No edges except, every mile 1.6 kms. Nobody lives that long. The other parameter is body heat, both sides try and keep the other one moving until it drops dead.
Heat, terrain, teeth, vegetation cover and speed. Balance another factor, stubble also counts, no mountains, no rivers, only open prairie. No rules or judges. There is no flock pattern but for the breifest of moments wind resistance plays little or no part not even a finish line. So this is real life real agents, and it sometimes gets very bloody, mostly dogs get so frustrated they take on one another. That works for the Jack. Now the flock is neat an easily recognozable pattern, you call it emergent I call it a “temporal accident”, between chaotic states. The behavior is certainly complex but I’ll be darned if you will ever see a pattern repeat itself. So this is definitely real life, but where is the emergent behavior?. I know what I think is happening, I saw it many times and yet I never could predict much, except some dogs would end up at the vet’s office and the Jack would get away and humiliate my champions. The explanation is that emergent behavior is not predictable nor is it necessarily recognizable according to Pattee 1987 Artificial Life proceedings Santa Fe. Those neat patterns were not originally accepted as emergence, they were called frozen accidents on page 72. The flock is not emergent behavior but migration definitely fits my concept and seems to meet Pattee’s. But Complexity seems to be the focus not AL so did complexity reduce its scope of interest and did AL just die out? Did Complexity inherit a dead language and try and make it work in a new environment? I suspect that if a pattern is easily recognized it probably is just another bumper sticker. Perhaps everybody is just hunting for the next wowy factor? Back in 87 Complexity waas only one of three components necessary to define emergemce. Now emergence seems to be a feature of complexity.
Patte suggested three components were required for emergent behavior to distinguish Life from simulation, first complexity using terms like non linearity and symmetry breaking, second semantics or symbology I had trouble with that but sometimes it seems like an image or idea ( The Jack recognized teeth and predatory eyes), and lastly some kind of measurement concepts dragging in the Quantum physics issues of observtion( The Jack seemed to anticipate positions and terrain features with incredible precision, he itroduced self awareness Obviously you have to use yourself as part of the frame of reference if you measure ). No one but perhaps Glen Ropella touches on these issues but I may be mistaken. I do occasionally miss threads. But it seems artificial life is a dead issue and all that remains are the cute simulations. So if you think a pack of dogs and a flock have something in common explain it to me one more time and I will try and find a straight line emerging from the dusty prairie. In 1987 it seemed there was general agreement that there were no global controls or rules coordinating the agents so I have been intrigued by agents with inherent rules and nothing much more sophisticated. There are a lot of mistakes made during a hunt that I know full well. So I never frustrated myself with perfection even dinner time is negotiable.
The Hunt was the emergent behavior but as Pattee explained, it might not be definable with conventional tools. As might be waterfowl migration, so do we settle for cute pictures or do we open discussion about what started all this complexity interest down in Santa Fe. It’s your backyard guys, I am so sorry I never travelled down to see the show back then.
I wish I had a video camera back then to show you what a Hunt looks like and compare it to a peloton or a flock. I have my fingers crossed that truly emergent behavior leaves evidence even though it itself may be fleeting or unrecognizable.
I will quote H.H.Pattee again ,
“ A simulation of life can be very instructive both empirically and theoretically, but we must be explicit about what claims we make for it” He went on to warn readers about the mistakes of the Artificial Intelligence ventures.which ignored the enormous knowledge base of biology.
I tink I have stumbled upon a semiotic swap, the original hierarchy has flipped as more nd more focus is broughtto Computation and Simulaton. I can see how the unrecognizable unknown forms of emergence were problematic and it ws very easy to change te focus to nice stable patterns which used to be called frozen accidents.
The lack of biologists has allowed a cultural realignment to center on the skills of te remaining participants namely programmers. So the semiotic swap must have happened some while ago and the language frustration is still and echo of an older revolution. It seems that the focus on simulations and frozen accidents is exactly what Pattee warned about, the real emergence which was very difficult to conceptualize was replaced by easily recognizable frozen accidents. So did the search for the essence of true emergence, characteristc of Living systems, simply fizzle out? As a former biologist and unofficial code geek I got to see both sides of the quandry and it makes perfect sense that the old ideal was simply unmanageable and a semiotic swap was the only way to save face and keep funding in place.
I guess the conclusion is that Life is long dead and pretty pictures are the new frontier for research. Now that simulations no longer require reference to the living world anything goes and the prettier the better. Maybe a lot of us are caught with one foot on the dock and the other is still In the canoe. Trying to split yourself linguistically semiotically can hurt just as bad, so the living systems of reality are no longer needed for reference and not relevant right?
I got out ito my bush today and shot some Prairie Crocuses still covered in the winter Fur. I always am amazed at these fur clad northern plants. Isn’t evolution marvellous.
Water is still frozen but in just the right location there is enough heat to keep life rolling along pushing through frozen soils. The look a lot like a Jack’s tail when the break ito the weak sunlight then they explode into Pale Blue petals bright yellow stamens surrounding a fur clad white pistil . I will have to wait few days to shoot the hardy pollinators Unknown and Unpredictable.(I know I could Google it but heck I like surprises)
Dr.Vladimyr Ivan Burachynsky
Ph.D.(Civil Eng.), M.Sc.(Mech.Eng.), M.Sc.(Biology)
120-1053 Beaverhill Blvd.
Winnipeg, Manitoba
CANADA R2J 3R2
(204) 2548321 Phone/Fax
-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email]
[mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Ted Carmichael
Sent: April 11, 2010 5:22 PM
To: [hidden email]; The
Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] leadership in
flocks
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
______________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
cell: 310-621-3805
blog: http://russabbott.blogspot.com/
vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
______________________________________
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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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
============================================================
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
============================================================
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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