As Eliezer requested, I offer my view on what emergence isn’t: emergence is not an explanation. When I say that a phenomenon is emergent, I am using a shorthand to say that I understand the basic rules, but I can’t form even a simple model of how they result in the phenomenon.
Take, for example, Langton’s Ant. The ant crawls around on an infinite grid of black and white squares, turning right at the centre of each white square and left ant the centre of each black square, and flipping the colour of the square it’s in each time it turns.
The first few hundred steps create simple patterns that are often symmetric, but after that the patterns Langton’s Ant produces become pseudorandom. If left to run for around 10000 steps, the Ant builds a highway—that is, it falls into a pattern of 104 of steps, and at the end of each cycle, it has moved diagonally and the cycle repeats. After millions of steps, the grid has a diagonal streak across it. As far as we know, the Ant always builds a highway.
Highways are emergent by the definition I use—that is, I know exactly how Langton’s Ant works, and therefore, in theory, know why it builds a highway, but I can’t form a model of its behaviour that I can actually use. I simply do not have a good enough brain to actually run Langton’s Ant. By this definition, conciousness is an emergent phenomenon (I know it’s caused by neurons, but I have no idea how) but the behaviour of gases is not (I know the ideal gas law and its predictions seem reasonable if I imagine a manageable number of molecules bumping about).
By my definition, emergent is much like blue. “It’s emergent!” and “It’s blue!” are both mysterious answers if I asked for an explanation, but useful answers if I asked for a description.
As Eliezer requested, I offer my view on what emergence isn’t: emergence is not an explanation. When I say that a phenomenon is emergent, I am using a shorthand to say that I understand the basic rules, but I can’t form even a simple model of how they result in the phenomenon.
Take, for example, Langton’s Ant. The ant crawls around on an infinite grid of black and white squares, turning right at the centre of each white square and left ant the centre of each black square, and flipping the colour of the square it’s in each time it turns.
The first few hundred steps create simple patterns that are often symmetric, but after that the patterns Langton’s Ant produces become pseudorandom. If left to run for around 10000 steps, the Ant builds a highway—that is, it falls into a pattern of 104 of steps, and at the end of each cycle, it has moved diagonally and the cycle repeats. After millions of steps, the grid has a diagonal streak across it. As far as we know, the Ant always builds a highway.
Highways are emergent by the definition I use—that is, I know exactly how Langton’s Ant works, and therefore, in theory, know why it builds a highway, but I can’t form a model of its behaviour that I can actually use. I simply do not have a good enough brain to actually run Langton’s Ant. By this definition, conciousness is an emergent phenomenon (I know it’s caused by neurons, but I have no idea how) but the behaviour of gases is not (I know the ideal gas law and its predictions seem reasonable if I imagine a manageable number of molecules bumping about).
By my definition, emergent is much like blue. “It’s emergent!” and “It’s blue!” are both mysterious answers if I asked for an explanation, but useful answers if I asked for a description.