I find that the best way to read the term “emergent” is to regard it as connotationally meaning “oh crap, this is too complicated for me”. Systems with easily-understood high-level behaviors, like the avalanche, meet most usual definitions of emergence but are rarely described as such.
e.g., intelligence as an emergent property of neurons = “Oh crap, intelligence is too complicated for me”.
This helpfully moves the word from being a somewhat hand-wavy category to being an objective statement of lack of comprehension. For instance, I can now unambiguously state that I consider intelligence to be emergent, while being happy to have Eliezer disagree.
In reality, when people use the word “emergence”, the actual conclusion about their state of mind you should infer is “I worship my ignorance of how this bulk behaviour is caused”, or even just “I am going to engage in some ignorance worship now”
Now I thought that the word emergence meant
Like, say, an avalanche “emerges” from the individually boring behaviour of snow particles.
I find that the best way to read the term “emergent” is to regard it as connotationally meaning “oh crap, this is too complicated for me”. Systems with easily-understood high-level behaviors, like the avalanche, meet most usual definitions of emergence but are rarely described as such.
e.g., intelligence as an emergent property of neurons = “Oh crap, intelligence is too complicated for me”.
This helpfully moves the word from being a somewhat hand-wavy category to being an objective statement of lack of comprehension. For instance, I can now unambiguously state that I consider intelligence to be emergent, while being happy to have Eliezer disagree.
In reality, when people use the word “emergence”, the actual conclusion about their state of mind you should infer is “I worship my ignorance of how this bulk behaviour is caused”, or even just “I am going to engage in some ignorance worship now”