On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 08:57:08AM -0700, glen e. p. ropella wrote:
>
> Note that the above is about emergent phenomena, not emergent
> properties. I still think the concept of an emergent property is either
> useless, self-contradictory, or just confused.
>
Eh? What's the difference between a
Thus spake Russ Abbott circa 10/12/2009 05:48 PM:
>1. *Operators.* What do you mean by an operator? Would you give a few
>examples.
It's nothing special. It's defined as: a mapping between two function
spaces.
1) The perception of a "glider" while watching the game of life.
2) Square ro
Glen, I have questions about your version of operators and properties.
1. *Operators.* What do you mean by an operator? Would you give a few
examples.
2. *Properties. *It seems to me that one of the most basic properties is
mass. Another is electric charge. Do you not see these as prop
Thus spake glen e. p. ropella circa 09-10-12 04:41 PM:
> By contrast, a property is inherent in the system and exists regardless
> of any perspective (a.k.a stance) from which it may appear, be
> perceived, or be observed.
Just to be clear, I get this (perhaps peculiar) definition of "property"
f
It's actually quite simple to me. Phenomena are the outputs of
operators. (Phenomenon means "to appear", it is perceived, observable.)
By contrast, a property is inherent in the system and exists regardless
of any perspective (a.k.a stance) from which it may appear, be
perceived, or be observed
=
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> [Original Message]
> From: glen e. p. ropella
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Date:
Group
Date: 10/12/2009 8:58:45 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
Nick, hi,
I can't really summon the energy to be part of the emergence thread,
but for this particular post, you may wish to keep an eye on
publications coming out from Flack, deWaal, Kra
Actually I think the thread is heading into some interesting and (for me)
useful directions. Several contributors (Eric, Glen, Russell et al.) are
explicitly filling in the blank in the sentence "if a phenomenon is
identified as emergent then " (and thanks to Doug for the clear
statement of my ques
nal Message]
> From: Eric Smith
> To: ; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
Coffee Group
> Date: 10/12/2009 8:58:45 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
>
> Nick, hi,
>
> I can't really summon the energy to be part of the emergence t
Robert: Just to help untangle the discussion: Are you saying a
theoretical grounding for Complexity .. or even just Modeling ..
appears to have no concrete use for you?
To be even more specific: Chaos has at least one definition:
divergence. It uses the Lyapunov exponent to define chaotic
Nice. That sort of turns Bedau on his head without rearranging his features
much. Where he is saying that an emergent process cannot be compressed into
a smaller computation than a full simulation, you're saying for given
computational resource the full simulation of an emergent process gives you
Thus spake ERIC P. CHARLES circa 10/11/2009 09:13 PM:
> "Once I've
> attached the 'emergent' label to a phenomenon, I now know that I CANNOT apply
> scientific methodologies to the problem that treat the phenomenon as
> if:
Excellent modification. I do have a (speculative) positive answer,
though
Nick, hi,
I can't really summon the energy to be part of the emergence thread,
but for this particular post, you may wish to keep an eye on
publications coming out from Flack, deWaal, Krakauer, and
collaborators including Ay and deDeo, on primate interactions. They
have some very strong analysis
ku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
- Original Message -
From: Douglas Roberts
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 10/11/2009 8:43:13 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
"Once I've attached
Ah can I change the requested line a small amount?
"Once I've
attached the 'emergent' label to a phenomenon, I now know that I CANNOT apply
scientific methodologies to the problem that treat the phenomenon as
if:
A) it is a simple aggregate of the ingredients
B) its final state
was determine
/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
- Original Message -
From: Russ Abbott
To: Roger Critchlow
Cc: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 10/11/2009 4:45:59 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
With aggregativity defined that way, Wimsatt notes that
That was a "quick whack"?
We operate on different plateaus. In different dimensions, more likely. On
different planets, certainly.
I was hoping for something more along the lines of
"Once I've attached the 'emergent' label to a phenomenon, I now know that I
can apply the following scientific m
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 7:11 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> Roger, I've lost track of what your point is.
>
My point was that Mill spent a few pages defining what became know as
emergence, and that everyone since has known exactly what he was talking
about.
Your question was: what can you say beyond
las Thompson
To: friam@redfish.com
Sent: 10/10/2009 12:28:36 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
All,
Following wimsatt, the puffiness of pancakes is emergent because it depends
on the order of mixing the ingredients. You mix the dry ingredients together,
you m
Robert,
(Building a bit off of Roger and
Owen...) Not to be trite, but the answer is obviously that different
people have different reasons for wanting to discuss "emergence". Some of the
reasons would match your criterion
for usefulness, others wouldn't. One reason for doing this, that receives r
Roger, I've lost track of what your point is.
I said that the attempt to find the appropriate abstractions to characterize
emergence is valid science. Are you agreeing? Disagreeing? Neither? Both?
And what does Winsatt have to do with it? Are you saying that his
aggregativity has captured the es
>
> On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
>
> An interesting example to which this approach might be applied is an ideal
>> gas. Such a gas satisfies all the aggregativity conditions. Yet it has
>> properties (the gas laws) that the individual components lack.
>
>
I read this better
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> With aggregativity defined that way, Wimsatt notes that "Very few system
> properties are aggregative." Then what? Is the point that "emergence,
> defined as failure of aggregativity" has now been fully characterized?
> Problem solved? I wou
With aggregativity defined that way, Wimsatt notes that "Very few system
properties are aggregative." Then what? Is the point that "emergence,
defined as failure of aggregativity" has now been fully characterized?
Problem solved? I wouldn't agree with that. I think there is more to say
than just
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> Roger, Well said.
>
> But there is a further question. Can anything be added to your (Mill's)
> statement that when you combine some things (e.g., combining a bunch of cows
> into a herd) the result has properties that the components lack. Th
I find it odd that we're arguing about the value of creating a theory
for emergence. Follow me back just a few years.
Lets see: why would we want a theory about Chaos. Its just when
things are messy, right? Poor Lorenz and his weather equations .. if
only he had be better with error cal
Roger, Well said.
But there is a further question. Can anything be added to your (Mill's)
statement that when you combine some things (e.g., combining a bunch of cows
into a herd) the result has properties that the components lack. That is,
what, if anything, can one say about those phenomena tha
>From my perspective, which is probably a minority, your question makes very
little sense.
The basic conditions for "emergence" were laid down by Mill in 1843,
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27942/27942-h/27942-h.html#toc53, and there's
not much to it: when you combine some things, the properties
Of course one of the many problems with (and perhaps benefits of)
human languages is that they are incredibly imprecise and flexible.
Obviously Russ A has at least a slightly different definition of
science than that of Robert. We could debate the merits of each
definition in our own partic
Thus spake Owen Densmore circa 10/10/2009 11:47 AM:
> To FRIAM: how would you answer this question by Dennett: "Are centers of
> gravity in your ontology?" .. i.e. are they "real", do they "exist"?
My answer is: "Yes, centers of gravity are real." But I qualify it with
"as real as anything else w
By definition science isn't applied. Whether or not new scientific results
have application is a different question.
My claim is that understanding the underlying mechanisms of emergence is a
scientific question in the same way that understanding the underlying
mechanisms of what makes some substa
Merely an expression of a personal preference: if "there is no point" is
true, it tells me that emergence is and can only ever be pure science. As a
practitioner, I prefer my science applied -- R
On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 12:22 AM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> Robert, Why do you hope my answer is not tru
Robert, Why do you hope my answer is not true?
-- Russ A
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 10:10 PM, russell standish
wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 08:21:08PM -0600, Robert Holmes wrote:
> > Wow, I post a question, go on a 6-hour hike and this is what I come back
> > to...
> >
> > I still don't feel
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 08:21:08PM -0600, Robert Holmes wrote:
> Wow, I post a question, go on a 6-hour hike and this is what I come back
> to...
>
> I still don't feel that I've got a straight answer to my question, other
> than Doug's (which I suspect is the most accurate) and Russ's (which I
>
Robert,
Just FYI: You did not get an answer to your question (other than mine,
FWIW).
Please keep pushing for one, though. I want to hear the answer myself.
Don't let them bog you down in words. Settle for nothing less than an
actual, concise, precise answer to your very concise, precise, and
Wow, I post a question, go on a 6-hour hike and this is what I come back
to...
I still don't feel that I've got a straight answer to my question, other
than Doug's (which I suspect is the most accurate) and Russ's (which I
really hope isn't true). So let me try again: once I've established that a
I'll buy that: the particular model space may not have to be a single
one. And our readings hopefully will lead to the good ones.
A model does, however, have to satisfy Timothy Cowers's notion of
abstraction: that after the intuition drives you to an abstraction,
you can cut the cord to to
fee Group
> Date: 10/10/2009 12:47:42 PM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
>
> To Nick: How about replying to the core observation on a theoretical
> approach? Forgive the sentence saying the book is OK.
>
> Simply stated, we may co
I read this entire thread to my psittascenes. None of them had much to say,
except, of course, one of the African Greys.
After a moment of deliberation (Opus, the Grey *never* speaks without
deliberation) he fixed me with one of his beady little eyes and said, "Ow,
Butthead."
I emerged from the
On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 7:58 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
> What's the point of determining whether a phenomenon is emergent or not?
> What useful stuff can I actually do with that knowledge?
> In other areas of my life, classification can have actionable consequences.
> For example, I can use the sop
clarku.edu)
>http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
>
>
>
>- Original Message -
>From: Robert Holmes
>To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>Sent: 10/10/2009 8:00:42 AM
>Subject: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists
u.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
[Original Message]
From: Owen Densmore
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >
Date: 10/10/2009 11:26:11 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
On Oct 10, 2009, at 7:58 AM, Robert Holmes wr
Abbott
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 10/10/2009 12:06:14 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
Robert's original question was "What's the point of determining whether a
phenomenon is emergent or not?" I don't
e]
> From: Owen Densmore
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Date: 10/10/2009 11:26:11 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
>
> On Oct 10, 2009, at 7:58 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
> > What's the point of determining whe
Robert's original question was "What's the point of determining whether a
phenomenon is emergent or not?" I don't think there is a point. That's not
the issue. The point of the discussion is that some properties seem to exist
at a macro-level (every time I use that word now, I worry that Glen will
On Oct 10, 2009, at 7:58 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
What's the point of determining whether a phenomenon is emergent or
not? What useful stuff can I actually do with that knowledge?
In other areas of my life, classification can have actionable
consequences. For example, I can use the sophistic
exity Coffee Group
Sent: 10/10/2009 9:16:37 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
Robert,
It's supposed to be *my* job to ask embarrassing practical questions.
The answer, of course, is to provide a vehicle around which to hold at-length
discussions on whether, o
2009 8:00:42 AM
Subject: [FRIAM] A question for the emergentists among you
What's the point of determining whether a phenomenon is emergent or not? What
useful stuff can I actually do with that knowledge?
In other areas of my life, classification can have actionable consequences. For
ex
Robert,
It's supposed to be *my* job to ask embarrassing practical questions.
The answer, of course, is to provide a vehicle around which to hold
at-length discussions on whether, or not, the term "emergence" applies to
said phenomenon.
Silly. You should have known that.
--Doug
On Sat, Oct 10
What's the point of determining whether a phenomenon is emergent or not?
What useful stuff can I actually do with that knowledge?
In other areas of my life, classification can have actionable consequences.
For example, I can use the sophisticated pattern-matching algorithms and
heuristics embedded
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