Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
Hope you don't mind if I give some examples.
The most concrete example I can think of of something that's pretty much the spitting image of what "weak emergence" - and reductionism - is, is Gliders in Conway's Game of Life.
Conway's Game of Life defines the rules of how future states progress from past states in the source code. Unlike our universe, we actually have the source code, so when it comes to Conway's Game of Life we can unambiguously prove that reductionistic concepts MUST be true in that little man-made cosmos. At a high level, we can notice certain patterns in the game, like Gliders as a simple example, and we know that Gliders are the direct consequence of each pixel behaving by the pixel rules, never breaking the rules - when you arrange certain pieces into particular patterns in the game, and each piece follows only its own local rules, you get new higher-level behaviours and patterns.
Yes, the game of life is indeed weak emergence.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
In real life, it's actually hard to prove for sure that some higher level concept is weakly emergent, rather than strongly emergent, simply because we don't have access to the source code of the universe. However even without access to the source code, you can point to some things as pretty good examples of what is almsot certainly weak emergence.
Laws of nature my friend.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
I think the best example of weak emergence in our reality is the behaviour of elements on the periodic table. There are certain patterns you see in elemental atoms - they seem to all "want" to end up in arrangements where they have access to certain numbers of electrons. This propensity gives certain elements in certain regions of the periodic table a consistency, a similarity between them, where things in one region are more likely to bind - or not bind - with elements in other certain regions. These chemical patterns of behaviour are taken to be emergent from the underlying laws of behavior governing the parts that make up these atoms - laws of attraction and repulsion of oppositely or similarly charged particles, laws of quantized energy states, and so forth.
Yes, all chemical properties can be explained in terms of underlying physical properties.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
As for strong emergence -- I don't personally believe in strong emergence as a real thing in our universe, so I can't give you what I think to be a good real example of that, but we could bring back up Conway's Game of Life to create an illustration.
Conways' Game of Life, if you don't know about it already, is a simulation where a pixel can be on or off, alive or dead, and it's next state of alive or dead, in the next tick of the system, is fully determined by the surrounding pixels and how many of them are alive or dead. So at a low level, it's fully local, and every pixel's state only ever takes into account its immediate neighbors. If we wanted to implement 'Strong Emergence' into Conway's Game of Life, what we would do is program a piece of the logic to be aware of, and detect, larger patterns in the system. When the code detects that there's some larger pattern we're looking for present, we could then override the individual pixels behavior to make sure some higher-level behavior of this larger pattern is maintained. For example let's say we knew that a fully solid circle was unstable, and it would result in the deaths of all the pixels that make it up -- we could program it to detect if that circle is there, and if it is, we could just force all those pixels to stay alive. That's what Strong Emergence would look like in a simulated system - a higher level law overriding lower level laws.
You cannot do that. As soon as you say that you are using a code/simulation for the game of life, no matter how complicated is the code, we are dealing with weak emergence.
So, can 'I' also just SAY, 'you' do NOT know what 'you' are talking about, and just leave it at that, as though it is absolutely and irrefutably true also?
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
Hope you don't mind if I give some examples.
The most concrete example I can think of of something that's pretty much the spitting image of what "weak emergence" - and reductionism - is, is Gliders in Conway's Game of Life.
Conway's Game of Life defines the rules of how future states progress from past states in the source code. Unlike our universe, we actually have the source code, so when it comes to Conway's Game of Life we can unambiguously prove that reductionistic concepts MUST be true in that little man-made cosmos. At a high level, we can notice certain patterns in the game, like Gliders as a simple example, and we know that Gliders are the direct consequence of each pixel behaving by the pixel rules, never breaking the rules - when you arrange certain pieces into particular patterns in the game, and each piece follows only its own local rules, you get new higher-level behaviours and patterns.
Yes, the game of life is indeed weak emergence.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
In real life, it's actually hard to prove for sure that some higher level concept is weakly emergent, rather than strongly emergent, simply because we don't have access to the source code of the universe. However even without access to the source code, you can point to some things as pretty good examples of what is almsot certainly weak emergence.
Laws of nature my friend.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
I think the best example of weak emergence in our reality is the behaviour of elements on the periodic table. There are certain patterns you see in elemental atoms - they seem to all "want" to end up in arrangements where they have access to certain numbers of electrons. This propensity gives certain elements in certain regions of the periodic table a consistency, a similarity between them, where things in one region are more likely to bind - or not bind - with elements in other certain regions. These chemical patterns of behaviour are taken to be emergent from the underlying laws of behavior governing the parts that make up these atoms - laws of attraction and repulsion of oppositely or similarly charged particles, laws of quantized energy states, and so forth.
Yes, all chemical properties can be explained in terms of underlying physical properties.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
As for strong emergence -- I don't personally believe in strong emergence as a real thing in our universe, so I can't give you what I think to be a good real example of that, but we could bring back up Conway's Game of Life to create an illustration.
Conways' Game of Life, if you don't know about it already, is a simulation where a pixel can be on or off, alive or dead, and it's next state of alive or dead, in the next tick of the system, is fully determined by the surrounding pixels and how many of them are alive or dead. So at a low level, it's fully local, and every pixel's state only ever takes into account its immediate neighbors. If we wanted to implement 'Strong Emergence' into Conway's Game of Life, what we would do is program a piece of the logic to be aware of, and detect, larger patterns in the system. When the code detects that there's some larger pattern we're looking for present, we could then override the individual pixels behavior to make sure some higher-level behavior of this larger pattern is maintained. For example let's say we knew that a fully solid circle was unstable, and it would result in the deaths of all the pixels that make it up -- we could program it to detect if that circle is there, and if it is, we could just force all those pixels to stay alive. That's what Strong Emergence would look like in a simulated system - a higher level law overriding lower level laws.
You cannot do that. As soon as you say that you are using a code/simulation for the game of life, no matter how complicated is the code, we are dealing with weak emergence.
I thought your position was that there is no emergence at all. Your position is only that there's no strong emergence?
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
Hope you don't mind if I give some examples.
The most concrete example I can think of of something that's pretty much the spitting image of what "weak emergence" - and reductionism - is, is Gliders in Conway's Game of Life.
Conway's Game of Life defines the rules of how future states progress from past states in the source code. Unlike our universe, we actually have the source code, so when it comes to Conway's Game of Life we can unambiguously prove that reductionistic concepts MUST be true in that little man-made cosmos. At a high level, we can notice certain patterns in the game, like Gliders as a simple example, and we know that Gliders are the direct consequence of each pixel behaving by the pixel rules, never breaking the rules - when you arrange certain pieces into particular patterns in the game, and each piece follows only its own local rules, you get new higher-level behaviours and patterns.
Yes, the game of life is indeed weak emergence.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
In real life, it's actually hard to prove for sure that some higher level concept is weakly emergent, rather than strongly emergent, simply because we don't have access to the source code of the universe. However even without access to the source code, you can point to some things as pretty good examples of what is almsot certainly weak emergence.
Laws of nature my friend.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
I think the best example of weak emergence in our reality is the behaviour of elements on the periodic table. There are certain patterns you see in elemental atoms - they seem to all "want" to end up in arrangements where they have access to certain numbers of electrons. This propensity gives certain elements in certain regions of the periodic table a consistency, a similarity between them, where things in one region are more likely to bind - or not bind - with elements in other certain regions. These chemical patterns of behaviour are taken to be emergent from the underlying laws of behavior governing the parts that make up these atoms - laws of attraction and repulsion of oppositely or similarly charged particles, laws of quantized energy states, and so forth.
Yes, all chemical properties can be explained in terms of underlying physical properties.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Mar 28, 2022 7:32 pm
As for strong emergence -- I don't personally believe in strong emergence as a real thing in our universe, so I can't give you what I think to be a good real example of that, but we could bring back up Conway's Game of Life to create an illustration.
Conways' Game of Life, if you don't know about it already, is a simulation where a pixel can be on or off, alive or dead, and it's next state of alive or dead, in the next tick of the system, is fully determined by the surrounding pixels and how many of them are alive or dead. So at a low level, it's fully local, and every pixel's state only ever takes into account its immediate neighbors. If we wanted to implement 'Strong Emergence' into Conway's Game of Life, what we would do is program a piece of the logic to be aware of, and detect, larger patterns in the system. When the code detects that there's some larger pattern we're looking for present, we could then override the individual pixels behavior to make sure some higher-level behavior of this larger pattern is maintained. For example let's say we knew that a fully solid circle was unstable, and it would result in the deaths of all the pixels that make it up -- we could program it to detect if that circle is there, and if it is, we could just force all those pixels to stay alive. That's what Strong Emergence would look like in a simulated system - a higher level law overriding lower level laws.
You cannot do that. As soon as you say that you are using a code/simulation for the game of life, no matter how complicated is the code, we are dealing with weak emergence.
I thought your position was that there is no emergence at all. Your position is only that there's no strong emergence?
Yes, I am arguing against strong emergence to be more precise.
Ah okay, well I think I probably agree that it doesn't exist in our physics, though I think I disagree with you about the idea that if there is code, no matter how complicated, it's weak emergence. I think the example I gave would count as at least my perception of what strong emergence means.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 8:23 pm
Ah okay, well I think I probably agree that it doesn't exist in our physics, though I think I disagree with you about the idea that if there is code, no matter how complicated, it's weak emergence. I think the example I gave would count as at least my perception of what strong emergence means.
Let me tell you what is weak and strong emergence: The properties of the system are functions of the properties of parts in weak emergence whereas there is no relation between the properties of the system and the properties of parts in strong emergence. We are talking about a function when we are talking about a code.
But in the code I described, it's explicitly the case the the behavior of a high level object is NOT the result of the behavior of each part, which is exactly what strong emergence means.
I don't think your definitions, those choice of words, is necessarily the *standard* one, and I would err towards leaving it up to someone who does believe in strong emergence to define it.
Strong emergentists maintain that at least some higher-level phenomena exhibit a weaker dependence/stronger autonomy than weak emergence permits. This often takes the form of rejecting physical realization, affirming fundamental higher-level causal powers, or both.
"Higher-level causal powers" -- the code I described matches this description, because the higher-level object is detected in that code and has its own causal mechanisms coded in.
Basically, I think right now I can say these things:
You think Strong Emergence and the concept of 'source code of the universe' are fundamentally incompatible,
Whereas I think Strong Emergence is explicitly a statement ABOUT the source code of the universe -- namely, that the source code of the universe makes reference to, and gives some sort of causal power to, higher level objects.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 7:55 am
But in the code I described, it's explicitly the case the the behavior of a high level object is NOT the result of the behavior of each part, which is exactly what strong emergence means.
In the game of life, the behavior of the system is the result of the behavior of parts. Just change the behavior of parts and you get another behavior in the system. Higher-level objects are again higher-level parts so you need an algorithm to tell how they should change.
Strong emergentists maintain that at least some higher-level phenomena exhibit a weaker dependence/stronger autonomy than weak emergence permits. This often takes the form of rejecting physical realization, affirming fundamental higher-level causal powers, or both.
"Higher-level causal powers" -- the code I described matches this description, because the higher-level object is detected in that code and has its own causal mechanisms coded in.
You cannot have both higher- and lower-level of causal mechanisms because of the tension between the two.
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Apr 06, 2022 8:16 am
Basically, I think right now I can say these things:
You think Strong Emergence and the concept of 'source code of the universe' are fundamentally incompatible,
Whereas I think Strong Emergence is explicitly a statement ABOUT the source code of the universe -- namely, that the source code of the universe makes reference to, and gives some sort of causal power to, higher level objects.
Again you cannot have the higher causal level in place when the system is functioning under the lower causal level because of tension between two causal powers.
