An extra kind of magic is how no individual can build a computer from scratch today but only through collaboration (in space and time) with thousands of others. The human hive mind is truly amazing.
While the dictionary tells me that emergence means sudden appearance (that of a bird out of the egg shell), to me, it has held a different meaning: A capability exhibited by a machine due to the sheer amount of data it has, and more importantly, the patterns it was able to spot - something that the engineers weren't able to see or design beforehand.
Great essay Tommy. I remember learning about the concept of emergence through ants and ant colonies from Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach." Ants can't do much at all individually, but together, in colonies, they can act quite intelligently.
I think it’s truly fascinating how emergent properties take hold.
In my view, the laws of physics, written at the big bang, is central to this idea that everything in this universe is working to dissipate energy….and finding ways to accelerate that dissipation.
Atoms came together in the right ways to create the first life forms, simple cells, islands of order in a sea of disorder. The operations of those cells increase and accelerate entropy.
Eventually, we get multicellular organisms that can pass genetic information (instructions on how to accelerate entropy) from one generation to the next.
Then humans, capable of “cultural evolution” that can pass counter-entropic information faster still.
We are now wizards in our own time, as you say. Indeed, our technology borders on sorcery, a subject of an essay coming very soon at Risk & Progress.
The last section caught me off guard. I thought the concept of emergence, and hence its "magic," is the irreducibility to the properties of constituent parts.
This might not contradict what you said, but it has the inverse flavor!
Feeling a bit like Babbage. I am a bit angry at myself for not doing something financially significant, since rules were for suckers. And I am bit angry at the world for so willingly burying logic analysis. I enjoyed this post, hopefully your site will inspire some thoughts and actions, logic can still stay a step ahead.
Great overview
An extra kind of magic is how no individual can build a computer from scratch today but only through collaboration (in space and time) with thousands of others. The human hive mind is truly amazing.
Great writeup down the "memory" lane!
While the dictionary tells me that emergence means sudden appearance (that of a bird out of the egg shell), to me, it has held a different meaning: A capability exhibited by a machine due to the sheer amount of data it has, and more importantly, the patterns it was able to spot - something that the engineers weren't able to see or design beforehand.
Great essay Tommy. I remember learning about the concept of emergence through ants and ant colonies from Hofstadter's "Godel, Escher, Bach." Ants can't do much at all individually, but together, in colonies, they can act quite intelligently.
That's a great book (and ants are great too)!
Thanks for sharing this! I have always been fascinated by Ada and the response she must of received sharing her ideas.
Great piece Tommy!
I think it’s truly fascinating how emergent properties take hold.
In my view, the laws of physics, written at the big bang, is central to this idea that everything in this universe is working to dissipate energy….and finding ways to accelerate that dissipation.
Atoms came together in the right ways to create the first life forms, simple cells, islands of order in a sea of disorder. The operations of those cells increase and accelerate entropy.
Eventually, we get multicellular organisms that can pass genetic information (instructions on how to accelerate entropy) from one generation to the next.
Then humans, capable of “cultural evolution” that can pass counter-entropic information faster still.
We are now wizards in our own time, as you say. Indeed, our technology borders on sorcery, a subject of an essay coming very soon at Risk & Progress.
The last section caught me off guard. I thought the concept of emergence, and hence its "magic," is the irreducibility to the properties of constituent parts.
This might not contradict what you said, but it has the inverse flavor!
Really insightful text! It has some ideas in common with my next one the will be on AI and humans.
Feeling a bit like Babbage. I am a bit angry at myself for not doing something financially significant, since rules were for suckers. And I am bit angry at the world for so willingly burying logic analysis. I enjoyed this post, hopefully your site will inspire some thoughts and actions, logic can still stay a step ahead.
I suspect that Quantum computers will remain mystical and magickal to most of us until the next 10% of our brains kick in.