Self-emergence? The God-didit of a secular worldview?

[Atheist-Lite]

I'm not keen on self-emergence as a concept. It seems a bit of a cop-out from exploring and explaining the intricate processes of radical change. So when things are 'self-emergent' either in nature, mathematics or science can someone think about and ask what isn't being explained? That simply because I say A follows B doesn't mean there are not a number of sub-processes necessary for A to follow B without A becoming C or remaining A? I've tried to explain my point of view here in a general way. Self-emergence is a way of 'not thinking' about things that get in the way of a potentialy harmful over-simplistic explanation of some phenomana.

[devogue]

I'm not keen on self-emergence as a concept.

Me neither. Self-pleasure on the other hand...

[Atheist-Lite]

I'm not keen on self-emergence as a concept.

Me neither. Self-pleasure on the other hand...

I never thought about it that way. Maybe down the pub later?

[PsychoSerenity]

When you have complex systems, often the results are chaotic and unpredictable beyond a certain point e.g. weather. Other systems produce emergent patterns of varying reliability. Obviously it is important to understand why a system produces chaotic or emergent patterns, - but once emergent patterns are reliable enough, it is usually far more useful to model those patterns rather than the underlying fundamental physics.

An example from I book I've been reading was about the concept of a volcano. There is no clear boundary at the base of a volcano, where the volcano ends and the surrounding landscape begins - but that doesn't mean the concept of the volcano is any less useful at a geographical scale. For understanding the process of the volcano's emergence it's useful to model the different pressures and temperatures and consistencies in different areas of the rock. - But it would become far less useful and in fact incalculable to model the volcano at the level of fundamental particles - once those particles are combined into the form of rock, the have reliable properties which we can calculate from plenty accurately enough.

Ultimately if you don't model things based on larger level pasterns, you have to attempt to talk about everything in terms of billions of specific quantum interactions. - but that doesn't mean it's a cop-out in any way, because there are other people working out the processes at the more fundamental levels.

Edit: I'm not sure that actually answers your question, but it's the best that I can do!

[Atheist-Lite]

When you have complex systems, often the results are chaotic and unpredictable beyond a certain point e.g. weather. Other systems produce emergent patterns of varying reliability. Obviously it is important to understand why a system produces chaotic or emergent patterns, - but once emergent patterns are reliable enough, it is usually far more useful to model those patterns rather than the underlying fundamental physics.

An example from I book I've been reading was about the concept of a volcano. There is no clear boundary at the base of a volcano, where the volcano ends and the surrounding landscape begins - but that doesn't mean the concept of the volcano is any less useful at a geographical scale. For understanding the process of the volcano's emergence it's useful to model the different pressures and temperatures and consistencies in different areas of the rock. - But it would become far less useful and in fact incalculable to model the volcano at the level of fundamental particles - once those particles are combined into the form of rock, the have reliable properties which we can calculate from plenty accurately enough.

Ultimately if you don't model things based on larger level pasterns, you have to attempt to talk about everything in terms of billions of specific quantum interactions. - but that doesn't mean it's a cop-out in any way, because there are other people working out the processes at the more fundamental levels.

Edit: I'm not sure that actually answers your question, but it's the best that I can do!

Once you rely on one set of commonalitys to construct a useful model you begin to make a fixed paradigm which may be missing critical parts that bite you in the bum later?

[PsychoSerenity]

Once you rely on one set of commonalitys to construct a useful model you begin to make a fixed paradigm which may be missing critical parts that bite you in the bum later?

You might, but it's the best you can do. And there are constantly people working to look at things from a different point of view and poke holes in anything that's been established for a while. If and when something is found, then you can make up for the mistakes, but until then there's no point in second guessing everything right down to and beyond the most fundamental levels we understand - you'd never get anything done.

[Atheist-Lite]

Take volcanoes. Can all supervolcanoes be considered the same? Wouldn't a small sea rise around Etna be more likely to set it off than Yellowstone? Wouldn't it make sense to dam the straits of gibralter to maintain a fixed level of water in the med?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Darwindidit.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Once you rely on one set of commonalitys to construct a useful model you begin to make a fixed paradigm which may be missing critical parts that bite you in the bum later?

[FBM]

Scientific knowledge is inherently inferential. Even if you could measure and record all the behaviors of all the particles in one or a hundred volcanos, you'd still have inferential knowledge, which as Hume and others have pointed out, never gets you to absolute certainty.

[Jason]

When you have complex systems, often the results are chaotic and unpredictable beyond a certain point e.g. weather. Other systems produce emergent patterns of varying reliability. Obviously it is important to understand why a system produces chaotic or emergent patterns, - but once emergent patterns are reliable enough, it is usually far more useful to model those patterns rather than the underlying fundamental physics.

An example from I book I've been reading was about the concept of a volcano. There is no clear boundary at the base of a volcano, where the volcano ends and the surrounding landscape begins - but that doesn't mean the concept of the volcano is any less useful at a geographical scale. For understanding the process of the volcano's emergence it's useful to model the different pressures and temperatures and consistencies in different areas of the rock. - But it would become far less useful and in fact incalculable to model the volcano at the level of fundamental particles - once those particles are combined into the form of rock, the have reliable properties which we can calculate from plenty accurately enough.

Ultimately if you don't model things based on larger level pasterns, you have to attempt to talk about everything in terms of billions of specific quantum interactions. - but that doesn't mean it's a cop-out in any way, because there are other people working out the processes at the more fundamental levels.

Edit: I'm not sure that actually answers your question, but it's the best that I can do!

Once you rely on one set of commonalitys to construct a useful model you begin to make a fixed paradigm which may be missing critical parts that bite you in the bum later?

What do you mean? Like Newtonian physics?

[FBM]

Once you rely on one set of commonalitys to construct a useful model you begin to make a fixed paradigm which may be missing critical parts that bite you in the bum later?

What do you mean? Like Newtonian physics?

Precisely like that. It's called 'the learning process.' You do the best with wot ya gots, then hope someone else comes along later with something better. Just keep the ball rolling and try to avoid traps like the Dark Ages and Republicans.

[apophenia]

(Btw, chaotic and unpredictable beyond a certain point is redundant. And I don't know what this self-emergence thing is, but I rather doubt your analogy to the dynamic tension between a vague predicate and the fallacy of the beard is apt. Could somebody define or link to this term?)

[Schneibster]

I'm not keen on self-emergence as a concept. It seems a bit of a cop-out from exploring and explaining the intricate processes of radical change.

You don't understand it or you wouldn't have characterized it as a cop-out from exploring and explaining anything.

If you drop a box of buttons on the floor, and you mark the position of every button and then start randomly picking pairs of buttons and connecting them, how do you expect the number of buttons in the largest interconnected group varies as the ratio of strings to buttons?

It's not a straight line, not a linear function. It's an S-curve; it goes from the largest group being 0% with no strings, to the largest group being 10% of the buttons at 40% as many strings as buttons; but then, between 40% and 60% as many strings as buttons, it goes from 10% being the largest group to 90% being the largest group.

This is an average behavior; the more buttons, the closer you will get to this exact behavior. If you repeat the experiment many times (with a computer, nobody's stupid enough to actually do this with buttons and strings), you will again get closer and closer to this exact behavior. It is unexpected; most people expect a smooth curve from 0% to 100% with maybe some deviation at one or both ends, not this wild shit in the middle. But that's how the real world is.

The details of how populations evolve are intimately connected with this S-curve phenomenon, as it turns out.

That's emergent self-organization, to give the phenomenon its proper appellation. I always think it's more credible to actually know something about what you're talking about before you start talking about it, for example how to refer to it.

Just sayin'.

[apophenia]

Ah. That makes more sense. This was the subject of Kauffman's The Origins of Order, which is yet another book I own yet have not read. The first few chapters discussing the nature of spin glasses and similar phenomenon (such as magnetization of a ferric body cooled from a high temperature) was certainly tantalizing. Alas, we must all make choices, and for my own, I have chosen not to devote the effort necessary to attaining competence on scientific matters. (Although people like Schneibster waving pretty baubles such as decoherence and the fluctuation theorem in front of me results in gnawing pangs at my heart which are most difficult to resist.) If there were only more time, or at least the discipline to use what one has wisely. Alas, for me, it is not to be.