bigjeff5 comments on The Futility of Emergence - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 August 2007 10:10PM

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Comment author: bigjeff5 30 January 2011 03:49:20AM 1 point [-]

Does an emergent bee swarm follow the same rules as an emergent market?

That is, can you take the rules of emergence and apply them to both as is - including only the necessary details (like how many bees or the number of stocks)?

If so, you have a testable theory. If not, you have phlogiston.

As Wikipedia describes them, "weak emergence" seems to be what the people above are talking about - that is the properties of the whole can be described/predicted by the interactions of its parts, and "strong emergence" which says the properties of the whole cannot be described/predicted by the interaction of its parts - seems to be what EY is talking about.

The notion of strong emergence, to me, seems nonsensical. I also see no formula for emergence of any kind, which suggests to me that it is not intended to make any predictions - only describe events after they occur. That sounds a lot like phlogiston to me.