Wind comments on The Futility of Emergence - Less Wrong

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (125)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Wind 27 July 2016 11:39:42PM 1 point [-]

Saying "X is emergent" is conveying some information, if there is someone in the room that does not already know this fact. Here is an example:

Quarks are emergent.

This is not an explanation though. It is more like a anti-explanation. I just claimed that there is an underlying explanation to quarks, and then stopped. I told you to make space for an explanation, in you mental world model, and then I left you with that space empty. If you believed my statement, and if you don't already know how quarks emerges and from what, I just made an explanation shaped hole in your mind. This is not nice of me.

But at least you now know that there is an explanation to be found. When you thought quarks was fundamental, you did not even know to look, because fundamental things can not be explained, only described.