Anonymous_Coward comments on The Futility of Emergence - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Anonymous_Coward 26 August 2007 11:39:15PM 26 points [-]

Hmm, interesting. I've never actually realized that people used "emergent behavior" as a model or an explanation for anything. In that context, I'd always treated it as just a description, with the meaning that an "emergent phenomenon" is a "complex or seemingly complex phenomenon arising from interactions of a large number of very simple subparts," or something of the sort. Never thought of it as a model or an explanation, but just as a reasonable descriptive word. But if it is used as an attempted explanation to end discussion, then it's just functioning as a curiosity-stopper and should be questioned further.