Byrne comments on The Futility of Emergence - Less Wrong

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

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Comment author: Byrne 27 August 2007 07:09:47PM 0 points [-]

BJK is on to something: the non-emergent description of a market crash is something like "IF the Fed is raising rates and the economy is slowing down and investors are too leveraged and ... ... ... then the market will crash," while the emergence theory might define investor behavior and note that it will result in periodic booms and crashes, without special rules to govern either. That's the essence of emergence: simple universal rules rather than complex specific rules.

It might feel like junk science because it crosses disciplinary borders, but that doesn't make it invalid.