Valter comments on Say Not "Complexity" - Less Wrong
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Comments (49)
Actually, the "emergence" and "complexity" pseudo-causal explanation are much worse than Felix's "gravity" example: the answer "Gravity!" does explain the fact that the block falls to the floor by noting that it is a specific instance of a general phenomenon for which we have very precise information on how it works (attraction force is constant x m1 x m2 /d^2). We may not know why gravity exists, but that is a different (higher level?) problem.
In the case of "emergence" and "complexity", we just don't know.
P.S. I do think that "emergence" is a useful concept to describe situations where modelling is more conveniently done at a (more) aggregate level, but that's yet another story.