JohnWittle comments on The Level Above Mine - Less Wrong

42 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 26 September 2008 09:18AM

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Comment author: JohnWittle 23 March 2013 09:08:05PM *  0 points [-]

there are aggregate behaviors that cannot be understood from looking at the individual constituents in isolation

Can you give me an example of one of these behaviors? Perhaps my google-fu is weak (I have tried terms like "examples of top down causality", "against reductionism", "nonreductionist explanation of"), and indeed I have a hard time finding anything relevant at all, but I can't find a single clearcut example of behavior which cannot be understood from looking at the individual constituents in isolation.

Comment author: EHeller 24 March 2013 01:05:42AM 1 point [-]

The fore-mentioned spontaneous symmetry breaking shows up in a wide variety of different systems. But, phase changes in general are probably good examples.