I dont think that the dividing line between weak and strong emergence is upward causation (reductionism) vs. holism. We dont represent 10^(24 + x) elementary components when we talk about organization, structure and properties at the macrolevel. These macro-properties surely can have complex feedback loops with the microlevel, weak emergence does not negate that... After all, we could represent that feedback (downward causation) in form of local interactions between elementary components. But describing every particle including it's local interactions is not practical. Symmetries and organization / structures at the macrolevel allow us to abstract away from lots of redundant information about individual components, giving us a concise statistical representation of the "whole" with new (macro-) properties where we can investigate the relationship with micro-level components (downward causation). The only way to actually explain strong emergence is *not* a lack of feedback loops (downward causation from higher levels of organization) - which weak emergence allegedly supposes -, but whether or not it is possible to describe elementary components in their entirety of properties. If there is even the slightest potential for a lack in our understanding of how the elementary components operate, then understanding the macrolevel by looking at local interactions will be impossible. Given the fact that the lack of knowledge of local interactions between elementary components could in itself already be a consequence of poorly understood complexity at an even lower level of organization, we might try to go to ever smaller orders of organization in order to remove complexity along the way. Going to the lowest conceivable level, e.g. elementary particles, the only way strong emergence could actually exist would be if there is an impossibility to predict the outcome of single local interactions. If the Kopenhagen interpretation of QM is correct and our world is fundamentally non-deterministic, we're obviously unable to do that. Thus, strong emergence hinges on the existence of true randomness. Otherwise it is only a matter of theoretical computability (which renders a practical distinction between weak and strong emergence meaningless, as we'll never be able to claim 100% knowledge which would allow us to test for strong emergence) Even though quantum effects vanish at larger scales of organization due to decoherence, which removes non-deterministic processes regarding properties and quantities at a higher level of organization, we're still forced to look at lower levels in order to understand even the complexity of the elementary components at the lowest level that does not exhibit quantum effects, i.e. appears to be deterministic. *We go down, we remove complexity. We go up we remove true randomness / quantum effects.* That being said... in a complete deterministic world, everything would be subject to computability and knowledge/understanding of nature. Just because we are not able to calculate or maybe even account for the intricacies of upward and downward causation and feedback loops, does not imply we're not missing some rules of the local interactions that could help explaining the intricate feedback loops. Given the fact that human understanding and knowledge of reality is limited, there is no way to ever prove one or the other concept wrong. Weak vs. strong emergence is rather a philosophical issue than a practical one. (and describing it as upward causation vs. feedback loops is a bit off the target for my taste)
I, really enjoy your representation, of how the deterministic macro level paradigm affects the micro level agency of emergence in relation to the theoretical computation of the complex adaptive system's ability to absorb the non-deterministic paradigms of the co-operative agents' feedback loops.
This was a thought provoking comment. Thanks for sharing. I'm wondering though, if no particle in a dynamic system ever perfectly repeats a trajectory due to energy loss and Brownian motion and whatnot, which is a central premise in chaos theory, then complexity would be infinite and no cycle or result would ever truly be the same. Like how the Fibonacci sequence is an infinite pattern that never repeats. The numbers are specific to the part of sequence being considered but the relationship that defines the sequence is always the same. But in chaos theory you get shapes (attractors) essentially acting as standing waves of probability (stability) for specific results at certain scales of time and space that are useful to us - like the climate pattern vs seasonal trends vs day to day weather. All scales are useful to know but require different scales of pattern recognition. And obviously the weather has a very measurable top-down effect on us, but as we know we also have a bottom up effect on it, albeit in a much less direct way from our individual perspectives. The chaos in chaos theory is not random - it is fractal, so both camps are true and necessary because there really is no end to the relationships that can be measured, but interactions with patterns outside of our reference frame will appear random. In theory the patters go on forever and are infinitely varied while being completely deterministic. And yet they are capable of generating unique results through a mix of linear and non-linear associations (the way twins with exactly the same DNA will not be completely identical). Thus, our best chance at understanding the world would be to adopt an ideal ratio between awareness of loosely correlated "strong-emergent" causations and strongly correlated "weak emergent" causations while maintaining an ability to change the tilt of that ratio to fit the situation. So our ability to detect patterns is relative to our scale. But we also interact with all patterns in a way that transcends our ability to explicitly comprehend it all. Enter the proposed purpose of intuition
So am i right in saying its the equivalent of telling if a house is a house based on looking at just one brick. Weak emergence suggests no, you can only understand brick or house seperately. Strong suggests just looking at the brick will provide sufficient information about the house?
Wow, I learned a lot from this video. The concepts are important and explained in such a clear way. I'm so glad you guys went to the trouble to make it. I hope you're able to sustain this endeavor. I would love to learn more about your business plan. I didn't get much detail about that from your website's FAQ. I wonder if there is any organization that brings together people who put educational material online and synergizes to get funding and audience.
Thanks for the feedback. I am not sure of such an organization by you may find one if you look. We generate revenue from, selling courses on third party sites such as Udemy and also by selling premiums subscriptions on our site that give additional services, like books, course certificates, downloads etc. it is possible to build a business model like this but it takes time, lots of work and you may need investment
why should we consider entanglement as strong emergent? Interaction between constituents (or at least pair-wise interaction between two constituents) is part of the microscopic description. Pair-wise interaction will results to entanglement. If you regard game of life as weak emergence because we can using the rule of a single cell and its interaction with its neightbours, to simulate emergent patterns, then you should also consider entanglement as weak emergence. You can literally simulate dynamics of a quantum system that shows entanglement using microscopic laws on the pair-wise interaction. I guess you can try to argue entanglement is both weak and strong emergent though. Why should we consider consciousness as strong emergent? We don't know what kind of emergence consciousness is. There might very well be a law of physics that quantify consciousness and explain how elementary contribution of consciousness can be accumulated to a macroscopic consciousness.
Incompleteness is not an accident but ubiquitous and that had been shown in multiple forms in the foundation of Mathematics and information complexity, hence strong emergence(a form of incompleteness) is also pervasive; Reductionism is intrinsically flawed.
Patterns of stuff emerge from stuff because stuff is stuff and does what stuff does. The rules don't change because of a higher level pattern. I'm not a reductionist, I agree that something truly new emerges that can't be _described_ in terms of the constituent parts. That's true for a snow flake and that's true for conciousness. If you try to describe a snowflake as all it's molecules and chemical bonds, then that's what you'll have described in the end. To describe the snowflake you must use other words that only apply on that level. Because it's truly something new that obeys new rules. But there is no downward causality. My mind does not cause "my molecules" to anything. My mind causes my fingers to something.
I agree and yet.... Walk 3 steps to the left. Congratulations. You haved now moved the molecules of your brain which is running the software of your mind. You can get around this by assuming no free will. You were going to walk anyway. You were always going to read this post, and i was always going to write it.
The snowflake exists on a different level of abstraction to the lower-level description of its parts. But the higher-level description supervenes on the lower-level description. There are new things that exist like snowflakes and new higher-level patterns that govern them than exist at the lower-level, but they all supervene on the lower-levels.
@@deplant5998Except free will is a higher-level description. If you are going to talk about “you” and not “atoms that we call ‘you’”, then it makes sense to use the language of agents making choices even if choices don’t exist in lower-level descriptions.
Can you give me an example of something in the physical world beside quantum entanglement that is a strong-emergent system? It appears to me that things such as organisms, societies and such, while *easier* to understand with holistic or higher level methods as in sociology or biology, is not impossible to comprehend by studying the basic components.
Water would be another example of a strongly emergent physical phenomenon. But sure you could look at almost anything from a reductionist perspective and you will find some way of interpreting it as simply the sum of its parts, but as you note the point is to recognize when it is best to use reductionism and when best to use a more holistic approach. The ideas of strong and weak emergents should largely just helps us to think about that.
Why is it taken that fluid mechanics is strongly emergent? I have always had it in my head as an example of weak emergence, I feel we just don't have a full understanding of the underlying dynamics. I feel evolution by natural selection is an example of strongly emergent phenomenon in nature. It seems intuitively clear that evolution operates on a plane on its own above chemistry, for it does not depend on the specific physics or chemistry of the system upon which it is built. All one needs is reproduction and natural selection will take place, thus it is not dependent on the physics or chemistry that underlie it. Either, evolution (or any other strongly emergent phenomenon) can be derived from multiple sets of underlying laws, or in principle, truly cannot be deduced.
I have a feeling that once we have a better understanding of quantum mechanics, the "emergent" properties of interaction between atoms and molecules (e.g the vicosity of water) won't appear as mysterious as they do now. I've heard a group of scientists managed to recreate a digital model of water reproducing viscosity, although it is apparently incomplete and doesn't account for everything. This would point to no emergence in water. As for natural selection, it is by no mean an example of strong emergence as it can easily be reproduced in a simulation with very simplistic rules. The same goes for stigmergy. I feel that strong emergence can't really exist and that we see emergence as a result of the anthropic principle + remnants of essentialism. It might just be an illusion.
Another example of strong emergence: A Natural Law for Rotating Galaxies: meaning a "strong emergent" property of a complex system of stars, a new independent property. Dark matter is superfluous. physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2016/10/a-natural-law-for-rotating-galaxies.html?m=1
Consciouness is an emerging property of the brain and require it to be complex enough. As such, there is no consciousness in a fetus before it brain devellop to a level high enough to allow it. Life is also an emerging property of matter but arised long before the apparition of neurons, so you can have life without consciousness. THe interesting question would be if you can have consciousness without life but that's a different question (related to AI)
@@francois-xavierpellayphd6597 You have rightly put that. It is a wonder! Matter exists, but to know that it exists, it transforms itself into an organism with consciousness and perceives itself as it is. At the micro level everything is connected and it interacts with each other in a strange manner, The same interaction gives rises to differences at macro levels, emerging to different forms and categories of living and non living matters including consciousness. To exist is itself is a wonder! to know that I exists.. It is beyond words.. Would love to see the AI transforming the system to a new and another dimension
The interaction between any two things creates an emergent relationship. That something cannot be so described ATM says nothing of the ultimate reality of it, and hard emergence is merely ignorance.
I have the impression too much emphasis is being placed on the distinction between strong and weak emergence?!?!?! For a thorough analysis, we need to take into account the interactions with the environment, big deal? Stating that string theory is only one piece of the puzzle seems a moot point. Overall informative video.
It’s an important distinction because if strong emergence truly exists as it’s defined, it represents a very large hole in our understanding of reality. We might be very comfortable observing, describing, and analyzing strongly emergent systems, but have no idea how they can exist. For example, consciousness. Conceivable as a weakly emergent property of the chemistry happening in our brains, but we are not yet at a point scientifically where we understand it. Also conceivable as a strongly emergent system. But that means we don’t even have the tools to understand why consciousness exists. That knowledge isn’t anywhere on the horizon. It makes me uncomfortable to think that something a simple as water a pure and relatively un-complex chemical system cannot be simulated, even theoretically, by the physical properties of water molecules. Like, dafuq? That feels like an important distinction to me. I’m just a layman though for context
I thought given the initial conditions and laws of physics of the early universe, a simulator could predict the formation of galaxies, black holes, quasars, stars… all these have a qualitative aspect just like the wetness of water. What’s the big deal?
@@bencressman6110 «Simple as water», oh boy, the hell of a ride awaits you at the Hydrochemistry AP. Though seriously, science is an incomplete bundle of explanations, remarkably so. It was very fruitful to address this incompleteness through going deeper into the causes and constituent parts but this doesn’t mean it will always be helpful. Methodology may change
Thanks
I dont think that the dividing line between weak and strong emergence is upward causation (reductionism) vs. holism. We dont represent 10^(24 + x) elementary components when we talk about organization, structure and properties at the macrolevel. These macro-properties surely can have complex feedback loops with the microlevel, weak emergence does not negate that... After all, we could represent that feedback (downward causation) in form of local interactions between elementary components. But describing every particle including it's local interactions is not practical. Symmetries and organization / structures at the macrolevel allow us to abstract away from lots of redundant information about individual components, giving us a concise statistical representation of the "whole" with new (macro-) properties where we can investigate the relationship with micro-level components (downward causation).
The only way to actually explain strong emergence is *not* a lack of feedback loops (downward causation from higher levels of organization) - which weak emergence allegedly supposes -, but whether or not it is possible to describe elementary components in their entirety of properties. If there is even the slightest potential for a lack in our understanding of how the elementary components operate, then understanding the macrolevel by looking at local interactions will be impossible.
Given the fact that the lack of knowledge of local interactions between elementary components could in itself already be a consequence of poorly understood complexity at an even lower level of organization, we might try to go to ever smaller orders of organization in order to remove complexity along the way.
Going to the lowest conceivable level, e.g. elementary particles, the only way strong emergence could actually exist would be if there is an impossibility to predict the outcome of single local interactions. If the Kopenhagen interpretation of QM is correct and our world is fundamentally non-deterministic, we're obviously unable to do that. Thus, strong emergence hinges on the existence of true randomness. Otherwise it is only a matter of theoretical computability (which renders a practical distinction between weak and strong emergence meaningless, as we'll never be able to claim 100% knowledge which would allow us to test for strong emergence)
Even though quantum effects vanish at larger scales of organization due to decoherence, which removes non-deterministic processes regarding properties and quantities at a higher level of organization, we're still forced to look at lower levels in order to understand even the complexity of the elementary components at the lowest level that does not exhibit quantum effects, i.e. appears to be deterministic.
*We go down, we remove complexity. We go up we remove true randomness / quantum effects.*
That being said... in a complete deterministic world, everything would be subject to computability and knowledge/understanding of nature. Just because we are not able to calculate or maybe even account for the intricacies of upward and downward causation and feedback loops, does not imply we're not missing some rules of the local interactions that could help explaining the intricate feedback loops.
Given the fact that human understanding and knowledge of reality is limited, there is no way to ever prove one or the other concept wrong. Weak vs. strong emergence is rather a philosophical issue than a practical one. (and describing it as upward causation vs. feedback loops is a bit off the target for my taste)
I, really enjoy your representation, of how the deterministic macro level paradigm affects the micro level agency of emergence in relation to the theoretical computation of the complex adaptive system's ability to absorb the non-deterministic paradigms of the co-operative agents' feedback loops.
This was a thought provoking comment. Thanks for sharing. I'm wondering though, if no particle in a dynamic system ever perfectly repeats a trajectory due to energy loss and Brownian motion and whatnot, which is a central premise in chaos theory, then complexity would be infinite and no cycle or result would ever truly be the same. Like how the Fibonacci sequence is an infinite pattern that never repeats. The numbers are specific to the part of sequence being considered but the relationship that defines the sequence is always the same.
But in chaos theory you get shapes (attractors) essentially acting as standing waves of probability (stability) for specific results at certain scales of time and space that are useful to us - like the climate pattern vs seasonal trends vs day to day weather. All scales are useful to know but require different scales of pattern recognition. And obviously the weather has a very measurable top-down effect on us, but as we know we also have a bottom up effect on it, albeit in a much less direct way from our individual perspectives.
The chaos in chaos theory is not random - it is fractal, so both camps are true and necessary because there really is no end to the relationships that can be measured, but interactions with patterns outside of our reference frame will appear random. In theory the patters go on forever and are infinitely varied while being completely deterministic. And yet they are capable of generating unique results through a mix of linear and non-linear associations (the way twins with exactly the same DNA will not be completely identical). Thus, our best chance at understanding the world would be to adopt an ideal ratio between awareness of loosely correlated "strong-emergent" causations and strongly correlated "weak emergent" causations while maintaining an ability to change the tilt of that ratio to fit the situation. So our ability to detect patterns is relative to our scale. But we also interact with all patterns in a way that transcends our ability to explicitly comprehend it all. Enter the proposed purpose of intuition
Seems like strong emergence is just weak emergence that we don't understand well enough yet...
These are so great. I can't thank you enough.
Very well explained. So elaborate this piece of work. Many thanks for sharing.
Very well description of a very complex topic. Thanks!
If strongly emergent features are not derivable even in principle from lower level domain, where do they come from?
They spring into being due to the presence of the lower level domain.
From (the addition of) higher level laws.
magic, basically
So am i right in saying its the equivalent of telling if a house is a house based on looking at just one brick. Weak emergence suggests no, you can only understand brick or house seperately. Strong suggests just looking at the brick will provide sufficient information about the house?
Wow, I learned a lot from this video. The concepts are important and explained in such a clear way. I'm so glad you guys went to the trouble to make it. I hope you're able to sustain this endeavor. I would love to learn more about your business plan. I didn't get much detail about that from your website's FAQ. I wonder if there is any organization that brings together people who put educational material online and synergizes to get funding and audience.
Thanks for the feedback. I am not sure of such an organization by you may find one if you look. We generate revenue from, selling courses on third party sites such as Udemy and also by selling premiums subscriptions on our site that give additional services, like books, course certificates, downloads etc. it is possible to build a business model like this but it takes time, lots of work and you may need investment
why should we consider entanglement as strong emergent? Interaction between constituents (or at least pair-wise interaction between two constituents) is part of the microscopic description. Pair-wise interaction will results to entanglement.
If you regard game of life as weak emergence because we can using the rule of a single cell and its interaction with its neightbours, to simulate emergent patterns, then you should also consider entanglement as weak emergence.
You can literally simulate dynamics of a quantum system that shows entanglement using microscopic laws on the pair-wise interaction. I guess you can try to argue entanglement is both weak and strong emergent though.
Why should we consider consciousness as strong emergent? We don't know what kind of emergence consciousness is. There might very well be a law of physics that quantify consciousness and explain how elementary contribution of consciousness can be accumulated to a macroscopic consciousness.
Incompleteness is not an accident but ubiquitous and that had been shown in multiple forms in the foundation of Mathematics and information complexity, hence strong emergence(a form of incompleteness) is also pervasive; Reductionism is intrinsically flawed.
Patterns of stuff emerge from stuff because stuff is stuff and does what stuff does. The rules don't change because of a higher level pattern.
I'm not a reductionist, I agree that something truly new emerges that can't be _described_ in terms of the constituent parts. That's true for a snow flake and that's true for conciousness. If you try to describe a snowflake as all it's molecules and chemical bonds, then that's what you'll have described in the end. To describe the snowflake you must use other words that only apply on that level. Because it's truly something new that obeys new rules.
But there is no downward causality. My mind does not cause "my molecules" to anything. My mind causes my fingers to something.
I agree and yet....
Walk 3 steps to the left. Congratulations. You haved now moved the molecules of your brain which is running the software of your mind. You can get around this by assuming no free will. You were going to walk anyway. You were always going to read this post, and i was always going to write it.
The snowflake exists on a different level of abstraction to the lower-level description of its parts. But the higher-level description supervenes on the lower-level description. There are new things that exist like snowflakes and new higher-level patterns that govern them than exist at the lower-level, but they all supervene on the lower-levels.
@@deplant5998Except free will is a higher-level description. If you are going to talk about “you” and not “atoms that we call ‘you’”, then it makes sense to use the language of agents making choices even if choices don’t exist in lower-level descriptions.
This is like word for word of an O’Connor lecture. Are u Tim in disguise
Can you give me an example of something in the physical world beside quantum entanglement that is a strong-emergent system? It appears to me that things such as organisms, societies and such, while *easier* to understand with holistic or higher level methods as in sociology or biology, is not impossible to comprehend by studying the basic components.
Water would be another example of a strongly emergent physical phenomenon. But sure you could look at almost anything from a reductionist perspective and you will find some way of interpreting it as simply the sum of its parts, but as you note the point is to recognize when it is best to use reductionism and when best to use a more holistic approach. The ideas of strong and weak emergents should largely just helps us to think about that.
Why is it taken that fluid mechanics is strongly emergent? I have always had it in my head as an example of weak emergence, I feel we just don't have a full understanding of the underlying dynamics.
I feel evolution by natural selection is an example of strongly emergent phenomenon in nature. It seems intuitively clear that evolution operates on a plane on its own above chemistry, for it does not depend on the specific physics or chemistry of the system upon which it is built.
All one needs is reproduction and natural selection will take place, thus it is not dependent on the physics or chemistry that underlie it.
Either, evolution (or any other strongly emergent phenomenon) can be derived from multiple sets of underlying laws, or in principle, truly cannot be deduced.
Complexity Labs how do u know water is strongly emergent? do u have any links? i thought anything other than consciousness are weakly emergent
I have a feeling that once we have a better understanding of quantum mechanics, the "emergent" properties of interaction between atoms and molecules (e.g the vicosity of water) won't appear as mysterious as they do now. I've heard a group of scientists managed to recreate a digital model of water reproducing viscosity, although it is apparently incomplete and doesn't account for everything. This would point to no emergence in water.
As for natural selection, it is by no mean an example of strong emergence as it can easily be reproduced in a simulation with very simplistic rules. The same goes for stigmergy.
I feel that strong emergence can't really exist and that we see emergence as a result of the anthropic principle + remnants of essentialism. It might just be an illusion.
Another example of strong emergence: A Natural Law for Rotating Galaxies: meaning a "strong emergent" property of a complex system of stars, a new independent property. Dark matter is superfluous.
physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2016/10/a-natural-law-for-rotating-galaxies.html?m=1
Strong emergence emerged from weak emergence :)
Really needed a O’Connor citation on that definition
thank you !!! very well explained!
imagine that our universe is a simulation whose purpose is to find hard emergences
Before the brain development in a fetus; does it have consciousness? Is the consciousness and life the same?
Consciouness is an emerging property of the brain and require it to be complex enough. As such, there is no consciousness in a fetus before it brain devellop to a level high enough to allow it. Life is also an emerging property of matter but arised long before the apparition of neurons, so you can have life without consciousness. THe interesting question would be if you can have consciousness without life but that's a different question (related to AI)
@@francois-xavierpellayphd6597 You have rightly put that.
It is a wonder! Matter exists, but to know that it exists, it transforms itself into an organism with consciousness and perceives itself as it is. At the micro level everything is connected and it interacts with each other in a strange manner, The same interaction gives rises to differences at macro levels, emerging to different forms and categories of living and non living matters including consciousness. To exist is itself is a wonder! to know that I exists.. It is beyond words..
Would love to see the AI transforming the system to a new and another dimension
The interaction between any two things creates an emergent relationship. That something cannot be so described ATM says nothing of the ultimate reality of it, and hard emergence is merely ignorance.
I have the impression too much emphasis is being placed on the distinction between strong and weak emergence?!?!?!
For a thorough analysis, we need to take into account the interactions with the environment, big deal? Stating that string theory is only one piece of the puzzle seems a moot point. Overall informative video.
It’s an important distinction because if strong emergence truly exists as it’s defined, it represents a very large hole in our understanding of reality. We might be very comfortable observing, describing, and analyzing strongly emergent systems, but have no idea how they can exist. For example, consciousness. Conceivable as a weakly emergent property of the chemistry happening in our brains, but we are not yet at a point scientifically where we understand it. Also conceivable as a strongly emergent system. But that means we don’t even have the tools to understand why consciousness exists. That knowledge isn’t anywhere on the horizon. It makes me uncomfortable to think that something a simple as water a pure and relatively un-complex chemical system cannot be simulated, even theoretically, by the physical properties of water molecules. Like, dafuq? That feels like an important distinction to me. I’m just a layman though for context
I thought given the initial conditions and laws of physics of the early universe, a simulator could predict the formation of galaxies, black holes, quasars, stars… all these have a qualitative aspect just like the wetness of water. What’s the big deal?
@@bencressman6110 «Simple as water», oh boy, the hell of a ride awaits you at the Hydrochemistry AP.
Though seriously, science is an incomplete bundle of explanations, remarkably so. It was very fruitful to address this incompleteness through going deeper into the causes and constituent parts but this doesn’t mean it will always be helpful. Methodology may change