Emergence 149
Emergence: the Connected lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software | |
author | Steven Johnson |
pages | 288 |
publisher | Touchstone Press |
rating | 8 |
reviewer | Tangurena |
ISBN | 068486876X |
summary | A look at how new behavior can arise from assembling smaller units. |
The author makes a point that there are 3 main camps of scientific study.
- The study of simple systems - under a few dozen variables, like electromagnetism, or celestial mechanics.
- The study of stochastic systems - few million to few billion variables, like actuarial sciences and genetics.
- The study of disorganized complexity. Systems in the middle between a dozen and a few million variables, where the second order characteristics - how they interact, is of primary concern.
Deduction and induction work for the first two camps, but for the third, the interactions cause actions and reactions which are what scientists politely call counter intuitive, meaning your first thought is Huh? Or, in other words, it behaves quite differently from what your instincts and (so-called) common sense would tell you.
There are five basic principles for developing a system (or simulation of one) which can express emergent behavior:
- More is different. You get a very different behavior of the system when certain thresholds are reached.
- Ignorance is useful. Ants communicate with a vocabulary of around 20 words/ideas.
- Encourage random encounters. Much of the behavior of an ant colony comes from them just bumping into each other (or external things like food, or my foot).
- Look for patterns in the signs. Even with the limited vocabulary of ants, they can also express things based on the decay in the pheromones they deposit.
- Pay attention to your neighbors. Also described as "local information can lead to global wisdom."
One of the enduring myths we have, is that of the Ant Queen. The myth supposes that there is some central planning done in an ant colony. Instead, the queen exists only to pop eggs out. Male ants have such short lives, that in most species of ants, they have no mouths to eat with; they just don't live long enough to get hungry. The production of warriors and workers is stimulated by pheromones in the colony. Information on where to gather food is gathered through random acts of bumping into things. There is no ant which tells another to go lift that bale or tote that barge. It appears that our intelligence is a by-product of the neural interactions of our brains.
The economist Jane Jacobs had been studying things like this for years, and has been demonized by the majority of economists: they want to believe in some centralized controlling force, control that force, and you control the development of your economic system. People reading her books tend to think she worships sidewalks, instead, she values the communication that can only happen on sidewalks; people meeting each other and exchanging words. You can't say "hi" to your neighbors if you are each zipping past each other on the freeway.
One can experiment with emergent behavior with some software tools. The author explains a few, of which you are most likely to have experience with SimCity.
The main difference between chaos theory and emergent behavior theory lies in a couple important differences. A chaotic system has a number of determinable feedback loops, all of which are (usually critically) dependent upon the starting conditions. Emergent behavior has more to do with feedback loops causing totally different behavior, and when some threshold (usually population) is passed, the nature of the system drastically changes.
If you are looking for sample code to simulate things, you won't find it in this book. If, however, you want to get an overview of where this field is coming from, read this book.
You can purchase Emergence: the Connected lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Please (Score:0, Funny)
Slashdot example (Score:3, Funny)
Higher order behavior (Score:4, Funny)
Well, not quite sure if it can explain as high order behavior as Wolfram yet...
Definition (Score:1, Funny)
Slashdot Hive Mind: Emergence! (Score:4, Funny)
I knew our collective hive mind would come in handy someday:
1. "I, for one, welcome our emergent overlords."
2. "???"
3. "Profit!"
4. "In Soviet Russia, our groupthink comes from emergent behvaior, or is it the other way around?"
5. "Who cares? Look, it's Natalie Portman!"
6. "Does Netcraft confirm it?"
7. "Yeah, but only in Korea."
8. "Netcraft does not confirm it. Old people are not quite dead yet."
9. "OK, that's the Monty Python reference out of the way. Has someone bashed China yet?"
10. "No, and we also haven't bashed Micro$oft yet, at least not until this line.
Crap. I'm only at #10 and the well's running dry. (What, you want me to yell "MEEPT!" or something?)
If you're a glass-half-empty type: we won't be as useful in the underground sugar mines as I'd previously thought. We're only capable of half as many thoughts.
If you're a glass-half-full type: or maybe we've achieved antlike emergent behavior using only ten words and ideas, making us twice as efficient as our formic emergent-behavior-exhibiting overlords!
Re:/. in the book (Score:2, Funny)
Ooohhh yes I do matey, I played Baldurs Gate all the way through I'll have you know.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Psychohistory (fictional) emerging? (Score:2, Funny)