“”″The failures of phlogiston and vitalism are historical hindsight. Dare I step out on a limb, and name some current theory which I deem analogously flawed?
I name emergence or emergent phenomena—usually defined as the study of systems whose high-level behaviors arise or “emerge” from the interaction of many low-level elements. (Wikipedia: “The way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.”)
Taken literally, that description fits every phenomenon in our universe above the level of individual quarks, which is part of the problem. Imagine pointing to a market crash and saying “It’s not a quark!” Does that feel like an explanation? No? Then neither should saying “It’s an emergent phenomenon!”
It’s the noun “emergence” that I protest, rather than the verb “emerges from.” There’s nothing wrong with saying “X emerges from Y,” where Y is some specific, detailed model with internal moving parts. “Arises from” is another legitimate phrase that means exactly the same thing. Gravity arises from the curvature of spacetime, according to the specific mathematical model of General Relativity. Chemistry arises from interactions between atoms, according to the specific model of quantum electrodynamics.”″”
I feel as though when I first read this piece by Eliezer, I only partially understood what he was gesturing towards. I’ve recently had an insight about my musical improvisations on the keyboard that I think has helped elucidate, for me, a similar kind of idea.
When I was learning music, I was taught that, like the major and minor scales, and the locrian mode, etc., there is something called the jazz (or blues) scale that you can play over a 3-chord sequence (the twelve-bar blues) and it sounds good.
Fair enough. Then I was also taught that it’s boring to just play those notes; you can throw in a D in the C blues scale, played over the twelve-bar blues in C, to liven things up—etc. Fine.
But as I’ve developed as a musician, and listened to lots of music that isn’t strictly twelve-bar blues, if at all, I’ve noticed that I really dislike the blues scale. It’s like this bad idea that’s lingering, for whatever reason, in the back of people’s minds when they hit certain chord sequences—say, G to F over C in any given song—and they’ll, y’know, _modally_ play something like the blues scale over those chords when they ought to be doing something else entirely.
This makes it less a design pattern than what I would call an _anti-pattern_. Avoid the jazz scale: do not play in that fashion if you are attempting anything other than a cliche children’s rendition of simplistic wailing harmonica blues.
This is also how I (and possibly Eliezer) feel about “emergence” as a concept. It’s not a good concept, nor a skunked concept that isn’t to be used, but a positively bad one that should be DISINTEGRATED by rationality. The reason for this is that too many people are disguising their lack of systematic, informed knowledge of physical phenomena by claiming emergence when they can’t think of anything else to say.
To return to the musical analogy, a bit like how Led Zeppelin already invented all the best bluesy riffs, and Rage Against The Machine already covered all of the hip-hop metal beats—allegedly—every time someone in our particular culture refers to emergence as an explanation for anything in particular, I would view them as an unfortunate music student who is stuck playing bad blues music that doesn’t move their audience the way it should.
This is not to say that in a different culture, as in the Baroque era where no-one had encountered blues music before, “emergence” would be such an anti-pattern, so worthy of stigma.
I prefer other words for it, but there is a legitimate world-modeling concept in there. “Chaotic” (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory ) or “one partial equilibrium in a dynamic non-linear system” are a bit more precise, but not as easy to use in some contexts/audiences. “very hard for human-accessible logic to calculate” is fine too.
I have no opinion about whether “blues scale” is a useful concept or not, nor whether it’s similar to emergent outcomes of complex systems.
“”″The failures of phlogiston and vitalism are historical hindsight. Dare I step out on a limb, and name some current theory which I deem analogously flawed?
I name emergence or emergent phenomena—usually defined as the study of systems whose high-level behaviors arise or “emerge” from the interaction of many low-level elements. (Wikipedia: “The way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions.”)
Taken literally, that description fits every phenomenon in our universe above the level of individual quarks, which is part of the problem. Imagine pointing to a market crash and saying “It’s not a quark!” Does that feel like an explanation? No? Then neither should saying “It’s an emergent phenomenon!”
It’s the noun “emergence” that I protest, rather than the verb “emerges from.” There’s nothing wrong with saying “X emerges from Y,” where Y is some specific, detailed model with internal moving parts. “Arises from” is another legitimate phrase that means exactly the same thing. Gravity arises from the curvature of spacetime, according to the specific mathematical model of General Relativity. Chemistry arises from interactions between atoms, according to the specific model of quantum electrodynamics.”″”
I feel as though when I first read this piece by Eliezer, I only partially understood what he was gesturing towards. I’ve recently had an insight about my musical improvisations on the keyboard that I think has helped elucidate, for me, a similar kind of idea.
When I was learning music, I was taught that, like the major and minor scales, and the locrian mode, etc., there is something called the jazz (or blues) scale that you can play over a 3-chord sequence (the twelve-bar blues) and it sounds good.
Fair enough. Then I was also taught that it’s boring to just play those notes; you can throw in a D in the C blues scale, played over the twelve-bar blues in C, to liven things up—etc. Fine.
But as I’ve developed as a musician, and listened to lots of music that isn’t strictly twelve-bar blues, if at all, I’ve noticed that I really dislike the blues scale. It’s like this bad idea that’s lingering, for whatever reason, in the back of people’s minds when they hit certain chord sequences—say, G to F over C in any given song—and they’ll, y’know, _modally_ play something like the blues scale over those chords when they ought to be doing something else entirely.
This makes it less a design pattern than what I would call an _anti-pattern_. Avoid the jazz scale: do not play in that fashion if you are attempting anything other than a cliche children’s rendition of simplistic wailing harmonica blues.
This is also how I (and possibly Eliezer) feel about “emergence” as a concept. It’s not a good concept, nor a skunked concept that isn’t to be used, but a positively bad one that should be DISINTEGRATED by rationality. The reason for this is that too many people are disguising their lack of systematic, informed knowledge of physical phenomena by claiming emergence when they can’t think of anything else to say.
To return to the musical analogy, a bit like how Led Zeppelin already invented all the best bluesy riffs, and Rage Against The Machine already covered all of the hip-hop metal beats—allegedly—every time someone in our particular culture refers to emergence as an explanation for anything in particular, I would view them as an unfortunate music student who is stuck playing bad blues music that doesn’t move their audience the way it should.
This is not to say that in a different culture, as in the Baroque era where no-one had encountered blues music before, “emergence” would be such an anti-pattern, so worthy of stigma.
I prefer other words for it, but there is a legitimate world-modeling concept in there. “Chaotic” (per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory ) or “one partial equilibrium in a dynamic non-linear system” are a bit more precise, but not as easy to use in some contexts/audiences. “very hard for human-accessible logic to calculate” is fine too.
I have no opinion about whether “blues scale” is a useful concept or not, nor whether it’s similar to emergent outcomes of complex systems.