Emergence

After experimenting with metacat in class and later over the weekend i just have to say metacat’s ability to “analyze” and justify its solutions to problems its just really really cool. When experimenting with metacat later i tried to “trick” it to make a conclusion that there was no solution. I entered in a->b and then asked metacat to determine what z would go to. My goal was to see if metacat was able to see that there is no other letter to send z to and thus no solution. While this seems like one of those problems that Doug’s kid would laugh at, for a program to understand why there is no solution is quite remarkable.

Additionally, i am still contemplating the two schools of thought about how ai should function. I do see how metacat’s self awareness and ability to recall is like how i would look at a problem but i still am struggling to see how the other program can produce valid results with out using these qualities.

On a side note i absolutely love that the program has a personality and when justifying its answers it has hilarious responses!

I enjoyed reading this book because I’ve only ever thought of emergence in terms of a mind emerging from neuronal connections in the brain. I have never considered cities to be emergent because I never saw anything crazy coming out of them. I couldn’t think of a complex system arising from a city. There didn’t seem to be anything smarter than the city components. The Manchester example was really interesting because it showed that a city could become very organized without someone planning it. Manchester’s useful organization just happened over time. What still sort of confuses me is that this great organized city didn’t just happen on its own; people were there to build it and interact with each other, which is what made the city was it is today, so how can one call a city emergent if, overall, people were responsible for its layout?
Being fascinated with the brain, I was disappointed that the book did not discuss the brain that much. I thought the mind was the ultimate example, but Johnson focused more on ants, cities, and computers. I guess maybe those topics are more accessible to the common person, and brain jargon might have lost a lot of interest. He did hint at free will near the end of the book, but it was more about free will in The Sims, which admittedly was interesting because I love The Sims; however, I was hoping for more insight into human free will, though I suppose you would need a book in itself to cover that topic.

From approximately the first half of Johnson’s Emergence, the subject matter in intellectually quite sitmulating .  The begining of the book gives the reader an introduction into the idea of what emergence is. Which I found particularly interesting because in class the idea of emergence seemed vauge to me.  Johnson’s discussion on how differenct fields were connected to emergence and the discussion from class allows me to contemplate whether all of life can be governed by the principles of emergence. This idea seems to reveribrate with the existence of a grand unification theory in physics. The idea that the complexity of life could be governed by a set simple rules that can create intelligence,  forces me to contemplate how the laws of string theory could be rippling through my brain like the squares in Conway’s game of life do.  Furthermore, I seem to find more and more examples of emergent behavior in life.

Johnson’s discussion of recognition also intrigued me because i came to comtemplate if recognition was different, comprable, or incomprable from species to species and inanitimate objects to antimate objects. The ants that Deborah Gordon study sense a change and then react similarly to the immune system within the human body. Furthermore, the way humans react to external stimuli can mimick ants and the immune system.  This idea brings about the Johnson’s discussion of what conciousness really is. Despite, johson’s discussion on conciousness i am still left with a vauge idea about if an object has or can posess conciousness.

I wonder if conciousness can emerge from simple rules can iniantimate object gain conciousness through a small change in set up like DNA?

Hey ladies and gents!

I guess the discussion we had in class regarding the reading should be continued here in the blog. I am not certain exactly where I wish to go with this discussion, save that it is about the emergent properties of a book versus a blog.

In finishing the book (Part Three… I know it’s not required, but it asks pertinent questions) Johnson mentions that although writing about Emergence, there is no actual emergent behavior evident in his book. (I guess there’s “semi-evident” behavior where we “mind read” an implicit conversation into the book with the author, but I wouldn’t bet too much on the implicit.)

Basically, in class it is possible to discuss Emergence and perhaps even evolve emergent behavior to be able to talk about the subject, but a book is a one-way street. This is like saying, “so what” at the end of a thesis statement; yeah we talked a good game, but can any of us really say what emergence really is? Also, by the end of the book, have we actually pinpointed anything?We kind of decided on no. However, with this blog, will we be able to “emerge” and answer, or because it is in an implicit “book-type” format will we be making statements into the ether?

Is a recap of class in order? In pursuing the discussion of Emergence, we stumbled upon the idea of “learning” as being a property of inanimate objects such as cities. This led to a further distinction: the internet versus the computer. Whereas a computer can be programmed to produce emergent behavior, it is an impossibility at present to do so with the internet. We rehashed the folly of believing the internet could produce emergent behavior through learning as it was a repository and not “self-using”. (Similar to the idea of a feral library, the internet can’t spontaneously develop self-changing learning patterns. A library holds the books, and the books do not incite revolution on the part of the library). This idea of the Internet not being like a brain. On Page 118 of Johnson’s book, he quotes Steven Pinker to express how the Internet would fail at being a brain, “The Internet is in some ways like a brain, but in important ways it is not. The brain doesn’t just let information ricochet around the skull… But the Internet, not being a cohesive replicating system, has no such organization” [italics added] (118, Johnson; 2001). In looking over this difference between “learning” through self-change and feedback (as mentioned by Johnson in Emergence) and being a repository of knowledge, could we come to the conclusion that there is a lack of feedback in a blog form?

I think it is inarguable that there is no feedback in book form. As informative as a book may be, there is no dialogue which could lead to learning and changed behavior through feedback. Therefore, I ask whether a blog is closer to a book, or closer to the conversation we have in the classroom. I am under the impression that there is a general consensus that interaction in the classroom is emergent behavior (similar to the sidewalk theory posited by Johnson).

Granted, unlike in class where I can rudely interrupt my fellow classmates (who surprisingly don’t tell me to shut up, they’re so nice ^_^), I can monologue on for HOURS in this post. (Really, don’t test me, because I am totally willing to blog until I fall asleep at the keyboard.) If this is possible, does it negate the whole feeling that we’re communicating through posting and then “comment” as a reply (exhibiting “feedback” behavior which seemed to be important to the “learning” of emergence)? Will the blog exhibit emergent behavior through the changing conversations, or is it a bunch of monologues formed into some semblance of an agreeable argument similar to that of a book?

Will I ever stop posting questions? (Will I ever get around to ANSWERING my own questions?) Also, I think I might have stopped making sense a few paragraphs back, as I am a little wonky from lack of sleep.