Stephan Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science” is a nearly 1200 page tome that explores the emergent properties of fractals and other patterns in a way I can only describe as “patient and thorough.”
I was entranced by the concept of emergence, and started unscientifically applying those ideas to all kinds of (completely unrelated) phenomena, such as social behaviors and politics.
Then I read the ever controversial Stephen Meyer’s “Return of the God Hypothesis.” He does a deep dive into emergence theories and concludes that, as interesting as the patterns are, and as similar as the seem to be to natural organic phenomena, at the end we must consider what (or who) provides the specific initial conditions that result in those phenomena.
I do not have the expertise, language, or patience to do this fascinating subject justice. Although I’m very glad some people do and I love to read about it.
All I can say is that for me, the pendulum has swung away from emergence as the source of order in a chaotic universe.
Now, instead, when I look at the elegance of a butterfly and consider the wild improbability that something so complex happened by chance alone, I am comforted by the thought that what I am observing is a type of divine art… An art that surrounds us and permeates us.
I realized after I posted this that I have James Glieck's "Chaos" on my bookshelf and owe it a read to solidify the concepts (maybe this will result in a follow-up post). My main goal is to understand the implications for human systems, which are constantly being tinkered with (not just running from initial conditions), and which may not see enough iterations in the history of the species to hit the threshold needed to understand the larger order (civilizational rise and fall, for example).
Emergence is all around us, but I think we would agree that it just shifts some of our appreciation from the final phenomenon to the elegance of the compact set of rules that produce it - "cosmic poetry" may be the best way to describe it.
When I start one of my Choose Your Own Adventure stories, the first chapter is always labeled "Initial Problem Set." As the author I am setting the initial conditions for the social phenomenon I want to examine. In my latest book, "Can You Survive the 2024 Election?" the Framing step resulted in the protagonist, Juan Torres, being a man of Mexican heritage who just received his US citizenship (a key demographic), and he lives in Phoenix AZ (a swing state).
Each of my chapters begins with a separate pediction from the Metaculus forecasting platform.
My problem is that I do not have anything that really ties this cluster of Forecasts together. For instance, one question asks who will be the 2024 Democratic nominee for President. While another asks what percentage of the US population will consider the election to be fraudulent... these are two separate and distinct questions that do not really have any impact on each other.
What does seem to tie these disparate questions together is the "narrative." I'm thinking that if (for instance) a Democratic narrative and a Republican narrative could be crafted, they might be expressed in the form of a causal-loop diagram. What do you think about that? The arguments linked, even if the events are not?
Does any of that align with the things you are interested in?
My personal curse is to be interested in almost everything. I think you're saying that different parties have different ideas (maybe assumption, maybe wish) on how these issues will resolve. I'd be interested on exploring the joint probabilities to think about which parts of the combinatorial space are worth considering, rather than assume any one group has a monopoly on useful narratives. I definitely feel like I'm not getting all the nuance you're conveying, but I'd like to discuss further.
Stephan Wolfram’s “A New Kind of Science” is a nearly 1200 page tome that explores the emergent properties of fractals and other patterns in a way I can only describe as “patient and thorough.”
I was entranced by the concept of emergence, and started unscientifically applying those ideas to all kinds of (completely unrelated) phenomena, such as social behaviors and politics.
Then I read the ever controversial Stephen Meyer’s “Return of the God Hypothesis.” He does a deep dive into emergence theories and concludes that, as interesting as the patterns are, and as similar as the seem to be to natural organic phenomena, at the end we must consider what (or who) provides the specific initial conditions that result in those phenomena.
I do not have the expertise, language, or patience to do this fascinating subject justice. Although I’m very glad some people do and I love to read about it.
All I can say is that for me, the pendulum has swung away from emergence as the source of order in a chaotic universe.
Now, instead, when I look at the elegance of a butterfly and consider the wild improbability that something so complex happened by chance alone, I am comforted by the thought that what I am observing is a type of divine art… An art that surrounds us and permeates us.
I realized after I posted this that I have James Glieck's "Chaos" on my bookshelf and owe it a read to solidify the concepts (maybe this will result in a follow-up post). My main goal is to understand the implications for human systems, which are constantly being tinkered with (not just running from initial conditions), and which may not see enough iterations in the history of the species to hit the threshold needed to understand the larger order (civilizational rise and fall, for example).
Emergence is all around us, but I think we would agree that it just shifts some of our appreciation from the final phenomenon to the elegance of the compact set of rules that produce it - "cosmic poetry" may be the best way to describe it.
When I start one of my Choose Your Own Adventure stories, the first chapter is always labeled "Initial Problem Set." As the author I am setting the initial conditions for the social phenomenon I want to examine. In my latest book, "Can You Survive the 2024 Election?" the Framing step resulted in the protagonist, Juan Torres, being a man of Mexican heritage who just received his US citizenship (a key demographic), and he lives in Phoenix AZ (a swing state).
Each of my chapters begins with a separate pediction from the Metaculus forecasting platform.
My problem is that I do not have anything that really ties this cluster of Forecasts together. For instance, one question asks who will be the 2024 Democratic nominee for President. While another asks what percentage of the US population will consider the election to be fraudulent... these are two separate and distinct questions that do not really have any impact on each other.
What does seem to tie these disparate questions together is the "narrative." I'm thinking that if (for instance) a Democratic narrative and a Republican narrative could be crafted, they might be expressed in the form of a causal-loop diagram. What do you think about that? The arguments linked, even if the events are not?
Does any of that align with the things you are interested in?
My personal curse is to be interested in almost everything. I think you're saying that different parties have different ideas (maybe assumption, maybe wish) on how these issues will resolve. I'd be interested on exploring the joint probabilities to think about which parts of the combinatorial space are worth considering, rather than assume any one group has a monopoly on useful narratives. I definitely feel like I'm not getting all the nuance you're conveying, but I'd like to discuss further.