Responses
eric: wow (8/5/04)
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Emergent behavior is a behavior that is observed when a bunch of something are working together, but which cannot be observed in the individual entities. For example, some birds fly in a V formation when migrating; this is not because the individual birds fly in a V, but because of how the birds interact with each other. Some species of termites build large towers; bees build honeycombs; cities have traffic jams. None of these behaviours are evident when you view a single entity by itself; yet in large communities these things happen almost automatically.
Emergent behavior is yet another example of why we cannot view our identities as individual entities; our identities are heavily impacted by our communities. When two people are in relationship, they act different than they would have acted individually; when many are connected, they form a culture that regulates the group and which actually creates new behavior; when cultures intersect, they impact and alter each other. So each of us is an entity that cannot be separated from our environment. Yes, we bring something unique to the environment and thus impact the environment. But the environment likewise brings something unique to us which changes us.
Emergent behavior is different than design in that, in emergent behavior, the individual components are not so rigidly organized and arranged. In emergent behavior, you take a fairly random assortment of entities, put them all together in a fairly random way, and then you observe some complex, seemingly non-random group behavior. Yet emergent behavior is like design in that it is possible (though hard) to intentionally build pieces such that they will work together in the way that you desire. The trick is to find the correct rules of individual behavior such that the group does what you want. You want something complex to happen out of simple rules...
I am fascinated by emergent behavior, and I assume that that must be part of my Createdness; it is a reflection of the nature of God. So God must be fascinated by emergent behavior, as well. But why? Is it just because he likes it, or is there some fundamental reason why emergent behavior must be part of his Creation?
Why does emergent behavior happen? What brings it on? Why don't you see the same behavior at all scales?
I think that emergent behavior comes about because of the problem of scale; most behaviors don't scale well beyond a certain point. Scaling is when you take something that works in something small and try to make it work the same way when it's large.
You can see scaling problems in the different bone structures of different animals. Elephants have huge leg bones, which take up almost all of the volume of their legs. Yet we humans have (comparatively) small leg bones. As you get to smaller and smaller animals, the relative sizes of the bones get smaller and smaller, until they disappear altogether. Ants don't need bones, yet they are massively strong and resilient for their size. Why can't you just build a massive elephant that is an exact scale copy of an ant?
An elephant-sized ant would simply crush himself under his own weight, because his body structure doesn't scale. When you double the size of an ant, his total weight goes up by a factor of 8, yet the cross section size of his legs only goes up by 4. So each leg bears twice as much weight per square inch. That's why elephant bones are so large; they bear a huge amount of weight as compared to some other, smaller animal of larger shape.
You see stuff like this all over. When a city doubles in size, the traffic gets four times as heavy as before. Why? Because traffic doesn't scale. When you put two computers together to work on a complex math problem, they can't quite double their speed, because computers don't scale.
But bad things also don't scale. That's why carpools work. Two people in a car consume less gasoline than those two people traveling alone. A bus, even though it's huge, consume less total gasoline than if its riders had all driven cars. A huge powerplant, though it may belch black smoke, can afford complex pollution controls, so it probably produces less pollution than would ten powerplants that were one-tenth its size. A farmer with an expensive tractor can produce more wheat than many small farmers using smaller, cheaper tractors.
Emergent behavior is the necessary response to the fact that individual behavior doesn't scale. If we try to build systems where the large group acts the same was as would a single individual, we will inherently fail. Moreover, we must realize that the very existence of the large group creates new behavior which did not exist before; thus in a group emergent behavior inherently creates new problems and new possibilities which cannot be seen on the individual level. The trick, then, is to create entities such that, as they encounter the problems of scaling, scaling also provides them with the very solutions they need for these problems.
So you see, God created a universe where no behavior scales perfectly. Emergent behavior is the natural requirement of such a creation. Emergent behavior makes it possible for atoms to form moecules, molecules to form cells, cells to form people, people to form communities, and for communities to come to understand and interact with each other.
Emergent behavior is also why we must be careful to remember that we cannot define any system of thought or knowledge which is said to "accurately" model God. Anthropomorphism (viewing God as much like a human) is the attempt to scale human experience to the infinite, and it inherently cannot work. God experiences problems and troubles that we cannot comprehend, just as the elephant has problems that an ant cannot understand. But likewise, just as the elephant can tear down a tree with his strength (something millions of ants could not do), God has capabilities and solutions to his problems that we cannot fathom.
I think that God delights in emergent behavior. I think that he delights in seeing what we small individuals come up with when we are put together. I think that he is tweaking each one of us, and tweaking the relationships we are in, and tweaking the rules of our world, to see what comes out of the mix. | 
