[HN Gopher] Epistemological problem of emergence in complex syst...
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Epistemological problem of emergence in complex systems (2018)
[pdf]
Author : wslh
Score : 37 points
Date : 2023-09-16 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| Animats wrote:
| Is this saying something profound, or is it just Derrida-inspired
| bullshit?
| [deleted]
| modzu wrote:
| What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
| mistermann wrote:
| What is it like to be a neurotypical, with a consciousness
| distorted by culture, with little to no awareness of the
| predicament.
|
| (Not aimed at you btw.)
| Exoristos wrote:
| It's great!
| jdougan wrote:
| I just read the abstract and some of the discussion. He is
| saying something interesting, however the language is pretty
| opaque if you aren't doing philosophy of science.
|
| As I understand the abstract (ruthlessly oversimplified):
|
| 1. Emergent behvior is interesting.
|
| 2. We don't really understand how to theoretically model
| emergent systems. Emergent properties are high level, the stuff
| we can measure is low level. Connecting them in a principled
| fashioned is hard.
|
| 3. We don't know if the limits are in the catgorization or
| aquisition of knowledge.
|
| 4. We are proposing a pragmatic bottom up approach which, like
| granger causality, bypasses some of the hard parts.
|
| 5. We test the approach on an artificially hard problem and got
| good results.
|
| 6. We think this has use elsewhere
|
| It helps if you understand he's working in theoretical biology
| where they see emergent systems at all levels and the inability
| to model these systems jn a principled fashion is a real drag.
| ed_westin wrote:
| Adding some links to his publications and field ranking:
|
| [] https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-
| contributions/Albert...
|
| [] https://www.adscientificindex.com/scientist/alberto-
| pascual-...
| smokel wrote:
| Even though you're being downvoted, I think your question has
| some merit.
|
| The paper is annoyingly opaque, and it would take me a few
| hours, at least, to validate whether it's interesting at all.
| This is typical of crackpot papers, so I'll simply reject it.
|
| Also, if it were genius, it would probably have received more
| than 6 citations after five years.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes.
|
| From the title, I was hoping for something on how to get more
| complex behavior to emerge from machine learning systems. Or
| at least a discussion of why self-improving systems seem to
| max out after a while. It's not about that. Not even close.
| corethree wrote:
| Just from the abstract I learned two concepts. Granger causality
| and Downward causation. Do scientists actually know these
| concepts like the back of their hand and are able to read that
| abstract in perfect clarity?
| vinceguidry wrote:
| If it's their field they can. If they're in a related field
| then there's still a good chance they have enough familiarity.
| gmfawcett wrote:
| I assume you mean most or all scientists. Why should they?
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| I hadn't heard the latter philosophical term but there are
| related concepts I'm familiar with. I'm more technically driven
| than many of the other neuroscientists I work with so I'd
| imagine they don't all know Granger causality. They actually
| might be more likely to know Downard causation given some of
| the philosophical drive behind their current work.
| layer8 wrote:
| Downward causation is certainly part of the core terminology
| when discussing the philosophy of emergence, like strong vs.
| weak emergence. At least some scientists are also familiar with
| it:
| https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/08/01/downwar...
| jprete wrote:
| I had to look up both terms. Granger causality seems like an
| intuitive concept and I am thinking the unique contribution of
| Granger is making it computationally rigorous. Wikipedia, at
| least, doesn't give a rigorous definition of downward causation
| - nothing sufficient to distinguish it from lots of other
| similar concepts.
|
| And...that abstract is very, very difficult to read. My most
| charitable explanation is that the author is carefully using
| terms with very precise meanings in scientific philosophy, but
| I have my doubts.
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