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From: kyriazis@iear.arts.rpi.edu (George Kyriazis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Emergent properties (was: What AI is exactly)
Message-ID: <{1N%'6+@rpi.edu>
Date: 29 Sep 90 21:27:37 GMT
References: <18070001@hp-ses.SDE.HP.COM> <ZCN%#J*@rpi.edu> <8312@milton.u.washington.edu>
Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY
Lines: 22

In article <8312@milton.u.washington.edu> forbis@milton.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:
>I'm not sure your analogy follows.  It is possible to write a program
>which when run writes its source.  There are many compression schemes.
>If comprehension of society's behavior can be sufficinetly compressed
>one person might be able to hold it in its entirity.
>
The behaviour of the society is directly related with the experiences
of each person.  Clearly, one person cannot handle all the experiences
of every member of the society. Ok, granted, most of them are useless.
I think though that compation that emerges out of the society if none of
its members has any idea about the computation itself is purely emergent
(remember a previous article stating that the whole is 
bigger than the sum of the parts, and
also that emergent computation exists when we cannot explain it from the
parts of the complex system).  If one person can handle the intellect
of the whole society, then emergent computation does not exist; we know
where it comes from, from that society unit.


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  George Kyriazis                 kyriazis@rdrc.rpi.edu
 				  kyriazis@iear.arts.rpi.edu