Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!bruce!frank
From: frank@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (Frank Breen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Emergent properties (was: What AI is exactly)
Message-ID: <3145@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU>
Date: 30 Sep 90 13:53:53 GMT
References: <15132@venera.isi.edu> <18070001@hp-ses.SDE.HP.COM> <ZCN%#J*@rpi.edu>
Organization: Monash Uni. Computer Science, Australia
Lines: 23

In <ZCN%#J*@rpi.edu> kyriazis@iear.arts.rpi.edu (George Kyriazis) writes:
>...  Neurons definetely cannot comprehend human
>behaviour, so a human (being part of a society) cannot comprehend
>the behaviour of the society.  So, even if the organized behaviour of 
>the human society exists, I think we won't be able to realize its
>existance!

I thought that for e.g. some aspects of crowd behavior were fairly
predictable even though individual behaviours within a crowd were
not.  Surely this kind of thing would also apply to societies.

Also I find that I can comprehend and to a reasonable extent predict
the behaviour of more than one(!) of my friends even though together
they are more complex than I.  Of course I can't comprehend everything
about them but I have a lot of useful information.  This also would
apply to human society - You don't need to know (and I can't imagine
how you could, or would even want to) EVERYTHING about a society.

Another analogy is that no-one (as far as I know) understands all
established science and I don't think it is possible to do so, but
science still manages ok.

Frank Breen