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From: david@hp-ses.SDE.HP.COM (David McFadzean)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Re: Emergent properties (was: What AI is exactly)
Message-ID: <18070001@hp-ses.SDE.HP.COM>
Date: 27 Sep 90 16:18:42 GMT
References: <15132@venera.isi.edu>
Organization: HP SW Engineering Systems - Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 29

I would like to add another, simpler example of an emergent property
that I'm sure most of us would find familiar. (This is originally due to
Hofstadter from _Metamagical Themas_ which, incidentally, I would
recommend highly to all comp.ai.philosophers.)

Say you are on some kind of time-sharing system or LAN and you notice
that whenever the number of users gets to be 12 or above, the disks
start thrashing badly. Would you go to your local sysadmin and ask her
to change the max-user-count parameter from 12 to 20? Not very likely
because it's obvious that the number 12 (as a max-user-count) is not
contained in any memory location in the system where it can be accessed
and modified; it's an emergent property of the dynamics of the system.

As for the human brain being the most complex organized system known to
exist, I would say that the system of all human brains that we call
human society is more complex (though calling it organized might be
stretching it. :) If this is true, could individuals be considered
analogous to neurons with respect to nations? Can countries be
considered sentient at some higher level?

--
David McFadzean
HP Calgary Product Development Centre

david@hpcpdca.calgary.hp.com or david@hp-ses.sde.hp.com

p.s. Can anyone tell me where I can find some more information on the
Darwin automata being investigated by Gerald Edelman's group at the
Neurosciences Institute? aTdHvAaNnKcSe.