From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Mon Oct 28 2002 - 21:17:51 GMT
Hi Jonathan:
Great to hear from you and know you survive in a very dangerous
environment that I'm afraid the U.S. is about to experience as a result of
our shared commitment to the value of liberty. In the MOQ, freedom is
the mother of all values, worth all risks to preserve. But I digress.
You wrote:
> Thanks for reviving an important topic. I think Patrick and Platt
> understand "emergent property" in a very non-scientific way, which
> rather kills the discussion.
>
> Let me try and explain it to them with the following dice throwing
> exercise:
>
> 1. Take a single die, throw it several dozen times and record the result
> each time. 2. Make a histogram of how many times each number came up.
>
> The histogram should be roughly flat (all columns about the same
> height), because the dice throw is "random".
>
> 3. Now repeat the exercise with two dice, on each throw recording only the
> total. 4. Make the histogram for all possible scores (2 to 12).
>
> If you did enough throws, you will see that the histogram has a very
> definite shape to it. You should find that 7 comes up the most, and 2 or 12
> the least. There is a very definite pattern that looks NON-random. (BTW, I
> saw this exercise done very nicely by a third grader as a science project).
> I would call the pattern that emerged in this example an EMERGENT
> pattern.
> What is interesting is that this is very mechanistic - it is easy to
> understand WHY the pattern emerges, yet each die behaves in a "random",
> "purposeless" way.
If I presented your little experiment to third graders I would ask, "Now
what's the difference between the histogram and a recipe your mother
follows when making a birthday cake?" I would point out that the way to
make a cake first "emerged" after a series of trials and errors over time
until a successful "pattern" appeared. Afterwards, even though the
ingredients of the cake behave in a random, purposeless way, not
knowing why they are being mixed together, and even though the
process is very mechanistic, the cake that "emerges" tastes wonderful.
But seriously, I don't see how your example explains the "emergence"
of goal-directed (purposeful) behavior in organisms, which was the
original challenge. Throwing dice is one thing. Figuring out why inert
material rose up and began to replicate is quite another.
And speaking of challenges, as a biologist have you an answer to the
following observation by Pirsig?
"So today we have as a result a theory of evolution in which "man" is
ruthlessly controlled by the cause-and-effect laws of the universe while
the particles of his body are not. The absurdity of this seems to be
neglected." (11)
Seems to me he has a point there.
Platt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 10:38:06 GMT