Who do you think built the great pyramid? Do you think it was a lost, technologically advanced civilization? Or do you think the ancient egyptians, with their stones and hemp rope built it ? 🙂🙂
@@phillynott2459 people have been just as mentally capable as us for tens of thousands of years, but for some reason people seem to consider humans from the past inferior. They had less knowledge to work with, but they could still figure stuff out, like-how to stack heavy stones? Yeah, I think they probably figured that out
@@phillynott2459 Every generation gives it's best, if their technology was really advance as of today, it was good for them and if it was not and still they built those pyramids it's bad indication for current and future generations.
Many years ago, a prominent Physicist said to other: “You can not explain with atomic physics the formation of Ice.” And the deep answer was in the seminal paper: “More is Different” and this very day Solid State Physics born, thanks to Phillip Anderson, also a Noble Laureate.
Great episode. Even if, ultimately, we may understand everything using a reductionist approach, we are far from it. So, in practice, we are all "emergentists" at present. That's why we have many different sciences
I agree. If I want to understand why my local drama club is failing, and what to do about it, an understanding of biochemistry is not going to answer my question in any meaningful way.
so glad he used water as an example early on in the video. it is such a unique and marvelous substance which we take for granted. if it was not so abundant on earth we would keep it in museums because of its incredible properties.
Mr Kuhn's personal odyssey to get *"closer to truth"* has often appeared to be so ill-defined and circular as to be futile. So it is with great humility that I now both congratulate and thank him for his endeavours, as disparate pieces of "truth" have begun to fall quite spectacularly, into place. Thank you Mr Robert Lawrence Kuhn.
It’s a certain number of fields interacting, each field with its own limits and laws, and at the point where all fields intersect you get a specific phenomenon, together they act like a blueprint ‘looking’ for the right environment to manifest what this specific combination of fields happens to do. It’s top down, and once manifestation has happened the combination of fields attract other fields to build further complexity in combination with the environment where manifestation has occurred.
I’m high af and also quite dumb but you explained that so well I understood it on the first read. That’s impressive. And it’s also a very illuminating theory. I’ll have to screenshot this comment on my phone so I can explain this to other people lol
This video is over 20 years old. This is an old PBS TV show. It's only the sky called "Closer To Truth Chats", which is some on one video chat between Kuhn and a remote guest, that are made recently and explicitly for TH-cam. "Closer To Truth" episodes are from an old TV show.
@@Spodlude I used to love playing with Legos and sometimes I still fantasize about getting them out and sitting in the floor and playing with them. It's okay. It can still be cool.
Muscle cells are classical. The simple expansion and contraction of single cells when synchronously combined into one bicep and tricep can move our arm. Now what can happen when neurons fire? Do they form some synchronous process? Do these slowed down process make a slower reality emerge? I say yes (in Robert's voice?) Why? Why because there are waves and pulses emerging from our brains. This tells me something synchronous is happening.
You have to get to the irreducible levels to build back up to understand where and when emergence is a factor. So, I understand the trend to start recognizing emergence and its importance in different systems. It may expose the reality that some things like time are not fundamental, but emergent property of entropy and so forth. Perhaps the same applies to gravity?
No matter how well you understand hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, you could never predict they would eventually combine to produce humans. Emergent properties will always be subject to chaos theory.
For phase transitions of water (solid/liquid/gas); temperature, pressure and volume play a role in the phase transitions. So for emergence in general, there may be ingredients that mix with the physical reality. May help to better understand the nature and existence of such ingredients. Are temperature, pressure and volume incidental or causal in phase transitions from solid to liquid to gas?
@@pkul9583 temperature is a bulk/continuous description of discrete molecules moving. Temperature is very much a human construct. Volume and by proxy dimensionality also seem emergent…and a human construction. You can imagine that you could construct arrays of 1d points that can assemble to create complicated 3d structures (this is how we do this in computer graphics) and the holographic principle dictates that 3d information can be completely encoded on a 2d surface. Given you have the right translation you can “fake” your reality by flashing a bunch of 2d pictures in front of your eyes from someone else’s perspective. Pressure…probably emergent too. Don’t know much about it tho tbh.
Strong emergence is definitely a thing in Biology. One example is homeostasis, a dynamic that characterizes all life forms, where organisms regulate their internal states (ph, ion-gradients, temperature etc.) to maintain an environment that allows the dynamics of life to continue in that organism by staying away from chemical equilibrium.
A lot of this kind of skirts the issue. "Emergence" doesn't mean that phenomena can't be broken down into smaller components, just that doing so doesn't tell you more about them. Emergent phenomena, like the game of chess for example, do theoretically exist as smaller components (the atoms that make up the neurons in our brains that constitute knowledge about chess, along with the physical pieces and the boards of chess that exist in the world), but it would just be ridiculous to think about chess on this level. Materially speaking, in order for us to know about and understand something we have to describe and store information, and even if it's possible to reduce everything in theory to the atomic level this is just not an efficient way to store information about phenomena, so we don't. Reductionism leads to a lot of useless excess information about things that are better described at emergent levels.
Organization itself contributes to emergence; put ingredients together to make bricks, put bricks together to make houses; put houses together to make neighborhoods; put neighborhoods together to make towns, put towns together to make counties, put counties together to make states, and on and on. What is driving organization, where does it come from?
I think the variety and novelty comes from recombination and increases in scale (both size and number). That certain emergences are predictable but others occur because of the sheer number of iterations in vastly different environments. And once you have life, you can preserve favoured configurations and pit them against each other. I really don't think it needs a controlling deity.
The problem with the house and brick analogy is that in nature the "houses" and "bricks" build themselves. There are no architects or brick layers. Like M.C Escher's Drawing Hands. (12:00 - 15:00 )
The "architect" is the phenomenon of change. Nothing is static. Everything in the universe is active in one way or another down to the subatomic level. Electrons orbit, atoms interact, energy released or absorbed, waves propagating, etc. Due to the dynamic nature of the universe is the reason complex things exist. Having infinite time helps.
16:42 this is very problematic. You might think that it's nothing, but it is. The idea that we humans are separate from nature, and that we are creating something independent of nature, suggests how disconnected we are from reality/nature
Great show! But like any great show, it only increases the questions that we wonder about. One such question would be: Is there any physical phenomenon or property that is NOT emergent? For instance how do we know that electrons or quarks are not themselves emergent phenomena? Perhaps the ultimate goal of Science Itself is to pierce all the way through the Maia; the veil of Illusion conferred by Emergence, to physical things "in themselves". But it seems quite possible to me that such an endeavor may ultimately be futile. I think Plato had it right two and a half thousand years ago: The only things we can grasp are the shadows on the walls of the caves of our minds, produced by an Unknown Reality. Steven Hawking once said that almost everything can be derived by Math, but then he asks (paraphrasing) : "But what is the Fire at the Heart of Reality that breathes Life into the equations and causes them to BE?"
I wonder what Peter would say about the fact that the mind can penetrate and gets lodged in the body (emotions), but that the body cannot perceive and regulate mind and thoughts? In cognitive sciences, we definitely say that the mind can regulate body experiences. The body definitely has an effect on the mind, but the mind can always, any time it wants, regulate the emotion's impact on the body. What would a reductionist like Peter say about this I wonder? And it is an assumption for those who are psychologists or counselors that the strong emergence of consciousness has downward causation. Working from the top down it goes like this: consciousness can observe thoughts, which generage emotions which are lodged in the body. All this process can be regulated from the position of self-transcending awareness, top-down causation. Wow!
A simple example of emergence from simple rules to complexity is chaos theory and the Mandelbrot set. And I wish that Kuhn would stop saying "I we knew everything about..." Does he not understand that we never will know everything?
@@encyclopath well, I mean like it is not encoded in the data which composes the written or encoded rule. You have to run the system to find the new info.
@@Sasuser not necessarily explicitly encoded, no, but the behavior of the system is dictated by fundamental rules, and may not be predictable using a mathematical model, but instead only by raw computation/stepping through it.
As an amateur scientist I always pondered how one could explain biological phenomenon base on the laws of physics. Strong Emergence defies reductionist explanation of what is happening
Hi Robert:-) I enjoy your programes. When it comes to emegence and if you ever come to Copenhagen you should really talk with Claus Emmeche of the Copenhagen University you wont regret it! Best regards, Nikolaj
The difference between individual bricks, and a brick house is the arrangement of bricks. After all, one could disassemble a brick house, and make a patio or a road. Just because certain arrangements of component materials have different functions doesn’t mean that they are manifestly different in their composition. it is just that certain arrangements of atoms making up biological structures lead to properties that seem distinguishable from their component make up.
is the density of water different from water vapor to liquid to solid ice?.can density explain emergence of molecule organization into different water phases?
Usually, when someone refers to a house, they define it as a specific building where a person and their family live. Home, on the other hand, is more abstract as it can be anywhere a person or family lives. The house is made of concrete. Home is the place one can always return to for comfort and simply paradise to be fully understood reality as we wish upon to complete in everything "Strong Emergence."
The ‘conscious’ aspect of the universe is far more basic _and_ complex than anyone can truly know You really gotta see time and space as more unified, though And distinct
I find myself deeply sympathetic to both reductionist and emergent explanations of reality. But there was one word by Peter Atkins coming at the 8:63 (9:03 mark) which left a strong impact on my thoughts. The word was 'defeat'. Referring to unwrapping the mysteries of proteins he said, "It's fiendishly complicated...but the fiend is not going to defeat us." It led me to ask myself if there was some transcendent quality of space-time at the quantum level which could survive and run concurrently with the layers of emergent properties as scales increased. It led to a startling conclusion after many decades of focus on the matter. The quantum foam as home to particles which pop into and out of existence describes an environment where emergence, and more specifically a regenerative architecture of emergence is the spring, the fountainhead at the end of a reductionist's search, the fundamental road map, a synchronicity of orbital and expanding paths which offers the best explanation for the dipole moment found in every subatomic particle. It may turn out that the dipole moment is the springboard of matter and ultimately consciousness itself.
Is the Schroedinger equation an emergent property of Nothingness? Does Logic imply the Schroedinger equation, based on energy tautologically equaling kinetic plus potential energy? Does Absolute Nothing generate the Schroedinger equation, or a series of Schroedinger-like equations, one for each fundamental premise of logic; whose fluctuations create universes and multiverses?
If this side of reality is complicated and beautiful then the other side must be just as complicated and beautiful take thought and senses just the flat ideas of thoughts in a vast realm
bottom up causation of increasingly complex nature from gravity (weak emergence)? top down causation of mind from expansion of space (strong emergence)?
increasing density from accelerating contraction of gravity could make rules grow from simple to greater complexity, in physical nature and human brain?
I don't see compulsive reasoning to conclude that "reducionism" and "emergence" are in opposition to each other. What happens, when in a natural build-up a critical new level of complexity is reached, amounts to a new form of inter-acting both between the new realities and downwards between them and their more simple constituents.
Yeah, the either/or absolutism of Atkins, sounds like a false dichotomy to me. Especially when he declares his opponents heretics for even asking. The universe exists as a whole on many scales, and that's only the part we can presently observe and interpret as organic beings.
My favorite relationship is the heart cell actions exist to support a structure that is a pump. It shares and exists only w support of others to create a macro emergent vital property.
might emergence (weak?) happen from accelerating contraction of time / gravity? maybe reductionism (strong emergence?) from accelerating expansion of space?
Thanks for the video. Scientific method may have its limits in what it could ultimately tell us about nature and the universe, but it is extremely good at what is was designed to do in the first place. Perhaps we need a new methodology than science to explore the emergent. Really looking forward to discussions around emergence going from 'yes or no' to 'what, how and why'. Otherwise it feels like the discussion stays entirely philosophical and there's nothing groundbreaking to be expected from the 'emergent' perspective - science, when borne, was designed and defined to leave out the subjective. It was meant to be a tool we could use to understand nature, not a weapon to attack with or a fortress to be defended. So my problem with the emergence view is that, it never gives the satisfaction, doesn't cure my human curiosity, regardless of whether emergency is fundamental or not. Every time I hear something like 'the whole is more than its parts' with these examples, my mind keeps asking the question - so what next? And, now how do we go about the whole, where does the path lead us? Please, enlighten me.
19:40 The existence of "simple underlying rules" infers that nature is NOT "un-directed and random" as Darwinian evolution claims. "Rules" and "Laws", regardless of simplicity, are still the product of mind. Un-directed random natural processes have never been scientifically demonstrated or proven to be capable of producing functional / coded information as that required for biological systems, even at the most primitive levels of biological life.
5:30 that's just a different way of describing transference between two or more semi-closed systems in a lorenze equations. I don't possess the math skills to know if this exists but for me the manifold of the universe that contains both conscious and unconscious is, or can be represented as, a set of differential equations that create a lorenze attractor but are also somehow in total a function that is a fractal that makes this manifold infinitely expand from the data it amasses but in a self similar way like a fractal. This can be seen as fundamental things like evolution which doesn't only apply to biological life imho. Btw I love the theatrics and cinematography at 6:11 that old library is the exact sorta cave a reductionist would live in lol. This is the abode of a man so far behind the times he has never even been online and has never read a book he agreed with written beyond 1957
Eh…I’d step away from differential equations. I’ve studied this stuff for a very long time. And the concepts you should look into are Wolframs….study of networks, graphs, complex systems. Lorenz Attractors are amazing and they describe behaviors that seem “hidden” to us. But the issue is that this is also just another aspect of emergence, where we merely use phase spaces to describe behaviors of systems. The simpler view is that you have a space of all possible states of a system…and then according to some simple rules, the states can evolve. A phase space diagram captures this evolution, in such a way where it will describe the systems behavior. But the problem with this is that this doesn’t actually capture the fundamental thing that is happening in this system, it merely describes how it evolves in phase space. The meta thematics behind this is how Wolfram describes it…there are rules…simple ones that govern the behavior of stuff…and as those things follow these rules, they fill up the space of all possible ways they can interact. Through these interactions, some of the interactions are Turing universal, and it’s this universality that allows a new layer of behaviors to emerge from these simpler forms. That sounds a bit much but through that lens you can piece together the more obvious picture: that the universe is a completely isomorphic and equivalent system, and all these properties emerge as a result of this system being isomorphic. When I say everything I really do mean everything: mathematics, rules, computers, consciousness…all of those things are in the same universe, there are no different layers of reality just “perceived” differences in a completely isomorphic structure based on where you are in relation to the things you observe.
@@NightmareCourtPictures imma follow you're advice and look Into those things. I'm heavy on emergence rn as I think it's at, or near, the lowest order of magnitude of understanding when dealing with "what's going on". I also think synchronicity is real, not totally in the hippy dippy sense, but to me it's a key in the manifestation of the subconscious. The subconcious to me represents the infinite multiverse, that is basically potential energy imo and at equilibrium and life exists in the substrate of kinetic energy that consists of observation/transference via the semi-closed systems called life which straddle the border, or like I said exist in the transference itself as the matrix for life and the observable universe. The Multiverse imho is the infinite, eternal and at equilibrium data that represents all possible things as a matrix of singular data points FYI the paragraph you wrote that starts with "a simpler view", is describing what I just said about the multiverse being the "subconscious" which is infinite, eternal and expanding because of the gathered and aggregated data it amasses. We turn that potential infinite energy is to kinetic energy which is the total subconscious data pool in turn learns from and expands from. It may not even learn it may simply expand. Btw I recognize the seeming paradox of the multiverse being at equilibrium and expanding but this is why the concept of a matrix of singular data points is key
@@Thee-_-Outlier I'm glad. and I agree with you that synchronization is "real" and more broadly what Wolfram's themes get to, is that there is no differences between "real and not real" there is simply the space of all possible things, the tendency for those things to exist over other things, and the time at which we are here to expierence them. Let me just give you a good example, because this might give you some deep thoughts on the topic to think about. Take the Periodic Table of Elements. It has 118 or so known elements. 118 seems a bit arbitrary though right...is 118 some kind of special number? Most scientist would have you believe that this number is somehow special but that seems silly "special numbers". Consider how we as humans actually classify this table. We classify it based on how STABLE the elements are. we pack as many protons into it...and at around 118 we can no longer stuff anymore protons in the atom, because it falls apart too fast. Consider that the reason this occurs (atoms falling apart) are due to the forces inside the atom holding it together (the strong force) but these forces have varied overtime across the age of the universe (grand unification and coupling). In other words, if we lived at a different time...when the forces were strongly or weakly coupled...then there would be either less or more atoms in the periodic table than 118...because the "unstable" configurations would be considered "stable" at that time to us. Likewise, if our life spans were 1 femto-second long, we would experience things in a different way...and so unstable elements might seem "stable" to us on the order of femto-seconds, if we ourselves only existed for femto-seconds. In essence, the entire construct of the periodic table is arbitrary...and if you look at a vast majority of different constructs especially, the ones based on modern mathematics...you find that most of these constructs are indeed just that...human constructions of our attempts to quantify the world in a way that makes sense to us. Wolfram's views are heavily endowed in this... that physics as we know them now are centered on our ability to probe the world and our unique history with which we categorize and organize things including the mathematics like differential equations and so on. I would suggest for some additional reading some articles on the topic (specifically the periodic table) about "why are there only 118 elements" as well as looking at other cases in which there are "special numbers in nature" (fine tuning, prime numbers, pi, speed of light) and you'll find a strangely familiar connection in these cases: how we organize them are based on some random human-centric construction.
@@NightmareCourtPictures lemme say without responding to all the points you just made, most of which I agree with greatly, that I also believe there is only one force and the other "forces" or variations in said forces are simply manifestations, adaptations, or manifestation for adaptation sake. What I mean is in a way you could look at life or consciousness, which is how I often frame it, as the only force and everything else is basically that same force in a different or limited context. Ik it's not an accepted theory and I'm not agreeing with it but if you think of ideas like gravito-electromagnetism you can get an idea of how I mean that. At least in the sense it's not hard to believe we conflate forces in science. Btw, I'm very daoist regarding my core thoughts and look at all things humans label as a "made up" binary combo of each part of a diad(both on, both off, one on one off....). The diad itself tho is the true whole, aka unexplainable essence of thing and devoid of label. what I want to really say about your periodic chart example is I always have seen humans as the librarians of the universe. We are the Dewey decimal system. Our entire existence is centered around organizing by classifying and categorizing things
@@Thee-_-Outlier You mean like an evolutionary process where the world that we have is the result of instantiations, or a kind of adaptations of the fundamental forces? (grand unified force?) That's actually a pretty rad idea and I never thought of it that way.
Quantization on the lowest level produces patterning at all levels above. An atomic Mandelbrot like fractal patterning. Just quantization or state snapping (like electron shell states)
The human element is a point of difference. One expert says that water can be deduced from all the knowledge of hydrogen and oxygen- another expert says studying bricks can't get you a house, but these two are not the same. In a house, an agent of design is introduced. Conscious awareness is the whitehead on a wave, it is the turbulence of feedback where the finger of nature touches itself. If we acknowledge the difference between things as they are, and things as we've made them through language the world is a lot more clear than insinuated here.
A rare episode actually getting closer to truth. Nice to see an episode not devoted to ponderous pondering of imponderables, like free will, the meaning of life and the characteristics of G*d. EDIT: Oh well, the meaning of life had to stick its nose in anyway. AND EDIT: Can't leave well enough alone. A theologian taking perfectly good science and composting it into Woo! Like some amateurish time travel novella, "going to the past to fix the present", only it's the other way!!! GASP!!!
The idea that just because you believe in emergence you don’t believe in the explanatory power of science is absurd. You just don’t believe in the explanatory power of quantum particles that much. You believe that things at different levels of reality require their own explanation. And since it’s most likely that reality isn’t even computable, it’s only natural to assume that we can always only discover partial theories that hold in a certain domain. It’s still a worthy endeavor though.
I'm gonna start, before I completely watch this video, by making it a duo by adding 'Complexity!' 16:00 He introduces this. Now I reframe his question: "Why does complexity increase up the levels?" 'Beyond Einstein: Emergence and Complexity.' ------------------------------------------------------- The physicists and chemists and mathematicians have had ungodly control over the beliefs of science for too long. These reductionists, at their basement levels, can only derive causation and hence determinism. Whereas as one ascends up each level of emergence, complexity (to my mind) increases. So, even properties at the lower domains can not foresee the properties that arise at higher realms. Hence, free will is possible because like biology, the whole and it's behavior is greater and is not dominated by the sum of the lower parts. "Even God can't see or predict this!" For the physicists out there, who's to say that even time and space not not transcend it's own rules, and perhaps consciousness is the thing that is already doing that. The search for reality is still extremely young. Footnotes: Perhaps even language is emergent. The introspective, seeking, intellectual needs ever more ornate words and longer sentences to describe and understand larger imagery and visuals. Biological systems can also work down the levels, at least until the boundaries of chemistry. External macro forces and events can generate depression, whereby chemical levels are altered. "No, you aren't depressed because of an 'imbalance'. You're depressed cause bad stuff happened to you." A New View: Emergence, Complexity, and Downward Causation. -------------------------------------------- Conclusion: This video defies complimentary words. Why is it not possible for me to double-like it? 💜
Excellent topic! And I think it ties in with the other video about causality. Nonduality teacher Ramesh Balsekar explained causality with a double arrow, going both from past and future. And if future states are more complex then that can explain emergence I think.
Emerging causation bottom up, emanating constraints top down. Light constrains the emerging structure of a tree. The emerging structure of a tree emanates down constraints to increase the probability of photons striking chlorophyll molecules. Emergence ultimately explains nothing without emanation.
Always so much to learn, it never ends... I've always wondered how are creator knows and provides everything for us if there is one. And how we figure things out. And there always something different in the process and the outcome. is god himself evaluation does he really exists. The one thing that baffles me in this world🌎is the there an after life... and not ONE person on this planet knows. it always keeps me wondering i guess I'll find out when I take my final breath I'll know the truth🤔🙂
I'm reminded of Saruman the White in The Lord of the Rings. When he comes under the influence of Sauron he is no longer "The White" and explains to Gandalf that he has abandoned whiteness because it can be broken up into all the colors, to which Gandalf replies "He who breaks things apart to discover their nature has left the path of Wisdom."
The reversal of reductionism, that is the concept of assembly from the elements that are "well understood" does not always work: look at the struggle of connecting the standard model to gravity (a standard model that is not all that well understood- viz. the latest g-2 experiments at the Fermi Lab) or even simpler: we may know the chemical, atomic and subatomic components of a grain of wheat. However will assembling these components into a seed result in germination?
I find the brick and house metaphor pretty convincing. For me yet another metaphor seems also helpful. Imagine a UFO flies over a stadium where a sports game is taking place. And the UFO crew are perplexed by what they see, so they study the players to every detail - analyse their blood and urine contents, blood saturation level, take the scans of the players' bones and brains. Because they still cannot quite understand the rules of the game, they go into smaller and smaller details. Now how likely are they to understand the difference between baseball and soccer? I suppose all efforts at improving the resolution of the analyses will be futile or counterproductive.
I think a portion of the problem is that reductionism has more predictive power in fields where relationships between components are well understood and acknowledged. Like in physics. I think in fields like biology, relationships between components are less well understood and underappreciated. Emergence is the result of relationships, and if reductionists gain understanding into and incorporate these relationships into their models, then they'll be more effective at explaining complexity
@@chaosss444 That is the kind of sentence that superficially sounds profound, but is in reality too fuzzy to provide any meaningful insight. No one sensible thinks that the way to give someone a tennis lesson is to try to explain to them the motions of the elementary particles in a tennis racket... So perhaps you could give an example of using this "holistic approach" to demystify just *ONE* mystery that "we once thought impossible to understand".
@@roqsteady5290 I never claimed to be here with any insight on the matter. My statement was just an expression of my enthusiasm for what might be achieved by studying systems in nature. I am not an expert on any scientific field, yet to my limited knowledge nature seems to use and reuse some simple rules across multiple scales, which leads me to suspect (albeit wishfully) it is all simple at the bottom. As for your request for an example...lets take weather. Chaotic systems theory has undoubtedly brought some tools and insights to the table otherwise unavailable through traditional reductionism.
Probably because strong emergence, with its idea of downward causation, implies that free will is an emergent factor which has an effect on the parts which manifested it. Not sure exactly how one would define "parts" though. The borders between factors seem to me to be somewhat arbitrary constructions.
Let's not confuse emergence with unpredictability. The carbon atom can combine into an almost infinite number of molecules. We cannot readily predict in an actual situation what molecules will form, but when an actuality appears based on carbon atoms, the system (for the most part) can be explained in principle base on the properties of the carbon atom, which can be explained by physics. Note I said for the most part. When conceptual information processing (aka brain) starts, a new dynamic might have emerged, a dynamic not in principle explainable every by the underlying parts. But, in general, don't confuse emergence with the inability to predict what will emerge.
Wetness emerging from quantum mechanical properties of water is nothing at all like inner subjective experience emerging from quantum mechanics, which gives absolutely nothing beyond a precise description of how stuff moves around.
we know only some "components" of Reality, such as matter, space, the present. We do not know what matter, space and the present are. I suggest you think about it a bit before choosing a topic.
Endless like as dreams.. sometimes you see a few dreams consequently but places and time has no relation between them as if you move in timeless and placeless... but all dream has one common side which is you never see your body:) endless is like this for me :)
A smart person. Yes. Downward causation. NOT emergence. I described how and why in my book and papers 20 years ago. No one gets it-they fail to consider all the variables and implications. Now people are starting to see what I saw so many years ago, so I have been re-writing my book which predicted all these new views and careers now. Sometimes I actually look at history and I know it so well it feels like I was part of the cause of that too. I also made an experimental methodology which shows the effects. I hear historians explaining Egypt and I am like: that’s not how it happened or what that means. Seriously.
Crazy to think all of us today 95% of the people will all be gone in 80 years or so, just freaks me out i was a entity that existed to know why, where who, and what is this place of being
What is missing in the discussion is what happens when you have more emergences possible, why nature should pick a particular emergence and not another one. For instance, when you had to start transmitting color TV, in USA the NTSC system had been developed for this purpose and in europe the PAL system instead.
Eventually all of the correlative evidence will be so overwhelming that we will go ahead and call atheism a brain disorder. A very purposeful and forcefully believed one.
Nature doesn't {pick} it uses a selection process of {what survives long enough to breed and pass on it's features}. What is fundamentally sound lives on to grow more complex. The lack of agency in evolutionary processes is clear.
The complex telomere system in eukaryotic chromosomes eloquently demonstrates a precise well-designed mechanism that interacts with a wide variety of interconnected cell processes and pathways. It regulates gene expression and both cellular and organismal longevity through a unique time-keeping mechanism. The telomere system also contains structural features that protect the linear chromosome ends, making higher forms of cell life possible. In vertebrates, particularly humans, the telomere system is associated with a large number of agerelated diseases, cancer, and cell longevity in general. Understanding this system may help to explain some aspects associated with the wide historical variation in human longevity, specifically the disparity of lifespans as described in the biblical record. In addition, the interdependence of the thousands of components related to the telomere system provides an overwhelming case for both irreducible complexity and intelligent design.
@@brianstevens3858 programs have been built that can read the information in DNA. In fact DNA strands have been used to deliver information into a computer. This is possible because the information encoded in DNA is, in fact, information. You can find absolutely no example in your environment of information that is coherent and understandable, that arised from the environment by chance. Every example in your reality that you can find where there is coherent information there will be a mind behind it.
How do humans break complexity of their conscious tasks? Imagine somebody asks about directions. He is given instructions verbally. He will interpret the language(cerebral cortex) then decide to move accordingly. I guess the brain will unconsciously go through layered approach: instructions are interpreted, stored and eventually converted to impulses to muscles and joints at every step. The details of neuron cell or muscle cells or synapse transmitters let alone lower down to atomic level need not be worked out as the system can call up existing mature internal modules as required. This is what complex software/hardware designs do nowadays and that evolved independently.
Some of these assertions seem rather post facto to me, like *I know that hydrogen and oxygen (will) form water. Even emergence seems post facto, we only assume that it is bound by some law/s. My question is, is there a math formula that can predict the ordinal place/s of the next prime number/s? I daresay we only label as laws or properties those that emerge out of the organization of atoms, when in fact they simply ARE. Simply the way it IS.
An equation needs data, a context to be applied to. Reductionists ignore the obligation to apply the fruits of their labor. We need scientists to model analytical "inverse physics" equations that tell you what input is required to produce some outcome. This has happened in isolated incidents, like programs that generate optical lenses and computer circuits. Other disciplines don't have tools like that usually due to funding or computational complexity. We need a better, analytical "inverse physics" than brute force (human design, machine learning, trial and error)
I think this is an important point. It seems to me that what you are really getting at is that no matter how good the equations are, we still need the right initial and boundary conditions to solve them. I am hopeful that quantum computing may allow us to explore a multitude of initial conditions to find out which ones are correct. This might expand the power of the reductionist/assemblists greatly.
So it's all about the sequence or the position of atoms relative to each other which leads to different types of masterpieces of science. Ex- Human Brain, Fuel or the potatoes
많이 모여야 비로소 나타나는 성질들... 따라서 환원주의의 방식으론 도저히 그 성질들을 알수없다는 이야기. 원자를 아무리 잘 이해하더라도 그것들이 많이 모여 구성하는 거시적 존재의 거시적 특성을 알수는 없다. 그래서 스케일 별로,거시적인 대상 별로 각기 다른 과학분야가 존재한다. 다큐 영상은 창발 (Emergence)이란 주제로 과학에 대한 흥미로운 관점을 제시하고 있지만... 개인적으로는 이러한 논쟁의 원인이 단지 인간 중심적인 편견에 의한 착각에 기인한다고 생각한다. 애초에 창발이란 말도 인간 중심적이다. 우리가 보기에 세상은 다체롭고 각각의 크기별로 대상별로 나타나는 특징과 성질이 다르다는 것은 어디까지나 인간이 보기에 그런 것이다. 몇 안되는 물리법칙과 그 법칙을 따르는 수많은 입자들이 모인 다음 시간이 충분이 흐르면..짜잔~우리가 보는 이 세상이 나타난다. 그리고 그게 전부다. 그런데 인간이 크기별 대상별로 나눈다음 온갖 의미를 부여하곤 새로운 법칙들이 창발한다고 착각하는 것이다. 질문이 잘못되면 답이 꼬인다.
Salute to every single person who is giving his/her best to decode the reality...
Who do you think built the great pyramid?
Do you think it was a lost, technologically advanced civilization?
Or do you think the ancient egyptians, with their stones and hemp rope built it ? 🙂🙂
@@phillynott2459 What a layperson thinks about such a question is irrelevant. Classic argument from personal incredulity.
@@phillynott2459 people have been just as mentally capable as us for tens of thousands of years, but for some reason people seem to consider humans from the past inferior. They had less knowledge to work with, but they could still figure stuff out, like-how to stack heavy stones? Yeah, I think they probably figured that out
Nice comment 🙂
@@phillynott2459 Every generation gives it's best, if their technology was really advance as of today, it was good for them and if it was not and still they built those pyramids it's bad indication for current and future generations.
The expression of joy and bliss when the anchor spoke to the biologist really tells you about where is mind is at.
Many years ago, a prominent Physicist said to other: “You can not explain with atomic physics the formation of Ice.” And the deep answer was in the seminal paper: “More is Different” and this very day Solid State Physics born, thanks to Phillip Anderson, also a Noble Laureate.
Great episode. Even if, ultimately, we may understand everything using a reductionist approach, we are far from it. So, in practice, we are all "emergentists" at present. That's why we have many different sciences
Ya bravo 2 yr understandg So excitg n liberatg bro.Rt on....
I agree. If I want to understand why my local drama club is failing, and what to do about it, an understanding of biochemistry is not going to answer my question in any meaningful way.
Emergence encourages emergence. Much like the multiverse.
Salute to these superb physicists.
Excellent production! Fully appreciate the multiple perspectives from all of these experts and the moderator’s synthesis. Thank you😊
so glad he used water as an example early on in the video. it is such a unique and marvelous substance which we take for granted. if it was not so abundant on earth we would keep it in museums because of its incredible properties.
Mr Kuhn's personal odyssey to get *"closer to truth"* has often appeared to be so ill-defined and circular as to be futile. So it is with great humility that I now both congratulate and thank him for his endeavours, as disparate pieces of "truth" have begun to fall quite spectacularly, into place. Thank you Mr Robert Lawrence Kuhn.
It’s a certain number of fields interacting, each field with its own limits and laws, and at the point where all fields intersect you get a specific phenomenon, together they act like a blueprint ‘looking’ for the right environment to manifest what this specific combination of fields happens to do. It’s top down, and once manifestation has happened the combination of fields attract other fields to build further complexity in combination with the environment where manifestation has occurred.
Beautifully stated
I’m high af and also quite dumb but you explained that so well I understood it on the first read. That’s impressive. And it’s also a very illuminating theory. I’ll have to screenshot this comment on my phone so I can explain this to other people lol
Keep up the amazing work Robert and team. Keeping us informed and inquisitive regarding the latest thinking, this is valuable work for our time!
I'm curious how you came to have so many subscribers.
This video is over 20 years old. This is an old PBS TV show. It's only the sky called "Closer To Truth Chats", which is some on one video chat between Kuhn and a remote guest, that are made recently and explicitly for TH-cam.
"Closer To Truth" episodes are from an old TV show.
@@williamesselman3102 I used to make weird star wars parody videos but they are hidden now as I'm a 30 year old teacher.
@@Spodlude I used to love playing with Legos and sometimes I still fantasize about getting them out and sitting in the floor and playing with them. It's okay. It can still be cool.
Outstanding to watch - Many, many thanks !
Muscle cells are classical. The simple expansion and contraction of single cells when synchronously combined into one bicep and tricep can move our arm. Now what can happen when neurons fire? Do they form some synchronous process? Do these slowed down process make a slower reality emerge? I say yes (in Robert's voice?) Why? Why because there are waves and pulses emerging from our brains. This tells me something synchronous is happening.
You have to get to the irreducible levels to build back up to understand where and when emergence is a factor. So, I understand the trend to start recognizing emergence and its importance in different systems. It may expose the reality that some things like time are not fundamental, but emergent property of entropy and so forth. Perhaps the same applies to gravity?
I recall Lisa Randall discussing "effective theories" in her books. It seems that different scales have different rules of organization.
Very good idea Lisa Rendal the most better Idea ever. I truely think is great my good freind. I am a Fan Philippe Martin
No matter how well you understand hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, you could never predict they would eventually combine to produce humans. Emergent properties will always be subject to chaos theory.
Amo este canal cada día más! Saludos desde Argentina
For phase transitions of water (solid/liquid/gas); temperature, pressure and volume play a role in the phase transitions. So for emergence in general, there may be ingredients that mix with the physical reality. May help to better understand the nature and existence of such ingredients. Are temperature, pressure and volume incidental or causal in phase transitions from solid to liquid to gas?
Temperature pressure volume are also emergent from ??? ?????
@@pkul9583 temperature is a bulk/continuous description of discrete molecules moving. Temperature is very much a human construct.
Volume and by proxy dimensionality also seem emergent…and a human construction. You can imagine that you could construct arrays of 1d points that can assemble to create complicated 3d structures (this is how we do this in computer graphics) and the holographic principle dictates that 3d information can be completely encoded on a 2d surface. Given you have the right translation you can “fake” your reality by flashing a bunch of 2d pictures in front of your eyes from someone else’s perspective.
Pressure…probably emergent too. Don’t know much about it tho tbh.
One of the best I’ve seen.
I've always been told to call 911 if an emergence occurs (112 in Spain)
Strong emergence is definitely a thing in Biology. One example is homeostasis, a dynamic that characterizes all life forms, where organisms regulate their internal states (ph, ion-gradients, temperature etc.) to maintain an environment that allows the dynamics of life to continue in that organism by staying away from chemical equilibrium.
A lot of this kind of skirts the issue. "Emergence" doesn't mean that phenomena can't be broken down into smaller components, just that doing so doesn't tell you more about them. Emergent phenomena, like the game of chess for example, do theoretically exist as smaller components (the atoms that make up the neurons in our brains that constitute knowledge about chess, along with the physical pieces and the boards of chess that exist in the world), but it would just be ridiculous to think about chess on this level. Materially speaking, in order for us to know about and understand something we have to describe and store information, and even if it's possible to reduce everything in theory to the atomic level this is just not an efficient way to store information about phenomena, so we don't. Reductionism leads to a lot of useless excess information about things that are better described at emergent levels.
Organization itself contributes to emergence; put ingredients together to make bricks, put bricks together to make houses; put houses together to make neighborhoods; put neighborhoods together to make towns, put towns together to make counties, put counties together to make states, and on and on. What is driving organization, where does it come from?
Consciousness. But you are not ready for that talk.
@@mv8908 contact when ready
I think the variety and novelty comes from recombination and increases in scale (both size and number). That certain emergences are predictable but others occur because of the sheer number of iterations in vastly different environments.
And once you have life, you can preserve favoured configurations and pit them against each other.
I really don't think it needs a controlling deity.
The problem with the house and brick analogy is that in nature the "houses" and "bricks" build themselves. There are no architects or brick layers. Like M.C Escher's Drawing Hands. (12:00 - 15:00 )
The "architect" is the phenomenon of change. Nothing is static. Everything in the universe is active in one way or another down to the subatomic level. Electrons orbit, atoms interact, energy released or absorbed, waves propagating, etc. Due to the dynamic nature of the universe is the reason complex things exist. Having infinite time helps.
robert , thanks for your work , this helps
You think he just filmed this? It's over twenty years old and it wasn't made for TH-cam. It's an old TV show.
Another beautiful intro with an amazing content ✨✨❤️❤️👌👌💯💯
I love Peter.
Yup
5:47 Me, most of the time when trying to understand.
Lol
16:42 this is very problematic. You might think that it's nothing, but it is. The idea that we humans are separate from nature, and that we are creating something independent of nature, suggests how disconnected we are from reality/nature
Humans are pathetic.
Made of nature itself, they feed of nature, depend on nature and... trying to conquer, destroy it.. Suicidal
16:55 "One of them is from nature, one of them is something that we as humans have created." Trick question - humans are nature.
RLK, Which scientist did you interview who was in Iceland?
Great show! But like any great show, it only increases the questions that we wonder about. One such question would be: Is there any physical phenomenon or property that is NOT emergent? For instance how do we know that electrons or quarks are not themselves emergent phenomena? Perhaps the ultimate goal of Science Itself is to pierce all the way through the Maia; the veil of Illusion conferred by Emergence, to physical things "in themselves". But it seems quite possible to me that such an endeavor may ultimately be futile. I think Plato had it right two and a half thousand years ago: The only things we can grasp are the shadows on the walls of the caves of our minds, produced by an Unknown Reality. Steven Hawking once said that almost everything can be derived by Math, but then he asks (paraphrasing) : "But what is the Fire at the Heart of Reality that breathes Life into the equations and causes them to BE?"
Please interview Dr Jonathan Schaffer!
I wonder what Peter would say about the fact that the mind can penetrate and gets lodged in the body (emotions), but that the body cannot perceive and regulate mind and thoughts? In cognitive sciences, we definitely say that the mind can regulate body experiences. The body definitely has an effect on the mind, but the mind can always, any time it wants, regulate the emotion's impact on the body. What would a reductionist like Peter say about this I wonder? And it is an assumption for those who are psychologists or counselors that the strong emergence of consciousness has downward causation. Working from the top down it goes like this: consciousness can observe thoughts, which generage emotions which are lodged in the body. All this process can be regulated from the position of self-transcending awareness, top-down causation. Wow!
“Emergence” seems like an emergent characteristic of too many philosophers locked in a room.
Why? It is a way more intuitive and realistic idea then "supernatural skywizard causation".
A simple example of emergence from simple rules to complexity is chaos theory and the Mandelbrot set. And I wish that Kuhn would stop saying "I we knew everything about..." Does he not understand that we never will know everything?
Unanswerable questions are his bread and butter. Literally. Orbiting the truth at a safe distance means the show gets picked up for another season.
Please bring the Stuart Kauffman and Peter Atkins to a discussion about this subject.
Sometimes the only way to know how a system works out is to step it forward. The long term outcome is not encoded in the generating rule.
humm.. interesting. Can you give an example?
Wolfram agrees with the former claim, but refutes the latter. This is the principle of irreducible computation
@@encyclopath well, I mean like it is not encoded in the data which composes the written or encoded rule. You have to run the system to find the new info.
@@Sasuser not necessarily explicitly encoded, no, but the behavior of the system is dictated by fundamental rules, and may not be predictable using a mathematical model, but instead only by raw computation/stepping through it.
@@encyclopath Nice clarification there. I did not realize that difference.
As an amateur scientist I always pondered how one could explain biological phenomenon base on the laws of physics. Strong Emergence defies reductionist explanation of what is happening
Hi Robert:-) I enjoy your programes. When it comes to emegence and if you ever come to Copenhagen you should really talk with Claus Emmeche of the Copenhagen University you wont regret it! Best regards, Nikolaj
What/where is that waterfall at the end?
The difference between individual bricks, and a brick house is the arrangement of bricks. After all, one could disassemble a brick house, and make a patio or a road. Just because certain arrangements of component materials have different functions doesn’t mean that they are manifestly different in their composition. it is just that certain arrangements of atoms making up biological structures lead to properties that seem distinguishable from their component make up.
is the density of water different from water vapor to liquid to solid ice?.can density explain emergence of molecule organization into different water phases?
Could energy provide the organization for a collection to have emergent property(s)?
Usually, when someone refers to a house, they define it as a specific building where a person and their family live. Home, on the other hand, is more abstract as it can be anywhere a person or family lives. The house is made of concrete. Home is the place one can always return to for comfort and simply paradise to be fully understood reality as we wish upon to complete in everything "Strong Emergence."
The ‘conscious’ aspect of the universe is far more basic _and_ complex than anyone can truly know
You really gotta see time and space as more unified, though
And distinct
I find myself deeply sympathetic to both reductionist and emergent explanations of reality. But there was one word by Peter Atkins coming at the 8:63 (9:03 mark) which left a strong impact on my thoughts. The word was 'defeat'. Referring to unwrapping the mysteries of proteins he said, "It's fiendishly complicated...but the fiend is not going to defeat us." It led me to ask myself if there was some transcendent quality of space-time at the quantum level which could survive and run concurrently with the layers of emergent properties as scales increased. It led to a startling conclusion after many decades of focus on the matter. The quantum foam as home to particles which pop into and out of existence describes an environment where emergence, and more specifically a regenerative architecture of emergence is the spring, the fountainhead at the end of a reductionist's search, the fundamental road map, a synchronicity of orbital and expanding paths which offers the best explanation for the dipole moment found in every subatomic particle. It may turn out that the dipole moment is the springboard of matter and ultimately consciousness itself.
Is the Schroedinger equation an emergent property of Nothingness? Does Logic imply the Schroedinger equation, based on energy tautologically equaling kinetic plus potential energy? Does Absolute Nothing generate the Schroedinger equation, or a series of Schroedinger-like equations, one for each fundamental premise of logic; whose fluctuations create universes and multiverses?
@-GinPi Gamma Hi, thanks, but what answers does that suggest might be given to my questions?
I'm too dumb to understand the conversations 🙌
keep watching--you'll catch on..
Not too dumb. You just haven't been watching long enough.
@@Spaghetti-is-gross Or maybe Chris *is* too dumb. We don't have enough evidence.
@@jps0117 Hmm perhaps
Don't worry it's just a brainwash
These videos gimme the same energy as bush does...
If this side of reality is complicated and beautiful then the other side must be just as complicated and beautiful take thought and senses just the flat ideas of thoughts in a vast realm
bottom up causation of increasingly complex nature from gravity (weak emergence)? top down causation of mind from expansion of space (strong emergence)?
increasing density from accelerating contraction of gravity could make rules grow from simple to greater complexity, in physical nature and human brain?
I don't see compulsive reasoning to conclude that "reducionism" and "emergence" are in opposition to each other. What happens, when in a natural build-up a critical new level of complexity is reached, amounts to a new form of inter-acting both between the new realities and downwards between them and their more simple constituents.
Yeah, the either/or absolutism of Atkins, sounds like a false dichotomy to me. Especially when he declares his opponents heretics for even asking.
The universe exists as a whole on many scales, and that's only the part we can presently observe and interpret as organic beings.
My favorite relationship is the heart cell actions exist to support a structure that is a pump. It shares and exists only w support of others to create a macro emergent vital property.
Could simple rules come from energy? Do simple rules have a greater capacity to interact leading to greater complexity?
might emergence (weak?) happen from accelerating contraction of time / gravity? maybe reductionism (strong emergence?) from accelerating expansion of space?
Thanks for the video.
Scientific method may have its limits in what it could ultimately tell us about nature and the universe, but it is extremely good at what is was designed to do in the first place. Perhaps we need a new methodology than science to explore the emergent. Really looking forward to discussions around emergence going from 'yes or no' to 'what, how and why'. Otherwise it feels like the discussion stays entirely philosophical and there's nothing groundbreaking to be expected from the 'emergent' perspective - science, when borne, was designed and defined to leave out the subjective. It was meant to be a tool we could use to understand nature, not a weapon to attack with or a fortress to be defended.
So my problem with the emergence view is that, it never gives the satisfaction, doesn't cure my human curiosity, regardless of whether emergency is fundamental or not. Every time I hear something like 'the whole is more than its parts' with these examples, my mind keeps asking the question - so what next? And, now how do we go about the whole, where does the path lead us? Please, enlighten me.
Is energy organizing emergent properties at different levels of reality?
19:40 The existence of "simple underlying rules" infers that nature is NOT "un-directed and random" as Darwinian evolution claims. "Rules" and "Laws", regardless of simplicity, are still the product of mind. Un-directed random natural processes have never been scientifically demonstrated or proven to be capable of producing functional / coded information as that required for biological systems, even at the most primitive levels of biological life.
That's a nonsequitur, there's no reason a rule can't itself emerge from somewhere other than a mind.
5:30 that's just a different way of describing transference between two or more semi-closed systems in a lorenze equations. I don't possess the math skills to know if this exists but for me the manifold of the universe that contains both conscious and unconscious is, or can be represented as, a set of differential equations that create a lorenze attractor but are also somehow in total a function that is a fractal that makes this manifold infinitely expand from the data it amasses but in a self similar way like a fractal. This can be seen as fundamental things like evolution which doesn't only apply to biological life imho.
Btw I love the theatrics and cinematography at 6:11 that old library is the exact sorta cave a reductionist would live in lol. This is the abode of a man so far behind the times he has never even been online and has never read a book he agreed with written beyond 1957
Eh…I’d step away from differential equations. I’ve studied this stuff for a very long time. And the concepts you should look into are Wolframs….study of networks, graphs, complex systems.
Lorenz Attractors are amazing and they describe behaviors that seem “hidden” to us. But the issue is that this is also just another aspect of emergence, where we merely use phase spaces to describe behaviors of systems.
The simpler view is that you have a space of all possible states of a system…and then according to some simple rules, the states can evolve. A phase space diagram captures this evolution, in such a way where it will describe the systems behavior. But the problem with this is that this doesn’t actually capture the fundamental thing that is happening in this system, it merely describes how it evolves in phase space.
The meta thematics behind this is how Wolfram describes it…there are rules…simple ones that govern the behavior of stuff…and as those things follow these rules, they fill up the space of all possible ways they can interact. Through these interactions, some of the interactions are Turing universal, and it’s this universality that allows a new layer of behaviors to emerge from these simpler forms.
That sounds a bit much but through that lens you can piece together the more obvious picture: that the universe is a completely isomorphic and equivalent system, and all these properties emerge as a result of this system being isomorphic. When I say everything I really do mean everything: mathematics, rules, computers, consciousness…all of those things are in the same universe, there are no different layers of reality just “perceived” differences in a completely isomorphic structure based on where you are in relation to the things you observe.
@@NightmareCourtPictures imma follow you're advice and look Into those things. I'm heavy on emergence rn as I think it's at, or near, the lowest order of magnitude of understanding when dealing with "what's going on". I also think synchronicity is real, not totally in the hippy dippy sense, but to me it's a key in the manifestation of the subconscious. The subconcious to me represents the infinite multiverse, that is basically potential energy imo and at equilibrium and life exists in the substrate of kinetic energy that consists of observation/transference via the semi-closed systems called life which straddle the border, or like I said exist in the transference itself as the matrix for life and the observable universe. The Multiverse imho is the infinite, eternal and at equilibrium data that represents all possible things as a matrix of singular data points
FYI the paragraph you wrote that starts with "a simpler view", is describing what I just said about the multiverse being the "subconscious" which is infinite, eternal and expanding because of the gathered and aggregated data it amasses. We turn that potential infinite energy is to kinetic energy which is the total subconscious data pool in turn learns from and expands from. It may not even learn it may simply expand. Btw I recognize the seeming paradox of the multiverse being at equilibrium and expanding but this is why the concept of a matrix of singular data points is key
@@Thee-_-Outlier I'm glad. and I agree with you that synchronization is "real" and more broadly what Wolfram's themes get to, is that there is no differences between "real and not real" there is simply the space of all possible things, the tendency for those things to exist over other things, and the time at which we are here to expierence them.
Let me just give you a good example, because this might give you some deep thoughts on the topic to think about. Take the Periodic Table of Elements. It has 118 or so known elements. 118 seems a bit arbitrary though right...is 118 some kind of special number? Most scientist would have you believe that this number is somehow special but that seems silly "special numbers". Consider how we as humans actually classify this table. We classify it based on how STABLE the elements are. we pack as many protons into it...and at around 118 we can no longer stuff anymore protons in the atom, because it falls apart too fast.
Consider that the reason this occurs (atoms falling apart) are due to the forces inside the atom holding it together (the strong force) but these forces have varied overtime across the age of the universe (grand unification and coupling). In other words, if we lived at a different time...when the forces were strongly or weakly coupled...then there would be either less or more atoms in the periodic table than 118...because the "unstable" configurations would be considered "stable" at that time to us. Likewise, if our life spans were 1 femto-second long, we would experience things in a different way...and so unstable elements might seem "stable" to us on the order of femto-seconds, if we ourselves only existed for femto-seconds.
In essence, the entire construct of the periodic table is arbitrary...and if you look at a vast majority of different constructs especially, the ones based on modern mathematics...you find that most of these constructs are indeed just that...human constructions of our attempts to quantify the world in a way that makes sense to us.
Wolfram's views are heavily endowed in this... that physics as we know them now are centered on our ability to probe the world and our unique history with which we categorize and organize things including the mathematics like differential equations and so on.
I would suggest for some additional reading some articles on the topic (specifically the periodic table) about "why are there only 118 elements" as well as looking at other cases in which there are "special numbers in nature" (fine tuning, prime numbers, pi, speed of light) and you'll find a strangely familiar connection in these cases: how we organize them are based on some random human-centric construction.
@@NightmareCourtPictures lemme say without responding to all the points you just made, most of which I agree with greatly, that I also believe there is only one force and the other "forces" or variations in said forces are simply manifestations, adaptations, or manifestation for adaptation sake. What I mean is in a way you could look at life or consciousness, which is how I often frame it, as the only force and everything else is basically that same force in a different or limited context. Ik it's not an accepted theory and I'm not agreeing with it but if you think of ideas like gravito-electromagnetism you can get an idea of how I mean that. At least in the sense it's not hard to believe we conflate forces in science.
Btw, I'm very daoist regarding my core thoughts and look at all things humans label as a "made up" binary combo of each part of a diad(both on, both off, one on one off....). The diad itself tho is the true whole, aka unexplainable essence of thing and devoid of label. what I want to really say about your periodic chart example is I always have seen humans as the librarians of the universe. We are the Dewey decimal system. Our entire existence is centered around organizing by classifying and categorizing things
@@Thee-_-Outlier You mean like an evolutionary process where the world that we have is the result of instantiations, or a kind of adaptations of the fundamental forces? (grand unified force?) That's actually a pretty rad idea and I never thought of it that way.
Quantization on the lowest level produces patterning at all levels above. An atomic Mandelbrot like fractal patterning. Just quantization or state snapping (like electron shell states)
The human element is a point of difference. One expert says that water can be deduced from all the knowledge of hydrogen and oxygen- another expert says studying bricks can't get you a house, but these two are not the same. In a house, an agent of design is introduced. Conscious awareness is the whitehead on a wave, it is the turbulence of feedback where the finger of nature touches itself. If we acknowledge the difference between things as they are, and things as we've made them through language the world is a lot more clear than insinuated here.
A rare episode actually getting closer to truth. Nice to see an episode not devoted to ponderous pondering of imponderables, like free will, the meaning of life and the characteristics of G*d.
EDIT: Oh well, the meaning of life had to stick its nose in anyway.
AND EDIT: Can't leave well enough alone. A theologian taking perfectly good science and composting it into Woo! Like some amateurish time travel novella, "going to the past to fix the present", only it's the other way!!! GASP!!!
The idea that just because you believe in emergence you don’t believe in the explanatory power of science is absurd. You just don’t believe in the explanatory power of quantum particles that much. You believe that things at different levels of reality require their own explanation. And since it’s most likely that reality isn’t even computable, it’s only natural to assume that we can always only discover partial theories that hold in a certain domain. It’s still a worthy endeavor though.
I'm gonna start, before I completely watch this video, by making it a duo by adding 'Complexity!'
16:00 He introduces this.
Now I reframe his question:
"Why does complexity increase up the levels?"
'Beyond Einstein: Emergence and Complexity.'
-------------------------------------------------------
The physicists and chemists and mathematicians have had ungodly control over the beliefs of science for too long.
These reductionists, at their basement levels, can only derive causation and hence determinism.
Whereas as one ascends up each level of emergence, complexity (to my mind) increases.
So, even properties at the lower domains can not foresee the properties that arise at higher realms.
Hence, free will is possible because like biology, the whole and it's behavior is greater and is not dominated by the sum of the lower parts.
"Even God can't see or predict this!"
For the physicists out there, who's to say that even time and space not not transcend it's own rules, and perhaps consciousness is the thing that is already doing that.
The search for reality is still extremely young.
Footnotes: Perhaps even language is emergent. The introspective, seeking, intellectual needs ever more ornate words and longer sentences to describe and understand larger imagery and visuals.
Biological systems can also work down the levels, at least until the boundaries of chemistry. External macro forces and events can generate depression, whereby chemical levels are altered. "No, you aren't depressed because of an 'imbalance'. You're depressed cause bad stuff happened to you."
A New View: Emergence, Complexity, and Downward Causation.
--------------------------------------------
Conclusion: This video defies complimentary words. Why is it not possible for me to double-like it? 💜
Might energy add new levels together or on top of one another for emergences? At some point energy develops ability to direct it's own emergences?
16:59
Nature had milions of years to develop, and see what our processors look like today, and how they looked just 50 years ago.
Small influences big. Can do this cos it knows how.
Quantum Gravity Research institute. Please interview those guys. Regards.
Excellent topic! And I think it ties in with the other video about causality. Nonduality teacher Ramesh Balsekar explained causality with a double arrow, going both from past and future. And if future states are more complex then that can explain emergence I think.
Emerging causation bottom up, emanating constraints top down. Light constrains the emerging structure of a tree. The emerging structure of a tree emanates down constraints to increase the probability of photons striking chlorophyll molecules. Emergence ultimately explains nothing without emanation.
I find very interesting the book A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram. I'm also a big fan of Peter Atkins.
Hats off to Ayala
Always so much to learn, it never ends... I've always wondered how are creator knows and provides everything for us if there is one. And how we figure things out. And there always something different in the process and the outcome. is god himself evaluation does he really exists. The one thing that baffles me in this world🌎is the there an after life... and not ONE person on this planet knows. it always keeps me wondering i guess I'll find out when I take my final breath I'll know the truth🤔🙂
Water is life. However, only in the middle phase, liquid.
Tell it to the extremophiles.
I'm reminded of Saruman the White in The Lord of the Rings. When he comes under the influence of Sauron he is no longer "The White" and explains to Gandalf that he has abandoned whiteness because it can be broken up into all the colors, to which Gandalf replies "He who breaks things apart to discover their nature has left the path of Wisdom."
Reality emerges out of One's desire not to be alone. Hence the significance of 1 Corinthians 13:13.
greater density from gravity brings increasingly complex levels of organization?
The reversal of reductionism, that is the concept of assembly from the elements that are "well understood" does not always work: look at the struggle of connecting the standard model to gravity (a standard model that is not all that well understood- viz. the latest g-2 experiments at the Fermi Lab) or even simpler: we may know the chemical, atomic and subatomic components of a grain of wheat. However will assembling these components into a seed result in germination?
I find the brick and house metaphor pretty convincing. For me yet another metaphor seems also helpful. Imagine a UFO flies over a stadium where a sports game is taking place. And the UFO crew are perplexed by what they see, so they study the players to every detail - analyse their blood and urine contents, blood saturation level, take the scans of the players' bones and brains. Because they still cannot quite understand the rules of the game, they go into smaller and smaller details. Now how likely are they to understand the difference between baseball and soccer? I suppose all efforts at improving the resolution of the analyses will be futile or counterproductive.
It doesn`t seem prudent to profess that man knows the ways of God.
I think a portion of the problem is that reductionism has more predictive power in fields where relationships between components are well understood and acknowledged. Like in physics.
I think in fields like biology, relationships between components are less well understood and underappreciated.
Emergence is the result of relationships, and if reductionists gain understanding into and incorporate these relationships into their models, then they'll be more effective at explaining complexity
I get the feeling that this whole emergence thing is tangled up with free will somehow. Help!!
People have a tendency to mystify things that they don't understand.
@@roqsteady5290 i think the holistic approach has immense potetial in demystifying some of the mysteries we once thought impossible to understand
@@chaosss444 That is the kind of sentence that superficially sounds profound, but is in reality too fuzzy to provide any meaningful insight. No one sensible thinks that the way to give someone a tennis lesson is to try to explain to them the motions of the elementary particles in a tennis racket... So perhaps you could give an example of using this "holistic approach" to demystify just *ONE* mystery that "we once thought impossible to understand".
@@roqsteady5290 I never claimed to be here with any insight on the matter. My statement was just an expression of my enthusiasm for what might be achieved by studying systems in nature. I am not an expert on any scientific field, yet to my limited knowledge nature seems to use and reuse some simple rules across multiple scales, which leads me to suspect (albeit wishfully) it is all simple at the bottom. As for your request for an example...lets take weather. Chaotic systems theory has undoubtedly brought some tools and insights to the table otherwise unavailable through traditional reductionism.
Probably because strong emergence, with its idea of downward causation, implies that free will is an emergent factor which has an effect on the parts which manifested it. Not sure exactly how one would define "parts" though. The borders between factors seem to me to be somewhat arbitrary constructions.
I am shocked at how few views Closer To Truth videos get 🤷🤦🤦🤦
There are people who just want to live what they got and it is really sad..
Let's not confuse emergence with unpredictability. The carbon atom can combine into an almost infinite number of molecules. We cannot readily predict in an actual situation what molecules will form, but when an actuality appears based on carbon atoms, the system (for the most part) can be explained in principle base on the properties of the carbon atom, which can be explained by physics. Note I said for the most part. When conceptual information processing (aka brain) starts, a new dynamic might have emerged, a dynamic not in principle explainable every by the underlying parts. But, in general, don't confuse emergence with the inability to predict what will emerge.
Might emergence come from how energy is organized?
Wetness emerging from quantum mechanical properties of water is nothing at all like inner subjective experience emerging from quantum mechanics, which gives absolutely nothing beyond a precise description of how stuff moves around.
we know only some "components" of Reality, such as matter, space, the present. We do not know what matter, space and the present are. I suggest you think about it a bit before choosing a topic.
Endless like as dreams.. sometimes you see a few dreams consequently but places and time has no relation between them as if you move in timeless and placeless... but all dream has one common side which is you never see your body:) endless is like this for me :)
There is more to the world than the sum of its parts. Perhaps environment is an extension of consciousness itself.
A smart person. Yes. Downward causation. NOT emergence. I described how and why in my book and papers 20 years ago. No one gets it-they fail to consider all the variables and implications. Now people are starting to see what I saw so many years ago, so I have been re-writing my book which predicted all these new views and careers now.
Sometimes I actually look at history and I know it so well it feels like I was part of the cause of that too. I also made an experimental methodology which shows the effects. I hear historians explaining Egypt and I am like: that’s not how it happened or what that means. Seriously.
Crazy to think all of us today 95% of the people will all be gone in 80 years or so, just freaks me out i was a entity that existed to know why, where who, and what is this place of being
The book [A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics From the Bottom Down by Robert Laughing, 2006. ] is a gem
What is missing in the discussion is what happens when you have more emergences possible, why nature should pick a particular emergence and not another one. For instance, when you had to start transmitting color TV, in USA the NTSC system had been developed for this purpose and in europe the PAL system instead.
Eventually all of the correlative evidence will be so overwhelming that we will go ahead and call atheism a brain disorder. A very purposeful and forcefully believed one.
Nature doesn't {pick} it uses a selection process of {what survives long enough to breed and pass on it's features}. What is fundamentally sound lives on to grow more complex. The lack of agency in evolutionary processes is clear.
@@brianstevens3858 no it isn't
The complex telomere system in eukaryotic chromosomes eloquently demonstrates a precise well-designed mechanism that interacts with a wide variety of interconnected cell processes and pathways. It regulates gene expression and both cellular and organismal longevity through a unique time-keeping mechanism. The telomere system also contains structural features that protect the linear chromosome ends, making higher forms of cell life possible. In vertebrates, particularly humans, the telomere system is associated with a large number of agerelated diseases, cancer, and cell longevity in general. Understanding this system may help to explain some aspects associated with the wide historical variation in human longevity, specifically the disparity of lifespans as described in the biblical record. In addition, the interdependence of the thousands of components related to the telomere system provides an overwhelming case for both irreducible complexity and intelligent design.
@@brianstevens3858 programs have been built that can read the information in DNA. In fact DNA strands have been used to deliver information into a computer. This is possible because the information encoded in DNA is, in fact, information. You can find absolutely no example in your environment of information that is coherent and understandable, that arised from the environment by chance. Every example in your reality that you can find where there is coherent information there will be a mind behind it.
How do humans break complexity of their conscious tasks? Imagine somebody asks about directions. He is given instructions verbally. He will interpret the language(cerebral cortex) then decide to move accordingly. I guess the brain will unconsciously go through layered approach: instructions are interpreted, stored and eventually converted to impulses to muscles and joints at every step. The details of neuron cell or muscle cells or synapse transmitters let alone lower down to atomic level need not be worked out as the system can call up existing mature internal modules as required. This is what complex software/hardware designs do nowadays and that evolved independently.
Some of these assertions seem rather post facto to me, like *I know that hydrogen and oxygen (will) form water. Even emergence seems post facto, we only assume that it is bound by some law/s. My question is, is there a math formula that can predict the ordinal place/s of the next prime number/s? I daresay we only label as laws or properties those that emerge out of the organization of atoms, when in fact they simply ARE. Simply the way it IS.
An equation needs data, a context to be applied to. Reductionists ignore the obligation to apply the fruits of their labor. We need scientists to model analytical "inverse physics" equations that tell you what input is required to produce some outcome.
This has happened in isolated incidents, like programs that generate optical lenses and computer circuits. Other disciplines don't have tools like that usually due to funding or computational complexity. We need a better, analytical "inverse physics" than brute force (human design, machine learning, trial and error)
I think this is an important point. It seems to me that what you are really getting at is that no matter how good the equations are, we still need the right initial and boundary conditions to solve them. I am hopeful that quantum computing may allow us to explore a multitude of initial conditions to find out which ones are correct. This might expand the power of the reductionist/assemblists greatly.
So it's all about the sequence or the position of atoms relative to each other which leads to different types of masterpieces of science.
Ex- Human Brain, Fuel or the potatoes
What is the Present?
A place where Time rests before continuing.
많이 모여야 비로소 나타나는 성질들...
따라서 환원주의의 방식으론 도저히 그 성질들을 알수없다는 이야기.
원자를 아무리 잘 이해하더라도 그것들이 많이 모여 구성하는 거시적 존재의 거시적 특성을 알수는 없다.
그래서 스케일 별로,거시적인 대상 별로 각기 다른 과학분야가 존재한다.
다큐 영상은 창발 (Emergence)이란 주제로 과학에 대한 흥미로운 관점을 제시하고 있지만...
개인적으로는 이러한 논쟁의 원인이 단지 인간 중심적인 편견에 의한 착각에 기인한다고 생각한다.
애초에 창발이란 말도 인간 중심적이다.
우리가 보기에 세상은 다체롭고 각각의 크기별로 대상별로 나타나는 특징과 성질이 다르다는 것은 어디까지나 인간이 보기에 그런 것이다.
몇 안되는 물리법칙과 그 법칙을 따르는 수많은 입자들이 모인 다음 시간이 충분이 흐르면..짜잔~우리가 보는 이 세상이 나타난다.
그리고 그게 전부다.
그런데 인간이 크기별 대상별로 나눈다음 온갖 의미를 부여하곤 새로운 법칙들이 창발한다고 착각하는 것이다.
질문이 잘못되면 답이 꼬인다.