3 ms·

Writings on chaos and complexity theory obviously aren't talking about LLMs. Those theories are so high level that it might as well be akin to "philosophy" to t

Writings on chaos and complexity theory obviously aren't talking about LLMs. Those theories are so high level that it might as well be akin to "philosophy" to the applied scientists working on LLM research. Additionally keep in mind emergent behavior is a very rare occurrence in even the most complex software projects. I mean it's common if you count "bugs" as emergent behavior. But emergent behavior that is a feature who's origins are not completely understood? That is extremely rare.

mejutoco 4y ago
OP has a good point I think, even if it does not refer to LLM, which to me is too strict of a requirement. I think emergent behaviour happens in a lot of videogames. Famously in Dwarf Fortress, with the cat getting drunk, but also in general, where game designers play the game to see if emergent behaviour of the game rules "feels" good. Yesterday I was reading a book about designing games, and it literally has a section called emergent behaviour. If by emergent behaviour we refer to something like Ghost in the Shell, then it happens less often :)
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  >I think emergent behaviour happens in a lot of videogames. Famously in Dwarf Fortress, with the cat getting drunk, but also in general, where game designers play the game to see if emergent behaviour of the game rules "feels" good. Depends. Dwarf fortress and games are sort of a contradiction. Emergent behavior is emergent because the behavior was not designed explicitly. However for games like DF the game was explicitly designed to have "emergent" behavior when the definition of "emergent behavior" is for the behavior to have NOT been designed. Don't get too hung up on that concept though. It's just a contradiction in English vocabulary there's no deeper underlying meaning behind that other than a semantic language issue. Anyway my point was emergent behavior in software is rare because we're operating in controlled environment. It's rare even in games. It's not an expected attribute at all. I'm not saying this isn't interesting to think about, but the comment I responded to was in fact, factually not fully correct. Emergent behavior is NOT expected. But it does happen, in the case of DF it was "designed" to happen, and it has happened elsewhere as well. Usually though when it does happen it was explicitly "designed" You can see this in genetic programming or evolutionary programming especially.
  - drdeca 4y ago
    My thought of what "emergent behavior" is, isn't that it is necessarily "unintended", but rather that it isn't really present in the small scale stuff, and isn't an obvious consequence of the small scale stuff? Like, a qualitative difference between the base level stuff, and the consequences when it all fits together. Like, if God intended for the universe to have something which acts like water, when designing subatomic physics, that doesn't make the behavior of water "not emergent behavior".
    - HervalFreire 4y ago
      That's a blurry definition I can sort of feel what you're trying to convey here but objectively it doesn't make sense. A brick building for example. Is a brick building the emergent effect of bricks? No. This makes your definition inconsistent because it should fit the brick building but colloquially we know it doesn't fit. A brick building is NOT an emergent effect of bricks. It was deliberately designed from bricks. So long as the effect is some reduction of entropy and there was no intention in producing such effect then it is "emergent." This is really the only definition that is consistently inline with our intuition of the concept.
_glass 4y ago
At least in the social sciences not so abstract. There are certain behaviors that can just be explained as emergent, rather than individual behaviors. That might be crowd, market, group, politics, culture (with art, language, fashion, taboos, etc.).
- HervalFreire 4y ago
  Of course. But the computer is a controlled environment designed to imitate the rigor of formal mathematics. It is usually not expected for such behavior to occur in computing. Of course in the real world it happens all the time. YOU are emergent behavior. Humans and the rest of biology come from natural selection and evolution, which is basically by definition, emergent behavior of atoms.
jesusofnazarath 4y ago
[dead]

mejutoco 4y ago

OP has a good point I think, even if it does not refer to LLM, which to me is too strict of a requirement. I think emergent behaviour happens in a lot of videogames. Famously in Dwarf Fortress, with the cat getting drunk, but also in general, where game designers play the game to see if emergent behaviour of the game rules "feels" good. Yesterday I was reading a book about designing games, and it literally has a section called emergent behaviour. If by emergent behaviour we refer to something like Ghost in the Shell, then it happens less often :)

HervalFreire 4y ago
>I think emergent behaviour happens in a lot of videogames. Famously in Dwarf Fortress, with the cat getting drunk, but also in general, where game designers play the game to see if emergent behaviour of the game rules "feels" good. Depends. Dwarf fortress and games are sort of a contradiction. Emergent behavior is emergent because the behavior was not designed explicitly. However for games like DF the game was explicitly designed to have "emergent" behavior when the definition of "emergent behavior" is for the behavior to have NOT been designed. Don't get too hung up on that concept though. It's just a contradiction in English vocabulary there's no deeper underlying meaning behind that other than a semantic language issue. Anyway my point was emergent behavior in software is rare because we're operating in controlled environment. It's rare even in games. It's not an expected attribute at all. I'm not saying this isn't interesting to think about, but the comment I responded to was in fact, factually not fully correct. Emergent behavior is NOT expected. But it does happen, in the case of DF it was "designed" to happen, and it has happened elsewhere as well. Usually though when it does happen it was explicitly "designed" You can see this in genetic programming or evolutionary programming especially.
- drdeca 4y ago
  My thought of what "emergent behavior" is, isn't that it is necessarily "unintended", but rather that it isn't really present in the small scale stuff, and isn't an obvious consequence of the small scale stuff? Like, a qualitative difference between the base level stuff, and the consequences when it all fits together. Like, if God intended for the universe to have something which acts like water, when designing subatomic physics, that doesn't make the behavior of water "not emergent behavior".
  - HervalFreire 4y ago
    That's a blurry definition I can sort of feel what you're trying to convey here but objectively it doesn't make sense. A brick building for example. Is a brick building the emergent effect of bricks? No. This makes your definition inconsistent because it should fit the brick building but colloquially we know it doesn't fit. A brick building is NOT an emergent effect of bricks. It was deliberately designed from bricks. So long as the effect is some reduction of entropy and there was no intention in producing such effect then it is "emergent." This is really the only definition that is consistently inline with our intuition of the concept.

_glass 4y ago

At least in the social sciences not so abstract. There are certain behaviors that can just be explained as emergent, rather than individual behaviors. That might be crowd, market, group, politics, culture (with art, language, fashion, taboos, etc.).

HervalFreire 4y ago
Of course. But the computer is a controlled environment designed to imitate the rigor of formal mathematics. It is usually not expected for such behavior to occur in computing. Of course in the real world it happens all the time. YOU are emergent behavior. Humans and the rest of biology come from natural selection and evolution, which is basically by definition, emergent behavior of atoms.

jesusofnazarath 4y ago

[dead]