I used to believe in the “sum is greater than the parts” bit, in the context of emergence etc, but then I’d realized it’s at odds with basic information theory:

I used to believe in the “sum is greater than the parts” bit, in the context of emergence etc, but then I’d realized it’s at odds with basic information theory: where does the information go? what computes these behaviors? To me the answer is pretty clear: you’re outsourcing some of your storage and compute into the environment. Without a suitable substrate none of this would be possible.