4 ms·

Emergence is an agent that isn't me. Why am I even conscious if all my agency is subsumed by the egregore. This isn't freeing in the slightest, maybe only for t

by hoseja 3y ago

Emergence is an agent that isn't me. Why am I even conscious if all my agency is subsumed by the egregore. This isn't freeing in the slightest, maybe only for the most conditioned megacity dwellers.

layer8 3y ago
Within a group of n people, everything else being equal, why would you expect to be able to steer its behavior by more than 1/nth?
- hoseja 3y ago
  But that's the problem with emergence, you don't even get the 1/n. You get zero, or very near it.
  - jgilias 3y ago
    I think you misunderstand what emergence is. It’s really not an argument about if you have agency or not in your individual actions.
  - layer8 3y ago
    Well, you had the agency to read HN today, to comment here, and to choose the contents of your comment. So I’m not sure what you’re getting at, beyond the well-trodden free-will debate.
jgilias 3y ago
This couldn’t be farther from the truth though. As in, I don’t think any place I’ve even been to would count as a megacity. Let alone where I live. The way I see it is that emergence is not an agent. More like some basic law of nature. Think about planned gardens and suburbs versus natural forests and medieval city centers. You can mow your lawn every week, expend obscene amounts of water during the summer, pour everything with herbicides in a misguided effort to have the perfect lawn, but the moment you stop doing it, nature takes over and introduces a fractal amount of complexity in just a few seasons. In my opinion an old forest where nature has been let alone for some time is much more beautiful and interesting than any planned garden, and a medieval city centre much more beautiful and interesting than any planned neighborhood. And then, emergence explaining our civilization doesn’t necessarily imply that you don’t have agency as an individual. It just says that the total of whatever we collectively do, irrespective of if we’re compelled to do it, or have free will, results in more than just the sum of individual parts.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hoseja 3y ago
  Tell it to the choanoflagellates. The emergent agent isn't a harmonious oak old growth. It's a ravenous, homogenizing beast, primally unable to die; accelerating forever in the red queen race; killing everything that isn't itself, fundamentally unaware and uncaring of the individuals it's made of.
  - jgilias 3y ago
    But you don’t know that. As in, it’s impossible for you (or me) to know that. I do care about my cells. Like, not individually, but I do care that they are in as good an environment for them as I can muster. I don’t think they have any concept of me. Or if they do, I don’t think they can reason about how murderous am I.

by hoseja 3y ago

Emergence is an agent that isn't me. Why am I even conscious if all my agency is subsumed by the egregore. This isn't freeing in the slightest, maybe only for the most conditioned megacity dwellers.

layer8 3y ago

Within a group of n people, everything else being equal, why would you expect to be able to steer its behavior by more than 1/nth?

hoseja 3y ago
But that's the problem with emergence, you don't even get the 1/n. You get zero, or very near it.
- jgilias 3y ago
  I think you misunderstand what emergence is. It’s really not an argument about if you have agency or not in your individual actions.
- layer8 3y ago
  Well, you had the agency to read HN today, to comment here, and to choose the contents of your comment. So I’m not sure what you’re getting at, beyond the well-trodden free-will debate.

jgilias 3y ago

This couldn’t be farther from the truth though. As in, I don’t think any place I’ve even been to would count as a megacity. Let alone where I live. The way I see it is that emergence is not an agent. More like some basic law of nature. Think about planned gardens and suburbs versus natural forests and medieval city centers. You can mow your lawn every week, expend obscene amounts of water during the summer, pour everything with herbicides in a misguided effort to have the perfect lawn, but the moment you stop doing it, nature takes over and introduces a fractal amount of complexity in just a few seasons. In my opinion an old forest where nature has been let alone for some time is much more beautiful and interesting than any planned garden, and a medieval city centre much more beautiful and interesting than any planned neighborhood. And then, emergence explaining our civilization doesn’t necessarily imply that you don’t have agency as an individual. It just says that the total of whatever we collectively do, irrespective of if we’re compelled to do it, or have free will, results in more than just the sum of individual parts.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hoseja 3y ago
Tell it to the choanoflagellates. The emergent agent isn't a harmonious oak old growth. It's a ravenous, homogenizing beast, primally unable to die; accelerating forever in the red queen race; killing everything that isn't itself, fundamentally unaware and uncaring of the individuals it's made of.
- jgilias 3y ago
  But you don’t know that. As in, it’s impossible for you (or me) to know that. I do care about my cells. Like, not individually, but I do care that they are in as good an environment for them as I can muster. I don’t think they have any concept of me. Or if they do, I don’t think they can reason about how murderous am I.