4 ms·

Isn't "emergent properties" another way to say "we're not very good at understanding the capabilities of complex systems"?

seliopou 1y ago
Yes, it’s a cop-out and smells mostly of dualism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/
theobreuerweil 1y ago
I understood it to mean properties of large-scale systems that are not properties of its components. Like in thermodynamics: zooming in to a molecular level, you can reverse time without anything seeming off. Suddenly you get a trillion molecules and things like entropy appear, and time is not reversible at all.
tunesmith 1y ago
It just means they haven't modeled the externalities. A plane on the ground isn't emergent. In the air it is, at least until you perfectly model weather, which you can't do, so its behavior is emergent. But I think a plane is also a good comparison because it shows that you can manage it; we don't have to perfectly model weather to still have fairly predictable air travel.
esafak 1y ago
Not quite. Complex systems can exhibit macroscopic properties not evident at microscopic scales. For example, birds self organize into flocks, an emergent phenomenon, visible to the untrained eye. Our understanding of how it happens does not change the fact that it does. There is a field of study for this called statistical mechanics. https://ganguli-gang.stanford.edu/pdf/20.StatMechDeep.pdf https://ganguli-gang.stanford.edu/pdf/20.StatMechDeep.pdf
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Very interesting crossover!
- anonymars 1y ago
  See also: stigmergy
bunderbunder 1y ago
I've always understood it more to mean, "phenomena that happen due to the interactions of a system's parts without being explicitly encoded into their individual behavior." Fractal patterns in nature are a great example of emergent phenomena. A single water molecule contains no explicit plan for how to get together with its buddies and make spiky hexagon shapes when they get cold. And I've always understood talking about emergence as if it were some sort of quasi-magical and unprecedented new feature of LLMs to mean, "I don't have a deep understanding of how machine learning works." Emergent behavior is the entire point of artificial neural networks, from the latest SOTA foundation model all the way back to the very first tiny little multilayer perceptron.
- andy99 1y ago
  Emergence in the context of LLMs is really just us learning that "hey, you don't actually need intelligence to do <task>, turns out it can be done using a good enough next token predictor. We're basically learning what intelligence isn't as we see some of the things these models can do. I always understood this to be the initial framing, e.g. in the Language Models are Few Shot Learners paper but then it got flipped around.
  - dmd 1y ago
    Or maybe you need intelligence to be a good enough next token predictor. Maybe the thing that “just” predicts the next token can be called “intelligence”.
    - bunderbunder 1y ago
      Maybe? Mostly I just think that "Intelligence" and "AI" go together like "life, the universe and everything" and "42".
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    Or more generally "fitting a model to data".
  - Workaccount2 1y ago
gond 1y ago
Not at all. Here is an analogy: A car is a system which brings you from point A to B. No part of the car can bring you from point A to B. Not the seats, the wheels, not the frame, not even the motor. If you put the motor on a table, it won’t move one bit. The car, as a system, however does. The emergent property of a car, seen as a system, is that it brings you from one location to another. A system is the product of the interaction of its parts. It is not the sum of the behaviour of its parts. If a system does not exhibit some form of emergent behaviour, it is not a system, but something else. Maybe an assembly.
- unsupp0rted 1y ago
  That sounds like semantics. If putting together a bunch of X's in a jar always makes the jar go Y, then is Y an emergent property? Or we need to better understand why a bunch of X's in a jar do that, and then the property isn't emergent anymore, but rather the natural outcome of well-understood X's in a well-understood jar.
  - gond 1y ago
    Ah. Not semantics, that is cybernetics and systems theory. As in your example: If a bunch of x in a jar leads to the jar tipping over, it is not emergent. That’s just cause and effect. Problem to start with is that the jar containing x is not even a system in the first place, emergence as a concept is not applicable here. There may be a misunderstanding on your side of the term emergence. Emergence does not equal non-understanding or some spooky-hooky force coming from the unknown. We understand the functions of the elements of a car quite well. The emergent behaviour of a car was intentionally brought about by massive engineering. Reductionism does not lead to an explaining-away of emergence.
- cluckindan 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Leray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Leray
  - tinix 1y ago
    haha cool! turned the car into a motorcycle. here's an article with a photo for anyone who's interested: https://archive.is/y96xb https://archive.is/y96xb
jfengel 1y ago
It's more specific than that. Most complex systems just produce noise. A few complex systems produce behavior that we perceive as simple. This is surprising, and gets the name "emergent".
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seliopou 1y ago

Yes, it’s a cop-out and smells mostly of dualism: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/

theobreuerweil 1y ago

I understood it to mean properties of large-scale systems that are not properties of its components. Like in thermodynamics: zooming in to a molecular level, you can reverse time without anything seeming off. Suddenly you get a trillion molecules and things like entropy appear, and time is not reversible at all.

tunesmith 1y ago

It just means they haven't modeled the externalities. A plane on the ground isn't emergent. In the air it is, at least until you perfectly model weather, which you can't do, so its behavior is emergent. But I think a plane is also a good comparison because it shows that you can manage it; we don't have to perfectly model weather to still have fairly predictable air travel.

esafak 1y ago

Not quite. Complex systems can exhibit macroscopic properties not evident at microscopic scales. For example, birds self organize into flocks, an emergent phenomenon, visible to the untrained eye. Our understanding of how it happens does not change the fact that it does. There is a field of study for this called statistical mechanics. https://ganguli-gang.stanford.edu/pdf/20.StatMechDeep.pdf https://ganguli-gang.stanford.edu/pdf/20.StatMechDeep.pdf

HPsquared 1y ago
Very interesting crossover!
anonymars 1y ago
See also: stigmergy

bunderbunder 1y ago

I've always understood it more to mean, "phenomena that happen due to the interactions of a system's parts without being explicitly encoded into their individual behavior." Fractal patterns in nature are a great example of emergent phenomena. A single water molecule contains no explicit plan for how to get together with its buddies and make spiky hexagon shapes when they get cold. And I've always understood talking about emergence as if it were some sort of quasi-magical and unprecedented new feature of LLMs to mean, "I don't have a deep understanding of how machine learning works." Emergent behavior is the entire point of artificial neural networks, from the latest SOTA foundation model all the way back to the very first tiny little multilayer perceptron.

andy99 1y ago
Emergence in the context of LLMs is really just us learning that "hey, you don't actually need intelligence to do <task>, turns out it can be done using a good enough next token predictor. We're basically learning what intelligence isn't as we see some of the things these models can do. I always understood this to be the initial framing, e.g. in the Language Models are Few Shot Learners paper but then it got flipped around.
- dmd 1y ago
  Or maybe you need intelligence to be a good enough next token predictor. Maybe the thing that “just” predicts the next token can be called “intelligence”.
  - bunderbunder 1y ago
    Maybe? Mostly I just think that "Intelligence" and "AI" go together like "life, the universe and everything" and "42".
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Or more generally "fitting a model to data".
- Workaccount2 1y ago

gond 1y ago

Not at all. Here is an analogy: A car is a system which brings you from point A to B. No part of the car can bring you from point A to B. Not the seats, the wheels, not the frame, not even the motor. If you put the motor on a table, it won’t move one bit. The car, as a system, however does. The emergent property of a car, seen as a system, is that it brings you from one location to another. A system is the product of the interaction of its parts. It is not the sum of the behaviour of its parts. If a system does not exhibit some form of emergent behaviour, it is not a system, but something else. Maybe an assembly.

unsupp0rted 1y ago
That sounds like semantics. If putting together a bunch of X's in a jar always makes the jar go Y, then is Y an emergent property? Or we need to better understand why a bunch of X's in a jar do that, and then the property isn't emergent anymore, but rather the natural outcome of well-understood X's in a well-understood jar.
- gond 1y ago
  Ah. Not semantics, that is cybernetics and systems theory. As in your example: If a bunch of x in a jar leads to the jar tipping over, it is not emergent. That’s just cause and effect. Problem to start with is that the jar containing x is not even a system in the first place, emergence as a concept is not applicable here. There may be a misunderstanding on your side of the term emergence. Emergence does not equal non-understanding or some spooky-hooky force coming from the unknown. We understand the functions of the elements of a car quite well. The emergent behaviour of a car was intentionally brought about by massive engineering. Reductionism does not lead to an explaining-away of emergence.
cluckindan 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Leray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Leray
- tinix 1y ago
  haha cool! turned the car into a motorcycle. here's an article with a photo for anyone who's interested: https://archive.is/y96xb https://archive.is/y96xb

jfengel 1y ago

It's more specific than that. Most complex systems just produce noise. A few complex systems produce behavior that we perceive as simple. This is surprising, and gets the name "emergent".

deleted 1y ago

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