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--- advanced_notions:emergence [2017/11/30 08:50]
jakobadmin [Why is it interesting?]
+++ advanced_notions:emergence [2018/02/18 16:43] (current)
jakobadmin [Layman]
@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 <blockquote>I tend to assume that space-time and everything in it are in some sense emergent <cite>[[https://www.quantamagazine.org/edward-witten-ponders-the-nature-of-reality-20171128/|Ed Witten]]</cite></blockquote>
-<blockquote>Symmetries are caused by things, not the cause of things <cite>p. 124 in Laughlins "A different Universe"</cite></blockquote>
+<blockquote>Symmetries are caused by things, not the cause of things <cite>p. 124 in "A different Universe" by R. Laughlin</cite></blockquote>
 <blockquote>
@@ Line 21: / Line 21: @@
 <tabbox Layman>
-  * A great explanation of emergence for laymen is [[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/10/29/quasiparticles-and-the-miracle-of-emergence/|Quasiparticles and the Miracle of Emergence]] by Brian Skinner
+<blockquote>[T]he concept of [emergence] has suffered in the sciences, and
+especially, in physics, where all of the effort has been on describing the individual,
+typically by breaking its description down to that of even smaller
+individuals. While, without any doubt, this has been a useful endeavour,
+it unfortunately has evolved in a rigid doctrine, leaving no space for anything
+else. The most extreme manifestation of this dogma is the use of the
+term ‘theory of everything’ in particle physics. [...]
+**Biology evolved from chopping up individual animals in laboratories, to
+considering them in the context of other other animals and varying environments.
+the result is the theory of evolution of species. Similarly, our
+current (still very poor) understanding of the human brain makes it clear
+that the human brain should not be studied as something in isolation, but
+as something that fundamentally requires interaction with other brains [30].
+In contemporary audio equipment, music consists of nothing but a strings
+of zeros and ones. Instead, the entities that truly make up music are pitch,
+sound, rhythm, chord progression, crescendo, and so on. And in particular,
+music is not just a bag of these, since their intricate interaction is even
+more important than these constituents themselves. The same is true for
+film, where it isn’t even that clear what it is made up from, but it does
+include such things as (easily replaceable) actors, decors, cameras, which all
+are part of a soup stirred by a director. But again, in contemporary video
+equipment, it is nothing but a string of zeros and ones.**
+**In fact, everything that goes on in pretty much all modern devices is
+nothing but zeros and ones.** While it was Turing’s brilliance to realise that
+this could in fact be done, and provided a foundation for the theory of
+computability [38], this is in fact the only place where the zeros and ones are
+truly meaningful, in the form of a Turing machine. Elsewhere, **it is nothing
+but a (universal) representation, with no conceptual qualities regarding the subject matter.**
+<cite>https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.07618</cite>
+</blockquote>
@@ Line 32: / Line 64: @@
 </blockquote>
-Great books on the topic are:
+----
+**Recommended Articles:**
+  * A great explanation of emergence for laymen is [[https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/10/29/quasiparticles-and-the-miracle-of-emergence/|Quasiparticles and the Miracle of Emergence]] by Brian Skinner
+**Recommended Books**
   * "A different Universe" by Robert Laughlin

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