How Emergence plays outin our map-mediated world

Tony Smith Melbourne Emergence Meetup

11 August 2016

the land was invaded and people who weren’t here were killed

Myron Lysenko Cumberland River Poet

1 August 2016

Tonight (+ next 2? years)• Territory, Maps & Facebook: Popper’s 3 Worlds

• Dissipating Gradients under the Second Law

• Mechanisms of Emergence in the Territory

• Encoding Traces for Dynamic Persistence

• Biology, Neurology, Ecology, Linguistic, Digital

• Conservative Physics v Diminishing Cost of Maps

• Laws Emerge from Words, Gambling from Money

Karl Popper's (1972; 1978, 1994) three worlds of knowledge. World 2 is an emergent property based in World 1. World 3 is an emergent property based in World 2

From Bill’s Application Holy Wars

Language Knowledge

Digital Media

Stars Storms

Stalactites

Territory

Biology Neurology

Ecology

Facebook

Not quite Popper’s 3 Worlds

Refer Lynne Kelly Memory Code

c.f. other species Refer Bill Hall

ApplicationHoly Wars

Encoding Traces for

Dynam

ic Persistence

Maps

Encoding Thoughts for Peer Communication

The Second Law of Thermodynamics describes closed systems tending to

equilibrium, but our young universe is populated by stars and more that are far

from equilibrium and provide energy gradients which can only dissipate at

speeds allowed by other physics. Within such gradient flows, new entities

can emerge and do ‘useful’ work to increase the rate of dissipation.

Stan Salthe’s Rule of Thumb says less than 50% of the flow can be used.

Flow dissipation is but one class of mechanism for Emergence in the Territory. Novelty can also Emerge because a network

of processes support each other. Stu Kauffman has proposed such a metabolic

network as a precursor to cellular life. A minimal version between two (or three) entities is more commonly recognised as

Synergy, or as Symbiosis in the life world. The Territory is built on Synergy between two

very different entities: proton and electron.

Maturing Cosmos

Galaxy

Solar

System

Red

Giant

Type 1a

Supernova

Chaotic

Inflation

Conservative Bubble

Neutron Star

Earth

Vacuum

Sources

Sinks

Producers

Reproducers

Locally

Conservative

Physics

Human

Intellectual

Retreat

from

Centre

Stage

Re Conservative Physics Empty space is far from nothing

Must account for angular isotropy, unimpeded transit of light and matter

Conservation of linear momentum, angular momentum, electric charge, baryon number, energy-mass, etc.

Extrapolating from cellular automata findings: conservative bubbles form when a sufficient (tiny) seed is left without any embedded (exponential) reproductive elements, after which it grows by (polynomial) production

(Schematic opposite presented as example at workshop on Philosophy of Complexity held in Stellenbosch, South Africa, 2007)

12/08/2016 1:00:56 pmWhat follows assumes an unpopular notion of time:

The only time that exists is now, everywhere engaged in producing the next now.

Some entities/patterns persist, providing traces of earlier times.

Living cells embody a process for encoding traces of their environment in a form that facilitates ongoing

regeneration of an almost consistent lineage. Networked neurons embody a very different process for encoding traces of their environment in a form

that facilitates the flexibility of a mobile animal.

Physical traces The moon retains traces of many events against astronomical odds over billions of years

C.f. landscapes of a living earth with tectonic, ice, hydrological, wind and other active processes degrading most traces

Orbital dynamics retain traces of past encounters, as in Saturn’s rings

Knowledge needed to find and read traces

By finding a way of encoding a capacity to adapt to variations in its environment across time, life effectively invented the notion of time continuing that so pervades our lives today.

The notion of time as a linear measure, albeit with strong daily and yearly cycles, has served us well, especially when used by science to make predictions that can be remarkably accurate.

However this mathematical ideal of time as a linear dimension confirms that time is only an imaginary measure of distance.

To transform a measure of time into a measure of space needs not only c, the speed of light, but also i, the square root of -1.

While admitting its dependence on cellular biology and the similarly different organisational patterns of other

life forms and ecosystems that have co-emerged with it, we focus here on the neurological encoding of mobile

animals (leaving corner cases for another day). No matter what else the notion of consciousness may be

burdened with, it does have an active role in encoding experience of the world, including recursive reference to earlier encoded memory, in such a way that those accumulated memories define the individual mind. And it appears that the sleeping and dreaming, not

quite unconscious, mind plays an active role in further organising and suppressing some encoded memories. Acquired brain injury provides supporting evidence.

Many species share Knowledge essential to their success as populations, with human language

facilitating an apparently unmatched division of labor, and consequent social complexification.

Lynne Kelly provides a comprehensive account of how vital orally-maintained Knowledge, indexed by place and mnemonic devices, transitioned to

performance spaces associated with monumental architecture to support agricultural settlement.

Bill Hall describes ever-accelerating transitions to writing, printing, electronic communications and digital computation keeping Knowledge central to human affairs, if subservient to power and money.

Our Knowledge is how we Map our Territory Popper locates this internal neurologically encoded Map in World 2, but genetic encoding of heredity as external and thus World 3, seemingly not seeing them as being of the

same kind, even if very different in implementation detail. Here I focus on their commonality as dynamic encodings that directly facilitate adaptation, and contrast them with

the representational encodings of natural language, decorated artefact, art, writing and exploding digitisation.

Such dynamic encodings are tightly coupled to conservative condensed matter physics which imposes limits on growth. Representational encodings are effectively decoupled from most physical constraints, even more so at every iteration.

Mapping the Territory• We think of Maps as Diagrammatic Representations

• Such Maps are useless without Words and Numbers

• Diagrams take more work than Words or Numbers

• Many views of the Territory mapped by Words alone

• Oversimplified mapping into Numbers takes control

• Maps decoupled from Territory’s conservative physics

• Flow of Words has little constraint, Money even less

The Song Remains the Same?

Movie at: https://vimeo.com/104588900

A Verbaliser in most humans’ heads forms candidate sentence fragments almost every waking or dreaming

moment, a few of which are stitched into coherent utterances or typed and edited with a keyboard.

Such Conversations are only marginally related to conserved physics, so expand without physical limit.

While much is redundant, ignored or falls on deaf ears, some is received more warmly and begins a

process of Consensus building via meetings of minds. So we get articles, books, contracts and regulations covering every sphere of human interest, and with

Knowledge industries dedicated to their production.

There is an implicit assumption that texts should be an accurate Map of the Territory, with exceptions for fiction

However Language turns out to be a two-edged sword

Language can be a powerful tool for sharing Knowledge

But it is even more efficient at spreading misconceptions

And it is generally inefficient at propagating corrections

Lynne Kelly showed the value placed on knowledge from long before agriculture and human settlement. Today an increasingly vicious feedback loop allows

knowledge work to be considerably overvalued. The commentariat is predominantly white collar and advocates white collar education and remuneration.

Old expectations and academic pressure towards hyper specialisation conflict with capital’s desire for

interchangeable workers and rewarding CEOs.

Word v Excel v DrawNot the place to say much about

Draw

Necessary proliferation of

media tools

Pictures worth a thousand words

Effective use vital to Facebook

Media capture getting cheaper

Numbers, Measurement and Counting In the Territory, quantification measures perform consistently

Within Mathematics, numbers have seductive accuracy

In the messy Map of human value judgements, little is stable

Standardisation of measures enables confident exchange

Many forms of money try to support confident interchange

Trade needs to be win-win in terms of each trader’s values

Physical markets facilitate trade, generalised to intangibles

Value abstracted: fees, wages, salaries, commissions, rent

Taxation and government, accountants and lawyers

After Cowries and other relatively stable commodities served as local currencies, gold beat silver to become the final backing for promissory notes and coinage. The Gold Standard was then watered down through

legislated prudential ratios before finally being superseded during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In October 1976’s last days of Gerald Ford’s unelected presidency, the USA abandoned any connection of the

value of its dollar to gold, leaving the international monetary system based entirely on Fiat Currency. Banks are supposed to maintain a prudential ratio

between assets and loans but policy looseness leaves no guaranteed cap on their ability to create money.

So we have a world increasingly awash with money

Financial institutions and instruments emerge and grow

Growth statistics more about monetisation than value, more about rate of flow than built or natural asset value

Neoliberal ideology facilitates the rich mopping up

But then we get Facebook and its supporting cast

Knowledge workers in overdrive creating unpaid content

Universal basic income proposed to restore inflows

Putting this into today’s context While many have deeper routes, all components of today’s

natural environment survived the 2.5 million year Pleistocene ice age and its repeated inter-glacial succession processes. Almost all land and coastal ecosystems have more recently co-evolved with knowledge-centric human communities.

Human industrial scale processes are now breaking all that. These are being driven by desk-bound knowledge workers

with no material constraints on their words nor their money.

Truth and prudence are losing badly

Bringing it even closer to home

Transurban has to go!

P.S. Agreements and disagreements with Bill Hall

• General thrust and detail of Application Holy Wars

• Concern that environmental threat understated

• But I do see industrial effects outpacing warming

• Disagree on Fermi Paradox for two reasons:

• Combinatorics shows civilisation against all odds

• Evolution mostly prefers specialists to generalists

Responsibility of being first to aspire to know all

Needing a Black Swan Event

Movie at: https://vimeo.com/42961266

Assuming they exist at all, it would not matter who The Powers That Be are.

They’d have no reason for doing what they’re doing beyond Fear and Greed.

Or are ‘they’ an Emergent entity that Supervenes?