Emergence Biology 361 = Computer Science 361 Bryn Mawr College Spring 2006

Some Blog Thoughts Apparently this is going to be more of a philosophical course than I had planned on ... PeterOMalley can a person create a program with no rules and no purpose? ... Every single program I've written has been to solve some sort of problem of accomplish some task ... Julia_Ferraioli before thinking about your post I definitely thought that a program could have no purpose, but now I don't know ... LauraKasakoff There's a strong argument to be made for tossing the concept of purpose onto the sentimental, self-delusional pile of anthropomorphisms ... Kathy Maffei I was thinking about the ideas of "free will" and "agency", and they do not make any sense to me ... DavidRosen

Emergence - from the simple to the complex without an architect/planner

• Digital determinism - the universe is computable (and hence deterministic)
• Not a bad baseline, since there are indeed computable things/features in the universe
• Our intuition/aspirations suggest there are other things as well (see for example Roger Penrose, Emperor's New Mind, 1989)
• There exist at least some non-computable things in the universe (see for example Gregory Chaitin, Omega and why math has no TOES, 2005)
• Could such things, as well as "agency", "purpose, "free will" be better understood as emergent properties of a computable system? In what ways do they not reduce to something "computable"? How could they emerge from something computable (again, with no architect/planner)?
• " there's nothing wrong with using new frames of reference to examine the unknown - why not try them on for size?" ... Kathy Maffei
• philosophy? or ... cosmology?, physics?, or chemistry?, biology?, cognitive science?, social science?, mathematics?, or computer science?, gaming?, art?, or ... dealing with problems that surface in all these realms?
• writing programs without a well-defined objective, to see what happens, to be surprised? to make better sense of what does not make sense?

The World of Langton's Ant compared to cellular automata

• origin of the rules?
• the existence of an agent within the universe?
  • different behaviors?
  • differences in rules? ... "encapsulation"
  • computational equivilence (where did "encapsulation" come from? where might it come from?)

"Purpose": using The World of Langton's Ant to try out "unpeeling the onion"

• what is an observer looking for?
• what is actually in the ant?
  • simple rules, simple interactions
  • no change inside corresponding to observer's sense of behavior change
  • nothing inside corresponding to observer's sense of "purpose"
  • change in behavior due to agent's effect on environment ("stigmergy") in turn affecting agent behavior without internal change
• Conclusions - useful?
• could we put something in the agent that would make act more "purposefully"? what?

The determinate/indeterminate distinction

• Compare Langton's Ant to, for example Segregation/Integration
• yes, non-deterministic systems can create order
• yes, deterministic systems can create "pseudo"- randomness
• does indeterminacy get one another in principle?
  • The Magic Sierpinski Triangle
  • A Voyage of Exploration
  • Free Will?

NetLogo as a modelling environment for agent-based modelling

• Has universe, so can do game of life, cellular automata - "patches"
• Can do interactive agents - "turtles"
• Environment agent interactions

Assignment:

• Work through NetLogo documentation
• Create a World of Langton's Ant, with modifications?
• Create an "exploring" ant?
• Create a "free will" ant?