What is emergence? What does "emergent" mean?

[@intervibist]

Clearest explanation of emergence I've ever heard. I feel like I really understand it now. Thank you, Sabine!

[@ryanlyle9201]

The “wave” at sporting events analogy was perfect. Especially to us that remember what sporting events were like.

[@juanausensi499]

It was. It's only people getting up and down... but a real wave is formed. You can measure the amplitude, the frequency, even the energy that it carries.

[@ryanlyle9201]

​@@juanausensi499 I'm thinking the energy carried is directly proportional to the alcohol content of the individuals as well. A drunken macro-state if you will.

[@boukadoumramy8653]

@@juanausensi499 how do you measure its energy and its frequency ?

[@juanausensi499]

@@boukadoumramy8653 The frequency part is easy: you count complete cycles by time unit. For energy, i was thinking of a good answer but ... i finally realized i haven't one. You got me there. Maybe it is possible to calculate it, and i'm just incapable to figure it out. But now i'm thinking sports wave is different from a normal wave (i think it is still a wave, tho) but the energy behaviour is not the same. In a normal wave, for example the wave on a pond created by throwing a stone, the impact of the stone is the initial energy, and that energy is transported away by the waves. You can infer the energy of the stone impact from the waves, calculating how much energy is needed to move the water involved in the wave. But in the sporting wave, there is no initial energy transmitted, but several synchronized energy inputs from the people doing it. Trying to calculate the energy of the wave like we do with the water wave would give us an answer without meaning (what event with so many energy caused the wave?). At least, if we consider the energy mechanical energy. Maybe the energy transmitted is not mechanical in a sports wave, because people moving up and down is not causing mechanically the next row of people to move, instead they move because they are imitating the other row. So maybe we should talk about memetic energy? Well, i was tought to stop when i sounded like a raving madman, so i think i'm done here. I don't know if this is deep insight or plain nonsense, it's up to you to decide.

[@boukadoumramy8653]

@@juanausensi499 I don't think it's an actual wave because it does not obey the laws of reflection and transmission , like if you were to place a wall , what happens to the energy of the wave ? It just disappears out of the blue . It's not going to be reflected or transmited to the other side of the wall

[@mohamedahmedeltohfa5540]

I love that Dr. Sabine talks about everything related to foundations of physics and its puzzling semi-philosophical issues. I am glad to know about this channel.

[@MrDiaxus]

Gotta say, I'm a free will proponent and this is one of the strongest arguments I've heard. That said, it's not without faults. Take neurology for instance. We have mapped the entire brain and have found no properties that would create emergent consciousness that I am aware of. A neurologist told me about the emerging dialogue that this has produced. If this stands we have not only at least one thing that shows strong emergence, but that thing is most relevant to understanding anything at all.

[@jengleheimerschmitt7941]

You have some of the absolute best science / physics content. Impeccable. Thank you.

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

she does good; is that a beattles song?

[@EuphoricDan]

You're a world treasure Sabine.

[@EffySalcedo]

*plays treasure by Bruno Mars*

[@deanbuss1678]

Yeah she is. Especially since an uneducated Yank such as me can pick up what she's throwing down.

[@MichaelPiz]

Aw, come on! You can't drop a bomb like "consciousness is weakly emergent" and not elaborate! Now I am sad. ;)

[@fbkintanar]

There has been decades of research into consciousness as a weakly emergent phenomenon from cognitive processes and their underlying biophysical systems. I only keep up with a small part of that research but it already seems feasible to give an account characterizing "consciously seeing color" as something emergent while still fully naturalistic (explainable in terms of natural science). Primates see the color of a piece of ripe fruit at a granularity which is consistent with their evolved capacity to interact with their environment: they can grasp a piece of fruit while feeding, which is selective for their species. In the language of ecological psychology of perception (J.J.Gibson) primates are perceptually attuned to invariants in the exposed surface of the environment in line with the affordances to primate action in the perceptible environment they live in. At a low level of physical explanation, there is a flow of photons radiating out from the reflective surface of the fruit, which is sampled at a certain distance away by rhodopsin molecules in two retinal patches. What is emergent is a physiologically complex response to those sampled photons, which gives some information about depth (information about distance that guides where the primate hand should grasp the fruit) and color (is the fruit ripe enough to be of interest to a hungry primate now, or at a future date when it is riper?). But not all primates have the same color vision physiology, some are trichromats and some have red-green color-blindness and others are completely color-blind and see the world in black or white. So, for example, most humans can see a rainbow of possible colors, while others cannot distinguish red and green by their experience of the hue of surfaces. One group is conscious of the difference between red and green tomatoes, while another is not, and this will affect their propensity to pick them when hungry for a ripe tomato. This provides a reasonable explanation of the "easy" problem of perceptual awareness, which is at the very least an important part of consciousness. Philosophers of mind have distinguished a "hard problem" of explaining consciousness in terms of "what it is like to be" experiencing something in a conscious way (this started with discussions about "what is it like to be a bat"). These "what it is like" aspects of experience seem to involve "qualia" or the first-person phenomenological feel associated with a class of experiences (say the feel of seeing a ripe tomato, if a viewer is a trichromat or has red-green color blindness). I don't know if the following explanation works in general, but one way to account for qualia is in terms of how members of the same species (or a physiologically similar group within a species) have a shared scheme for cognizing the objects around them and their properties. Not only are primates attuned to objects like pieces of fruit, as social animals they are attuned to the purposeful behavior of the other primates in their troop or community. These behaviors seem to have an underlying mental cause, the behaving primate uses beliefs and desires and perceptions to guide action. For humans in particular, a typical human with language (non-autistic, let us say), their social functioning depends on attunement to the mental states of the other humans they interact with. Mental states of others are not directly perceptible but can be reliably inferred from their overt behavior. If you are not sure whether you are correctly cognizing a mental state, you can always ask them and they will tell you. Humans learn attunement to mental states like beliefs and desires and experiences of seeing (and maybe some aspects of that higher attunement is innate, like face recognition is innate or hardwired in the physiology of specific brain regions, and not constructed "online" from general cognitive capacities like seeing lines, contours, textures and color patches). Humans are attuned not only to the content of what somebody sees (the piece of fruit, or maybe the concept of a fruit which isn't really there at the moment) but also the mental state of seeing, which may have a "what it is like" character or phenomenological feel. If we consider human cognitive capacity to recognize and classify (for subsequent action) the objects and events in external perceptible scenes, this may involve a third-person scheme of attunements. This term "third-person scheme" refers to recognizing properties that are somehow "objective" and independent of the point of view of a cognizer (first person) or some interlocutor perceiving the same scene (second person). On the other hand, considering the higher-level cognitive capacity to recognize and classify the mental states of other humans (inferred from evidence like behavior, reports, social conventions and other background knowledge), this seems to involve an extended scheme of attunement to mental states. This extended scheme seems to associate with certain objects of cognition (the mental states of others or the similar mental states of the (first person) cognizer) certain properties of "directedness of mental states". A mental state is about something extramental, a characteristic that has been called "intentionality" in the philosophy of mind and language (e.g. John Searle's book _Intentionality_). The cognition of mental states as having some kind of content property that identifies what the mental state is about provides a basis for language and a broad range of higher cognitive functions. Such a scheme of attunements to mental states could be the neural and cognitive basis for the emergence of a system of concepts, including concepts that are shared through language and the lexicalized concepts called words. Since the same scheme of attunement to mental states is used to classify mental states of others and the cognizer's own mental states, many states come to be associated with what they feel like to a (first person) cognizer; the scheme associates qualia or phenomenological character to mental states. The scheme for cognizing mental states is a third-and-first person scheme of attunement, it provides a basis for attributing the property of consciousness to certain mental states. In summary, the higher cognition of mental states (inferred from evidence like behavior, reports, social conventions and other background knowledge) invoke a third-and-first person scheme where certain mental states have associated qualia or phenomenological feel. It is useful to make a distinction between the type of an experience (with respect to a shared scheme, fixed for the moment) and the occurrence of an experience of that type. Successful perception involves recognizing a signal as being of a certain type, in a way that can regulate afforded action. For attunement to invariants in signals like photonic flows from surface reflectance from nonmental obects or events, a third-person scheme seems to be adequate; and so qualia and phenomenological feels may not be relevant. Successful cognition of the mental states of others involves inferring from ongoing perception of behavior (and integrating it with remembered facts and knowledge). In this case, a species like (neurotypical) humans invokes a third-and-first person scheme that classifies the mental states of others as having "the same" type as what the cognizer could experience first person. When ascribing a mental state to a non-autistic person, an observer infers that there is a physiological-cognitive occurrence in that person that is relevantly similar to an experience of the same type that might occur in the cognizer themselves. The cognizer knows with certainty what their own experience fells like, and if they correctly attribute the same type to the mental state of the other person, they will also associate the qualia of the mental state with what occurs in the other person, with some assurance but a lower level of certainty. There are many details that need to be worked out by cognitive scientists before they get to an adequate theory of consciousness as a phenomenon that weakly emerges from the physiology of brains, sensory organs, controlled movement and the facts of social interactions. (For example, in a clinical setting you would like a theory that helps characterize certain aspects of consciousness of a patient along the autistic spectrum, as a basis for diagnosis and recommending therapies.) But in principle, such a theory could be worked out without invoking some nonphysical strong emergence. At least that's how it seems to me.

[@MichaelPiz]

@@fbkintanar Thanks very much for that. As I'm not a specialist, It will take me a few readings to completely understand it but it will certainly be well worth the effort.

[@fbkintanar]

@@MichaelPiz Lol, I wrote the thing and even for me, upon rereading it sometimes the logic doesn't really seem to flow. I revised one part (starting in the third paragraph), which ended up adding a couple of paragraphs. I hope it is a bit clearer now. I wrote this for my own clarification of issues I have been thinking about for some time, but I would welcome any detailed (constructive!) comments or questions. Cheers, and stay safe and healthy!

[@jdsartre9520]

@@fbkintanar TLPTWDRBWTLPGSOHKPPF (too long plus text walls, didn't read but wanted to. please give summary or highlight key points por favor)

[@malekmannai9445]

I join you. Actually I am crying :P, this is the easiest way to escape from the hard problem of consciousness. In this comment I explained why the conflict between strong emergence and standard model didn't make sens to me: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHuoZ2CMicmVoNk&lc=Ugyr7sYDHj5t6EXETyZ4AaABAg

[@janbormans3913]

In the lockdown times, I look forward to your weekly videos more than ever. Thank you!

[@brianfoley4328]

The best example of a brilliant mind is the ability to explain important concepts to someone like me....Thank You.

[@robertkelly5025]

The only person that I've heard explain not only emergence in a way that I understood, but her explanation on the loss of information from a black hole made more sense than anyone else I found. I've been in the wine business for thirty years. Often people talk about aspects of a wine without any idea what the words they are saying mean. I feel the same way about emergence and information paradox.

[@CoranceLChandler]

This video is going in my library. I will have to review it later; this is beyond fascinating and very well summarized.

[@schontasm]

Isn't the problem that the universe itself is so strongly emergent, that it's difficult, metaphorically, to measure all the ripples on its surface ?

[@therealzilch]

Gut erklärt und faszinierend, wie üblich. Danke aus bewölktem Wien, Scott

[@mahoneytechnologies657]

Sabine I am reading your book “ Lost in Math “ again, New Meaning and Ideas are Are Emerging every page I read , every time I read it! Thank You 👍🦊

[@mad_gamer6576]

I watch your videos to learn new things even if I do not fully comprehend the topic. Keep up producing your videos.

[@4623620]

Don't worry, you are curious, trying to understand and enjoying it, that is more than can be said of the majority of the human race. ;)

[@davedsilva]

How lovely that you add consciousness as emergence at the end

[@slash196]

Whether you count something as "strong emergence" rather depends on what you count as an "explanation".

[@kosatochca]

It's so sad that only hardline philosophers of science and psychologists have elaborated the problem of explanation. Teleology is unfairly discarded across natural sciences to the point that if your theory called teleological in evolutionary biology it's almost dealt as some sort of insult

[@slash196]

@@kosatochca Teleology and explanation are not synonyms. Teleological explanations are not the only kind.

[@kosatochca]

Ben Feddersen well I’ve just elaborated one of the more problematic example. Nevertheless, I think there is a strong bias towards direct A to B explanation in natural sciences and generally system theory is one of the most formalized challenge to this thinking

[@michaelyaziji]

Consciousness "qualia" are such a different *kind* of property, it is hard to even imagine a "weak emergence" explanation. :) If I understand your argument correctly, it goes something like this: While we might not have enough information to give a weak emergence explanation for consciousness, we should still assume it is weak emergence because strong emergence requires giving up on reductionism. Is this what you are saying?

[@hrperformance]

That was a really concise video! Emergence in this context is a new word for me! But it is definitely something I'll consider from now on when thinking about natural phenomena. Thanks very much for posting this Sabine! All the best to you and everyone else here. If we have to stay at home, what better thing to do than think about the universe! 😁

[@SabineHossenfelder]

Thanks! Happy you find it useful!

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

in any spark the way may shine mabe is there just is blindding us.

[@austin3789]

@@SabineHossenfelder thanks for your uncommon clarity. Are designed things, like picture mosaics and cars, only strongly emergent by analogy and are actually weakly emergent or are they actually strongly emergent?

[@mycurrentadventure]

@@austin3789 Maybe @Sabine has a better answer, but I think only a self-organizing system is weakly emergent by itself - because you could compute/deduce what the organization would likely be from the constituents. Designed things *might* be weakly emergent from the total system of designer and raw materials together ... that is, if we had a sufficiently good understanding of both we could model what would result (think: ants + dirt = ant hill full of tunnels). I say "might" here only because, as @Claude points out in another comment, the proof that a sufficiently complex system is weakly/strongly emergent is currently intractable (both computationally, and that it likely requires we have perfect knowledge of the constituent parts)

[@johnnyragadoo2414]

So refreshing. I liked the way she used the term “periodically” in the sense of repetitive or cyclic movement without having to explain her usage. The meaning was naturally emergent from context.

[@doctorbobcannabuzz]

Johnny Ragadoo canna-sapiens.com/in-god-we-rust-the-beauty.html What she’s talking about actually is at the heart of life and it’s explained in this monograph

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

for the word emergent there is submergent that sach a thing olone cant be, south cant go to north nither north can go to south which is need to create a newtral.

[@johnnyragadoo2414]

@@doctorbobcannabuzz "Random statistics cannot explain life since it is statistically too improbable to exist." That is a fascinating paradox. I must read further. Thank you for that link. By random improbable statistics - that you and I would happen to communicate - I'm enlightened!

[@johnnyragadoo2414]

@@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace A nice observation, Espacio. Nature couldn't abhor vacuum, since there is so much of it, but monopole magnetics will probably never be found.

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

@@johnnyragadoo2414 do black holes are systems with some kid of sharge since they are made by matter and matter as magnetism always has 2 poles? if no charge then what happen to the the poles.

[@wobh688]

Could strong emergence be understood as entropy reversal? If time were flowing in reverse we might see lots of things strongly emerging and find weakly emerging things difficult to understand and seeming impossible.

[@klemmichard8916]

There are example of strong emergence in words, especially compounded words. We call them exocentric if the emergent meaning is strong. French has many of these words, take "tue-loup" (lit. wolf killer), a name for Aconit plants.

[@johnkeck]

"Emergence" frames reality exactly upside down, at least for anything as complicated as an organism. It's not that particles give **rise to** the behavior of an organism, but that an organism uses the powers of its matter (particles) for its own ends. Notice how organisms discard individual molecules (as waste) once they cease to be useful to the organism's maintenance of its form.

[@rektator]

Interesting perspective to strong emergence is that for every sufficiently strong consistent formal language there exists statements that are not decidable. It follows that every theory of physics that is build on set theory will have undecidable statements from axioms, or the theory is inconsistent. It could be possible that for any physical theory there exists some physically meaningful statement that is not decidable from the axioms. This would yield strong emergence. About consciousness: We have no formal language in which we are sufficiently even able to talk about consciousness. It is very weird to then say that consciousness is an emergent property of modern physical theory. Consciousness is not movement of our body, it is not electrical signals. It is about the existence and the content of experience. Even if one were to build a theory that characterizes when a system is associated with consciousness, this would not mean that we are even capable of giving a formal definition for consciousness. We by definition aren't able to understand strongly emergent systems from their parts. Arguing against the existence of strongly emergent systems by pointing out that all systems we know are weakly emergent is a bad argument. It would be a good argument if we already knew all systems.

[@strangebird5974]

I want to slow down and think about that cat picture. What does it mean for a system to have some properties? Is the property of the picture that it looks like a cat actually a property of the picture? Or is it a property of how we perceive the picture? I feel that the human level of understanding and experiencing is a level that we cannot exclude from our description of the world when we think about on what levels to describe the world. Whenever we measure something, it has ultimately to be relatable to the human level of experience. What I'm grasping at is the question of whether the picture's likeness to a cat is somehow the same or somehow different from other physical properties of systems. I'm not entirely at a conclusion. There seems to be a difference to me. Maybe the difference I feel is there is due to other physical properties being quantitative, while the cat-likeness of the cat picture is qualitative.

[@benroche9555]

I have been trying to write an essay on emergence and this is the best explanantion that I've read so far.

[@XEinstein]

I actually started watching your videos, Sabine, after I saw you in a KZbin video having a discussion with Erik Verlinde when I was searching for as much information that I could find about his emergent gravity ideas. I feel I've come full circle now with your emergence video.

[@Alkis05]

Another example I saw of strong emergency was in music. There is a way to make a music in such a way that if it is played many many times faster It will become some other song. There is a music youtube channel by Adam Neely where he does that. It is a similar idea of the mosaic. But instead of change the spacial scale, you change the temporal (frequency) scale.

[@inccommensurable600]

Well there are good reasons why some people think that consciousness might be strongly emergent. If you think that there is a "hard problem of consciousness" it is natural to resolve the mystery this way; i.e. there is still a categorical difference in the understanding of complex macroscopic systems (like human brains... ) and conciseness itself. One way to think about this is to consider some kind of explanatory gap argument: all scientific theories do is giving us structural and functional understanding of the described object & no structural and functional understanding can ever explain how consciousness weakly emerges. Contrary it is "easy" to imagine a principal reduction of weakly emergent phenomena like color or even psycho-sociological properties of brains down to the standard model. But even if I know everything about a certain brain and calculate all its weakly emergent properties starting with a fundamental physical theory (maybe even predict its behavior and properties in a hard deterministic manner) my explanation lacks consciousness. Consciousness will always be an "ontological add-on" so to speak; -we could live in a Zombie-world (identical world & no consciousness) having the same fundamental physics as ours. Or at least by just looking at a hypothetical theory of everything describing this world we can never tell if we live in the Zombie or non-Zombie world. However there are other conclusions someone can draw of this line of reasoning. Maybe there is a way how consciousness weakly emerges that simply transcends our current understanding or there is a restriction in principle (no conscious observer can ever understand how consciousness arises). Finally someone might even argue that since there is no current example of strong emergence and that it seems that we cannot explain consciousness in principle that it might be fundamental.

[@maudeeb]

What might a test for strong emergence look like? Or put another way, how is weak emergence, or bottom-up causality, falsifiable? It seems to me the assumption that all is weak emergence we are yet to understand is as much an 'explanatory gap argument' as anything else, with the double assurance that no method is available to suggest otherwise.

[@inccommensurable600]

@@maudeeb hmmm I guess there is none. But I can imagine a mathematical/logical theorem proving that something we learned about the structure of consciousness is in principle not derivable from our (current) fundamental theory of nature -or maybe it is in principle independent like some mathematical hypothesis are independent from a certain set of axioms. However, these discoveries would always leave room for the assumption that either our current fundamental theory is wrong, or that that the description of consciousness we have is just an useful approximation/model. So there will never be a bullet-proof test. Therefore I think the problem here is even deeper. It seems like that our (current) scientific method just relies on reductionism/weak emergence and does not allow for anything describable by science to be strongly emergent --it just transcends the realm of our current scientific paradigm. Personally I don't think that strong emergence is the right way to resolve the hard problem of consciousness (which I still consider to be a real problem).

[@maudeeb]

@@inccommensurable600 I think you're right about the problem being deeper. I suspect there is something about our metaphysical view of reality that puts us in a logical bind. Even the definition of strong emergence, the need of a 'novel property', seems problematic. If we take 'novel' to mean 'not an extension of constituents'. then how can it also be a sub-property of those constituents. The very notion of properties is unavoidably reductionist.

[@ramkumarr1725]

I happy Dr Sabine did not trash emergence like she did the multiverse (I hold on to the multiverse). There are many people who deny emergence or complexity science because they seem to mystify the actuality. I think I can subscribe to weak emergence physically. I think weak emergence ought to be enough to explain most of the fundamentals of consciousness. Various parts of the brain light up under a stimuli and produce a sense of consciousness which includes qualia. I think mind however is a collective belief system (Dr Yuval) or sort of a jargon dictionary for constructed entities that allows for individual brains to connect and exchange information. For example you can be scientifically minded or money minded or career minded. I feel I have the necessary theories (of course I agree there are other minds as per Theory of Mind). So there you go : brain, consciousness, mind. I have budding theories. Of course, we have the vagus nerve and mirror neurons for heart and brain and complex emotions.

[@SrValeriolete]

Consciousness being weakly emergent would imply some degree of panpsychism (or even straight out idealism), that's why people came up with this idea of strong emergence, to try to avoid the inevitable conclusion and try to save physicalism.

[@haros2868]

Finally someone with a brain.. weak emergece=every property is the sum of the parts. So neutrons are comscious too. So molecules are conscious too... Panphysism is an absolute inevitability. This video is rotten garbage. And some might ask ok whats wrong with panphysism?? I would answer berserkly, SLEEP. Sleep, anesthesea, comma are absolutely impossible under panphysism!

[@localverse]

Strong emergence might be a thing in animal senses, for example the sight of color: we have physics for which particular wavelengths of light will activate our perception of each color. But color itself, the 'redness' actual color, exists in our imagination only on an inner display by our brains, and doesn't physically exist in the universe. Without the existence of animals including humans (if animals perceive the same splashes of red as we do and the same varieties of 'colorness'), it seems logical the universe would be colorless, in fact the universe should be mere fluctuations of varying wavelengths. But, instead animals perceive each wavelength as a splash or shade of color. We seem to lack a physics for color itself. Sound is in the same boat, as are the rest of our senses. Our brains perceive something that exists only on our minds. What we perceive as everyday sounds are what our brain is displaying to us after interpreting what's merely molecular collisions or interactions. The quality of 'soundness' doesn't exist in the universe outside of living animals. As far as seems to be the case, even the most advanced computers cannot access such perception (that's more like an individualized phantom thing in our minds) as a computer's ability to detect anything is a mere mathematical measure, they don't have an inner subconscious that'll then reinterpret reality into a real or phantom sensation. That to me seems like a strong emergence (by your definition of it). A strong emergence from a quality, instead of from a behavior like you defined at the end of video. And for the record, I don't see how it'd invalidate the standard model. Merely, food for thought.

[@ggg148g]

Consciousness emerges from the physical world just like sound, but, contrary to sound, it literally takes on a life of its own. We can be sure of it because we live that life, it is the only thing we have direct access to.

[@johnp2714]

Given current events, I expected that before the video ended Sabine would relate epidemics and pandemics as emergent properties of living, specifically human, populations. Like a wave at a stadium, a pandemic does not exist in isolation in a single human, rather it emerges from collections of humans and their interactions - with a virus or bacterium as the seed. In any case, this is a great video.

[@longjohnjimmie1653]

is there any video where you’ve shared your thoughts on how qualia logically supervenes on the physical?

[@artdadamo3501]

Consider a novel, a poem, or a play and basic typographic elements (letters, spaces, punctuation). Is the novel/poem/play weakly or strongly emergent from the typographic elements?

[@guilhermehx7159]

3:25 consciousness is an exemple of strong emergence. We couldn't explain or predict that consciousness arise from the interactions of fundamental particles

[@chocolatekake6796]

Except that’s not necessarily true, perhaps we just don’t understand it yet. Strong emergence seems to be like one of those math conjectures where it can’t be disproven without some new way of looking at it; for now, all we can do is look to try and prove it.

[@EugeneKhutoryansky]

At present, we do not know how consciousness emerges from the behavior of atoms and molecules. Therefore, claiming that it is an emergent phenomena is simply an untested hypothesis.

[@R0c4f7]

Physics Videos by Eugene Khutoryansky I think that by knowing the properties of atoms, you can predict how molecules will form. By knowing the behaviour of molecules, you can predict how they will interact and form cells. By knowing the properties and characteristics of neurons, you can understand how consciousness will emerge from a collective of neurons

[@ingobojak5666]

@Nabaneet Sharma It only has to emerge from them if "atoms and molecules" are indeed all that exists. That's the philosophical position of materialism though, not physics as such. Just how much evidence for materialism the practical successes of physics provide is a matter of considerable philosophical debate.

[@rv706]

But the difficult question is: what is a "constituent" of something? What does it mean for a set of things to be "more fundamental" than another? We are used to think of "constituents" as *small* units of stuff, and we usually take "more fundamental" to mean "smaller". This certainly happens in particle physics, but also in many other branches of physics. Even when a more general candidate (e.g. linearity - "constituents" are summands) is applicable, usually the "summands" are somehow related to smaller systems. But this "fundamental is small" paradigm (even if it has worked well so far) is not justified in purely epistemological terms, it's just linked to the contingent fact that in our world we experience space, and that phenomena of (spacially) bigger stuff are explainable/describable in terms of smaller stuff. Who knows, maybe we will have to abandon this assumption ( small = more fundamental) when we will face quantum gravity phenomena... And this may open the possibility for new "fundamental" things to not necessarily be small (relative to an appropriate scale), hence giving the impression of what we would now call "strong emergence" (between two scales).

[@fbkintanar]

I agree that clarifying the notions of "constituent" and "more fundamental" are crucial, and that it is a mistake to limit our attention to "smaller constituents". In many condensed matter phenomena, and in biological systems, we may want to consider different aspects that make up a whole, and each aspect may be as "big" as the whole. Something like this may be relevant for more "fundamental" physics, where I have no expertise. If a quantum field is constituted from many symmetries, it doesn't mean that a symmetry is "smaller" than the field, they are both as big as the universe. Symmetries could be seen as aspects of the whole.

[@raphaelaugusto714]

Is there a theoretical perspective that argues emergent behavior is not an intrinsic property of the phenomenon being studied, but rather a construction of the observer's perception? This view would suggest that the layers of emergent behavior we observe are not inherent to the phenomena themselves but are instead artifacts created by the mental representations and interpretations of researchers, who may not be consciously aware of this process. Such a perspective challenges the notion that emergent properties naturally arise from the interactions within a system and posits that these behaviors are, to a significant extent, observer-dependent constructions. Are there theorists who propose and support this observer-centric interpretation of emergent phenomena?

[@user-sl6gn1ss8p]

I don't know about a theory or in general, but the example in the video with pictures would be a case of this, wouldn't it? There's an external process by which they're perceived, and someone with knowledge of this process arranges them so that they'll be perceived in a given way. The "intrinsic" thing about the pictures is just in how their surfaces reflect light, but not related to the process of making them into a mosaic. I think maybe the difference from what you're saying is that in this case both the perception and the arrangement are external, and maybe you're talking about some internally-driven arrangement which nonetheless can only be considered a case of emergence in the context of some external perception? Also, in all this I'm considering the pictures as a system under observation with the person manipulating them as an external factor, but really in doing that what I'm discussing is the picture-person system, in which case idk how much of this still holds. Anyway, it's late and I've had a few, but hopefully this makes at least a bit of sense : p

[@johnhausmann2391]

Read some on ontic structural realism, search 'everything must go', search 'real patterns' by Dennet circa 1980

[@thiagoheringer101]

Great video! By the way: isnt Chalmers Emergence theory of counsciouness a Strong Emergence? If i am not mistaken he is not in conflict with physis and science in general. If his theory is a strong emergency, therefore he may have solved the issue of creating a strong emergency without breaking natural laws.

[@gemini_537]

Nice talk, but I think "strong emergence" is pretty common: 1) no elements of a plane can fly but when putting them together in a certain way they fly; 2) wood and air don't have fire in them, but when you drill the wood, fire emerges. 3) a painting of flow has no flower in it, but when you look at it, flower emerges in your mind.

[@pukaman2000]

What about DNA? I was told that DNA has a “plan” and that the plan must be completed in steps. As a step is completed it changes the base DNA so that the next step is produced. This means that the end product cannot be determined by sequencing the DNA.

[@chaselenahan4524]

I’m so glad I stumbled upon a comment referring people to this channel

[@douglassmith3016]

@ the 03:40 mark, Sabine inadvertently explains why physics breaks down when trying to describe certain astronomical events! *Physicists are erroneously attempting to describe how the universe works by only examining its individual parts.*

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

Phisicists cant get the whole picture jet cause is like looking to a real big screan beeing near to it, you may see the whole picture in DNA see the video: THE FLOWER OF LIFE OR DNA DECODED in you tube, it came from an old picture I guess maybe from Rosalind Franclines time.

[@mrroneill99]

Is there enough computational power in the known Universe to be able to predict Mozart’s Jupiter symphony (let alone our response to hearing it) based on the behaviour of atoms in Mozart’s body?! I’m inclined to be with the philosophers on this one... Thanks for your thought-provoking videos. I’m a big fan. ❤️🇮🇪☘️

[@mikel4879]

mrroneill99 / The bacteria has its own existential frequencies. It can be said that it has its own "music", its own "mozart kind bacterium" and "symphonies". Does it matter to the reality of the human world ? Does it matter to the reality of the Universe ? It is its "mozart bacterium symfony" somehow something "special" to the reality of the Universe ? The same for a Galaxy ( any Galaxy ) : it has its own frequencies, its own "music" and symfonies ( and maybe its own "mozart Star"🙂) ! Does it really matter to the reality of the Universe ? NO ! It doesn't matter at all ! What is "Mozart" and the "feeling" of its "music" to the reality of the Universe ? Nothing ! Absolutely ZERO ! It is a "minuscule" entropic blip ( almost "nothing" ! ) of an almost zero "entropic" phenomenon in a huge ocean of endless entropic phenomena.

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

the 12 are in music so it goes in steps, 6 up 6 down.

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

some how 12 goes with 10.

[@garrithsmith799]

What about electrons in a semi conductor? just curious. brilliant video as always.

[@fbkintanar]

Electrons aren't usually thought of as emergent, they are generally treated as ordinary (and fundamental) particles with mass. However, electron holes are part of the theory of semiconductors. They are very much an emergent quasi-particle, as beautifully explained by Matt O'Dowd in a recent video on PBS Spacetime: kzbin.info/www/bejne/opbCgIWHj9-eo6c . Curiously, electron holes also have something like mass!

[@garrithsmith799]

@@fbkintanar thanks for the info! Fascinating!

[@quphys5253]

In times of Corona I'll just link my students to your videos. And -- as a homework -- I'll assign your music videos. Thank you so much for all of this. Sei gsund (jiddisch)!

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

Corona time is to hot in here Ineed a cold one.

[@Ramkumar-uj9fo]

Thanks for supporting emergence. I accepted ML.

[@utingabernardo8205]

Thank you so much for the video. I am doing a course on genomics and stop-by here just to learn something about the concepts of emergence and reductionism. The channel content is just great !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@ThePinkus]

I think there is an important distinction in relation to emergence between classical and quantum logic, and by extension between classical and quantum mechanics. Note, when I say logic, intend the probability logic. Kolmogrovian for classical logic, Born rule defined for QM. This distinction stems from the encoding of correlations. In classical logic it is trivial, meaning that the correlations are encoded (in the deterministic limit) by the determined configurations of the systems and there is nothing more. The absence of a deterministic limit for quantum logic (corresponding to the incompatibility of dynamical quantities, which is the structural core of QM and its logic), results in a genuine, non trivial, encoding of correlations, i.e. entanglement. Philosophers might say that quantum logic, and QM, is holistic, where classical logic/mechanics is not. This is intended to express the fact that the information encoded in the whole is more than the information encoded in the collection of the (isolated) parts. Now, this should immediately be recognized as a relevant factor for the notion of emergence, simply according to its definition: emergence refers to the collective properties of systems giving rise to some new "behavior" (theoretical model) which is not recognizable in the constituent parts considered singularly. If the base theory is classical, the only possibility for emergence is epistemic, i.e. what emerges is dependent on the recognition by subjects, but there is still nothing more than the parts. If the base theory is quantum, emergence can be in itself genuine, because it has the possibility of being reliant on the genuine encoding of correlations that is entanglement. This is one essential point to realize in respect to understanding QM and the importance of the fact that we have QM and not simply classical mechanics as our fundamental physical theory: that emergence is not only an epistemic or theoretical operation, but *because* we have quantum logic as fundamental, and it is holistic, *then* emergence can be genuine and objective. The fact that emergence is genuine and objective in QM, comes specifically from the fact that it is connected to entanglement. As an immediate corollary, emergence is mechanical/dynamical in QM. Again, this is not valid in classical logic, where emergence is solely epistemic. This is extremely important for the interpretation of QM, due to the relation of entanglement and decoherence. Colloquially, I like to say that decoherence is the "insider view" on entanglement, to a large extent they are the same, seen from different perspectives (entanglement from the "outside", decoherence from the "inside"). Thus in QM we have this very important result: that because of quantum logic, because correlations are genuinely encoded as entanglement, decoherence is the genuine, objective and mechanical/dynamical emergence of classical logic within quantum logic. This emergent classical logic is the possibility of reconnecting the quantum theory to our physical experience, which is determined (to a resolution limit, not necessarily an infinitely determined resolution limit), i.e. classical in its determination (to the same resolution limit). A few notes on the meaning of "emergent classical logic within quantum logic": CL is a genuine novelty respect to the fundamental QL, but this emergent CL is still completely QL; it is not "pure" CL in the sense that it is not fundamental or defined separately from QL, and in particular it does not allow the infinite removal of uncertainty, i.e. the deterministic limit, at some point CL is no longer valid and where that occurs is decoherence dependent. On the question of weak and strong emergence. It is in classical logic that the distinction is unequivocal between the two. But the situation is different in QL due to the sense in which QL is holistic in respect to the encoding of correlations. QL strikes a sort of middle ground, one might say it is a model for "weak strong emergence" :P This is simpler when we say what it means (it's just a play of definitions, so it is very simple when we say to what definitions we refer to): it is "strong" in the sense that what is emergent is not solely reliant on the collection of the individual states of the systems, but it is weak in that what is emergent is fully encoded within the complete theory of those same systems, the point being that such theory is holistic. This is the proper sense, I think, in which we can have a model of "(weak) strong emergence", i.e. of genuine emergence, within a universal theory: the theory needs to be holistic. As it turns out, we do have a model for this proper "strong emergence" and it is nothing less than our fundamental physical theory: quantum mechanics. A "strong strong emergence" would instead be a theory for the collective which is distinct from the fundamental theory of the parts, and at this point we have two theories, and obviously neither of those is universal as there is the other one. As Sabine noted, we do not have any evidence that this is required, just one theory might well suffice. I think that these considerations on the possibility that what is emergent is genuine or not, "not" meaning solely epistemic, should lead us to rethink things we give as granted. Do we really think that the Boltzmann argument that links classical statistical physics to thermodynamics is fundamentally correct? Or does it only happen to get the right result (and we already knew what the right result was) by a wrong heuristic argument? I think that thermodynamics is genuine and objective, I think I know that it is mechanically/dynamically emergent. And I think I know that genuine, objective and mechanical/dynamical emergence is not possible in a theory fundamentally based on classical logic. Which would imply that the Boltzmann derivation of thermodynamics within classical statistical physics is flawed because impossible, and that thermodynamics is properly a quantum phenomenon.

[@davec.6456]

Thank you for a very clear definition of emergence. I use that term to help explain the question What Is Life. (It is an emergent phenomenon.) I think the concept of emergence can explain where people go when they die. They don’t go anywhere. They just stop existing. The particles that made up the life form may still be there after death but the life (the emergent property) is gone. Where does a tornado go after 24 hours? It doesn’t go anywhere. It just isn’t anymore. Once you understand emergence, something out of nothing (and vice versa) makes perfect sense.

[@raedshaiia3976]

I think that even the picture of the cat can't be considered as an example on strong emergence, but it's a subtle example on weak emergence. The reason is that if we study the individual properties of the small pictures, and from that we study all the possible patterns that we can get by arranging them together, then the picture of the cat will be one of those patterns :)

[@secondprime5105]

Very Informative and to the point, as always. Thank you Sabine!

[@cliffordhodge1449]

The notion of emergence has always seemed like almost a wild-card concept for any object or phenomena that we wish to attribute to a collection of entities. At its simplest, an emergent object would be a pile of sand, which starts with one grain, and as more are added it becomes at some point a pile of sand. So properties it has when considered as a pile are emergent properties. It seems sometimes in philosophy of mind, people who claim mind is an emergent property of brain activity are using this as a logical place-holder, assuming there will someday be a point-by-point account of how the latter can yield or create the former. They don't want to say that mind is an abstract thing, but cannot give an account of it as a merely physical thing. A good example of why emergent properties are necessary theoretical tools is the notion of group psychology - how the behavior of a group does not reduce to the way each individual would behave if he faced the same stimulus alone. Another example can be taken from music. As Wittgenstein said, "I am now whistling a note, but I am also - now - whistling a tune." There is clearly a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. (This, by the way, is why a computer cannot be a mind. Computers are digital; minds are analog. At no point does there appear a way for analog to emerge from digital.)

[@RichardRoy2]

This was quite fascinating. Thank you, Professor Hossenfelder. This should provide a measure of inoculation against a potential emergent ID argument.

[@Melomathics]

The quality of this episode is weakly emergent from a very rare collection of particles called Sabine Hossenfelder.

[@Wrongald]

... I thought she was a causal chain... Do I have to rethink this too... ?

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

JOINTING in the wave.

[@balasubr2252]

Stephen and strongly emergent after reviewers accolades....

[@fbkintanar]

Lol. Somebody has been watching too much Matt O'Dowd on PBS Spacetime

[@danuttall]

@@fbkintanar Since when can you want too much PBS Spacetime? ;)

[@newtagwhodis4535]

Incredible explanations! I’m so happy that I found such a great new science channel!

[@ixglocTV]

0:05 Is the fact that I keep understanding here "emerging means becoming a parent" a case of weak emergence or of strong emergence?

[@wisedupearly3998]

There is an interesting segue from photo mosaics to consciousness. Unfortunately, the mosaic does not exhibit unique behavior, and our inherent pattern-matching faculty is used to determine which arrangement is seen as 'informative' and which is seen 'noise'. The same set of images could yield an extremely large number of informative images depending on your imagination. So is consciousness a strong emergent phenomenon? Since consciousness does not appear to generate any measurable property (conductivity yields current that can be measured) we are stuck with our native analytical powers. I posit that i is impossible for us to completely/fully capture consciousness in terms of what we can conceive of. We are continually conceptualizing reality to able to consciously manipulate reality which is a unique behavior. To me this suggests that consciousness is strongly emergent.

[@harrykirk7415]

That was really good for me - the discussion of strong/weak emergence. Very clarifying and motivating. I'll remember that.

[@ramkumarr1725]

I was obsessed with emergence like NKS before. Thanks for supporting . -- String theory, as it stands, incorporates both deterministic and probabilistic elements. At its core, string theory aims to describe the fundamental particles and forces of nature in terms of vibrating strings rather than point-like particles. While the theory itself is deterministic in its equations, the vast complexity of the interactions among strings can give rise to emergent phenomena that exhibit probabilistic behavior, especially when considering quantum effects. Therefore, while the fundamental laws may be deterministic, the outcomes of certain events or processes can be probabilistic due to the complexity of the system

[@restonthewind]

The illustration of 'strong emergence' with a photo mosaic is beautiful. I didn't understand the distinction without it.

[@rc5989]

I am glad to know the correct terms to describe emergence in physics ‘weakly emergent’ to distinguish it from the concept of emergence in philosophy. Using the correct verbiage is part of my enjoyment in learning the philosophy of science. This is an important role in the communication of science from the real scientists to the rest of us amateur enthusiasts of science, imho.

[@i18nGuy]

Brilliant as always Sabine. Would an example of strong emergence, something that cant be derived from the properties of its constituents, be the higgs field? The higgs field in particular seems to be everywhere and yet has no reason to be, or to have a quantification where there might be more in one place than another. (As I understand it). Quantum fluctuations and energy of a vacuum also seem vaguely strongly emergent in that random production of ephemeral particle pairs from nothing seems to be inexplicable, even if consistent with laws of physics.

[@caricue]

This video goes well with your reductionism video since emergence is one of the proposed exceptions to the ideas of reductionism. This also ties into the idea of determinism since, in this view, all action is initiated and controlled from the bottom up. I'm not the only one who thinks this is nonsensical, but it is not testable, so it will remain a matter of opinion (or belief for the hard determinists) until some future time when some future scientist comes up with an experiment that can produce hard data, or maybe never since it really is an opinion.

[@ppst5524]

Fantastic video, on an extremely interesting subject. Being judgemental (strong emergence probably not necessary) helps orienting oneself. However, I believe the question about strong emergence/strong reductionism is altogether irrelevant. Each physical theory has its area where it is applicable and should not be used outside of it. The justification for theories is exclusively Denkökonomie. To claim there'll be a theory applicable to all levels of reality (strong reductionism) is just as presumptuous and speculative as to claim there are levels of reality wholly incompatible with lower level theories (strong emergence). Wherever there is overlap of areas of applicability the "higher" level can use the "lower" level. Also: Is decoherence at the core emergent phenomena?

[@crawhey]

When I was a kid, my family took a yearly vacation to New Hampshire to spend a week or so on the beach. I remember looking at the water and visibly seeing the horizon off in the distance curve ever so slightly panning from jetty to jetty. I know the people that are in support of arguing a round flat model are closer to those living in Kansas(flatter than a literal pancake) verses the advantage of seeing the Atlantic ocean from the east coast United States.

[@ihmejakki2731]

Just talked emergence a couple days ago, this came at the right time! Stuart Kauffman has written good stuff on emergence, I found Origins of Order very interesting.

[@henrytjernlund]

How about psychological behavior being strongly emergent? Or even just personality. People's personality can change, some even can change it at will. A con artist can, at will, put on the mask of being a good guy. Actors change their personality to a character they are portraying. Might a system become so complex that it's effect is unpredictable?

[@olegkorobkin6235]

I'd be interested to see a measurement postulate "weakly emerging" from quantum mechanics.

[@haros2868]

Exactly, someone has to be a fool to say quantum decohererence is weak emergent. Its strong and i would even say radical, same with consciousness. You have to be a panphysist to believe comsciousness is weakly emergent. This is the most rotten science channel

[@MatthewSuffidy]

Sounds more like the effects of dynamic systems, and is not necessarily tied to anything else. These systems may upon some input have a tendency to change in a regular way.

[@HaveANceDay]

So, I have a hard time understanding strong emergence. It doesn't address properties that come when complexity increases. "Life" may be a weakly emergent pattern, but what "Life" does should be? I don't know. Also, talking about life, is Conway's "Game of Life" an example of emergence?

[@ShankarSivarajan]

0:30 Is that the German name for the Wave? I've never heard it called that.

[@clmasse]

"Ola wave" in fact it is "ola" alone, a Spanish word for wave.

[@deltauniformtangocharlieho2795]

It is hard for me to imagine a way in which conscious experience (e.g. the sensation of the color of redness) could emerge weakly from the known laws of physics even in principle. Maybe there is a way but if there is I have no idea how you would even go about approaching the idea.

[@itheuserfirst3186]

Simple: It's the by-product of sensory input formed in a biological system. The entire disucssion surrounding consciousness is a bit too precious because it's be discussed from the human perspective, and our perception is limited.

[@nono-bt8gy]

Very interesting thanks. If consciousness is emergent, it would mean that subjective experience should be present somehow at the most fundamental level of physics? It would also be weird, because when you think about weak emergence in general (not just for consciousness), you can always assume that it is some sort of simplification to reason about the whole system more easily. You never consider the emergent structure as a "real" thing. But in the case of consciousness, the structure that emerges feels "real" (actually if there is only one thing real in the world, then it would be the subjective experience)...

[@deprivedoftrance]

To me it seems that a strongly emergent state would be a complex structure that exists in the future, hence we have no view as to how it is arranged much like the larger paining if you are "zoomed in" too far. Once you reach that future vantage point you can see what the individual structure became (or emerged as, if you like). Proving a strongly emergent state would be akin to time travel, you would need to know what all the little zoomed in parts are arranged like on a scale you cannot access from your vantage point.

[@Anders01]

Strong emergence sounds interesting. I recently learned that causality is still an unsolved problem in philosophy and in physics. If causality is systemic across all of time, both past and future, then strong emergence is possible even in the case of complete determinism.

[@clmasse]

"We would see deviations in particle physics" This is the instance of a theory taken as an established fact in this video. The theory could be changed, while the finite collection of the observations keep unchanged in the limit of experimental accuracy (5% - 10% in a particle accelerator.) In very complex systems, even a very small deviation can have drastic consequences.

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

even the cosmos looke coyote it really is in armony in a fine tune balance, when not then is not any more.

[@Sidionian]

Test

[@stevenjones8575]

Very good video, Dr. S.H. The stadium wave was an excellent analogy. It seems to me that emergence is just a synonym for spacetime-aligned causality. If the constituent elements followed the same reactions but each at a different far-separated time or in a different far-separated place or following random vectors or world lines, the emergence wouldn't occur. It is the fact that these reactions take place in a spacetime-aligned way that our pattern-finding brains identify the emergent property as "something."

[@stevenjones8575]

I do wish that you'd gone a bit further into your take on consciousness. It was uncharacteristic of you to dismiss discussion on something we know so little about. In all the videos I've seen of yours, you've been very good about cautioning both your peers and viewers against overstating the sureness of a finding or viewpoint. But your view of (forgive my paraphrasing), "We have no examples of strongly emergent phenomena; I assume consciousness is weakly emergent because everything else is," was a bit circular and seemed much more dogmatic than I expected to hear from you. I assume my paraphrase of your view lacks much of the nuance behind your actual view, but that is what was communicated to me in this video. Perhaps you could do another video to expound upon your view? Thanks again for the excellent content.

[@kennethboykins264]

Interesting. How do our brains fit in this casually aligned spatio-temporal modal? If emergence is merely how our brains scale, fit, or pattern objects in space and time then aligns our patterns our brains? Strong emergence exist anywhere one cares to look. Light propagates through space and time but its massless which means its outside of space and time. Matter, gravity, space and time strongly emerge from the interactions of massless energy outside of space and time. From the refrence frame of a single photon the Universe does not exist

[@carl-magnuscarlsson7713]

@@kennethboykins264 gobbledygook

[@rdjinaz]

First a caveat; I am a physician, not a physicist! Now the comment. I watched your video on "Free Will" and found it to be very interesting. From my limited perspective, your arguments about deterministic vs. probabilistic systems were compelling. But this video leaves me with a question (actually, many). Although we, as human beings, are made up of atoms, all of which observe the laws of physics and chemistry, isn't it possible that our "free will" (as it is conceived by common language and usage) is an emergent property of this physical/biologic system of complexity? This questions strays into philosophy, perhaps, but mightn't this emergent property also grant us moral culpability that we, otherwise, would not have in a completely deterministic system? Anyway, I love your videos! You are a fantastic teacher (even though I am hampered by remedial math and only retained smatterings of my undergraduate physics). Thank you for your great work!

[@krhyni555]

Very clear. I feel thankful to whatever that made me run into this video

[@mbbag1980]

Hi doctor, I was wondering if Conway's "games of life" and similar cellular automata can be considered as systems exemplifying strongly emergent behaviors.

[@SabineHossenfelder]

Yes, good example!

[@09bidon]

@Sabine Hossenfelder, on the contrary, in the article "Weak emergence" (Bedau, 1997), Conway's game of life is a perfect exemple of weak emergence, not strong emergence as he says.Cf onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0029-4624.31.s11.17

[@brucerosner3547]

Congratulation - one of your best lectures.

[@TheRainHarvester]

Is it correct to say, "there is no Free Will unless Strong Emergence exists"?

[@fbkintanar]

No, not if volition and mental states of intending can be explained by weak emergence from interacting brains and social cognition. Even in such a theory hasn't been conclusively verified by empirical science, just the existence of a consistent and plausible theory refutes the claim "no FW unless SE". The previous comment only addresses Will, the issue of when a voilition is "Free" comes with a lot of philosophical baggage about determinism (in the sense of God already determined the choice, physics determinism came into the picture much later) and responsibility of action and sinfulness. Unless the term "free" is made precise, I don't think it can be discussed scientically, so there is no profit in trying to analyze the weak emergence of "free" volition.

[@RunFast64]

It's like I'm back in Engineering school watching your videos. Fun stuff to think about!

[@iangrant8174]

1:02 I don't think that the atoms in a gas need to move periodically for the sound to be transmitted, do they? I can imagine in the case of standing waves they might do, and I think sonic refrigeration is an example of such a case, but I can also imagine a pressure wave propagating through a gas without inducing any kind of harmonic motion in the constituent particles. Indeed, it seems you _need_ random motion to maintain the isometry and the acoustic properties of the macro-system. This might seem a bit nit-picking, but I think it matters when we are trying to pin down emergent phenomena and epiphenomena and whether there is a difference.

[@farshads3367]

The reductionist approach in the scientific paradigm has caused so much technological progress that it is super hard for any scientific comunity to think of maybe modeling phenomena based on a different scientific paradigm.

[@jayakrishnan26]

Pls make a video on quantum field theory.. would love to know your thoughts on it

[@christophbader3713]

I might have a question: The universe is expanding. And I hear people saying, the curvature of the universe seems to be quite flat. How does that fit together? I understand, that curvature means somehow - what kind of geometry we have - do for example parallel lines merge or diverge. And what is the sum of angles inside a trigangle. Something like that. But I imagine an expanding space as one with a curvature as well - when space expands - how can parallel lines stay parallel? Or have I forgotten “time”? I really would like to know, what I am missing.

[@AJ-xj3bq]

Can I ask a question?…How do we know that the wave function is not an emergent property of the behaviour of particles as opposed to the collapse of the wave function to reveal the particle?

[@istvansipos-yt]

Sabine... love you... period...

[@istvansipos-yt]

@UCSngiONM8WfY_QnSTTgozLg it's simple... every video enhancing my life she makes... music or science it doesn't matter... and i am grateful for that...

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

what part?

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

@@istvansipos-yt amen, amar.

[@markkaidy8741]

Philosophically speaking, I know strong emergence is true for at least one part of me, whenever I watch Sabine's videos :)!

[@Rolancito]

I was hoping for an interjection about emergence not being the same as emergency, like what you did in another video about metrology being confused with meteorology.

[@austin3789]

So... According to this video, "As far as we currently know, consciousness is weakly emergent"... Or strongly emergent via intelligent design (4:00).

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

The cosmology thing does not seem to weak to where ever I can see.

[@SernasHeptaDimesionalSpace]

excuse me ment to say looks to weak to me, made a mistake.

[@itheuserfirst3186]

Intelligent design is not a scientific idea. Saying there is intelligent design is about as equally verifiable as saying we live in the bowls of a unicorn that has always existed. As far as we currently know, there is no intelligent design. It's just a place holder for what we don't understand about time, and the broader universe. We don't know if this is the only universe, or if time had to have a beginning because we understand so little about time on a cosmological scale.

[@austin3789]

@@itheuserfirst3186 really? It's not scientific to assess whether any observed effect has an intelligent cause? What do you say to all those forensic scientists?

[@itheuserfirst3186]

@@austin3789 Yes, because ther's no way of proving it, or testing for it. It's a hunch. Forensic science has nothing to do with intelligent design.

[@vishalmishra3046]

Sabine - Is gravity an emergent property of mass-energy confined in some space-time ? Any individual small part of space-time does not exhibit any distortion, but over a large space-time region, gravity emerges automatically as a curvature across the entire region ? Is rainbow an emergent property ? Everyone can see the rainbow even though it is not made of any specific sub-set of water droplets in the moist air.

[@peterfaber9316]

Great video. Can you do one on emergent gravity too? I'm desperate to understand that better, but it's a tough subject. Your way of explaining makes it easier to understand.

[@Sparky-vj2dq]

So, perhaps controversially, Time is emergent in the sense that at the Big Bang everything that existed was essentially in the same place with inconceivably small spatial dimensions when time was not required for any interactions to occur. Once expansion had occurred and space had dimensions then events required time in which to occur.(for information to transfer) Or is that too simplistic?

[@kevalan1042]

Can strong emergence be proved in principle? It seems like there is always the possibility that we discover something which knocks it back to weak emergence.

[@Earwaxfire909]

Good presentation. I agree with you about what we know about physics so far. But paradoxically I wonder if insisting on that is also just philosophy. Math seeks symbolic self consistence. Science seeks measurable self consistence. And philosophy seeks defining that which we can not know.