Pockets in a system have different properties than the main system.
- Pockets in a system have different properties than the main system.
- This is why they can often find innovations that will percolate out that the larger system couldn't find.
- The pocket has a different centroid than the main context, which might by happenstance be in a direction that is innovative.
- Though note most "innovations" they find aren't viable in the main context, it's only the small set that make it through the structural percolation gauntlet crossing over to the main context that work.
- The gauntlet is the selection pressure that culls the emergent process's outputs.
- Sometimes we use things like "ideas that resonate in my Bluesky clique" as a proxy for what will resonate in the broader context.
- But that only works if you have a random sample in the pocket.
- If there is a structural selection bias (which there must be in an emergent pocket, at least in some dimension) then it ceases to be a good proxy for the surrounding context.