22 chunks · 18 episodes
When you can feel the emergent system, you see how very small, low-level, common-sense asymmetries can add up to way more than the sum of their parts.
... wants. We talk about what "your body" wants. These are responding to the whole emergent system, not individual voices in it.
...t don't add up to anything more than the sum of their parts. Default diverging. Emergent systems are much more than the sum of their parts. Default converging. This characteristic shows up in situations where totally local decisions sum up to gl...
Patient emergent systems will explore every nook and cranny of a space. The slime mold will fill every bit of the container it's put in. So give it the right jello mold to g...
...zations of the savvier users roll down hill to less savvy users, an inductively emergent system.
The emergent systems and the inputs are different. Systems can work even if all the components are self deceiving and self interested. Also, vice versa!
...get an exponential-benefit-for-logarithmic-cost curve is to be downstream of an emergent system.
With enough scale, every emergent system finds antisocial gravity wells that are hyper engaging. Superficially meaningful but ultimately hollow.
...ed: a garden that grows from that compost. Something we tend, prune, curate. An emergent system of record for our personal lives. LLMs should handle the weeding. We should choose what blooms.
A semi-permeable membrane is a key component for coherent emergent systems. You need to get the concentration right. Not necessarily high, but right. You want a system that can gatekeep at the boundary, to only allow certai...
...ion), and 4) polycentric governance (no single point of control). Society as an emergent system, not a top-down design. You need the right philosophical foundations to think about AI's impact on society. Those foundations must acknowledge the em...
...hile the part the product owners measure seems to be doing better than ever. An emergent system can easily be constructed where caretakers who intrinsically care and are given space to follow their gut gives great results The only downside is yo...
Emergent systems need to have all logic decided at the local level, but have global-level outcomes emerge. In emergent systems, all decisions are local but they have...
...ftware for basically free, then you can have the LLM generate it on the fly. An emergent system built out of just-in-time software. Code is easier to trust because it's concrete and can be structurally analyzed. LLMs, on the other hand, are squi...
In an emergent system, what components to combine is the most important part. That's where the magic comes from! If you look at it in stasis, it will look like the compone...
An emergent system has multiplicative power. All of the components combine with all of the others, creating a combinatorial cloud of possibility. But this possibility c...
...er value and even harder because of more complex architecture. A decentralized, emergent system will have to enable new possibilities.
BIackboard systems are powerful emergent systems. Swarms of relatively dumb little agents all emergently collaborating on a shared work space. Emergently accreting complex answers to problems. The ...
Emergent systems can absolutely create emergent cathedral-style outcomes. Last week I talked about the Sea Shanty craze on TikTok. A natural example is termite mound...
...omplex behaviors that emerge entirely bottom-up, that are alive. These kinds of emergent systems are totally alien to our minds, and yet they're the most natural, common thing in the world.