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Technical Research |Simulations Ideology

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Technical Research |Simulations Ideology

To better understand this phenomenon, it is important to understand emergence. This term is generally used to characterize the behavior of systems in which its components interact in various ways by following local rules, producing nonlinear behaviors often resulting in greater complexity than the sum of its parts. Johnson explains this in his book Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities:

“What features do all these systems share? In the simplest terms, they solve problems by drawing on masses of relatively stupid elements, rather than a single intelligent “executive branch.” They are bottom-up systems, not top down. They get their smarts from below. In a more technical language, they are complex adaptive systems that display emergent behavior. In these systems, agents residing on one scale start producing behavior that lies one scale above them: ants create colonies; urbanites create neighborhoods’ simple pattern-recognition software learns how to recommend new books. The movement from low-level rules to higher level sophistication is what we call emergence.”[6]

He then conceptualizes a billiard table with motorized billiard balls programmed to alter their movement based on interactions, stating that “such a system would define the most elemental form of complex behavior: a system with multiple agents dynamically interacting in multiple ways, following local rules and oblivious to any higher-level instructions. But it wouldn’t truly be considered emergent until those local interactions resulted in some kind of discernible macrobehaviour.”[7]

What can be extracted from this text is that this “movement from low level rules to high level sophistication” is what is known as emergence and can be observed in various complex system models, as it is a fundamental property of the universe. (Fig. 2.1.4 - 6) It can then be observed from these water/traffic/crowd examples that due to emergence, a wave-like pattern emerges from the local interactions of the particles. These interactions, while simple, propagate throughout the system using the particles as a medium, producing this wave-like pattern that can only be observed from a scale larger than the particles but can only be understood by looking at the particles themselves.

While these systems are complex in nature, and can be hard to comprehend, they generally exhibit common traits that can be investigated to help break down their complexity. By observing these simulations as complex systems, it can become easier to understand the basic components that make up the system. These basic components can then be modified to create a simulation model, meaning that by following this methodology, it is possible to produce relatively complex simulations with relatively simple components.

Snowflakes

By Wilson Bentley, “File:SnowflakesWilsonBentley.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, accessed December 25, 2019, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SnowflakesWilsonBentley.jpg.

Termite mount

By Brian Voon Yee Yap, from Yewenyi, “File:Termite Cathedral DSC03570.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, accessed December 25, 2019, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Termite_Cathedral_DSC03570.jpg.

Starling murmurations

From National Geographic, trimmed by Author, “Flight of the Starlings: Watch This Eerie but Beautiful Phenomenon | Short Film Showcase,” YouTube, 2:00, accessed December 25, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4f_1_r80RY.

Figure 2.1.4 - 2.1.6

Emergence is a fundamental property of the universe. Subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons, and elec-trons combine to form atoms that are responsible for all the various emergent properties of matter that we come in contact with on a daily bases. These figures show some ex-amples of emergent behaviors within nature from further interactions of these emergent properties.