James
Emergence Spirals… sounds sort of woo-woo but it's not, despite what Yudkowsky says… nonzerosum.games/emergencespirals.html #evolution #feedbackloops #biology #systemstheory #complexity #Yudkowsky #LessWrong #Popper #Hegel #Parasites #Symbiosis #Science #Nature #Philosophy #History

EMERGENCE SPIRALS
EMERGENCE SPIRALS

exploring what Yudkowsky gets wrong about emergence

Jun 7, 2025 at 5:43amWeb
Show threadTom FoaleJun 13, 2025
Very interesting. Have you considered parasitism in emergence? Governments, laws, companies and cities are emergent properties of large collections of people because organisation solves problems of trust and inefficiency, but they’re also subject to parasitism.
Show threadTom FoaleJun 13, 2025
This is the introduction to “Liars and Outliers” by Bruce Schneier, a leading cryptographer and security expert, a book about trust. Even non-intelligent emergent systems develop defences against parasitism.
Show threadJamesJun 14, 2025
Wow, I love that passage. Yes absolutely I think of parasitism as emergent, a classic example of one phenomena becoming a substrate (specifically a host) for another, similar to carnivorous predators where the herbivore becomes a substrate (food) for another. Also works for metaphorical parasites.
Show threadJamesJun 14, 2025
Re: "L & O", this is something that occurs to me often while walking around the world, and in trying to explain to my daughter why she need not worry about violations of trust as much as she might think, because the self-interest of imagined perpetrators is best served by their adherence to norms.