Emergence – How Stupid Things Become Smart Together

An ant is pretty

stupid

. There is not much brain, there is no will, there is no plan and, again, many ants

together

are wise. An ant colony can build complex structures. Some colonies maintain humus farms, others deal with bagets. They can weigh war or protect themselves. How is this possible? How can a group of idiots do

smart

things

together

? This phenomenon is called

emergence

and it is one of the most impressive mysteries of our universe. In short, it describes small

things

that make up big things that have properties other than the sum of their parts. Emergence is a complexity that arises from simplicity and

emergence

is everywhere.

Water has many different properties in the molecule that composes it, such as the concept of humidity. Take the wet cloth, if you look deep enough there is no moisture. There are only molecules that remain in the spaces between the atoms of the fabric. Humidity is a property that water manifests. Something new that is created just by many individual interactions between water molecules. And this is not enough. Many things that interact under certain rules, that create something beyond and beyond themselves. Turns out it's different. This different property is itself a smell, and this smell can be combined with other new things to repeat the process.

You can imagine this as layers assembled and each layer made of more complex parts. Atoms form molecules. The molecules form proteins. Proteins form cells. Cells make organs. The organs are formed individualized. Individuals form society. But how can something be more than the sum of its parts? How do ants form the kind of cloudy entity that is a colony? Following certain rules that produce order through chaos. For example, let's look at how an ant colony distributes tasks. Suppose a colony has 25% workers, 25% caretakers, 25% soldiers, and 25% gatherers. Ants communicate their jobs through chemicals. For example, worker ants constantly secrete chemicals that say "I am a worker." When ants encounter other ants, they sniff each other to gather information, tell each other about the work they are doing and what they are doing.

They both keep a note that they met last night. Now, imagine a forager ant that kills most of the foragers. If this is not done, the colony will starve. Many worker ants have to change jobs, but how do you tell this to thousands of them? Simple. It is noticeable that our worker ants will meet and smell other ants again, but they will hardly find collectors. until you reach the critical point, and then you change jobs. The worker

become

s a collector. The other ants will do the same, until after a while there are enough collectors again. The balance is restored on its own.

An individual's actions and interactions are random. You can't plan which ant will encounter another ant, but the simple set of rules is so elegant that the colony's operations follow. At a more fundamental level, hundreds of millions of molecules interact to maintain a surprisingly powerful structure. A being flourishes with properties more diverse than the sum of its dead parts. The smallest unit of life: a cell We still do not have a clear definition of what living beings are, we only know that they arise from things that are alive. The cells combine and work together. They specialize and respond to each other and more.

Over time, we

become

complex organisms with extraordinary capabilities. Your hands, feet, and heart are an extremely complex system of complex systems made up of billions of

stupid

individuals... and yet we breathe. We eat and watch YouTube videos. HOW YOUR CELLS KNOW WHAT TO DO Think about the pacemaker cells of the heart. Billions of them need to send a fixed impulse at the right time to collectively create a heartbeat. Our cells share chemical information with neighboring cells to see what they are doing and then decide what to do. If it is among many cells, they have the same task and they start working on that task as well, and they keep up the pace.

There is no main mind giving orders. They are just individual units that communicate with their neighbors and act based on them. the feedback they receive. But for the most important part? What generates these types of questions? Is our consciousness an emergent property of our brain cells? This question is very big and important, it needs a video. Some things that bloom are difficult to determine. You can't touch an ant colony, only parts of it. It has no brain, no face, no body. And again a colony interacts with the world. Just as colonies arise from ants, things arise from people, like nations.

What really is a nation, is it population? Are they the institutions, their symbols such as flags, colors or anthems? The physical things that make it like the cities, the territories it occupies? All of these things are fluid. Populations change and are replaced. Institutions come and go. Cities can be built and abandoned. Boundaries have changed throughout history and symbols have been replaced by new symbols. A nation has no face, no brain, no body. Are nations real then? Of course they are, just like ant colonies, nations interact with the world. They change landscape, wars occur, they grow or shrink and may cease to exist.

But they exist only because many people interact with each other, but not just nations. All the complex structures around us arise from us. Even if we don't intend to, we are constantly creating. Communities, companies. society. All of these things are entities that have fundamentally different properties and abilities than the many stupid apes they evolved from. None of us know why it happens. We just observe them and it seems to be a fundamental feature of our universe. It may be the most beautiful and strange feature of our universe.