Emergence on NOVA

[Halden]

I just watched the Emergence theory segment from the July 10th episode of NOVA and I was riveted. This is a fascinating area of research. Does anyone have any thoughts or recommended books/sites/resources I could use to delve deeper?

 

[PixyMisa]

I highly recommend Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach. It doesn't focus specifically on emergence, but it does cover the subject and a huge range of related concepts.

 

[fishbait]

Very interesting segment. Thanks for posting it.

 

[GodMark2]

I just watched the Emergence theory segment from the July 10th episode of NOVA and I was riveted. This is a fascinating area of research. Does anyone have any thoughts or recommended books/sites/resources I could use to delve deeper?

Decent episode, except for their choice of narrator. Every time they said "Uh-mergence" my spine shivered.

The 'checkers learning' computer example was rather poorly covered. They forgot to mention that the program had been specifically designed to learn from it's past mistakes (or it's opponents). Yes, it developed a strategy all on it's own (which is impressive, and possibly emergent) but it didn't just have the rules for checkers programmed in, and then begin learning (which is what they implied).