Quick thought: I see analogies to blogswarms.

Neurons : blogs

brain : new memes developed on, by, with blogs

Sez who?

Chuck: “Other examples would be fish schools and the V pattern of migrating geese.”

I think I’d quibble with you on migrating geese, because the pattern is computationally simple and exhibits a single controller (the lead goose tends to be a gander, and it’s often the alpha male in other ways.) But schooling fish and birds that form those big random looking flocks are good examples, so it’s a mere quibble.

I like Steven Johnson’s Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, John Holland’s Emergence: From Chaos to Order and of course Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science are all good sources.

Be careful with Wolfram, though — lift with your legs, or you could hurt yourself.

Charlie and WichitaBoy have already done a good job with this. Other examples would be fish schools and the V pattern of migrating geese. In these cases the individual seems to react to its nearest neighbors according to simple rules, yet a single whole seems to emerge out of it — fish schools will turn as one or open up holes in front of charging predators. The term emergent behaviour is a sharpened version of the old observation that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

If you’re still out there, the whole idea of emergent behavior is quite fascinating. Consciousness is another classic example. Whereas individual neurons are firing and coordinating in all animals, much as individual slime molds are going about their business, they don’t seem to coordinate into something greater until the human brain comes along. I found Steven Levy’s book Artificial Life to be a good read on this and some related subjects, though it’s probably dated at this point. You also might want to poke around the website of the Santa Fe Institute.

Thibaud, neglecting the technical details for the moment, the basic idea is that there are systems with no central controller that still exhibit what appears to be coherent and organized behavior. Cellular slime molds are one of the canonical examples. They generally behave as single-celled organisms, but under certain conditions they sort of all agree to act like one animal — literally, they start to move, can be trained and differentiate into a reproductive organism with their own reproductive “organs”. Then, afterwards, they go back to doing what they do individually.

Another example is fireflies, which will in some conditions synchronize their flashes.

The basic point is that there is no Master Slime Mold cell, no “brain” that makes the decision; coherent behavior that emerges without a controller.

Roger, that’s probably a good ‘ban’ call…there’s just too many nutjobs out there to let yourself in any way contribute even an iota to any desensitization of the idea of regicide (or whatever it’s called in a republic).

I mean, the idea of Pat Buchanan on the cover of The Nation ought to be humorous rather than seemingly coldly inevitable. But the brain-drain out of the philosophical wing of the Demos–evidenced by the rise of such limited leaders as Kerry and Dean–has to going somewhere, doesn’t it?

You’re right. Buchanan’s one-of-a-kind. In the Mikey Maroon-Pat Pugilist example I was simply trying to show how the “cool” Left is morphing into a type of angry isolationist that was always associated with the tres uncool populist Right.

Give it time: Buchanan will begin appearing on the pages of The Nation in due course, just as his right-populist confrere Kevin Phillips has.

I suspect Roger gets linked in a few places and folks drop by — Instapundit could be the proximate cause. Emergent behaviour sounds like the right point of view to describe what goes on, with all the connections between blogs and other internet sites the opportunity is sure out there. Roger’s blog and his community of commenters are probably another example of emergent behaviour; it would be interesting to go back in the archives and watch how attitudes and tone have developed here over the past two years.

Hmm… do you know if there is a technical definition of emergent behaviour?