%% date:: [[2023-04-08]], [[2023-04-11]] %% # [[Disadvantages of emergence]] [[Emergence]] isn't always a good thing. Here are some of its disadvantages. ### Emergence is just chaos that's been given enough time The author talks about emergence being distinct from [[Chaos Theory]] in that emergent behaviour involves the development of *new* behaviours that did not occur at random. However, firstly, chaos is not random. It merely appears it at first glance. Very few things are truly random. In this sense, chaos can be thought of as fertile ground for emergence. Secondly, one could say that the author draws a distinction between chaos and emergence based on their output. While it's true that emergence requires a coherent new characteristic to develop, it's also true that that development likely took several iterations to emerge. What we call "chaos" can evolve the same way. ### Emergence takes too much time to be useful While the idea of emergence is enticing, the reality is that we can't always put it into practice because of the sheer amount of time it involves. Cultivating an environment ripe for emergence requires a lot of initial investment, significant maintenance, and then a lot of patience in waiting for new behaviours to develop. ### The results of emergence are unpredictable The nature of emergence makes it impossible to forecast beforehand what the end result would be, precisely because there is no top-down proliferation of instructions. This unpredictability, added to the fact that emergence takes a lot of time, calls into question its usefulness and practicality as more than just a fun experiment. ### Emergence treats individual behaviour as a black box Emergence treats individual behaviour as a [[Black Box]]: ants are given a task, something happens, and *poof!* new behaviour emerges. It almost treats the process of evolution or adaptation with reverential awe. While it's true that emergence is generally unpredictable, that doesn't make individual behaviours unpredictable or unexplainable. ### Emergence isn't repeatable