A Non-Magical, Example-Rich Introduction to Emergence

Out of the many charming short stories in David Eagleman's Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlife, one in particular has stuck with me. Its title is Ineffable and it's short enough to be read in five minutes. This version of the afterlife (each story in the book gives an alternative variant) is not for people, but for...
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The Demon and the Tree

Regardless of the details, every system is a physical arrangement of matter and energy. The way this matter is arranged is what we call the structure of the system, and it determines what happens when differences pass through the system.
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Toying With Ideas of Glass Circuits

When you want to solve a new, hard-to-define problem, chances are old expertise won't cut it. You either make a groundbreaking new discovery (good luck!) or find new useful ways to combine the things you already know, new connections between things that no one before had thought to be connected.
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The Invention of Systems

What would happen if one were to take the argument that the world is one big, intricate network a little too seriously? How would such a person talk about things?
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The World Is a Network

Daily life is like paying to go to an amusement park, only to walk straight past all the rides and get out.

We regularly miss the best parts. We see without seeing, wander without wondering, and turn the time we spend in this inconceivably deep world into a jagged but linear route from B to D.

Yet it would be so easy to do otherwise!...
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