https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-theory-of-reality-as-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-20...

"Hoel’s theory, called “causal emergence,” roundly rejects this reductionist assumption.

“Causal emergence is a way of claiming that your agent description is really real,” said Hoel, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University who first proposed the idea with Larissa Albantakis and Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “If you just say something like, ‘Oh, my atoms made me do it’ — well, that might not be true. And it might be provably not true.”

"Using the mathematical language of information theory, Hoel and his collaborators claim to show that new causes — things that produce effects — can emerge at macroscopic scales. They say coarse-grained macroscopic states of a physical system (such as the psychological state of a brain) can have more causal power over the system’s future than a more detailed, fine-grained description of the system possibly could.

"In a May paper in the journal Entropy, Hoel placed causal emergence on a firmer theoretical footing by showing that macro scales gain causal power in exactly the same way, mathematically, that error-correcting codes increase the amount of information that can be sent over information channels. Just as codes reduce noise (and thus uncertainty) in transmitted data — Claude Shannon’s 1948 insight that formed the bedrock of information theory — Hoel claims that macro states also reduce noise and uncertainty in a system’s causal structure, strengthening causal relationships and making the system’s behavior more deterministic.

***

"Their ultimate usefulness in explaining the world and its mysteries — including consciousness, other kinds of emergence, and the relationships between the micro and macro levels of reality — will come down to whether Hoel has nailed the notoriously tricky notion of causation: Namely, what’s a cause? “If you brought 20 practicing scientists into a room and asked what causation was, they would all disagree,” DeDeo said. “We get mixed up about it.”

***

"philosophers have argued that causal power existing at two scales at once would be twice what the world needs; to avoid double-counting, the “exclusion argument” says all causal power must originate at the micro level. But it’s almost always easier to discuss causes and effects in terms of macroscopic entities.

***

"Tononi conceives of consciousness as information: bits that are encoded not in the states of individual neurons, but in the complex networking of neurons, which link together in the brain into larger and larger ensembles. Tononi argues that this special “integrated information” corresponds to the unified, integrated state that we experience as subjective awareness.

***

"With Albantakis and Tononi, Hoel formalized a measure of causal power called “effective information,” which indicates how effectively a particular state influences the future state of a system. (Effective information can be used to help calculate integrated information, but it is simpler and more general and, as a measure of causal power, does not rely on Tononi’s other ideas about consciousness.)

***

"For any given system, effective information peaks at the scale with the largest and most reliable causal structure. In addition to conscious agents, Hoel says this might pick out the natural scales of rocks, tsunamis, planets and all other objects that we normally notice in the world. “And the reason why we’re tuned into them evolutionarily [might be] because they are reliable and effective, but that also means they are causally emergent,” Hoel said. [Comment: I feel this means it takes a whole brain to have consciousness]

***

"Hoel and his collaborators aim to show that higher-level causes — as well as agents and other macroscopic things — ontologically exist. The distinction relates to one that the philosopher David Chalmers makes about consciousness: There’s the “easy problem” of how neural circuitry gives rise to complex behaviors, and the “hard problem,” which asks, essentially, what distinguishes conscious beings from lifeless automatons.

***

"Causation “is really the measure or quantity that is necessary to identify where in this whole state of the universe do I have groups of elements that make up entities? … Causation is what you need to give structure to the universe.” Treating causes as real is a necessary tool for making sense of the world."

Comment: Can one prove causation is top down? Just consciousness or God's consciousness? Huge article. Should read all.

dhw:...All of these contradictions disappear if you remove the philosophical shackles of evolutionary anthropocentrism, or alternatively the decisive know-it-all-from-the-beginning infallibility of your God. And neither of these solutions requires you to be an agnostic or an atheist!
> > > 
> > dhw: Well, you are young (at heart) and impulsive, but when pressed are open-minded and courageous enough to switch from 100% to 50%. You would make a good agnostic.
> > 
> > GK: group hug
> 
> I have phsycially hugged dhw, but no mental hugging here!-sorry about that.-Mental hugging is legal in many states now ... srry.-lol

dhw:...All of these contradictions disappear if you remove the philosophical shackles of evolutionary anthropocentrism, or alternatively the decisive know-it-all-from-the-beginning infallibility of your God. And neither of these solutions requires you to be an agnostic or an atheist!
> > 
> dhw: Well, you are young (at heart) and impulsive, but when pressed are open-minded and courageous enough to switch from 100% to 50%. You would make a good agnostic.
> 
> GK: group hug-I have phsycially hugged dhw, but no mental hugging here!


> DAVID: The problem is we do not know God personally. I don't presume to know if he is infallible or had to experiment.
> 
> dhw: This, dear David, is music to my ears. Less than a fortnight ago you were dismissing the idea of experimentation as defining "an indecisive God so it is a nonstarter", while God not thinking of humans till later on in evolution "is less indecisive, but no less a wrong approach, since it makes God dither." Well, you are young (at heart) and impulsive, but when pressed are open-minded and courageous enough to switch from 100% to 50%. You would make a good agnostic.-My impulsiveness is a consequence of my own problem, which you poke at constantly. I don't know God or his personality. I can only make guesses to answer our queries. My answer above is clear enough. Like mud.

dhw:...All of these contradictions disappear if you remove the philosophical shackles of evolutionary anthropocentrism, or alternatively the decisive know-it-all-from-the-beginning infallibility of your God. And neither of these solutions requires you to be an agnostic or an atheist!
> 
> DAVID: Thanks for the advice but it doesn't answer the issue of humans appearing against all odds.
> 
> Dhw: Removing the second set of shackles does. But instead of making your God decisively infallible, as you want him to be, it allows him to learn by experimentation and experience.
> 
> DAVID: The problem is we do not know God personally. I don't presume to know if he is infallible or had to experiment.
> 
> This, dear David, is music to my ears. Less than a fortnight ago you were dismissing the idea of experimentation as defining "an indecisive God so it is a nonstarter", while God not thinking of humans till later on in evolution "is less indecisive, but no less a wrong approach, since it makes God dither." Well, you are young (at heart) and impulsive, but when pressed are open-minded and courageous enough to switch from 100% to 50%. You would make a good agnostic.-group hug

-> 
> So you say you are acting like a supervisor and guiding? 
> > -Not on your site I am not. you and dw know a lot more than me. I dont remember the context of the first post I put it in. But over all yes. When I talk to people about things I ask question based on what they know. Dangle the carrot so to speak.


> 
> GK: That finding what happened is fine. saying it shouldn't have happened is another matter. I also said that thinking it shouldn't have happened is silly. They are two different line of thoughts.-Fair enough.
>> 
> GK: "supervised". My pet peeve is intellectual bullying. People taking advantage of what others don't know. When I show up I begin by using what the person knows to help them see. It's a bully free zone. -So you say you are acting like a supervisor and guiding? 
> 
> GK: I am sorry for being confusing. I really don't even know why I write so bad. I am so bad, I don't know the rules I am breaking ... :)-When I don't follow, I'll ask as I have done before.


> > GK: No, I did not say that about anti matter. What I said is that based on how much we don't know it surprises me that scientist think that a math formula that predicts absolute uniformity is the way it should be.
> 
> Since it is a basic tenet of the standard model, it seems all knowledgeable scientists accept the lack of antimatter as something that should be explained and it isn't.
> 
> 
> > GK:Scientist? Trust and verify. Trust and verify. Some of the meanest people I know were considered very smart. Boy were they supervised when I showed I up. 
> > 
> > no, I am not sure. I am as sure as you and dwh. I lay out what we have. Tats where I start.
> 
> I am confused by the way you use the word 'supervised'. And you have explained that you never wonder why things are the way they are.-
I said that 2 post ago. That finding what happened is fine. saying it shouldn't have happened is another matter. I also said that thinking it shouldn't have happened is silly. They are two different line of thoughts.-"why it happened". I laid out what I know and then drew a conclusion off of that. There is a limited number of "if". I am not giving what i think. You guys are so close. If you guys close this gap by the same method I did then I feel better.-"supervised". My pet peeve is intellectual bullying. People taking advantage of what others don't know. When I show up I begin by using what the person knows to help them see. It's a bully free zone. -I am sorry for being confusing. I really don't even know why I write so bad. I am so bad, I don't know the rules I am breaking ... :)


> GK: No, I did not say that about anti matter. What I said is that based on how much we don't know it surprises me that scientist think that a math formula that predicts absolute uniformity is the way it should be.-Since it is a basic tenet of the standard model, it seems all knowledgeable scientists accept the lack of antimatter as something that should be explained and it isn't.- 
> GK:Scientist? Trust and verify. Trust and verify. Some of the meanest people I know were considered very smart. Boy were they supervised when I showed I up. 
> 
> no, I am not sure. I am as sure as you and dwh. I lay out what we have. Tats where I start.-I am confused by the way you use the word 'supervised'. And you have explained that you never wonder why things are the way they are.


> > > > GK: I say we were not against all odds. In fact at t-minus 10^-43 seconds life was going to happen. That is fairly sound with, or without a god.
> > > 
> > > That sounds like a form of faith to me. Can you explain your reasoning?
> > 
> > 
> > GK: Yes .I do have faith I think. we all have some faith I believe. I have faith in the periodic table. 
> > 
> > When leptons and quarks formed they were going to follow the set of rules. That soup of particles was going to do what that soup of particle do. They were going to form stars. Big ones. I mean really big ones.
> > 
> > That first generation of starts then seeded the universe with the materials that we see today. "carbon", hydrogen, and oxygen, would have been very abundant. Along with the rest of the 2-4 rows. Given the tempura gradients that were around. The Corbon-water Goldie lock zone was going to be present.
> 
> To me you are describing the process we discovered and the fact that we live in the Goldylocks zone. We have to live here or we wouldn't be here. Do you think it is all luck? 
> > 
> > GK: What would have been more surprising is if the periodic table didn't act like the periodic table.
> 
> It is something we discovered. we don't know why it acts that way. Fred Hoyle described the making of carbon in the intense pressure inside stars requiring very exact conditions of resonance,and thought 'somebody monkeyed with the works' to paraphrase him. Did the fine-tuning to allow life just happen?
> > 
> > GK: The surprising "uneven mix" of anti mater/matter? I think it is supervising that they are supervised to tell you the truth. I am not supervise they are as arrogant as they are, but I am surprised they are taking tit to the level they are.
> 
> You don't think antimatter is rare, compared to matter?
> 
> > GK: And the scientist to get paid to talk about it.
> 
> Scientists live on grants. Do you trust them? 
> > 
> > GK: As usual, we can throw probably, for me, and I am not sure of anything, all over this post.
> 
> But you seem sure life had to appear in the form of humans?
>>
your right, nobody knows how it works so it is useless for me to base a conclusion on what we don't know. If you noticed I only used what is basically known.-No, I did not say that about anti matter. What I said is that based on how much we don't know it surprises me that scientist think that a math formula that predicts absolute uniformity is the way it should be. It is like assuming type1 supernova explosions start at the exact center of the start. I mean if you look at the temperature and time scales. The probability of absolute uniformity is kind of funny to me. I would assume it wasn't uniform based on what we see around us. thats 100% uniformity. not 99.999999%
 
Scientist? Trust and verify. Trust and verify. Some of the meanest people I know were considered very smart. Boy were they supervised when I showed I up. -no, I am not sure. I am as sure as you and dwh. I lay out what we have. Tats where I start.


> > > GK: I say we were not against all odds. In fact at t-minus 10^-43 seconds life was going to happen. That is fairly sound with, or without a god.
> > 
> > That sounds like a form of faith to me. Can you explain your reasoning?
> 
> 
> GK: Yes .I do have faith I think. we all have some faith I believe. I have faith in the periodic table. 
> 
> When leptons and quarks formed they were going to follow the set of rules. That soup of particles was going to do what that soup of particle do. They were going to form stars. Big ones. I mean really big ones.
> 
> That first generation of starts then seeded the universe with the materials that we see today. "carbon", hydrogen, and oxygen, would have been very abundant. Along with the rest of the 2-4 rows. Given the tempura gradients that were around. The Corbon-water Goldie lock zone was going to be present.-To me you are describing the process we discovered and the fact that we live in the Goldylocks zone. We have to live here or we wouldn't be here. Do you think it is all luck? 
> 
> GK: What would have been more surprising is if the periodic table didn't act like the periodic table.-It is something we discovered. we don't know why it acts that way. Fred Hoyle described the making of carbon in the intense pressure inside stars requiring very exact conditions of resonance,and thought 'somebody monkeyed with the works' to paraphrase him. Did the fine-tuning to allow life just happen?
> 
> GK: The surprising "uneven mix" of anti mater/matter? I think it is supervising that they are supervised to tell you the truth. I am not supervise they are as arrogant as they are, but I am surprised they are taking tit to the level they are.-You don't think antimatter is rare, compared to matter?-> GK: And the scientist to get paid to talk about it.-Scientists live on grants. Do you trust them? 
> 
> GK: As usual, we can throw probably, for me, and I am not sure of anything, all over this post.-But you seem sure life had to appear in the form of humans?


> > GK: I say we were not against all odds. In fact at t-minus 10^-43 seconds life was going to happen. That is fairly sound with, or without a god.
> 
> That sounds like a form of faith to me. Can you explain your reasoning?-
Yes .I do have faith I think. we all have some faith I believe. I have faith in the periodic table. -When leptons and quarks formed they were going to follow the set of rules. That soup of particles was going to do what that soup of particle do. They were going to form stars. Big ones. I mean really big ones.
 
That first generation of starts then seeded the universe with the materials that we see today. "carbon", hydrogen, and oxygen, would have been very abundant. Along with the rest of the 2-4 rows. Given the tempura gradients that were around. The Corbon-water Goldie lock zone was going to be present. -What would have been more surprising is if the periodic table didn't act like the periodic table.-The surprising "uneven mix" of anti mater/matter? I think it is supervising that they are supervised to tell you the truth. I am not supervise they are as arrogant as they are, but I am surprised they are taking tit to the level they are. I mean if we even just look at magnetic fields, I see a very low probability of "100 uniformity". Maybe it is the public, tho that is freaking out about it. And the scientist to get paid to talk about it. -As usual, we can throw probably, for me, and I am not sure of anything, all over this post.


> GK: I say we were not against all odds. In fact at t-minus 10^-43 seconds life was going to happen. That is fairly sound with, or without a god.-That sounds like a form of faith to me. Can you explain your reasoning?

DAVID: Thanks for the advice but it doesn't answer the issue of humans appearing against all odds.
> > 
> > dhw:Removing the second set of shackles does. But instead of making your God decisively infallible, as you want him to be, it allows him to learn by experimentation and experience.
> 
> The problem is we do not know God personally. I don't presume to know if He is infallible or had to experiment. All I know is humans appeared against all odds. Pre-programmed or guided are both possible, and roughly equal. It really doesn't matter which it was. The intentionality ( teleology)is still present in the final result. Either way a God (intelligence/consciousness) is operative, which fits my belief.-I say we were not against all odds. In fact at t-minus 10^-43 seconds life was going to happen. That is fairly sound with, or without a god.

Dhw: What we think we know (nothing is absolute) is that all forms of life have descended from earlier forms, apart from the very first, whose origin is unknown. If common descent is true (it seems logical to me), then there has to be some kind of mechanism ... origin also unknown ... that has enabled organisms to adapt and innovate in accordance with environmental change. Otherwise life would not have progressed beyond the level of bacteria. How do you think it "works"? 
> 
> GATEKEEPER: I don't know how it works.
> use what you know, don't describe it with what you don't know. I mean look at the paper we read on baryon number. Did you read the axioms? We do not have to accept them. But they worked for that paper. 
> Start at what we do know. Look around you and see what is working. Use that. I can tell that you know enough already. The stuff you do not know isn't holding you back.
> 
> Once again, I'm sorry, but I thought I had done just that ... other than the caveat about our "knowledge" not being absolute. Everything I think I know about evolution points to there being a mechanism that enables organisms to adapt and innovate in accordance with environmental change, and I've explained why. The fact that I do not know the origin of that mechanism has not held me back from offering my hypothesis, which in my view explains the higgledy-piggledy bush far more coherently than David's divine preplanning and Darwin's random mutations. Perhaps you could just tell me what it is you object to.-I don't object to anything you have done. I think you are doing a great job actually. What notion can tie your's and david's notions together so that most people learning about it can at least say it is reasonable. Even if they don't want to follow it.

DAVID: Thanks for the advice but it doesn't answer the issue of humans appearing against all odds.
> 
> dhw:Removing the second set of shackles does. But instead of making your God decisively infallible, as you want him to be, it allows him to learn by experimentation and experience.-The problem is we do not know God personally. I don't presume to know if He is infallible or had to experiment. All I know is humans appeared against all odds. Pre-programmed or guided are both possible, and roughly equal. It really doesn't matter which it was. The intentionality ( teleology)is still present in the final result. Either way a God (intelligence/consciousness) is operative, which fits my belief.


> GK: I don't know how it works.-I presume you mean evolution
 
> 
> gk: Start at what we do know. Look around you and see what is working. Use that. I can tell that you know enough already. The stuff you do not know isn't holding you back.-We know a great deal about how the genome works. But it still does not offer any explanation why one group of long-tailed monkeys, 22 million years ago eventualy split off into a big- brained form about 8 million years ago and left the chimps far behind.-Sciece and philosophy must work hand in hand to offer any undestanding. Nuts and bolts alone offer litle.