Hugo:
Yes, emergent behaviour is awesome. It brings a new light to the concept of "free will" and "self-consciousness".
All creatures consists of various levels of components - roughtly, from the lowest; particles -> athoms -> molecules -> cells -> organs -> individual - and the behaviour of all the components in these different levels depend on increasingly more complex rules that are built on top of the rules in the previous levels.
Kind''a like programminglanguages, with 0/1 -> assembly -> C++ -> OpenGL.
So, since our so called "free-will" is only an abstraction of fundamental natural laws that our most minute particles are ruled by, it makes me wonder at what point "self-consciousness" is spawned. Or is it something that can exist on a number of levels, ie. are even cells self-aware to a certain point? And what about levels beyond the entire individual (like a human being), ie. diferent levels of societey; family -> city -> country -> world?
Well, if even higher levels of self-consciousness were to exist as a result of our joint behaviours, then I guess we would be talking about a God of some sort, hehe. Anyway, even if higher levels of consciousness are not self-aware, they surely exists as emergent behaviour.
Perhaps it would be a cool thing to look at the behaviour of the stock-market from an "emergent behaviour"-point of view. Since I got a thesis to do before I get my masters in international finance (yes, boring, and not much to do with computer-science), this could be a subject to write about.
Another idea is doing it about AI in stockprice-prediction, using neural networks (and even fuzzy logic) to determine patterns in stockprices, and using genetic algorithms to generate the best buy/sell strategies. If you have any suggestions, Id be happy to hear
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Anyway, thanks for the input on Gameinstitute. I think Ill sign up for a course this summer. Havent decided which one yet, though, but Ill be sure to drop you a line to see if we will be classmates, hehe.
Holy crap, I checked out some pictures of Serra da Estrela, and it is awesome! Ill be sure to check it out on one of my trips to Portugal.
----PATRIOTISM----
“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar.”
— Julius Caesar
"I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal-but there''s an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I''m very proud to be a part of."
- Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine
------------------------Why of course the people don’t want war. ... That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. [Herman Goering]