Thinking Through It

Thinking Through It

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Thinking Through It
Thinking Through It
Unpredictable Magic

Unpredictable Magic

The Emergence of Complex Systems

Alejandro Betancourt's avatar
Alejandro Betancourt
Jul 22, 2024
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Thinking Through It
Thinking Through It
Unpredictable Magic
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This image captures thousands of starlings' awe-inspiring emergent behavior, creating fluid, abstract patterns in the twilight sky. A prompt designed by Alejandro Betancourt generated this image using AI technology.

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." — Carl Jung

Have you ever been surprised by an outcome that seemed to emerge out of nowhere? Like watching a flock of starlings at dusk. Suddenly, thousands of birds swoop and swirl in perfect unison, creating mesmerizing patterns across the sky. There's no leader, no grand plan – just individual birds following a pattern. Yet together, they make a breathtaking aerial ballet that's far more than the sum of its parts.

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Today, I want to discuss this fascinating phenomenon called emergence.

But what exactly are emergent properties?

Simply put, they're characteristics or behaviors that arise when simple components interact…

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