Waves of Behavior
Emergent Patterns
I’ve been thinking about this loose idea of patterns that are hard to define, and the challenges of explaining them through the lens of our exceptionally scientific world view. To start, I think it’s useful to think about Daniel Dennett’s idea of The Intentional Stance. Here is a quick overview of the physical stance and the design stance:
The physical stance stems from the perspective of the physical sciences. To predict the behavior of a given entity according to the physical stance, we use information about its physical constitution in conjunction with information about the laws of physics. Suppose I am holding a piece of chalk in my hand and I predict that it will fall to the floor when I release it. This prediction relies on (i) the fact that the piece of chalk has mass and weight; and (ii) the law of gravity. Predictions and explanations based on the physical stance are exceedingly common. Consider the explanations of why water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, how mountain ranges are formed, or when high tide will occur. All of these explanations proceed by way of the physical stance.
When we make a prediction from the design stance, we assume that the entity in question has been designed in a certain way, and we predict that the entity will thus behave as designed. Like physical stance predictions, design stance predictions are commonplace. When in the evening a student sets her alarm clock for 8:30 a.m., she predicts that it will behave as designed: i.e., that it will buzz at 8:30 the next morning. She does not need to know anything about the physical constitution of the alarm clock in order to make this prediction. There is no need, for example, for her to take it apart and weigh its parts and measure the tautness of various springs. Likewise, when someone steps into an elevator and pushes "7," she predicts that the elevator will take her to the seventh floor. Again, she does not need to know any details about the inner workings of the elevator in order to make this prediction.
The intentional stance essentially boils down to predicting behavior based on the intentions of a rational agent. Dennett illustrates the advantage of this approach when imagining a race of ultra-intelligent martians who can predict behavior based purely on the physical stance:
Our imagined Martians might be able to predict the future of the human race by Laplacean methods, but if they did not also see us as intentional systems, they would be missing something perfectly objective: the patterns in human behavior that are describable from the intentional stance, and only from that stance, and that support generalizations and predictions.
Take a particular instance in which the Martians observe a stockbroker deciding to place an order for 500 shares of General Motors. They predict the exact motions of his fingers as he dials the phone and the exact vibrations of his vocal cords as he intones his order. But if the Martians do not see that indefinitely many different patterns of finger motions and vocal cord vibrations—even the motions of indefinitely many different individuals—could have been substituted for the actual particulars without perturbing the subsequent operation of the market, then they have failed to see a real pattern in the world they are observing. Just as there are indefinitely many ways of being a spark plug—and one has not understood what an internal combustion engine is unless one realizes that a variety of different devices can be screwed into these sockets without affecting the performance of the engine—so there are indefinitely many ways of ordering 500 shares of General Motors, and there are societal sockets in which one of these ways will produce just about the same effect as any other. There are also societal pivot points, as it were, where which way people go depends on whether they believe that p, or desire A, and does not depend on any of the other infinitely many ways they may be alike or different.
Suppose, pursuing our Martian fantasy a little further, that one of the Martians were to engage in a predicting contest with an Earthling. The Earthling and the Martian observe (and observe each other observing) a particular bit of local physical transaction. From the Earthling's point of view, this is what is observed. The telephone rings in Mrs. Gardner's kitchen. She answers, and this is what she says: "Oh, hello dear. You're coming home early? Within the hour? And bringing the boss to dinner? Pick up a bottle of wine on the way home, then, and drive carefully." On the basis of this observation, our Earthling predicts that a large metallic vehicle with rubber tires will come to a stop in the drive within one hour, disgorging two human beings, one of whom will be holding a paper bag containing a bottle containing an alcoholic fluid. The prediction is a bit risky, perhaps, but a good bet on all counts. The Martian makes the same prediction, but has to avail himself of much more information about an extraordinary number of interactions of which, so far as he can tell, the Earthling is entirely ignorant. For instance, the deceleration of the vehicle at intersection A, five miles from the house, without which there would have been a collision with another vehicle—whose collision course had been laboriously calculated over some hundreds of meters by the Martian. The Earthling's performance would look like magic! How did the Earthling know that the human being who got out of the car and got the bottle in the shop would get back in? The coming true of the Earthling's prediction, after all the vagaries, intersections, and branches in the paths charted by the Martian, would seem to anyone bereft of the intentional strategy as marvelous and inexplicable as the fatalistic inevitability of the appointment in Samarra. Fatalists—for instance, astrologers—believe that there is a pattern in human affairs that is inexorable, that will impose itself come what may, that is, no matter how the victims scheme and second-guess, no matter how they twist and turn in their chains. These fatalists are wrong, but they are almost right. There are patterns in human affairs that impose themselves, not quite inexorably but with great vigor, absorbing physical perturbations and variations that might as well be considered random; these are the patterns that we characterize in terms of the beliefs, desires, and intentions of rational agents.
The intentional stance is clearly a very useful way to think about and predict behavior! But let’s take it one step further. Here’s an example:
Imagine a mother(A) who is often neglectful with her daughter(B). The daughter grows up, relatively healthy, and has a child(C) of her own. Because of her own experiences with her mother, she has always felt insecure about love, and clings to her child, to a degree that is not ideal for a parent. That child grows up and is aloof and distant in her personal relationships, and neglects her child the same way her grandmother(A) neglected her child(B).
This sounds contrived and maybe implausible, but it’s really not! There are many behavioral patterns, and even mental illnesses, that are hereditary (but not genetically so). It’s common sense that the way we are raised affects the way we raise our children; our early relationships and the relationships we witness shape the relationships for the rest of our lives.
Okay. So what?
Well it’s obvious there’s a real pattern here, but it’s a pattern that would be hard (read: impossible) to predict or even describe from a physical perspective. Additionally, the patterns would be truly hard to predict or describe even from the intentional stance! What obvious decisions are these “rational agents” making when they unconsciously replicate these behaviors over generations? It’s truly unclear. It seems that the only way to meaningfully describe the behavior of these people is to speak of self-replicating patterns, or propagating waves. The actual mechanisms that propagate these waves aren’t particularly important (just like how we don’t need to predict where the man coming home from work buys wine to know he will come home with a bottle). We don’t need to know what motivates the rational agents to act in such a way at every time period, only that the pattern is likely to replicate itself. These patterns of behavior are waves, rippling across space and time, and instantiating themselves in the beliefs and desires of rational agents.
Whereas Dennett describes the intentional stance as:
There are patterns in human affairs that impose themselves, not quite inexorably but with great vigor, absorbing physical perturbations and variations that might as well be considered random; these are the patterns that we characterize in terms of the beliefs, desires, and intentions of rational agents.
I would describe this perspective of propagating waves by saying:
There are patterns in human affairs that impose themselves, not quite inexorably but with great vigor, absorbing physical perturbations and variations that might as well be considered random; these are the patterns that characterize and shape the beliefs, desires, and intentions of rational agents.
These propagating waves are the changes in the beliefs, desires, and intentions of rational agents -- just like a wave on an ocean both causes and is caused by the movement of water molecules.
