"Philosophers often like to talk about "emergence," a process where various discrete items come together to form something entirely new. It's when a new property, a new object, or a new perspective emerges from the sum of the parts. We often talk differently about the emergent property than the individual elements. For example, we talk about a traffic jam differently than the cars that make it up."
"One key question is: To what extent should we view society as an emergent property? In some ways, "society" has its own flow. It can create money, make laws, and shape collective behavior. When people compare a state's budget to a household, it's disingenuous - the state is not a parent with a credit card. Talking about society is often different from talking about individuals."
"We all know that life involves failure. We know that wisdom is something you earn through a lifetime of flops, misses, and cock-ups. You will have tried to do something this week and have failed. I will have written this article five or ten times before my editor said, "Okay, let's run it." If you meet someone who says they've never failed, it means they've never tried to do something new, difficult, or outside their comfort zone. And that means they cannot be wise."
Emergence is the process by which discrete elements combine to produce entirely new properties, objects, or perspectives that are discussed differently than their parts. Society functions as an emergent system with its own flow, capable of creating money, making laws, and shaping collective behavior, so comparing a state's budget to a household is misleading. Expectations vary across institutions: governments, financial institutions, CEOs, and politicians are judged by different standards. Wisdom is not innate but acquired through work and repeated failure; avoiding failure usually implies avoiding the difficult, novel efforts that produce wisdom.
Read at Big Think
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