Sublime

But the way in which complex phenomena are hidden, beyond masking by space and time, is through nonlinearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence—a deck of attributes that have proved ill suited to our intuitive and augmented abilities to grasp and to comprehend.

philosophers have tried to define causation in terms of probability, using the notion of “probability raising”: X causes Y if X raises the probability of Y.

In economics the particles, that is, agents, are endowed with some kind of foresight. Their image of the future affects the present.

instead of representing probability in huge tables, as was previously done, let’s represent it with a network of loosely coupled variables. If we only allow each variable to interact with a few neighboring variables, then we might overcome the computational hurdles that had caused other probabilists to stumble.

They appear to want some of the same things most of us want: recognition from their peers and communities and better lives for the people they care about. Being

So, participation is risky in that sense.

A closer look shows that the hierarchies are constructed on a “building block” principle: subsystems at each level of the hierarchy are constructed by combinations of small numbers of subsystems from the next lower level.