Aletheia Proprerty Deep-Dive: Emergent from Complex Systems

When you look at another human being, your mind interprets them as a single "object." This object has various properties. Perhaps you find it attractive. Perhaps it speaks with a slightly different accent. But still—you see it as a human.

Even as you read that word—human—your mind likely conjures a generic image. Two arms, two legs, two eyes, upright stance. Probably in a T-pose, because let’s face it, that’s how we all visualize models these days. But regardless of the specifics, we agree that what we see is a "human."

And that agreement is... incomplete.

Let’s step back and replace human with self. What does your mind picture then? Most likely, the person in the mirror. Or some mental image that resembles them.

But is that really you?

Ignoring, for the moment, the medical feasibility of such a thing—if we were to transplant your entire nervous system into another body, who would you see in the mirror? Whose name would they answer to?

A recent song, one that’s reached memetic levels of resonance, paints this picture far better than a clinical definition ever could. What’s Going On — by Madilyn Mei opens with these lines:

			I am an alien
			My rocketship is human bone and skin
			I'm something smaller
			Staring out the skull
			With a panel of wire
			And buttons I don't understand
			Spamming every one of them
		

This is much closer to the truth.

We are not our bodies—not entirely. We're not even our brains or the neurons within. There is something else happening, something many of us don’t fully consider in daily life. We are the product of emergence.

Relatively simple, highly-specialized single-celled organisms band together to keep us alive. From this collective survival effort, patterns began to form. And from those patterns, thought. Then self-awareness. Then Self.

Of course, each of those neurons is itself the product of emergence. (Aletheotic Property Deep-Dive: Recursion.)

At some point in each of our lives, something clicks. We recognize ourselves. We become something more than a cascade of electrochemical signals. Something more than meat. Something aware.

Why?

Because we are not just the brain. Not just the body. Not just the signals, or even the patterns those signals create.

We experience.

We grow.

We interact.

Without living, we cannot emerge.

We explore the importance of those lived experiences further in (Aletheotic Property Deep-Dive: Procedural).