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I've been thinking about Emegernce as a logical model to explain a variety of phenomena including incidents in everyday life. One example occurred to me on Saturday when I went down to DC with a group of other Haverford students to attend a large protest on the National Mall. Seeing this crowd of tens of thousands of activists swarm and cluster around the large open space led me to wonder what logical systems could be generated to explain the behavior of such a crowd. Several things occurred to me :

1. The Environment: The organization, United for Peace and Justice, that organized the protest worked with the cops to lay out the physical geography of the space. Barricades were constructed along the sides to keep the crowd contained to the Mall, and a large bandstand was constructed from which the speakers could preach. In addition, UFPJ distributed maps that showed where different blocs (such as the student bloc, the labor bloc, the Latino bloc etc.) were supposed to gather, but many people chose to disregard these maps and move through the space at their own speed. Essentially, UFPJ set the confines of the space and made a limited attempt at designing the meta-level of arrangement but did little to lead actual individuals through the space. As a result, the form remained fluid and evolving throughout the day.

2. Rules and Conditions: One way of explaining different people's behavior is to say that different individuals had different rule sets governing their movement through the space and different conditions defining their situations. Slight differences in either rules or conditions could lead to different behaviors.

for example: people who like pretzels might have the rule:

if (you pass a pretzel stand AND you're hungry) -> then: buy a pretzel

This rule depends on the conditions of being at a pretzel stand and being hungry. Two people could share this rule and be at a pretzel stand, but if only one meets the condition of being hungry, then only one will buy a pretzel and the other will continue moving around the rally. On the other hand, if somebody didn't like pretzels, they wouldn't have this rule, so they could meet the conditions of being at a pretzel stand and being hungry but wouldn't buy a pretzel.

3. Randomness: I'm inclined to say the system was not deterministic and that had the same people been there on the same day in the same weather, the crowd still might have moved in a slightly different way. There are several ways to explain this in terms of rules and conditions, including:
1. The systems are actually incredibly complex and involve a very large number of relevant conditions. For example, in the above pretzel example, it would be possible to like pretzels, be at a pretzel stand and be hungry but still not buy a pretzel if you'd rather have a hot dog or if your friend really had to find a bathroom. The number of relevant conditions doesn't make the system non-deterministic in of itself, but it does make it incredibly fragile, and a massive amount would have to be controlled for in order to get the crowd to move in exactly the same way every time.
2. Another thing that makes the system unstable is that the rules governing individuals might change over the course of the day if they experience things that affect the way they think. For example, somebody with no political affiliation could start out with the rule: if (somebody hands me a free newspaper) -> then I'm going to take it and read it. Following this rule, they could end up reading a free socialist newspaper, agreeing with it and taking on the new rule: if (i pass a group of socialists) -> then I'm going to talk to them.