Emergent behavior.

Now there's a phrase to conjure with. And boy howdy is there a lot of nonsense
around it. It's quite a bit like quantum mechanics and relativity, in that
pop notions built on the magic of the phrase run out way ahead of the way
it's used by the specialists.

So. Here's a thing. It can only go one step forward, or backward, and it
can only turn right or left. So, four possibilities, right? Four, and four
alone, simplest possible thing imaginable.

I can describe every pixel on your screen with such a scheme. It might be
clumsy, but that is, in effect, all that raytracing does. The pixels on the
screen know only on or off, and red/green/blue. That's it. Five little
possibilities.

And how I trace them is my business, especially if the processor does it
quickly enough for your brain to not notice. In the old days, you could
watch the line of resolution update migrate from top to bottom of the screen
as the little automaton did its business for each refresh cycle.

The things that can all be done with computer animation these days should then
tell you what possibilities there are for simple state machines. The phrase
'you can't explain this' is, in this context, more properly stated as 'I can't
explain this' or, 'I don't understand this'.

'I don't want to understand this' is often implied, of course.

(As ever, these sorts of noodling thoughts are, in the most important sense,
me noodling character in public. I'm a fiction writer, if you see me pushing
these sorts of thoughts around in public, then know that there's a character
who's going to exhibit some, all, or none of these traits in your future.

That, or there's an interesting reason *why* someone may or may not think
this way...)