  Predictions of emergent phenomena, appearing on the macroscopic layer of a
complex system, can fail if they are made by a microscopic model. This study
demonstrates and analyses this claim on a well-known complex system, Conway's
Game of Life. Straightforward macroscopic mean-field models are easily capable
of predicting such emergent properties after they are fitted to simulation data
in an after-the-fact way. Thus, these predictions are macro-to-macro only.
However, a micro-to-macro model significantly fails to predict correctly, as
does the obvious mesoscopic modeling approach. This suggests that some
macroscopic system properties in a complex dynamic system should be interpreted
as examples of phenomena (properties) arising from "strong emergence", due to
the lack of ability to build a consistent micro-to-macro model, that could
explain these phenomena in a before-the-fact way. The root cause for this
inability to predict this in a micro-to-macro way is identified as the pattern
formation process, a phenomenon that is usually classified as being of "weak
emergence". Ultimately, this suggests that it may be in principle impossible to
discriminate between such distinct categories of "weak" and "strong" emergence,
as phenomena of both types can be part of the very same feedback loop that
mainly governs the system's dynamics.
