It quickly became evident that we were all talking about the same thing—emergence: the idea that new structural properties and patterns can appear spontaneously in complex adaptive systems that are not present in its individual parts.

Similarly at equilibrium there’s no incentive for any agents to diverge from their present behavior—that’s the definition of an equilibrium. Therefore, exploitive behavior can’t happen. A subtle, muted, unconscious bias precludes ideas of exploitation or collapse.