HACKER Q&A
📣 desertraven

Is Humanity a Superorganism?


Is Humanity a Superorganism?


  👤 aops Accepted Answer ✓
This is a nice take about the coordination problem - https://www.edge.org/response-detail/10464

6 billion chimps brains dont really get into "sync" so easily because of huge variation in types of intelligence, learning rates, personality types, needs, resource availability etc.

That doesnt mean its not possible.

We already see enough evidence how fast it is to get a whole bunch of chimps to believe bullshit, and perform the same behavior repeatedly without too much questioning and thought. In that sense we already look like an ant colony. Social media, wall st, video games have shown us you can scale it up to the hundred million mark (talking about the number of people given the same info perform the same behavior). In the past religions and empire took centuries to do the same. So its just a matter of time to push it to the billions but its going to be in fits and starts due to difference in people stated above.

Also Nature show us its possible to keep the 20 billion neurons with 1 trillion connection in our head in sync long enough to inject beauty into the universe. So anything is possible.


👤 ksaj
If you are interested in this subject, I think the free courses offered online from Santa Fe Institute, under the name Complexity Explorer will really interest you. I took their Origins of Life course and consider it to be one of the best courses I've taken for any subject. It answers your question from the point of several different kinds of scientists - different practices, from chemistry, to astronomy, to geology, etc.

They just started a new session of that course, but you're probably not too late to start it. And they have a lot of other courses (a lot of which are free) along the same theme. If anything, you'll come out with even more questions, but they'll be really complex questions.

https://www.complexityexplorer.org/


👤 kushan2020
Imo, one of the hallmarks of superoganism is the propensity to sacrifice ones existence for the survival of the superorganism. Humanity in this sense fails this test because of a strong sense of individualism amongst us.

I do believe we do have a bunch tribal behaviour up our sleeves, but it pales in comparison to what other superoganisms have developed over millions of years of evolution.


👤 fuzzfactor
More like a superdisorganizm.