for - Whitehead's philosophy of Organism

for - question - identity - individual cell vs multicellular organism

question - identity - individual cell vs multicellular organism - This is a fascinating question as it looks at our evolutionarily composite nature - as a multi-scale competency architecture - Certainly our ordinary consciousness operates as the governance system for the entire population of collaborating cells and microbes - but can we actually directly identify with each individual cell or microbe in this vast integrated collection? - how does Levin's computational boundary of self help to shed light on this question?

• for: earth species project, ESP - Earth Species Project, Aza Raskin, What is it like to be that organism?

• comment

  • what is it like to be that other organism?
  • Earth Species Project is trying to shed some light on that using machine learning processes to decode the communication signals of non-human species
    • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=earth++species+project
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2FH9SvPs1cCds%2F&group=world

• for: social superorganism - vs human multicellular being, social superorganism, Homni, major evolutionary transition, MET, MET in Individuality, Indyweb, Indranet, Indyweb/Indranet, CCE cumulative cultural evolution, symmathesy, Gyuri Lajos, individual/collective gestalt, interwingled sensemaking, Deep Humanity, DH, meta crisis, meaning crisis, polycrisis

• comment

  • True, there is no physical cohesion that binds human beings together into a larger organism, but there is another dimension - informational cohesion.
  • This informational cohesion expresses itself in cumulative cultural evolution. Even this very discussion they are having is an example of that
  • The social superorganism is therefore composed of an informational body and not a physical one and one can think of its major mentations as collective, consensual ideas such as popular memes, movements, governmental or business actions and policies
  • I slept on this and this morning, realized how salient Adam's question was to my own work
    • The comments here build and expand upon what I thought yesterday (my original annotations)
    • The main connections to my own sense-making work are:
      • Within our specific human species, the deep entanglement between self and other (the terminology that our Deep Humanity praxis terms the "individual / collective gestalt")
      • The Deep Humanity / SRG claim that the concurrent meaning / meta / poly crisis may be an evolutionary test foreshadowing the next possible Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality.<br /> - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=MET+in+Individuality
        • As Adam notes, collective consciousness may be more a metaphorical rather than a literal so a social superorganism, (one reference refers to it as Homni
          • https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140701-the-superorganism-engulfing-earth
        • may be metaphorical only as this higher order individual lacks the physical signaling system to create a biological coherence that, for instance, an animal body possesses.
        • Nevertheless, the informational connections do exist that bind individual humans together and it is not trivial.
        • Indeed, this is exactly what has catapulted our species into modernity where our cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has defined the concurrent successes and failures of our species. Modernity's meaning / meta / polycrisis and progress traps are a direct result of CCE.
        • Humanity's intentions and its consequences, both intended and unintended are what has come to shape the entire trajectory of the biosphere. So the impacts of human CCE are not trivial at all. Indeed, a paper has been written proposing that human information systems could be the next Major System Transition (MST) that could lead to another future MET that melds biotic and abiotic
          • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=MST+-+information
          • or https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Farticles%2F10.3389%2Ffevo.2021.711556&group=world
        • This circles back to Adam's question and what has just emerged for me is this question:
          • Is it possible that we could evolve in some kind of hybrid direction where we are biologically still separate individuals BUT deeply intertwingled informationally through CCE and something like the theoretical Indyweb/Indranet which is an explicit articulation of our theoretical informational connectivity?
          • In other words, could "collective consciousness be explicitly defined in terms of an explicit, externalized information system reflecting intertwingled individual/collective learning?
      • The Indyweb / Indranet informational laminin protein / connective tissue that informationally binds individuals to others in an explicit, externalized means of connecting the individual informational nodes of the social superorganism, giving it "collective consciousness" (whereas prior to Indyweb / Indranet, this informational laminin/connective tissue was not systematically developed so all informational connection, for example of the existing internet, is incomplete and adhoc)
      • The major trajectory paths that global or localized cultural populations take can become an indication of the behavior of collective consciousness.
        • Voting, both formal and informal is an expression of consensus leading to consensual behavior and the consensual behavior could be a reflection of Homni's collective consciousness

• insight

  • While socially annotating this video, a few insights occurred after last night's sleep:
    • Hypothes.is lacks timebound sequence granularity. Indyweb / Indranet has this feature built in and we need it for social annotation. Why? All the information within this particular annotation cannot be machine sorted into a time series. As the social annotator, I actually have to point out which information came first, second, etc. This entire comment, for instance was written AFTER the original very short annotation. Extra tags were updated to reflect the large comment.
    • I gained a new realization of the relationship and intertwingularity of individual / collective learning while writing and reflecting on this social annotation. I think it's because of Adam's question that really revolves around MET of Individuality and the 3 conversant's questioning of the fluid and fuzzy boundary between "self" and "other"
      • Namely, within Indyweb / Indranet there are two learning pillars that make up the entirety of external sensemaking:
        • the first is social annotation of the work of others
        • the second is our own synthesis of what we learned from others (ie. our social annotations)
      • It is the integration of these two pillars that is the sum of our sensemaking parts. Social annotations allow us to sample the edge of the sensemaking work of others. After all, when we ingest one specific information source of others, it is only one of possibly many. Social annotations reflect how our whole interacts with their part. However, we may then integrate that peripheral information of the other more deeply into our own sensemaking work, and that's where we must have our own central synthesizing Indyweb / Indranet space to do that work.
      • It is this interplay between different poles that constitute CCE and symmathesy, mutual learning.
      • adjacency between
        • Indyweb / Indranet name space
        • Indranet
        • automatic vs manual references / citations
      • adjacency statement
        • Oh man, it's so painful to have to insert all these references and citations when Indranet is designed to do all this! A valuable new meme just emerged to express this:
          • Pain between the existing present situation and the imagined future of the same si the fuel that drives innovation.

• quote: Gien

  • Pain between an existing present situation and an imagined, improved future is the fuel that drives innovation.
• date: 2023, Nov 8

• for: illusory self, non-self, lack of self, organism - as process, human INTERbeCOMing, bio-buddhism, biology - buddhism

• ego as illusion
• not I, but we? (relate to concept of environments/ extending mind/extending self)
• awareness to what is (all of our experience, surroundings, organisms)
• body "I?" as part of a greater nature, Allah, and everything else (part of oneness we participate in)
• ego as construct (things we tell ourselves, beliefs)
• ego as illusion (are we a center of consciousness/energy? it causes opposition)
• we are the body, as part of the natural environment
• no self, as system (organs)
• self as organism that goes together with other organisms/see extended mind as extended self, maybe different phrasing)
• I as organism/environment, but ego as opposing it
• confusing symbols with reality of the world itself (see Tolle on interpretation as removing from present)
• caused by stories to ourselves, by others, looking at mirror/listening etc. "creating of image of self/mask" (persona), as a social institution (construct of self/ego), it is useful (helpful for navigation, but it is abstract)
• hides of ourselves, entirely unconscious, to external world etc. (things that are essential to us, we don't perceive, bec of the ego)
• sensations of "I" is false (cutting off your complete experience, all organisms, everything in ones awareness, not closed off)
• forcing the mind/concentrate is thinking to ourselves (for example, how we ought to read thst difficult book)
• distracting ourselves from reality
• destroying environment as destroying the body
• "you can't rid of it" (that is the ego, trying to get rid of the ego, a circle) answer: do nothing (ego asking the question)
• you can't control anything, like thoughts, feelings, other organisms, they are as they are, so you don't do anything, you see, you feel, observe, you are not "you" , you as the whole world (and creator), as experience

• for: societal design, designing societies, societal architecture, transforming society, whole system change, SSO, social superorganism, John Boik

The seven main ideas for societal design: 1. societal transformation - is necessary to avoid catastrophe 2. the specific type of transformation is science-based transformation based on entirely new systems - de novo design - 3. A practical way to implement the transformation in the real world - it must be economical, and doable within the short time window for system change before us. - Considering a time period of 50 years for total change, with some types of change at a much higher priority than others. - The change would be exponential so starting out slower, and accelerating - Those communities that are the first to participate would make the most rapid improvements. 4. Promoting a worldview of society as a social superorganism, a cognitive organism, and its societal systems as a cognitive architecture. 5. Knowing the intrinsic purpose of a society - each subsystem must be explained in terms of the overall intrinsic purpose. 6. The reason for transformation - Transformation that improves cognition reduces the uncertainty that our society's intrinsic purpose is fulfilled. 7. Forming a partnership between the global science community and all the local communities of the world.

Individual organism's intrinsic purpose is to maintain vitality and sustain a flourishing of itself, including its extended self (ie. the environment) through sensing, evaluating states and take actions based on anticipation through models of reality.

Check out the 1911 William Morton Wheeler paper on Ant Colonies as organisms. Does Wheeler actually call the colony an organism rather than a superorganism?