Collective Intelligence: Virtues & Vices

Michael Levin on the good & bad of collective intelligence, consciousness, and how little selves become larger selves

Mind Matters is a newsletter written by Oshan Jarow, exploring post-neoliberal economic possibilities, contemplative philosophy, consciousness, & some bountiful absurdities of being alive. If you’re reading this but aren’t subscribed, you can join here:

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tl;dr: New podcast episode is out with Michael Levin. We discuss the biology of how selfhood scales up, collective intelligence, consciousness, and what biological systems can teach us about designing social systems.

The overarching question of our conversation was this: what can we learn from the success evolution has had in ratcheting up intelligence & agency in biological systems, and can we apply any of these learnings towards designing social systems that have similar effects of increasing intelligence and agency?

Below, a scattering of topics we covered.

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On the Scaling Problem of Collective Intelligence

One thing biological evolution is really good at doing is taking small systems, like cells, and combining them into larger systems, like humans. Evolution achieves this by creating various kinds of nested collective intelligences.

A familiar example is the human body, a kingdom of collective intelligence, with layer upon layer of nested intelligent systems, each pursuing their own goals. Miraculously, these all harmonize into the proper functioning of…me, the full human typing this at a computer, totally oblivious to all the flummoxing stuff going on inside my body/kingdom.

But why would we assume that humans are the final frontier of collectively intelligent systems? If combining parts into larger wholes is evolution’s go-to trick, why would it stop at humans? What if humans are becoming parts in larger systems of collective intelligence?

If this doesn’t concern you, consider skin cells, which are parts of the larger collective intelligence that is me. If I go rock climbing (which I won’t, but still, if), I’m dragging these cells across jagged rocks, ripping them off my fingers and leaving them to die.

In other words, my goals trump any goals the skin cells may have; I don’t take into account the well-being of all the parts that comprise my kingdom, I just follow my own goals, even if skin cells must die in the process.

Therefore, as Michael urges in our conversation, it is a project of existential importance to develop a rigorous science of predicting and controlling the emergent goals of collective intelligences, of which we are certainly already a part, and will certainly only become smaller parts of larger systems that increasingly dwarf our goals as time rolls on.

[Sometimes these video embeds don’t work, so here’s a link to the same audiogram on Twitter in case]

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On the Biology of Selfhood

So far, my podcast has covered ‘selfhood’ from various angles. Meditation, Psychedelics, Capitalism. The self is an illusory notion of an enduring control agent, the lingering shadow of the prediction that agents cause actions in the world. The self is a bundle of predictive priors that harden into the background of how we perceive the world. The self is an identity subject to the socioeconomic environments it acts within.

None of these provide a simple, physical explanation of what the self is. Michael Levin’s work, then, is a wonderful addition. It provides a biological explanation of what selves are, and how they combine to form larger selves.

The story he gives relies on a crucial mechanism: gap junctions. Gap junctions are like little bridges that connect the inside of one cell to the inside of a neighboring cell. Across these bridges, ions flow almost instantaneously.

So, a cell is a self. But when it gap junctions to another cell, they are subsumed into a larger self. This process scales all the way up, to a full human organism. To me. Here are his words:

[Sometimes these video embeds don’t work, so here’s a link to the same audiogram on Youtube in case]

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On Consciousness

What does it mean to actually study consciousness, not just its neural correlates? Should I just fuse my brain to whatever conscious system I intend to study?

What is a better format of output for a scientific theory of consciousness - numbers, or poetry?

Why is alchemy a better example of consciousness research than chemistry?

[Sometimes these video embeds don’t work, so here’s a link to the same audiogram on Youtube in case]

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The full conversation covers a wide range:

• Why “goals” are the fundamental ingredient to identifying any intelligent system

• Biological underpinnings of the Bodhisattva vow

• Biological principles for economic design

• What larger systems of collective intelligence we may already be part of, the good & the bad

If you’re curious, you can listen wherever you get pods, or visit the show page here:

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You can find more writing, podcasts, or even explore my research garden, on my website. If you’d like to talk, reach out! You can reply directly, find me on Twitter, or join the Discord.

Until next time,
~ Oshan