Sep 8, 2022·edited Sep 8, 2022Liked by Doctor Hammer
Good stuff, Doc. It may have been freeform jazz, but it was still smooth. Not the Kenny G kind of smooth; more like Coleman Hawkins kind of smooth). Now I really want to try it! Perhaps with some assortment of mild chemicals involved.
Funny enough, I wrote a bit about both ant colonies and markets as higher order gestalt-beings a couple of days ago.
I think our conclusions are similar. My only fear is that I suspect humans -- as the reigning champions of pattern-finding -- may be emulating the species' success, instead of it being an intrinsic quality, either of ourselves or of holistic (i.e. embodied, fully integrated) living forms in general I do think there is a difference between the hivemind model and the individual model.
But at the same time, I also think that (spiritual? Jungian?) structures of collective being are accessible to some portion of our minds. Highly distributed, loop-dependent egregores like markets are a very good example of that.
The irony of communism is that they thought to emulate ants by trying to turn humans into a eusocial organism, not understanding that humans already are a eusocial organism, and further misunderstanding the distributed nature of decision making that eusociality depends upon.
In 'The Once and Future King' TH White use a representation of ant-life as a lesson against collectivism. I expect we know more about ant biology and behaviour now, and so ants were perhaps not the best representation (though you can see the intuition). The contrast to your points on them not being guided, and acting individually to create the wider whole is nice:
I guess the tendency for coercion and a seeming need to control other member of the colony, which some individual humans over other humans, is a big difference from ants.
Got any good book recommendations on classical antiquity? Given sub-footnote 13, I figured you might....
Loved this one!
Good stuff, Doc. It may have been freeform jazz, but it was still smooth. Not the Kenny G kind of smooth; more like Coleman Hawkins kind of smooth). Now I really want to try it! Perhaps with some assortment of mild chemicals involved.
Funny enough, I wrote a bit about both ant colonies and markets as higher order gestalt-beings a couple of days ago.
https://markbisone.substack.com/p/the-devil-incarnate-part-1
I think our conclusions are similar. My only fear is that I suspect humans -- as the reigning champions of pattern-finding -- may be emulating the species' success, instead of it being an intrinsic quality, either of ourselves or of holistic (i.e. embodied, fully integrated) living forms in general I do think there is a difference between the hivemind model and the individual model.
But at the same time, I also think that (spiritual? Jungian?) structures of collective being are accessible to some portion of our minds. Highly distributed, loop-dependent egregores like markets are a very good example of that.
The irony of communism is that they thought to emulate ants by trying to turn humans into a eusocial organism, not understanding that humans already are a eusocial organism, and further misunderstanding the distributed nature of decision making that eusociality depends upon.
In 'The Once and Future King' TH White use a representation of ant-life as a lesson against collectivism. I expect we know more about ant biology and behaviour now, and so ants were perhaps not the best representation (though you can see the intuition). The contrast to your points on them not being guided, and acting individually to create the wider whole is nice:
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/o/the-once-and-future-king/summary-and-analysis-the-sword-and-the-stone/chapter-13
Beautiful and thought-provoking. Thank you!
Harrison Kolehi called your work to my attention.
I guess the tendency for coercion and a seeming need to control other member of the colony, which some individual humans over other humans, is a big difference from ants.
Beautiful and elegant! Manipulating prices probably does the same to society as messing with pheromones in an ant colony
Brilliant essay. I kept looking for something that I could disagree with, but the only thing I could find was the subtitle.
That life is something "built" seems to imply what Hayek et al called 'constructivist' fallacies. Although I doubt that's what you meant.
Otherwise, perfect IMHO.