Aggregated effort is extraordinarily powerful at least in part because, given sufficient inter-communication between individual units of effort (let’s call these “cells” though real cells are already aggregates) and some time, aggregates appear to self-coordinate. That is, a functioning aggregate entity begins with individual free-behaving cells and comes to be organized. Because it becomes organized rather than electing or planning its organization, the aggregate entity also “discovers” any function it might have rather than deciding it. Even if each cell is perfectly free-willed and does precisely as it intends, with sufficient communication between these free-willed nodes there can (and maybe must) emerge an aggregate function. It might not be useful, but there will be consistent gross qualities of behaviour that we can describe.

I say that like it’s a fact because it reads better. It’s really a hypothesis. But that’s how the best science fictions starts — what if this (plausible, I think) hypothesis is true?

So cells aggregate to form tissues and organs whose disparate discovered functions allow a great level of aggregation to exist — a human being that acts and thinks and communicates. Is there a particular reason to believe that this is the terminus of these layers of aggregation? Does the chain organelle → cell → tissue → organ → human have to end at human? I’m not sure there is any reason to believe that. And if it’s true that there are higher levels of organization — that human beings could organize into things that could reasonably be seen as beings in their own right (and let’s be clear — we would not have to sense that for it to be true and more than a cell in your body, even if it was self-aware, would sense that there was a human being nearby), what do these beings do and think?

By inventing the Limited Liability Corporate we drew out the first sketch — blueprint even — for what such a super-entity might be. But the LLC is a golem — it’s a crude deliberate structure that does behave in some ways as an aggregate, but still also obeys commands from masters ¹. It’s not what we’re really looking for.

Now the key to real aggregation has little to do with the individual elements — you can build powerful aggregates from elements that do no more than know their position in space, know the time, and are able to communicate. The first two functions are specific to certain kinds of applications but the third is the glue: powerful aggregate behaviour emerges when there is sufficient communication between cells. When the volume of data and the speed of transmission, and the delay time between data deliveries all cross some threshold, aggregates emerge and begin to evolve function. With the cells in our body, communication is diverse and information-rich — chemicals are swapped, transacted, reswapped, bought, and sold in myriad currencies, and cells themselves may move from place to place, carrying remote data to distant lands. Specific latencies, throughputs, and bandwidths vary, but the communication creates the aggregation.

In the last ten years the intercommunication between human beings has been skyrocketing. Even in very poor nations, large numbers of individuals have cellular telephones and internet connectivity in some form. Vast volumes of data are being transmitted. It is seductive to think that there are ways to organize this to do something great, and indeed humans are constantly pursuing this — we build non-profit organizations, petitions, companies, secret-santa lists, and on and on in an effort to plan a function for an aggregate entity. More golems here though.

What we should be looking for is the emergent entity — consistent behaviour that exists not as a matter of individual intention, but in spite of individual interests. This would be evidence that there are (not is — while the boundary between humans-as-animals is clear, the boundary between humans-as-minds is practically non-existent) super-entities that we do not control in any interesting fashion. Perhaps our golems incidentally provide aggregation of us-as-cells into functions that allow the existence of something much greater and wholly unintentional.

This is where the concept of “artificial intelligence” and, indeed, of transhumanism ceases to be relevant. It’s not possible, impossible, utopian, or inevitable — it’s irrelevant. Any artificial intelligence we create at this point will be just one more cell in these super-organisms. Any amazing changes that happen to humans are simply modifications to cells in a greater structure. As we improve communication, we make these super-entities inevitable and they (even if they exist today) have the power to shape the whole planet, and rapidly, in ways that suit their interests.

And their interests are not our interests except insofar as we keep talking to each other. Anything else they do has nothing to do with us at all. If this were already true, what would be the signs? It we could detect that it was about to happen, would we want to stop it? Could we?

Are new organisms ever still-born from cellular revolt?

–BMurray