Long time no post. See: on beach in SC for a week. Much eating, swimming, reading, sleeping. Not much else.
While there, I read four books, one of which being "Global Brain" by Howard Bloom (
Anyway… "Global Brain" has, as its main crux, the idea that although many scientists and technologists are predicting a worldwide, (semi-?)intelligent mind of a cybernetic variety, there have, in fact, been global brains around for a couple-a-few million years. He starts with bacteria, moves up through various animal examples, spends a good bit of time on the Spartans vs. Athenians, and ends up with modern media and politics. In short, to prove his points, he gives us really interesting and fun examples of systems that improve their lot through group evolution that seems (in many cases) like learning.
It is a theory related to and built upon memetics. Richard Dawkins came up with the term "meme" to describe a "unit of cultural evolution." Basically, a meme is any idea or group behavior that can be summed up as self-contained trait that lives in a society rather than an individual. Though individuals express memes, they aren’t biologial. Though, as Bloom points out several times, biology has established learning systems within other systems that encourage (usually) learning on larger scales.
Bloom identifies five elements necessary for group selection:
- Conformity enforcers
- Diversity generators
- Inner-judges
- Resource shifters
- Intergroup tournaments
He provides lots of examples of how these elements work alone, and together, to promote the evolution of learning groups, be they prehistoric shrimp or fundamentalist religious groups.
It was a neat read and very thought-provoking. Some of what Bloom is trying to do is to get people to think about evolution outside the "selfish gene" paradigm of individual selection. And I’ve got no problem with the idea that nature favors the advancement of complex systems that work well together. Nor do I have any disagreement with the basic idea that groups of people, as well as many animal species, rely on the evolution of inter-member memes, as well as genetic evolution.
What kind of made me go, "Hmmm…." though was that Bloom’s five elements can basically describe any kind of group interaction. He discusses ways in which conformity generators can help strengthen a positive meme… but also ways in which too much conformity can strangle growth. He clearly favors diversity generators, long-term, as a key to developing new memes for survival… but also acknowledges that diversity without some kind of stabalizing system is too chaotic for growth.
The other elements fare similarly. So my issue with this is that it’s a way for describing systems… but not really categorizing them or making, shall we say, objective qualifications of the elements of group evolution.
We know, for example, that physical traits obtained through genetic, individual evolution will always favor survival, over the long-term, and barring sudden, catastrohpic events. Nature does not select for dumb-ass, weak, brittle or slow survival strategies. Individual creatures with those negative sparks of creative biology will die (on average) more often before reproducing, thus reducing the population of weaklings in a particular niche, and increasing the chances that competing creatures will flourish.
The same can’t be true of Bloom’s five elements, because he points out contradictory examples of how they work in groups. Which isn’t necessarily bad/wrong… a complex system often requires balance. A bit of conformity after diversity… then some reshuffling of resources… then more diversity after a time of complacency, when opportunity presents itself. A description, however, that allows for so much flexibility in interpretation of positive effects leaves me a bit… well… puzzled.
In nature, faster is better than slower, all other things being equal. Stronger is better than weaker. You can’t put "conformity" and "diversity" on the same kind of binary scale, though. There’s too much mud in that water. If I conform to a self-reflective meme that pushes me to be different than my social group… am I being influenced by a conformity enforcer? or a diversity generator? Diversity in small things can be a mark of conformity overall, and vice versa. I almost wish Bloom had come up with a term/idea that captured, on one scale, the concept of the tension that exists between the two, and how the tension is what generates learning.
It made me think, and still is doing so. And that’s a good thing. Lots of good anecdotes, too. But I’ve still not made up my mind about certain key elements. Which is OK, too.
Well, the way I think of it is the same way you describe mass on those relativistic spacetime maps.
A piece of fabric, with lots of little dots (individuals) on it. A diversity generator is a reasonably large-sized ball dropped onto the fabric. It eventually ends up in one place, and in stabilizing, becomes a conformity enforcer, such that all the dots roll over to it. But when a diversity generator is plopped down, it upsets stuff because it bounces everything around.
So, that’s my way of saying, “Yesterday’s liberal is tomorrow’s conservative.”
Andy, if you liked my kindred spirit, Howard Bloom’s Global Brain, you might resonate with the notion of mind colonies — see http://www.ryze.com/go/bala
BTW, would you like to interact with Howard’s team?
@Michael: That’s a good visual. The problem is, until the ball comes to rest (and even after, maybe), we don’t know if it’s something that will be destabalizing to other, more positive diversity generators. We also can’t tell if a conformity enforcer is enforcing a status-quo that is improvement/diversity friendly, or is enforcing an unhealthy conformity. I think the terms are useful, yes… and Bloom’s book explains them well. But like many social constructs, you could argue both sides of various stimula as being either conformity or diversity related, as there are many levels of diversity and/or conformity going on at all times. As you say, yesterday’s liberal is tomorrow’s conservative. But that holds true even in one time period. Ohio’s liberal may be Boston’s conservative. A US conservative may seem fantastically liberal to someone from another country, and vice versa. So events, technologies, etc. that are generating diversity in one area, may be part of conformity in another. And, if that’s the case, then the terms are only really useful in a pretty sophisticated context, whereby you know if an event is more or less change-oriented to *me* in particular. Yes, trending and stats helps look at these things in larger pools. But even then, the diversity generator of a new medium like TV, let’s say, may help drive conformity through mass broadcast of identical images to millions of homes.