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Collective Intelligence & Distributed Identity
These are two other phrases which have been absolutely dancing around my head for the past few months. However, in their fits of ecstasy, they’ve yet to coalesce into a shape which I can easily just compress down into a few words and say: here, here is this new cool idea which will revolutionize how you look at yourself and other people. I know it’s there but I haven’t struck on the magic passphrase for it. So they’re being released into the wild as seeds on the wind, hopefully to find good soil to cling to and grow into new entities unto themselves.
The gist of all this, I guess, has to do with reaching a perceptable point in one’s experience of life where it seems like you and especially certain of other people are, if not exactly the same thing, then being fed the same line of instructions from planet Xenon or whatever metaphor you want to make up to describe how alien it feels at first. It is, however, I think simply the natural progression of the human being mind experience whatever. You can reach a point of harmony with natural processes patterns rhythms and your own life where you completely sync up with your environment and other volitional agencies and all are mutually propelled forward on a wave of Joy.
If that sounds like hippy crap, then maybe you’re not there yet. The tendrils of this thing though, as it moves through time are inexorable. Mathematically, sooner or later, you’ll simply be taken up in ecstasy whether you like it or not.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Back when you were talking about the interchangebale musicians in the jam session, I was relating that to scalability, in terms of music. The problem is that musicians are interchangeable to a large degree.
There is not all that much difference in level of skill. There is some, but a lot of people are adequate. Talent doesn’t lead to fame so much as famous musicians are percieved as being talented. “making it” is a matter of being in the right place and the right time. So a lot of famous musicians are no better than others living in obscurity. But thre is some relationship between talent and skill, its just there is a lot of randomness also that is exagerated by the huge scale.
But if its live music with people you know and you are doing it just for fun, than it doesn’t matter so much how talented people are or if you become famous.
But then you get into this borg business again, like you do from time to time and combine it with the idea that you personally are riding some wave that no one has ever ridden before, this wave of ecstasy or whatever. Its seems like a clever marketing ploy, even if its not. Like some awesome party is surrounding you that people might miss.
So which is it?
Are we all the Borg (including you) strumming on banjos and guitars interchangeably or are you a unique individual riding some amazing wave of awesomeness?
Because really in a world of extreme scalability which the author of “the black swan” calls “Extremistan” people do miss parties and waves of awesomeness and ecstasy.
Some people become J.K. Rowling and others with perhaps equal talent teach kidergarten and tell equally as good stories to 30 kids at a time. Some gragae bands get huge and become millionaires and famous others stay in the garage.
So if people are interchangeable what does that mean?
May 7th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
are you interchangebale or just the people around you?
May 7th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
That’s what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about people becoming “famous” off of music. Music and the community which surrounds it are their own reward.
First of all, it’s not an *idea* so much as it is an experiential state. Second, I’m not the first person to discover this and I’ve never claimed to be. It’s just humanity in its natural state: happy and fulfilled and radiating that outward in all directions.
That’s a very cynical outlook on something which is very important to me.
I’m not going to argue against this as it has been my experience that this is the case.
I’m both interchangeable and expendable. There are many other people - more all the time, I’m meeting - who are onto the same “trip” as me. There is nothing unique about what I’m into at this point.
It doesn’t *mean* anything at all. There’s no deeper meaning. Nothing to be figured out.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Its not cynical outlook. Its all in how you phrase things. I tend not to phase things super delicately. You are no stranger to branding and things like that. You are even cutting edge. But I am not saying its “simply” a marketing ploy or that YOU are cynical or not genuine. I allow that you may be totally sincere and still a smart marketer.
I guess what it comes down to for me is this:
I have never been into this Buddhist stuff of “all is one” I mean, in a way it might be true. We might just be vessels or transmitters for creative ideas.
But I want it to be me. I want to be the one. Not the only one but one. One of the transmitters. I want credit. If J.K. Rowling makes a billion off of a story she downloaded from the ether. I want to download a billiona dollar story from the ether.
It is not enough for me to say, well we are both creative people, both interchangebale, both one. So if she is successful and me not, its the same thing anyway.
Its not the same thing to me. The only person experiencing reality from my perspective is me.
Plus, I am not convinced its that easy to be creative and create valuable things. I think its possible to get a rich stream and squander it and have it dry up on you.
You say its fine for people to steal your ideas and get rich, I would like to see you steal them. I actually would be happy for you.
Because I want money but I don’t want to simply steal others ideas.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
I guess maybe I come across as a downer. I don’t mean to. I just can’t make sense of this giving everything away for free stuff and having a collective identity.
Is self interest all wrong? Is signing a painting and selling it wrong? Is making a movie and appearing in the credits wrong? Maybe neither is wrong but it comes down to choice. It doesn’t make sense to me but thats fine.
You make a lot of beautiful things. I guess it comes down to my lack of trust for pixels. Maybe I should buy a printer.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Yes, it all comes down to choice. Not just choice but action. No other answer.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:08 am
You know, I was reading some of the links on your tumblr page, and I am actually simulataneously into that some type of thing, about collective intelligence, like what you posted from the MIT page.
I don’t know if you ever check out my blog or not, But I’ve been writing about it. But anyway, from my perspective collective intelligence has nothing to do with people being interchangebale or as not having individual identities.
In fact Karl Popper who was one of the poineers of this kind of thing makes a big distinction between “Open societies” Collectivist societies.
The respective epistemologies of the individual people in the open society has a big effect on the level of collective intelligence of the society.
“Open”, means you belive in “provisional” and not absolute truth. It means being Open to new ideas but also skeptical of everything, like Leaders,
When people organize together in Open societies they form positive feedback loops that result in upwardly spiraling progress.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:11 am
What I mean is a society of Open minded skeptics thinking as individuals has more collective intelligence, than a bunch of wingnuts that think they are Borg or something.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Maybe I come across as a Dick. Maye I just seem negative and like I am droning on and on. I think what it is is that I am awkward in my language. I wish my language were tighter.
But here is the thing dude! People are individuals! They aren’t interchangeable. And when people act in their INDIVIDUAL self interest it works out better for EVERYONE.
You can say that individual people acting in their individual self interest produces an effect that is a Collective type of intelligence. But that is not COLLECTIVISM
People goose step in a collectivist society. So they are basically collectively a bunch of idiots, like lemmings or a school of sardines. INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS is a big deal.
I think the intelligence comes from people being allowed to activate the third semantic circuit of consciousness. OPEN SOCIETIES allow people to freely use this CIRCUIT then time binding creates upward spirals of progress.
The processes at work are STOCHASTIC. its the way evolution works. So if you could say GAIA is intelligent, then an intelligent OPEN SOCIETY would be like GAIA, buzzing with activity! People arguing! Not Goose Stepping! PROVISIONAL TRUTH
the FREE MARKET is part nof this. its kind of harsh because its based on SELECTION. INDIVIDUIAL CHOICE
May 8th, 2008 at 11:53 am
I think that we are individuals, but the stuff that we use to create an identity for ourselves is entirely communal property, so to speak. No one has your perspective on the world, sure, but everyone around you sees the same things.
It’s like the hindu story about the 3 blind men who walk into a room with an elephant. They’ve never encountered an elephant before, so they each go forward to see what it is. One grads the truck, and says “it’s a snake!”. One grabs the foot and says “it’s a tree”, and the last grads the tail, and says “it’s a rope!”.
We can’t see these things that make up our identity, these memes or spirits or whatever they are. But we can do our best to get as complete a picture as possible. And perhaps it’s possible to hook our perspective into a larger thing, which lifts us up and can be shared with others, as long as we stay hooked into it.
And I don’t think this is limited to just memes/ideas/thought patterns. I feel the same thing around trees, where I can sense the force of being that brought the tree into existence and caused it to grow the way it did.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
You can both be an individual and be interchangeable. Individual actors playing common roles.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
Cheer up! When a “TOO much Ted” situation arises we’ll let you know.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Roles aren’t the real you. Maybe everyone else is a vacuous hole waiting to be filled in with programming, but I am not.
If another person was equally adamant that they aren’t a vacuous hole either, I would take their word for it.
Maybe if people want to say they are simply a big hole and have no personal identity beyond the socially constructed and so they want to be the Borg, I shouldn’t disagree with them. But I will give them a wide birth. They make me really wary. I think eventually they become very dangerous.
That is whjat compelled Popper to write his book “Open Societies and its enemies”
Because they eventually become like a black hole trying to suck everything else into the void with them, all in the name of altruism.
“We are all one magical tribe, let us goose step together” they say. Life is less messy that way.
ergo Hitler and Stalin.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I think we are both the things that make us up and the space in which they are contained. To call that space a vacuous sucking hole is to miss the point of having space. The two are not mutually exclusive, they are both aspects of what we actually are.
With space as part of your identity, you never have to fully identify with anything, you never get suckered by your own beliefs, because you know that there is always space around them for something else.
What our identity is, is that which makes a choice as to which parts grow and which parts do not. We all have half-forgotten dreams of things we wanted to do which didn’t work out, or things that we thought at one time and no longer agree with. But really, it’s not that they didn’t work out, or that we were wrong to think them, it’s just that we decided to pursue other aims and grew in a different direction.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I feel like we are getting a bit far afeild. If Tim is basically posting the equivalent of say, a poem. Then there is nothing to debate about.
But in terms of putting forth a spiritual principle like “all is one and all is God” to the degree that we are all God living in interchangeable shells and that we are not actually individuals, outside our superficial roles, Then I have a really strong aversion to that.
I am kind of curious as to why exactly. Sure you can say I am just “Not there yet” Just like if you criticize psychoanalysis to a shrink, the shrink can say “that’s because you have problems with your Father.”
That doesn’t really get to the crux of the issue. The issue as I see it is what Star Trek was getting at with the idea of the Borg. Its a creepy idea to me.
I think people can have experiences while meditating that are all well and good, but making it a permanent state will turn your brain into mush. I think its been demonstrated in countless cults. There is always some psychopath in charge whose brains are not mush and then once everyone has become mush he goes around and violates everyones boundaries.
The boundaries that ostensibly not there, becuse they don’t exist. Boundaries are apparentlly unspiritual. All is one.
So I am an indidividualist and I am not autistic. Autistics have a problem in that hey cannot comprehend the existence of other minds. I also think that psychopaths and Narcissists have a similar problem in that they are so egocentric that they think all minds are extensions of their own.
I think collectivism is a big problem. I think what it is is that at one time when we lived in little tribes we thought more collectively and symbolic culture ruptured this somehow, but we can’t go back. Maybe this is what we yearn for.
But anyway we can’t go back. We have eaten the fruit.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
I think when you get people all excited about living in Unity in a magical world and being one and collective You get thing like the Third Reich.
I know that sounds so over the top, and like it can’t possibly be true, but it must have seemed like a really good idea at the time.
Being skeptical and individualistic and accepting truth as merely Provisional, makes a big difference in how you organize as opposed to people who are all True Believers and and Collective and believing in absolute truth.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Yeah, I think we used Tim’s post as a springboard to something a little bigger than what he intended originally. My apologies Tim, if there is any offence.
I won’t say much more here, other than that what youre talking about seems to be related to the Luciferean and Arihemanic currents of Rudolph Steiner, which Zac @ Alchemically Braindamaged has discussed, and Tim has commented on as well.
Basically, I think that using either of these positions to fight the other is counterproductive. Both need to be used together, in order for anything good to happen. Otherwise, you’re right, we end up with some immense communal shadow posession like the Third Reich.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Just one more quick little thing here.
Just watched that, and I think it relates back to Tim’s original post pretty well. It’s a bit hippyish, but really good. Watch to the end.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Thanks for that Ian!
That was good. Puts it all in context. I think what it is for me, is that its not too hard for me to go into lala land. I think I spent a lot of time in lala land as a kid and I can back there anytime.
I think Gurus kind of act like Gatekeepers to lala land to a lot of people. Because most people are really left brain dominant. Then the followers make two errors, first they think they need the Guru to go there, so they give him a lot of power and then they make this other error that their eventual goal is to be in la la land all the time.
But really the goal is balance like she said.
This has given me a lot of food for thought.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Definitely! I think the key is that lala land, as she puts it, is completely ineffectual. You’re lost in a sea of bliss, or just spaced out, or whatever. You don’t want to do anything. And left brain dominance is effective, but meaningless. Putting the two together, well, that’s being alive!
Also, I don’t know if these two states should be limited to brain hemispheres exclusively. That is, I don’t mean to imply that simply balancing your brain hemisphere’s = effective enlightenment. But what she’s talking about is real, and important. It’s the old finer-pointing-at-the-moon thing again.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Another thing I just thought of-
I am not a materialist/atheist. I believe in reincarnation. And the way I believe in it is that I think I still have a seperate and unique identity in relation to others outside my body.
I kind of look at it like we are spiritual beings playing “The Sims” reality game here on earth in 3D. We are supposed to learn stuff and work on stuff. The point is not to always spend all our time and energy trying to access and think about where we came from. But also its good to remember and to access that place fairly regularly so that we can turn Earth into some reflection of it. Bring heaven down.
But spiritualities that entail the idea that we are trapped here, that life on Earth is Hell or a self imposed delusion really turn me off. Not that you are saying that Tim,
But a lot of spiritualities that have that idea also have the idea that we are all one and that the seperateness is part of the trap. Like ACIM has the idea that we are all Jesus Christ trapped into a billion different bodies and that once we all realize it, physical reality will disappear.
I say screw that. All you have to do to make physical reality dissappear is wait a few decades and die of old age.
May 9th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Ian,
I don’t know if I believe in enlightenment. Actually, to put it more firmly I am unconvinced. I think its a good thing to sell because people want it and its easy to store. Its very scalable. So, I really have my doubts about it. It will either be somthing I find or manufacture on my own or I won’t buy it.
I do know one thing meditation is not something that comes really hard for me. So as a dabbling Buddhist, I pretty quickly got to where I could stay still and chant and do all these motions. Then I wondered why I have to listen to this Guy with the Stick giving my stupid riddles to solve. I think it was very doubtful that this little bald mofo actually had somthing I needed or wanted, beyond teaching me how to meditate.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Sounds good to me Ted.
Personally, I think that if Enlightenment exists (and I do believe in it, although still only in an incredibly vague way at this point), the way you are looking for it is the only way to actually find it (although technically you don’t find it so much as suddenly remember that you’ve had it all along).
It has to be something you do on your own or it’s not the real thing. Everything else along the way is just window dressing. =)
May 9th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I wish I could put into words better what my original intentions were with this subject in general, because we’ve veered into territory that for me isn’t really related. I’ll keep hacking away at it though, and I appreciate the commentary regardless.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Everyman
Harmony
ecstasy
Collective intelligence
Distributive identity
volitional agency
Interchangeable humans
I just find the combination of these various key words in the last few posts kind of creepy.
I guess whatever it is you are grasping at could be creepy in one conext and not another.
If its a game it wouldn’t be creepy, like say some type of Ninetendo wii type deal where you have a concert where people plug in and experience some type of shared participatory energy, as they act as characters in a play.
But outside a game people play through the internet or something, you also have been talking about political societal engineering type stuff.
I think in that context its creepy. Because I am an individualist and not a collectivist. I can play games or act in a play but that is not my identity. I am a soverign individual.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Right, exactly! We usually just call it “reality” but you summed it up perfectly.
My point is that society and culture are games which have been designed and which can be re-designed according to consensual agreements between sovereign individuals to find “best possible” and “what works best” type solutions.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:26 am
PS. A corporation is an example of a collective intelligence with a distributed identity.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:27 am
This also should be relevant
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2007...10/07/towards-open-source-identities/
May 9th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I see this happening to my friends, but not me, and it just kills me.
Any concrete advice on how to get there?
May 9th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Wouldn’t a corporation be more a collective identity with a distributed intelligence, or am I just spiltting hairs there?
Anyway, I am curious about how what you’re talking about is different from Ted’s concerns about a Borg-like hive-mind. I do believe that what you mean is a different thing, because I both share Ted’s concerns on the hive-mindset and like what you are pointing towards. But I just can’t seem to wrap my head around what separates the two.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Read the Tao Te Ching and do what it says. Study it until you’re living inside it. It’s a manual on perfecting each moment, until they all flow together in a seamless continuity. The Art of War is a good follow-up, I think. I’ve read a bunch of similar texts, but I think those two have it all in the easiest to follow and most memorable format. They are like really good pop songs.
I don’t know how to answer this question because I’m still “downloading” what this all is about. At first blush, I’d say there’s nothing different between the two beyond frames of reference and base assumptions. Be afraid of and worry about whatever you want; it’s not my problem. Everyone picks what they worry about and what they do about it. The borg/hive thing doesn’t spook me out anymore because I realize that the nature state of a human (while each may be a sovereign individual) is to act within a community, to live within a pack. In order to do so effectively, a certain amount of humility and a great deal of service are required. I don’t ever hear people talk about those issues when you bring up the “Borg argument.”
May 9th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Well, I’m willing to bring them up.
Do you imply that I am against humility and service? I think Human beings in general tend to fall into binary thinking patterns. Like “which should I choose: Selfishness or altruism? Isolation or disipation?”
What I am interested right now, is what Popper was talking about in terms of an “Open Society” and what other people like Robert Anton Wislon liked so much about it when they quoted him.
I am also interested in what exactly the free market is.(wether it can or ever has existed in a pure state is beside the point for now) But my working hypothesis is that these two related things allow individual people’s self interest to work for the benefit of all.
I also am interested in an epistemology if “emperical skepticism”
I see the converse of these concepts as being “collectivism” and “absolute truth”
I sense for whatever reason that pairing those two things, might seem to hold greatest potential for Bliss or Utopia or whatever but actuall are a recipe for disaster.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
“Open” refers to leaving things Open. Its in the sense of epistemology. “Society” implies coming together for the mutual benefit of all.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
And
So there you go?
No, I just never hear anybody talk about such things in relation to these subjects and I think they are prerequisites for the experiences I’m having.
Okay, but there *is* such a thing as truth - even Truth with a capital T.
I like this too!
May 9th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Well its not really binary. I think in an open society there are dynamic balances between various polarities already. So when you contrast it with a closed society, you aren’t really comparing it in a totally binary 1:1 way. I mean I guess to some degree you are…but whatever.
I see your point, though.
But in relation to an open society, of which we have some semblence of here in America, in a free market, liberal democracy, you have individual people making rational choices in their self interest and having an indirect, positive, collective effect.
Its not the same thing as people acting as a collective.
As far as absolute Truth with a capital T I think it’s possible that it exits in the ether some where. As far as bringing ideals into actual reality, we have only provisional truth.
Progress is a stochastic process. That meands it can go forward in a lot of differnt ways.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I think there’s a strong connection between the Tao Te Ching and the idea of an Open Society…
Tao Te Ching 61
or
Tao Te Ching 75
May 9th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Left a comment, don’t know if it showed up.
Anyway, I think these are relevant.