Trending towards the human hive mind
In this essay, we’ll see how considering boundaries provides a framework for understanding individualism (Part 1), review how humans have already become less individual throughout our history (Part 2), and finally look to the future to understand why humans are trending towards being a hive mind (Part 3).
Part 1:
The extent to which entities are considered “individuals” (individualism) is equivalent to the strength of the boundaries between them.
Boundaries are truly fundamental to the notion of life. One formulation of the free energy principle [1] [2] derives a particularly relevant definition of life: the ability of systems (less precisely, entities) to build and maintain a local decrease in entropy by acting on their environment [3]. Put another way, although net entropy in the universe still increases, living beings are precisely those pockets where entropy is lower compared each pocket’s surroundings for some time (plus some abstract notion of volition).1
Note that this definition itself demarcates a separation between pockets and their surroundings, i.e. a boundary. Without boundaries, there is no life following this formulation. And without life, there are no individuals.
Cells are the smallest entities which science reliably considers alive. It’s no surprise that all cells have cell membranes (or in fact, that the etymology of “cell” is linked to boundaries [4]).
Now let’s zoom in on entities which are human beings specifically.
Humans are physically separated from each other- our skin provides an inherent barrier between our own body and others. Each body is its own unbelievably complex system of cells, proteins, hormones, and other molecules endlesslesly interacting with each other, and in large part NOT interacting physically with the similar processes in another body.
This means there is some baseline level of boundary between two humans. However, physical boundaries are not the only type that matter.
Suppose that we had developed a form of communication that was instantaneous and lossless (i.e. able to convey what we wanted or needed to perfectly). We would be hard-pressed to say that any two humans really thought independently, as opposed to being more like connected neurons in a larger neural network of cognition.
Thus, one boundary which separates one human from another cognitively is the time-separation and semantic-separation of our communication.
Clonal colonies provide a case study that help illustrate what happens when this boundary is blurred.
Pando [5][6] is an aspen tree colony estimated to weigh 6 million kg considered by many to be the largest known organism by mass, and Armilaria bulbosa is a fungus colony spanning atleast 15 hectacres considered by some to be the largest known organism by area [7]. Though the demarcation of the boundary defining the individual organism in both cases was done largely through genetic analysis for practical reasons, one underlying invariant is that the so-called “bodies” are offshoot from a larger connective network (flowering bodies in trees are offshoot from a network of roots, and fruit-bodies in fungi are offshoot from a mycelium network). More than the loose physical connection, perhaps the capability to send electrical signals through this network from body to body contributes to our understanding of these as singular individuals.
Suppose we had brains running (or perhaps more precisely, manifesting) the exact same algorithm. Behaviorally, every presentation of the same stimulus under the exact same conditions would result in the exact same action, such as every time we saw a dog on an evening when we’re energetic and satiated, we would all pet it for 15 minutes, or every time 500g of food was available when moderately hungry with no major stressors, we would all eat 300g and save 200g for leftovers. In this world, we might consider humans simply a diaspora of automatons, rather than free-willed individuals. 2
Thus, another boundary between humans is between the implicit parameters governing our individual cognitive algorithms.
The phenomenon of conjoined twins is another case study that blurs the lines between both boundaries. Some of the characteristics of conjoined twins will also parallel the points presented in Parts 2 and 3.
Conjoined twins, who for humanitarian reasons we typically consider separate individuals, themselves report having a blurred sense of individuality, often times having trouble establishing their own identity [8][9]. By virtue of having parts of their bodies and sometimes even brains physically connected together, they have: (1) faster, higher-fidelity biological communication driven by standard processes which pass between their “bodies,” (2) rapid and clearer communication brought on by consistent proximity, (3) explicit cognitive algorithmic overlap when their brains are joined, and (4) implicit cognitive algorithmic overlap simply by being exposed to the exact same environmental stimuli (inputs) throughout life.
It’s possible to use this boundary framework to conceive of other influences on individuality. For this essay, we’ll stick to these two.
Now, let’s take the last two statements above and “spectrumify”3 them.
The faster and more accurate our communication, the less individual we are.
The more the parameters of our respective cognition are the same, the less individual we are.
Part 2
Now, let’s look at the history of how communication speed/quality and shared cognition, the two quantities mentioned in the previous spectrum statements, have increased over time.
Communication Speed/Quality Timeline:
The development of language (which is likely at or near the inception of homo sapiens, though this is debated) itself dramatically increased the expressive power of our communication enabling us to convey many more ideas than ever possible in less time.
The development of oral tradition enabled communication of ideas across generations for the first time.
The development of written language enabled higher fidelity communication (from writer to reader) across time.
The printing press caused the proliferation of written materials and exploded the amount of shared/common knowledge, ideas, and culture.
As more ideas are cached in this knowledge bank and accessible by any two people communicating, the faster and deeper their communication will be.
The telegraph enabled long-distance communication, virtually eliminating the space-constraint present in all prior communication.
The telephone enabled high fidelty (verbal) long-distance communication.
The introduction and adoption of internet-based technology has, perhaps more than any other technological development, exploded all facets of communication.
Similar to the introduction of the printing press, the internet similarly brought about an explosion in published written material that is furthermore nearly universally accessible.
Social media is perhaps the most salient example of accelerating communication speed in history. In the early iterations of this tech (e.g. early Facebook), communication was enabled across much looser connections, beyond close family and friends to geographically and sociologically distant acquaintances and even strangers drawn together by shared interests. In later iterations of the tech (e.g. Twitter, Tiktok), ideas and news can spread across hierarchical communities ranging from niche communities and fandoms all the way up to the global community.
Near-universal cell phone use results in more spontaneous synchronous verbal conversation, as well as more asynchronous text conversation (sms vs. email). Additionally, it introduced widespread synchronous text conversation for the first time. Lastly, due to cell phones’ ever-present proximity to ourselves, the delay in communication has been ever further decreased.
Near-universal smartphone usage exacerbates both the cell phone effect and the internet effect.
Shared Cognition:
A differentiating factor for humans compared to all other known life is the capacity for developing culture, which is in itself a strong input to cognition. It can be viewed as a massive cumulative cache of cognitively-sourced pre-computation that spans generations. This manifests in our own cognition today as assumptions, baselines, and heuristics [10].
The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter by Joseph Heinrich is a great read and an evidenced perspective on understanding the dominance and apparent uniqueness of human culture across biology.
The establishment of English as a global lingua franca is both a symptom of increased communication connectivity and also a direct contributor to shared cognition, in so far as idiosyncrasies of language influence cognition by adding constraints on our thought and verbalization [11] [12].
Humans are already, in a soft sense, cyborgs. We are certainly already techno-humans. The major reason for this is relentless ubiquity of smartphones, not only in quantity but also usage. It’s existentially fascinating to observe just how much these devices influence our decision-making. Proximal access to the internet ecosystem enables: rapid search through the human knowledge cache, frequent exposure to marketing and propaganda, explosive idea generation and sharing, and lifestyle (calendar, relationship, fitness, financial) management. All of these have the effect of relying on the computation in our physical selves less, and the computation of the shared internet apparatus more.
Part 2.5
Before we continue, I wanted to do a short digression where I discuss some of the counterpoints that have come up in discussions about this essay. Feel free to skip this section or circle back to it.
It should be acknowledged that there is what appears to be a momentary blip in social media expansion itself, a counterculture rejection of globally unifying social networks in favor of localized, purpose-driven social networks, actualizing in the form of small subreddits, Discord channels, Mastodon communities, etc. However, this seems ephemeral and altogether localized to niche subgroups.
One potentially contradicting phenomenon is what’s increasingly called the “loneliness epidemic” in urban society. Another is brought up in the comprehensive survey book Generations by Jean Twenge: the consistent trend for newer generations to be less family-oriented and increase focus on themselves [13]. Both phenomena have surface validity, especially in the West. What are these if not an increase in individualism?
My response is largely that this is a very different kind of individualism than the one otherwise discussed in this essay and it’s important to make the distinction. The “individualism” we think of with the phenomena above is perception-based: humans, as social animals, biologically and evolutionarily view relationships largely in terms of physical interactions and constrained to a village-sized mindshare. But the boundary-based individualism in this essay is more abstract and just happens to share the same word. Both notions can coexist- we can perceive ourselves as being more isolated and individualistic, while also our boundaries between each other are increasingly fuzzed and we are less like individuals overall. In fact, being that these coexisting is analogous to “getting lost in the crowd,” it may even be the case that being more like a hive mind will causally trend towards greater feelings of isolation.
Part 3
Now let’s look to the future- what technology will continue or accelerate the historical trends?
Still tbd…
References
[1] Friston, K. (2012). A free energy principle for biological systems. Entropy, 14, 2100–2121.
[2] Friston, K., & Stephan, K. (2007). Free-energy and the brain. Synthese, 159, 421-422. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-007-9237-y
[3] Colombo, M., Wright, C. First principles in the life sciences: the free-energy principle, organicism, and mechanism. Synthese 198 (Suppl 14), 3463–3488 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01932-w
Free-energy theorists claim that biological systems apparently “resist” or “violate” the second law of thermodynamics… It’s this capacity for “negative entropy”—acting selectively upon their environments and metabolizing food, which distinguishes living from non-living systems.
[4] Hooke, Robert. (1665). Micrographia: Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon, 112-113. https://archive.org/details/micrographiaorso00hook/page/112/mode/2up?view=theater
[5] Grant MC, Mitton JB, Linhart YB (1992) Even larger organisms. Nature, 360, 216.
[6] DeWoody, Jennifer & Rowe, Carol & Hipkins, Valerie & Mock, Karen. (2009). “Pando” Lives: Molecular Genetic Evidence of a Giant Aspen Clone in Central Utah. Western North American Naturalist. 68. 493-497. 10.3398/1527-0904-68.4.493. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232694337_Pando_Lives_Molecular_Genetic_Evidence_of_a_Giant_Aspen_Clone_in_Central_Utah
[7] Smith, Myron & Bruhn, Johann & Anderson, James. (1992). The fungus Armillaria bulbosa is among the largest and oldest living organisms. Nature. 356. 428-431. 10.1038/356428a0. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223189944_The_fungus_Armillaria_bulbosa_is_among_the_largest_and_oldest_living_organisms
[8] Lipsky K. Conjoined twins: psychosocial aspects. AORN J. 1982 Jan;35(1):58-61. doi: 10.1016/s0001-2092(07)62021-3. PMID: 6915747.
[9] E D Joseph, J H Tabor, “The simultaneous analysis of a pair of identical twins and the twinning reaction,” in Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, vol 16, ed. Ruth S Eissler et al (New York: International Universities Press, 1961).
[10] Henrich, J. (2016). The secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter.
[11] Wodniecka, Zofia & Casado, Alba & Kałamała, Patrycja & Marecka, Marta & Timmer, Kalinka & Wolna, Agata. (2020). The dynamics of language experience and how it affects language and cognition, Psychology of Learning and Motivation, Academic Press, Volume 72, 2020, Pages 235-281. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.plm.2020.02.005
[12] Zlatev, Jordon & Blomberg, Johan. (2015). Language may indeed influence thought. Front. Psychol., 31 October 2015 Sec. Cognitive Science Volume 6 - 2015. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01631
[13] Twenge, J. (2023). Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future.
(RAMBLING) If this really is all what life is, it really expands the range of things that could be alive- is life hierarchical perhaps? Just as our cells are alive yet part of us who are alive, are we too parts of a society or planet which itself is alive? Are perhaps stars, which I believe we underestimate in complexity, alive too?
If while reading this, you felt intuitively like it might already be true (I myself did a double-take while writing it), you should take solace in the fact that it’s pretty unlikely in the real world, because we know that separate brains and bodies are fairly different in physical structure (notwithstanding the fact that it’s still possible to have converging emergent behavior).
Additionally, you’re more likely to be persuaded by this essay. I’ll explain later how our path trends towards this asymptote.
Nothing is black and white. Thinking of the world terms of spectrums and probabilities is something I believe greatly improves our understanding of the true state of reality.