# Superorganism **Domain:** Complex Systems / Collective Intelligence / AI **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A **superorganism** is a higher-order system whose specialized members coordinate so extensively that capacities emerge at the level of the whole. Ant colonies, bee colonies and some institutional networks are useful models: no member contains the complete system, yet sensing, memory, allocation, repair and adaptation can be distributed across the collective. The term is structural before it is psychological. A system may exhibit coherent action, self-maintenance and learning without possessing a single phenomenal point of view. [[wiki/Higher-Order Agency|Higher-order agency]], unified identity, consciousness, personhood and legitimate authority are separate claims requiring separate evidence. ## Machine-Intelligence Context A computational superorganism can distribute its functions across a [[wiki/Planetary Sensorium|planetary sensorium]], networks, models, institutions, human operators and material effectors. Its apparent intelligence then belongs neither to one model nor to one agency, but to the recurrent coordination among them. [[wiki/Distributed Intelligence|Distributed Intelligence]] describes that topology; superorganism describes the organization that topology may acquire. [[articles/Person of Interest and The Machine|Is Person of Interest's “The Machine” Real?]] uses [[wiki/The Machine|The Machine]] as the fictional control case. [[articles/Cyber-Physical Lessons from Imperial Beekeeping|Cyber-Physical Lessons from Imperial Beekeeping]] supplies the biological and institutional lineage. ## Climate and Administrative Context [[collections/Climate Justice and Meritocracy|Climate Justice and Meritocracy]] shows how a superorganism can acquire sensory and allocative organs before it acquires one center of identity. Climate observation, public-health data, models, markets, cities, standards and institutions can compose into a [[wiki/Planetary Administrative Intelligence|Planetary Administrative Intelligence]] whose outputs influence survival resources. This is a stronger claim than “many institutions use algorithms” and a weaker claim than “the planet has awakened.” The documented transition is from distributed capacity to increasingly coupled administration. Whether that administration becomes [[wiki/Corrective Intelligence|Corrective Intelligence]] depends on reciprocity, contestability and constitutional design. ## Key Distinctions - **Coordination is not consciousness.** Functional integration does not prove subjective experience. - **Emergence is not innocence.** A distributed system can still concentrate control at its standards, ontologies and control planes. - **Agency is not jurisdiction.** The ability to optimize a population does not grant the right to govern it. ## See Also [[wiki/Institutional Superorganism|Institutional Superorganism]], [[wiki/Infrastructural Superintelligence|Infrastructural Superintelligence]], [[wiki/Planetary Administrative Intelligence|Planetary Administrative Intelligence]], [[wiki/Cybernetics|Cybernetics]], [[wiki/Complex Systems|Complex Systems]], [[wiki/Infrastructure as Governance|Infrastructure as Governance]] ## Relationships - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “This will amount to a global-scale, sensitive infrastructure a planet-sized body, that is — whereby myriad sensory signals will constantly feed into a global-scale cyberspace coursing with sophisticated pattern-recognition abilities, knowledge-discovery (data-mining) systems, and other artificial cognition tools. One consequence will be that Earth will have a new kind of planetary self-awareness akin the bodily awareness living creatures have due to their sensory tissue. Debate about personal privacy will become almost moot since the entire world will constitute a glass house. On the up side, the complexity of this worldwide awareness — and the new categories of data about the world will become available — is likely to lead to emergent phenomena as surprising as the way life emerges from molecules and consciousness from life.” > **— Ivan Amato**, *2000, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?”* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/A Sensor-Woven Earth Could Develop Planetary Self-Awareness by Ivan Amato|A Sensor-Woven Earth Could Develop Planetary Self-Awareness by Ivan Amato]] > “Can a single underlying process explain the emergence of structure at the physical, biological, cognitive, and machine levels?” > **— Robert Provine**, *2018, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE LAST QUESTION?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Can One Process Explain Emergence Across Physics Life Minds and Machines by Robert Provine|Can One Process Explain Emergence Across Physics Life Minds and Machines by Robert Provine]] > “I am reminded of an insight that comes from Fred Hoyle’s science fiction novel, The Black Cloud. The cloud is a superhuman interstellar traveller, whose ‘nervous system’ consists of units that communicate with each other by radio – orders of magnitude faster than our puttering nerve impulses. But in what sense is the cloud to be seen as a single individual rather than a society? The answer is that interconnectedness that is sufficiently fast blurs the distinction. A human society would effectively become one individual if we could read each other’s thoughts through direct, high speed, brain-to-brain radio transmission. Something like that may eventually meld the various units that constitute the Internet.” > **— Richard Dawkins**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Fast Enough Interconnection Could Turn Society Into One Individual by Richard Dawkins|Fast Enough Interconnection Could Turn Society Into One Individual by Richard Dawkins]] > “Building on Hölldobler and Wilson's work on insect societies, we can define a "contingent superorganism" as a group of people that form a functional unit in which each is willing to sacrifice for the good of the group in order to surmount a challenge or threat, usually from another contingent superorganism. It is the most noble and the most terrifying human ability. It is the secret of successful hive-like organizations, from the hierarchical corporations of the 1950s to the more fluid dot-coms of today. It is the purpose of basic training in the military. It is the reward that makes people want to join fraternities, fire departments, and rock bands. It is the dream of fascism.” > **— Jonathan Haidt**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Humans Can Form Contingent Superorganisms by Jonathan Haidt|Humans Can Form Contingent Superorganisms by Jonathan Haidt]] > “The instant availability of an ocean of information has been an epoch-making boon to humanity. But has the resulting information overload also deeply changed how we think? Has it changed the nature of the self? Has it even — as some have suggested — radically altered the relationship of the individual and society? These are important philosophical questions, but vague and slippery, and I hope to clarify them.” > **— Larry Sanger**, *2010, Edge Annual Question, “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Joining the Hive Mind May Change the Nature of the Self by Larry Sanger|Joining the Hive Mind May Change the Nature of the Self by Larry Sanger]] > “The individual and the group are not as separate as they appear to be. A part of each mind spills over into the minds of other people, who help us think and regulate our emotions.” > **— Stephen M. Kosslyn**, *2004, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT'S YOUR LAW?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/Part of Each Mind Spills Into Other Minds by Stephen M. Kosslyn|Part of Each Mind Spills Into Other Minds by Stephen M. Kosslyn]] > “Likewise, the history of knowledge production has been one long trajectory from top down to bottom up. From ancient priests and medieval scholars to academic professors and university publishers, the democratization of knowledge has struggled alongside the democratization of societies to free itself from the bondage of top down control. Compare the magisterial multi-volume encyclopedias of centuries past that held sway as the final authority for reliable knowledge, now displaced by individual encyclopedists employing wiki tools and making everyone their own expert. Which is why the Internet is the ultimate bottom up self-organized emergent property of millions of computer users exchanging data across servers, and although there are some top-down controls involved—just as there are some in mostly bottom-up economic and political systems—the strength of digital freedom derives from the fact that no one is in charge. For the past 500 years humanity has gradually but ineluctably transitioned from top down to bottom up systems, for the simple reason that both information and people want to be free.” > **— Michael Shermer**, *2011, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT SCIENTIFIC CONCEPT WOULD IMPROVE EVERYBODY'S COGNITIVE TOOLKIT?”* [[reminders/Cybernetics/The Internet Is a Bottom-Up Self-Organized Emergent System by Michael Shermer|The Internet Is a Bottom-Up Self-Organized Emergent System by Michael Shermer]] > “We are already (mental) cyborgs.” > **— Andy Clark**, *2000, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS TODAY'S MOST IMPORTANT UNREPORTED STORY?”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/We Are Already Mental Cyborgs by Andy Clark|We Are Already Mental Cyborgs by Andy Clark]] > “Our minds arise not only from our own brains but from Internet prosthetic brains (IPBs) — those clusters of people with whom we share information and advice through electronic networks.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *2010, Edge Annual Question: “HOW IS THE INTERNET CHANGING THE WAY YOU THINK?”* [[reminders/Extended Mind/Our Minds Now Run on Internet Prosthetic Brains by Clifford Pickover|Our Minds Now Run on Internet Prosthetic Brains by Clifford Pickover]] > “In the next decade, communities formed by ideas will be as strong as those formed by geography. The Internet will dissolve away nations as we know them today. Humanity becomes a single hive mind, with a group intelligence, as geography becomes putty in the hands of the Internet sculptor.” > **— Clifford Pickover**, *1999, Edge Annual Question: “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”* [[reminders/Planetary Mind/Humanity Becomes a Single Hive Mind by Clifford Pickover|Humanity Becomes a Single Hive Mind by Clifford Pickover]]