
Humans are not unitary individuals but superorganisms - cjg
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150917-is-another-human-living-inside-you
======
netcan
This is a sort of pattern. (1) We create categories and concepts that rely on
categories: molecules, organisms, species, galaxies; water, rebecca, potatoes,
multiple personality disorder. (2) We use those categories to describe and
understand things, engineer and theorize using them. We have evolution and
chemistry and potato salad recipes. (3) Then we discover that these categories
aren't really real. They're real, like, but not _really_ real, you know what I
mean. Tasmanian devils are being decimated by a contagious cancer. A mutated
cell in some devil reproduced until it was lumps, then the devils bit another
delve in the face (they're not nice animals) and some of that cancer jumped
into another one and spread. Now, that cancer has outlived his maker and is
going around spreading in the world with complete disregard for the concepts
of organism or species and behaving like a bacteria, virus or somesuch.
Instead of spreading normally like the rest of the devil by sexy with other
devils it jumps into the other devil's face (sometimes during sex, they are
not nice animals). Maybe one day it will evolve into our replacement. Maybe it
will find symbioses with sheep and become a beneficial gut fauna (it is a
taste devil after all).

We make up these categories for convenience. They are not obligated to comply.

~~~
jacquesm
The posterchild for categorization failure is 'species'. The closer you look
at what a species is the more nebulous it becomes.

~~~
samuel
Most of the models that we use everyday are "leaky abstractions". They are
useful in most contexts, but they get fuzzy at their boundaries.

My favourite example is the "chicken and egg" problem. The difficulty of it is
to define what a chicken is, everything is trivial afterwards. The answer,
IMHO, is that "a chicken" was born from an egg put by a "non-chicken".

~~~
jernfrost
I really like Richard Dawkins explanation of this, where he has you imagine
taking a photo of yourself from your are born to you reach adulthood with 1
minute intervals.

If you stack these pictures, there is no single picture you can pull out and
say: "Here I transitioned from child to adult" e.g. Likewise with animals and
evolution. Changes are so minute that you can speak of a transition from one
species to another happening at the point of birth.

Only when you look at pictures of yourself far away from each other in the
pile can you start differentiating them. Likewise with animals.

~~~
sageikosa
Also Dawkins posits a relatively good empirical definition of species
boundaries (although I'm not quoting him verbatim, and I may be
extending/synthesizing some of the ideas somewhat), but...a species is
basically the pool of organisms available at a period of time that can
generate progeny that themselves can generate progeny. That is, they have
replicator compatibility...

Under that definition, humans make a species. Horses make a species, donkeys
make a species, but mules do not. Apparently in the world of Star Trek,
Klingons and humans make a species: Worf (Klingon) had a child with a half-
human/half-Klingon woman, and Tom Paris (human) had a child with a half-
human/half-Klingon woman. Not sure about Vulcans and Romulans...obviously they
can mate, but I'm not sure Spock himself can have children, perhaps we'll find
out in a future movie. In Futurama, Kiff reproduced with Leela.

As to the concept of a human as a "super-organism", the problem with bacteria
being part of the equation is that they do not transmit their replicator
payload through the germ-line transmission vector. They are not integrated
into the next generation in whole or in part. Via the concept of the extended
phenotype they may alter and extend their environment to improve their chance
of success (and often mothers and children have the same bacteria flora), but
it's better to think of it as symbiosis (or in the worst case, parasitism)
than true "super-organism" reproduction. (Me thinks!)

~~~
mortehu
> a species is basically the pool of organisms available at a period of time
> that can generate progeny that themselves can generate progeny

That's what we learned in high-school too, but as you mentioned, it doesn't
make sense for donkeys, nor does it work for ring species[1], or organisms
that reproduce asexually[2]. Mules can occasionally become mothers[3].

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species)

2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual_reproduction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexual_reproduction)

3\.
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1226025...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12260255)

~~~
sageikosa
I wasn't familiar with the term "Ring Species" (I've only gotten interested in
evolutionary biology in the past few years), although I had considered that a
"pool" might have a relatively fluctuating degrees of mutuality and
incompatibility among candidate members.

Also, I hadn't considered to qualify "sexual reproduction", as asexual
reproduction might be better thought of as strains (perhaps), the
classification systems for simpler organisms tends to be more structural than
fecund. In my defense, I tend to refer to organisms as assemblages of organs
of which simpler biota can loosely be said to possess, though I always thought
of the "organs" of single-cellular creatures as organelles as they are not
made up of "tissue" as they are in multi-cellular organisms.

------
b6
Really interesting subject. I'm more like a forest than an animal!

If humans are higher-order animals on top of cells and bacteria (us not caring
much about them and them not being aware of us), are humans also the cells of
some super-er animals?

Apparently the Buddha said that one of the characteristics of reality is that
there is no such thing as "you", no unchanging entity that could be called the
perceiver of all these perceptions. I guess we're like the boat whose parts
are all replaced over time.

~~~
mikekchar
You could imagine that "you" is simply an artefact of memory. Because it
creates a sense of continuity, it is an easy place to create a barrier outside
of which is "not you". If you could remember other people's thoughts, how
would it affect your perception of yourself?

Just as a neuron acts in concert with other neurons, but does so
independently, so do we act in concert with our surroundings. If not for our
memory, that creates identity, how are we separate from the rest of the
universe?

Though having said that, there are many other explanations which people
believe in very strongly. I'm not attempting to challenge those notions. I'm
just musing out loud.

~~~
andyl
Where does the memory reside? What is it that 'remembers'?

------
kmonad
This is really cool. Our bodies are essentially battle fields with different
replicating agents struggling for control and a "place" in the future. Any
cooperative "agreement" is loose and subject to change at any point (for
example cancer), and those offspring stem cells invading a mother's brain:
mind-blowing (no pun intended).

~~~
vanderZwan
> Our bodies are essentially battle fields with different replicating agents
> struggling for control and a "place" in the future.

That's just another metaphor, and you have to be very careful with your choice
there. To paraphrase Lakoff & Johnson[1]: the metaphors we use shape the
thoughts that we understand through them. A very common one is thinking of
arguments as war ("his viewpoints got _attacked_ but he _defended_ them well",
etc). Imagine what would happen if we think of arguments as a dance?

[1]
[http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3637992...](http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3637992.html)

~~~
ThomPete
Yeah it's like when Dawking wrote the Selfish Gene. He spend some time talking
about that the genes weren't in fact selfish it was just that they acted as if
they were.

~~~
vanderZwan
Exactly. Denis Noble wrote a perfect counter to the trap of thinking that this
metaphor often leads to (although not in Dawnkins himself). In The Music of
Life[1] he _invert_ the metaphor: instead of us being "lumbering hulks, slaves
to our genes", our genes are captives of our bodies, depending on our choices
to keep existing. Noble's point was that you could neither prove nor disprove
one to be more accurate a metaphor than the other, despite having the _total
opposite_ interpretation.

I'm not saying kmonad's explanation is wrong, just that it's dangerous to not
be aware of the underlying metaphor.

[1] [http://musicoflife.co.uk/](http://musicoflife.co.uk/)

~~~
ThomPete
I actually think it's much more important to realize what metaphors are
exactly because they are derived through language which by default is framing
our perspectives and is limited in it's ability to express more complex
reality. (Hence a picture is worth a thousand words)

I always look at language as a reduction of reality not a one to one
relationship with reality. I.e. we as pattern recognizing feedback loops
notice some phenomena and then try trough language to express it. But because
we are limited beings and our language is limited in expression we end up only
expressing perspectives rather than truth.

This could, I believe, also be one of the reasons why we have such a hard time
finding a way to describe QM and general relativity in a unified manor. Our
language really doesn't do well with paradoxes.

The exception is in zen-buddhist philosophy that actually are much more
accepting of paradoxes (wisdom lies in paradox)

But thats another discussion. The primary point I am trying to make is that
this reduction of reality leads to our perspectives and can both provide
clarity but also trap us in a certain way of thinking.

~~~
vanderZwan
I think you would really enjoy reading the works of Lakoff & Johnson I
mentioned earlier, if you haven't already :D

> _I actually think it 's much more important to realize what metaphors are
> exactly because they are derived through language which by default is
> framing our perspectives and is limited in it's ability to express more
> complex reality. (Hence a picture is worth a thousand words)._

I agree with everything you say - but I would like to give an opposing view to
the "derived from language" bit. It's very likely to go in the other
direction! One thing Lakoff & Johnson discuss - especially in their later work
- is how our metaphors originate from our physical senses and our body (look
up "embodied cognition" and "conceptual metaphor"). In short, they argue that
we derive fundamental metaphors from the embodied experience, and inject what
would otherwise be a otherwise purely symbolic language with meaning through a
complex web of metaphors.

~~~
ThomPete
Yes you are of course right. I am using metaphor more literally than they are.

------
TeMPOraL
The way all organisms depend on the ecosystem for their basic function paints
human-made self-replication in a different light. I used to think that we'll
reach the proper level of nanotech if we learn to make machines that build
themselves pretty much from the scratch. Throw a rock in, out swarm of robots
go. I used to think that's how nature works. That it eats atoms or simple
molecules and then spews out organisms.

But it turns out, nature is cheating. There are things that human cells can't
make. We depend on other, smaller organisms to make them. For instance, we
can't make vitamins ourselves, we need to source them from outside. It turns
out that even for replication, cells need to have proper prefabs available in
the environment. For instance, we're swimming in nitrogen, and plants can't
use it anyway because it's not in a proper form.

Which means that if we want to copy this ability, we need to just focus on
"vitamins". That is, all the hard-to-make stuff that requires large-scale,
high-tech industry to be produced. If we can tile the area where a robot
operates with universal microcontrollers and accept that as a part of its
environment, then the problem of self-replication becomes much easier. There's
a big volcano^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfactory operating somewhere, pumping out those
small prefabs, and robots are "eating" them and incorporating into themselves
and their children.

Yes, it's cheating. But nature cheats too.

~~~
ZeroFries
I like to think of nature as taking over object generation where stars left
off (and some more duns mental object builders before stars). You need nature
to create high order objects and elements and to combine them in novel ways.

~~~
TeMPOraL
So in this line of thinking, _we_ are taking over where the nature left off -
since our mind-driven changes are orders of magnitude faster and more
efficient than evolution, we're the dominant force of invention now.

------
richmarr
I agree that humans aren't simple unitary individuals, but calling us
"superorganisms" kinda devalues the word. If we're superorgansisms then so are
cats, dogs, mice, birds, and anything else that relies on bacteria for
digestion or has reproductive complexities like chimerism. This would probably
include ants... making an ant colony a superorganism of superorganisms, so
we'd need a new word for that.

How about we figure out which species _are_ unitary individuals and give them
a word? Mono-organisms or something.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
No species are unitary individuals.

No, really, there's no such thing. Everything alive is part of one ecosystem,
and the only thing that really evolves is the ecosystem itself.

Don't agree? Completely disconnect any apparently unitary individual from the
planetary ecosystem and see how long it survives.

This has practical implications, especially for extended space flight. It
turns out to be extraordinarily difficult to build a functioning and stable
micro-ecosystem. Thinking at the species level is almost no help at all,
because what actually happens is that chemicals, energy, and information
propagate through the system space, and modify each other.

We don't have good models to describe what happens at that level, which makes
it very hard to build or maintain systems that are stable.

The Origin of the Species was a huge improvement on biblical creationism, but
it would be disappointing if it was the last word on biological systems.

~~~
mikro2nd
> No species are unitary individuals.

Well,... excepting unicellular ones, no? ;)

~~~
jcromartie
No, even then, the constituent parts (organelles) of single-celled organism
likely began as a symbiosis of separate organisms. The history of life is more
complex and fantastic than we can possibly imagine.

~~~
rtl49
This isn't true. Prokaryotes do not have membrane-bound organelles resulting
from an ancestral symbiotic relationship.

(You might be able to found some weird exception to the rule out here. This is
a generalization -- nothing in biology shocks me anymore.)

Even for unicellular eukaryotes, it would be incorrect to claim they're
separate organisms from their membrane-bound organelles just because of the
organelle's evolutionary origin.

Unicellular organisms really are "unitary."

Edit: A biologist should always be humble. I just thinking of lichens, which
are "composite organisms" consisting of fungi, bacteria, and algae, which can
be an instance of what you're getting at. Still, _some_ organisms really are
"unitary."

------
purplerabbit
On "meta-organisms," which several have mentioned...

It's not a stretch to think of human groups who act in a coordinated way as
meta-organisms... In fact, we do it every day. "Google" does not exist -- it's
a coordinated group of people acting as a corporation.

Even though they're spatiotemporally discontinuous, these organisms seem to be
obviously real, even though this leads to some observations that sound really
pagan. These entities (like Google, or governments) exert their own wills and
controls over our actions and environments... We're basically their subjects.

If you're right-brained at all, try visualizing these entities. It can make
for some interesting impressions :)

Oh, and on terminology: I think it's fair to refer to ourselves (or any
higher-order but spatiotemporally continuous organisms) as "super-organisms."
I think of higher-order, spatiotemporally _discontinous_ organisms "meta-
organisms"

~~~
k__
I'd consider groups of humans as organisms too.

To me the prison system of countries feels a bit like the cancer prevention in
bodies. I mean, it even got something like auto-immune problems, you just have
to look at the USA.

------
snowwrestler
It's arguable that all organisms today are superorganisms. Try to grow a plant
in inert soil without bacteria, for example.

You probably have to go back 3.5 billion years, to the dawn of life, to find
organisms that did not depend on any other organism to grow and/or reproduce.
And maybe not even then; it's possible that early life arrived on Earth from
somewhere else, on a meteorite or comet.

~~~
ZeroFries
Go further back than life to molecules and the same is probably true.
Everything is a holon.

------
amelius
What is of course interesting, is that these organisms, when working together,
can create things such as the experience of pleasure. This makes me wonder
what kind of experience could arise if humans organize into a single "meta"
organism, and if the "lower" individuals would experience anything of the
meta-experience.

~~~
jacquesm
> This makes me wonder what kind of experience could arise if humans organize
> into a single "meta" organism, and if the "lower" individuals would
> experience anything of the meta-experience.

Have a look at a stadium full of people watching a football match. It really
does from some angle look as if there are two giant organisms. Or nation
states at war as observed on a map (the latter reminds me of amoeba moving
around).

~~~
TeMPOraL
>> _if the "lower" individuals would experience anything of the meta-
experience._

> _Have a look at a stadium full of people watching a football match. It
> really does from some angle look as if there are two giant organisms._

Moreover, if you look at the phenomena like "the wave" (aka. Mexican wave), it
seems that the "lower" individuals do experience something more in such a
group than they do in small crowds. I've heard that being in a big crowd can
in some way override individual instincts and reasoning patterns.

------
ommunist
Very shallow article, but very good problem raised into public attention. But
rumours about Toxoplasmic pandemia in Britain are grossly exaggerated. Also
our unique relationship with parasites like worms are not even touched.

UPD: more than 80% of Japanese people (living in Japan) have worms untreated
and Japanese people life expectancy is dramatically better than in any other
nation.

------
pessimizer
The fact that people are living with only a single brain hemisphere (or less)
with relatively little difficulty has always been enough to make this real for
me. I can easily imagine a hypothetical scientist slicing half of my brain out
and transplanting it into another body, and that body acting as a new
individual.

It's only the constant feedback and proximity of my parts that makes me feel
unitary.

------
Aardwolf
"A very large number of different human and non-human individuals are
struggling inside us for control"

Interesting article, but I think it should be careful with exaggerations like
this, "a large number of humans" is something entirely different than
"possibly one if you had a born or unborn twin"

------
sageikosa
Kind of a fluffy piece to me, but that might be because as I write this, I am
looking up on my shelf with "The Selfish Gene" sitting underneath "The
Extended Phenotype".

~~~
abandonliberty
It's the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect at full force.

Meanwhile many comments in this thread remind me of this bit by Paul Graham:

If you're a database expert, don't build a chat app for teenagers (unless
you're also a teenager). Maybe it's a good idea, but you can't trust your
judgment about that, so ignore it. There have to be other ideas that involve
databases, and whose quality you can judge. Do you find it hard to come up
with good ideas involving databases? That's because your expertise raises your
standards. Your ideas about chat apps are just as bad, but you're giving
yourself a Dunning-Kruger pass in that domain.

------
jcromartie
And not just humans, all life is this way.

------
vetrom
Yay, another vague Toxoplasma gondii article with vague statements and
suppositions.

------
PaulHoule
Ron Hubbard was right...

------
dandare
Vague statements, low information density. Dislike

