So humans are just running around as unorganized individuals, hermits, living in small tents in the woods by themselves. There are no borders or countries or associations of humans. We are all just unorganized. Really?
Either your definition of organized is different than mine or this is a silly conversation.
OK. Now I understand where you’re coming from. You are using an analogy to insect groups with the term eusocial, which is defined as “cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups.”
Not sure I would use the word organized to describe this though. It actually sounds more like hunter-gatherer society / commune / family. It does seem unlikely that this could happen on a global scale though. It’s more likely to occur in smaller groups, because without some familiarity between the people, they’re unlikely to open up with such personal activities like child rearing.
Anyway, I like your idea. Humans coming together to ensure fairness is going to be necessary. I just don’t think it’s a realistic expectation to expect this at the global scale.
What may be feasible is for people with similar occupations joining together in global labor unions for leverage against the corporations. These unions could have standards for how workers interface with corporations, especially global corporations utilizing AI and or other technologies that impact society in a potentially harmful way.
Yes you nailed it! Thanks for the thoughtful response.
> I just don’t think it’s a realistic expectation to expect this at the global scale.
This is exactly my point. We dont have the biology for it - mammals don’t have eusocial traits because we’re too complex and egocentric, to the extent that game theoretic defections are individually risky but can have individual benefits.
A group of soldier ants can’t start their own colony because they physically cannot reproduce without a heirarchical queen because they are effectively sterile.
Dunbar number limits the possible social interactions at the depth you describe to 150-250 people at the most. That’s your tribal limit and it’s seen in extant hunter gatherer groups as you describe
While your ideas are valid about global labor cooperation, ultimately it’s stymied by the limitations of the cerebellum size, and you’re back to where you started.
Note that we already tried the hunter gatherer thing for about 250ky and it got overrun by transacional colonialism.
If you want to read my theory work on this here are some resources - note though it’s a lot of reading:
Maybe with your research into social patterns of nature, you can figure out a way around this issue or at least approaches that might work to increase the social transaction depth for humans.
I wonder, though, whether the issue with humans coming together on a global basis for common issues like labor, has less to do with cerebellum size (or individual weakness) and more to do with active interference from governments and corporations to prevent these alliances from forming.
If people are upset and angry about more fringe issues, it is possible to distract them from the impactful issues they may agree on like wage growth, education, healthcare. I believe until people start to realize this tactic and recognize it and counteract it, the average human will continue to lose ground.
>increase the social transaction depth for humans.
Unfortunately my conclusion is that the root issue is the biological limit and unless you can increase dunbar number from 150 to 8 billion it’s not going to matter what other structures exist
It would require:
1. Enthusiastic, voluntary subordination of every individual to a collective goal
2. Zero defectors
3. All information and processing would be collective
Ultimately it would be an entirely different species that looks like the Borg from Star Trek
Fwiw that’s basically what I’m building at our company
Either your definition of organized is different than mine or this is a silly conversation.