Common knowledge and post-professional sporting event riots dictate that a crowd’s IQ is much less than that of its individual members. What if the exact opposite were true? It would certainly provide a small measure of comfort if so, considering candidates for the presidency are now comparing the size of their… hands.
I heard a great podcast by Radiolab, based out of NYC public radio (highly recommended) that talks about this, and I have to credit this podcast with many of the examples in this post. Emergence has sort of fascinated me ever since I learned about bacteria and biofilms, and started thinking of organisms like bees and ants as one big superorganism.
There’s a common Psychology 101 test that professors do where they ask a class to guess the number of jelly beans in a glass jar. No one usually gets the answer correct, but when you calculate the average number that people guessed, it’s usually extremely close to the correct answer. This is a phenomenon that has been observed time and time again. The group as a collective mind, when logically put to a task is actually very accurate.
Another way to think about it is when you’re walking through a park and you use a dirt path that cuts diagonally from one paved path to another. One person by themselves did not create this dirt path, and there’s no communication between people walking along it, but the most efficient route is found by accident by the group as a whole.
This is how ants find the most efficient path to a resource. A scent trail is left by one ant, and while others also find the resource by a different route, the first ant has the most efficient route so he gets back first, reinforcing the smell. This attracts more ants and eventually the group uses the most efficient path and the other paths are forgotten.
This is how your brain works as well.* When you’re learning you’re trying out a bunch of different ways to solve a problem, eventually finding the most efficient solution. Experts surgeons for example become so by trial and error, and the most efficient methods are reinforced. In fact specific motor skills are represented by physical neural connections within the brain. When you know how to do something, there’s a pattern of neural connections in your brain that represents that knowledge.
We ourselves are a network of smaller parts, and the singular “me” is actually a complicated and beautiful pattern. This pattern extends to others, who can be seen as one being when acting together. You can ask yourself, how do cities form character? Why would you say a neighborhood has a personality? It’s not because one person lives there, it’s because the individuals in that neighborhood make up a larger group’s personality.
This continuum, starting with the arrangement of atoms, extends outside of us and includes other species, plants and even inanimate objects. We’re made of the same parts that rocks and the sun are made of, just arranged in a different order.**
I don’t know about you, but this gives me some comfort when considering things like politics or climate change. That we’ll get things right eventually, even if mistakes are made in the process.
Check out the Radiolab podcast here: http://www.radiolab.org/story/91500-emergence/
* Shoutout to Hex, the thinking machine powered by ants #TerryPratchett
** Some, however may be closer to inanimate objects than others.
animamusication.wordpress.com 