The internet becomes much more entertaining when viewed as an ensemble of such meta-organisms. However, instead of competing for land and nutrients like organisms in the real world, they compete for human attention.
At least in this case, we have a mutually beneficial relationship between Tyson and his crew. Unfortunately there are many other cases of communities evolving around disfunctional individuals with the sole intention of tormenting them for fun.
this territory is moderated
Agreed -- I think you start seeing this everywhere, once it becomes the active metaphor. You wonder: what systems am I a part of? Who or what is making me into this?
At least, I wonder that.
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Yes, Bitcoin being a prime example.
In fact, perhaps Bitcoin is a rare example of an internet-based meta-organism which has grown beyond the attention economy and started consuming real-world resources (i.e. electricity) for its own end.
If you believe that consciousness is an emergent property of information processing (as I'm inclined to), you also start to wonder if that can be applied to meta-organisms also.
Can a city have a consciousness? What's it like to "be" meta-Tyson? Could Bitcoin have subjective experience, albeit in such a non-human fashion we could scarcely understand it?
The universe is weird.
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If you believe that consciousness is an emergent property of information processing (as I'm inclined to), you also start to wonder if that can be applied to meta-organisms also.
That is it, exactly.
Can a city have a consciousness? What's it like to "be" meta-Tyson?
Dude, please post more.
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