Evolution of the Super Person
When we introduce a new type of living entity into our lexicon, there is a temptation to spread some scientific fairy dust over the idea with a discussion of evolution.
I will resist the usual trope of explaining how groups are "adaptive" and how they arise in chimpanzees. To me, such discussions seem to use evolutionary ideas in a circular and ultimately uninformative way.
Instead, let's just look at how groups compete, survive and spawn other groups. We will leave aside the issue of whether membership in a group is "natural" or "adaptive" to the human "component". In passing, I must observe that membership in particular groups (such as ISIS) can be very far from "adaptive" to the one who joins the group. He'd be wiser to stay home. Groups live and die by rules of their own.
The structure of a group can be viewed as a "meme", which, according to [Dawson] has evolutionary tendencies of its own. For example, the structure of a corporation in Canada is determined by law. Basically, there is a template for it which all corporations must follow. If the corporation issues public shares, the communications between the shareholders and the board is also governed by a set of laws. All these laws change over time in what may be regarded as "evolutionary" - tinkering with the rules to outlaw corporations that don't "work" according to the society that the corporation finds itself embedded in.
We also find corporations imitating each other. The organization chart of one legal firm or major oil company will resemble those of others in the same business. Nations tend to sort themselves out with some form of "government" in charge. There are not an infinite number of ways of doing this. There are even fewer ways to organize the armed forces of a Nation.
By and large, we can see analogue to "descent with modification" that is key to Darwinian evolution. Groups of all sorts tend to originate, formalize and grow according to a pattern that has been established by the real-world experience of other groups.
What about survival, the other element of Darwinian evolution? How do some groups survive and others fade away? Here, as in the biological world, we see a bewildering range of survival strategies. As in the world of living things, raw competition (survival of the fittest) plays a role along side of changing environments, predation, parasitism and symbiosis.
All this would seem to vaguely support my main thesis that the human group is, in some sense, alive in its own right. But caution is called for. Dawkins made a strong case that "memes" (ideas) obeyed Darwinian rules, but, to many, the idea turned out to be a bit too fuzzy to be productive. It was hard to use "meme theory" to predict anything interesting - certainly nothing interesting that could not be described using old-fashioned concepts like "culture".
Accordingly, I regard discussion of "evolution" with connection to the Super Person to be somewhat a dead end, especially considering all the hot air that is emitted about evolution with respect to things like "the extended phenotype" (behavior).
I will resist the usual trope of explaining how groups are "adaptive" and how they arise in chimpanzees. To me, such discussions seem to use evolutionary ideas in a circular and ultimately uninformative way.
Instead, let's just look at how groups compete, survive and spawn other groups. We will leave aside the issue of whether membership in a group is "natural" or "adaptive" to the human "component". In passing, I must observe that membership in particular groups (such as ISIS) can be very far from "adaptive" to the one who joins the group. He'd be wiser to stay home. Groups live and die by rules of their own.
The structure of a group can be viewed as a "meme", which, according to [Dawson] has evolutionary tendencies of its own. For example, the structure of a corporation in Canada is determined by law. Basically, there is a template for it which all corporations must follow. If the corporation issues public shares, the communications between the shareholders and the board is also governed by a set of laws. All these laws change over time in what may be regarded as "evolutionary" - tinkering with the rules to outlaw corporations that don't "work" according to the society that the corporation finds itself embedded in.
We also find corporations imitating each other. The organization chart of one legal firm or major oil company will resemble those of others in the same business. Nations tend to sort themselves out with some form of "government" in charge. There are not an infinite number of ways of doing this. There are even fewer ways to organize the armed forces of a Nation.
By and large, we can see analogue to "descent with modification" that is key to Darwinian evolution. Groups of all sorts tend to originate, formalize and grow according to a pattern that has been established by the real-world experience of other groups.
What about survival, the other element of Darwinian evolution? How do some groups survive and others fade away? Here, as in the biological world, we see a bewildering range of survival strategies. As in the world of living things, raw competition (survival of the fittest) plays a role along side of changing environments, predation, parasitism and symbiosis.
All this would seem to vaguely support my main thesis that the human group is, in some sense, alive in its own right. But caution is called for. Dawkins made a strong case that "memes" (ideas) obeyed Darwinian rules, but, to many, the idea turned out to be a bit too fuzzy to be productive. It was hard to use "meme theory" to predict anything interesting - certainly nothing interesting that could not be described using old-fashioned concepts like "culture".
Accordingly, I regard discussion of "evolution" with connection to the Super Person to be somewhat a dead end, especially considering all the hot air that is emitted about evolution with respect to things like "the extended phenotype" (behavior).
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