In a previous post, I mentioned how our world view - especially our perceived system of values - comes into our politics . At the same time, political players tend to misrepresent their own value system and the value system of their opponents to gain power. Power itself is a value worth looking into. In fact, "political" power seems to show up in all the "social great apes" and many other species. My aim here is simply to visualize this dimension - to come up with a visual metaphor that helps us think of this type of value. There are many values similar to "political power". I chose to talk about "influence" as a representative of this class of values. These networks are essential to understanding one of the themes of this entire blog: the superorganism. Networks of value play a role similar to the nervous system of the individuals who make up these organisms. They account for "why" these organisms value what they value and do what the...

I have lately become impressed with the what's going on in the brain. Learning more about the small details, I wind up asking myself about the "big picture" that these details reveal. I'm a visual kind of guy, so I'm thinking about a picture something like this: Neural network in the brain That picture is showing main connections only - myelinated "high speed" connections. The actual picture would be a packed tangle of axons and dendrites - for example, the massive wad of connections that make up the "white matter" in the brain, connecting (on average) each neuron in the neocortex with 1,000 other neurons. White Matter in the Brain is a Wad of Connections Where else do we see something like that? Roots in the Forest Floor There is a tangle of roots under our feet in the forest floor. We usually see the big ones that manage to break the surface and threaten to trip us up, but the network is much more extensive, especially in a thriving "old...