wow, what a great question about superorganisms intuitively... one answer would be something about obligate symbiosis... like our cells can't live & reproduce without each other... that would imply an ant colony is alive tho kinda 🐜
Superorganisms and the fuzzy boundaries of aliveness
11 tweets · December 2023 · 25 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
...but then if you have two different insect species who are obligate symbionts... what's the unit of organism? what is the thing that IS alive? because any two organisms don't necessarily require each other, they could pair up differently
but then, this is way more true than we usually take for granted I need A heart but I don't need MY heart; I could get a heart transplant and continue living 🫀
likewise is {a pregnant woman & an embryo/fetus} alive? as distinct from either of them looked at "individually"?
I think this is a new angle on how "aliveness" isn't possible to perfectly define we must, as always, ask "in what sense?"
this video highlights death as a somewhat gradual process where the organism fails to maintain an outer membrane out of which it can export entropy and thereby maintain order internally. it doesn't happen all at once, but there is a tipping point youtube.com/watch?v=ibpdNq…
this can apply to companies or cities or countries or neighborhoods as well! (great book on this quoted below) yet they aren't alive in some other obvious sense... but as obvious as this is, how nameable is it?
so like, the boringly nameable thing is that one connotation of "alive" IS "biologically alive", and the living flows of companies and cities involve biology but aren't quite on that level tho in both cases energy is imported and entropy is dumped out
oh I think one of the things that's confusing about these entities is that it's much less clear when they are born and die but that's also true of eg trees, who can get completely chopped down but the same organism sends up a new shoot!
in the case of cities & countries, one thing that's true is that their sub-organisms include humans, but there's a kind of different flow of mana at the scale of humans eating vs cities getting money (tho ultimately that still does buy energy & materials... what's the diff?)
idk what else to say here but if these puzzles intrigue you then definitely check out @drmichaellevin's work this is one of his pieces that I've enjoyed; he also has shorter videos if you want to search for those youtube.com/watch?v=w1ah94…