[HN Gopher] John Carpenter's "Planaria": Or, the New Individualism
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John Carpenter's "Planaria": Or, the New Individualism
Author : saeranv
Score : 110 points
Date : 2021-10-03 07:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.rifters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.rifters.com)
| nathias wrote:
| This competition/cooperation ratio seems to be the key concept, I
| wonder if anyone measured it across different systems. It seems
| almost as a subtype of the noise/signal ratio.
| carapace wrote:
| This information about the nature of planaria is fascinating.
|
| See also the work that Levin's lab is doing, e.g.: "What Bodies
| Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg and "xenobots":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenobot https://cdorgs.github.io/
| and "Growing Neural Cellular Automata, Differentiable Model of
| Morphogenesis" https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/
|
| Also check out _Trichoplax adhaerens_ , an organism on the cusp
| between single-celled and multicellular lifeforms:
|
| > Trichoplax are very flat organisms around a millimetre in
| diameter, lacking any organs or internal structures. They have
| two cellular layers: the top epitheloid layer is made of ciliated
| "cover cells" flattened toward the outside of the organism, and
| the bottom layer is made up of cylinder cells that possess cilia
| used in locomotion, and gland cells that lack cilia.[2] Between
| these layers is the fibre syncytium, a liquid-filled cavity
| strutted open by star-like fibres.
|
| > On both sides of the septa [fibre syncytium?] are liquid-filled
| capsules that cause the septa to resemble synapses, i.e. nerve-
| cell junctions that occur in fully expressed form only in animals
| with tissues (Eumetazoa). Striking accumulations of calcium ions,
| which may have a function related to the propagation of stimuli,
| likewise suggest a possible role as protosynapses.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoplax
|
| You can push a trichoplax through a sieve that forces the
| individual cells to split apart and they will crawl around
| independently and reform the organism. You can dye two trichoplax
| different colors, split them, put the cells near each other, and
| the cells will form a single "piebald" organism together.
|
| > It is also possible to rub _Trichoplax adhaerens_ through a
| strainer in such a manner that individual cells are not destroyed
| but are separated from one another to a large extent. In the test
| tube they then find their way back together again to form
| complete organisms. If this procedure is performed on several
| previously strained individuals simultaneously, the same thing
| occurs. In this case, however, cells that previously belonged to
| a particular individual can suddenly show up as part of another.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichoplax#Regeneration
| sysihyk wrote:
| I prefer John Carpenter's "Hoax Watch", tho :)
| 3np wrote:
| This resonates heavily with me. It's an intuitively interesting
| idea. I do have one issue though (emphasis mine):
|
| "a living system maintaining both a higher level of internal
| cooperation and a lower level of internal conflict than either
| its components or _any_ larger systems of which it is a
| component. "
|
| So say there exists some form of higher-level individual that
| where we can be considered as components. Does its existence
| suddenly revoke our individual-ness? I don't see why that should
| be, why it has to be exclusive. The flatworm and the neoblasts
| can be individuals at the same time.
|
| ...But then the definition is meaningless. It'd be great to make
| it weaker without breaking it, so to say
| [deleted]
| mistermann wrote:
| > So say there exists some form of higher-level individual that
| where we can be considered as components. Does its existence
| suddenly revoke our individual-ness? I don't see why that
| should be, why it has to be exclusive. The flatworm and the
| neoblasts can be individuals at the same time.
|
| A far out way of considering it is in the context of greater
| humanity and the various pesky problems within it like anti-
| vaxxers, climate deniers, child deaths due to malnutrition,
| war, lack of genuine (non-illusory) empathy, etc.
| munificent wrote:
| I've had this weird thought stuck in my head over the past
| few months as I've been reading "Humankind" and watching the
| horrors of politics and the pandemic:
|
| The idea of "human nature"--good and evil--makes a hell of a
| lot more sense if you think of humans as a colony species
| where each tribe is a single individual competing against
| others.
|
| It's not so much that humans are uniformly capable of both
| good and evil. It's that what we deem "good" is mostly how we
| treat our own tribe and what we call "evil" is how we treat
| others. It's like trying to decide if an arm mostly good or
| mostly evil because it washes its own body and strikes other
| people. Those actions are fundamentally different--on
| incompatible moral levels--because the former is done to the
| arm's own organism and the latter to another.
|
| It may not even be meaningful to try to aggregate how we
| behave to our in-group and how we behave towards our out-
| group into any unified metric.
| mistermann wrote:
| May I offer an alternative/supplemental approach: rather
| than _thinking of_ the situation from the perspective of a
| human within a tribe, _analyze_ the system from the
| perspective of an ~alien who is _outside the system_. Treat
| it like a standard systems analysis exercise: isolate,
| decompose, and abstract the various objects within the
| system. So what was formerly a person, is now an agent
| running a sophisticated yet obviously hilariously flawed
| biological neural network, running on top of a similarly
| flawed set of data...and so forth and so on.
|
| I find that from this perspective, all the pieces start to
| fit together the more you think of it. Not only does what
| we are living through increasingly make sense, after a
| while it starts to seem logically inevitable (under present
| conditions, that is).
|
| And once you spend sufficient time on this phase, ideas
| might start falling out of the sky on how to plausibly
| rectify the situation.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Do we have any hope of ever treating all of humanity as our
| in group? Ideally we should treat people who are infected
| with dangerous ideas not as enemies, but as we would treat
| sick members of our tribe.
| [deleted]
| mannykannot wrote:
| I think the fact that we are self-aware makes it difficult (in
| the "it's not helpful" sense) to revoke our individuality if we
| participate in something bigger than ourselves. To make such a
| claim, I think one would have to propose some way, for us to be
| components of a higher-level individual, that takes away our
| self-awareness.
|
| Philosophy has long held (though not without dispute, of
| course!) that the world is ontologically divided into 'natural
| kinds' that have metaphysical significance, but I side with the
| view that ontologies are merely useful tools in epistemology,
| subject to modification and qualification as our knowledge
| increases, and useful in some contexts but not necessarily all.
| Nothing breaks if we talk about neoblasts being "in a sense"
| individuals, while also talking about planaria being "in a
| sense" individuals, so long as it is either obvious, or we make
| clear, in what sense we mean.
|
| There is quite a continuum here: for example, slime molds are
| even less aggregated entities than planaria. And then there is
| the aphorism "a chicken is an egg's way of making more eggs."
| bobthechef wrote:
| > I side with the view that ontologies are merely useful
| tools in epistemology, subject to modification and
| qualification as our knowledge increases
|
| This is incoherent. How can knowledge even exist if there are
| no natural kinds? What exactly would you be knowing in their
| absence? One can be mistaken about a particular predication,
| but knowledge isn't even possible if you deny the reality of
| natural kinds. Knowledge presupposes universals and
| universals presuppose natural kinds. I don't even know what
| is useful about natural kinds if they don't exist. How could
| you even talk about usefulness in their absence? You've
| denied the very possibility of even having a measure of
| usefulness!
|
| You seem to be taking a vaguely Kantian view of the world,
| except that you've gone further by denying that the
| categories of the mind are fixed AND that noumena are real.
| Kant himself is incoherent. If noumena are unknowable and all
| we have are phenomena and some mental schemata, then why
| posit noumena in the first place? What's the justification?
| In your case, how would you even make the claim you've made?
|
| Look at this statement: "I think the fact that we are self-
| aware makes it difficult (in the "it's not helpful" sense) to
| revoke our individuality if we participate in something
| bigger than ourselves." Putting aside the revolting notion of
| revoking my individuality like some collectivist (sorry, I'm
| a person, I have individuality, thanks), who is "we"?
| Wouldn't that denote at least suggest a genus, if not a
| species? That's just the beginning. Even if we accept that
| science reifies some things (which it does; science is to a
| large degree instrumentalist, but I know that only because I
| am capable of theoretical knowledge), that still presumes the
| existence of natural kinds and a broader capacity to know
| them. Science just becomes a way of organizing data for
| practical purposes (like laws that classify shellfish as
| fruit or whatever) and less a theoretical enterprise
| interested in knowing things as they actually are.
|
| The only workable solution is one that assumes the mind can
| know reality in principle. It can make mistakes, it can be in
| error, but it is _capable_ of knowing. Skepticism is
| unworkable and nothing is worse than a kind of domesticated,
| halfway house skepticism that fails to notice the non-
| skeptical baggage that 's being smuggled in through the
| backdoor to produce this half-hearted in-between. Either
| accept that knowledge is possible, or accept insanity. You
| cannot coherently straddle both.
| dsr_ wrote:
| 1. You're arguing with the author, who isn't here.
|
| 2. The problem with your approach is that people
| instantaneously leap from "capable of knowing" to
| "knowing", and they do this all the time.
|
| So anything that reminds you that you are definitely wrong
| is a useful tool, just as ontologies are helpful tools (and
| wrong).
|
| 3. "genus" does not exist. "species" does not exist.
| "clade" could exist in limited cases but is inevitably
| incomplete. (Consider that you are pointing at creatures
| and their offspring without thinking about their
| microbiomes, among other things.)
| mannykannot wrote:
| Given the very broad range of views on what, if anything,
| counts as a natural kind [1,2], it would seem that if I am
| being incoherent, philosophy as a whole is being
| incoherent, and if knowledge cannot even exist if there are
| no natural kinds, then we have not even taken the first
| steps to knowledge!
|
| What happens in practice, of course, is that we propose
| that the world is a certain way based on our experiences so
| far, without being hung up on the question of whether we
| have truly identified the real 'natural kinds' and are
| talking about them. We seek to validate, or refute, extend
| and/or replace these opinions, through further study of the
| world, in a process that is the opposite of the skepticism
| that you seem to think my position implies.
|
| If you find it helpful to think that 'natural kind' is a
| natural kind, then go ahead, but the fact that you know
| something about the world (a premise I am not disputing)
| does not make your assumption about natural kinds a
| metaphysical necessity and a prerequisite for knowledge.
| After all, we have, over the millennia, held many now
| demonstrably-false ideas about what sort of things there
| are in the world, yet that has not prevented us from
| learning more.
|
| One other thing: you wrote "putting aside the revolting
| notion of revoking my individuality like some
| collectivist..." Firstly, note how you are presenting an
| emotional reaction as if it were an argument. Secondly, if
| you had paid attention to my previous post, you would have
| seen that I am arguing that our individuality should _not_
| be put aside on account of the arguments in the article.
| Before you start bandying words like "incoherent" and
| "insanity", you should be a little more careful with your
| own arguments.
|
| [1] https://iep.utm.edu/nat-kind/ [2]
| https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/#MetNatKin
| germinalphrase wrote:
| If we imagine that it becomes possible to 'record' full
| sensory experiences and 'replay' them in another person _:
| would a collective pour their meager resources into elevating
| the life, lifestyle, and success of the single experience
| donor such that the collective can experience a superior life
| (as a personal state) that would otherwise be unattainable?
|
| _ Mary Lou Jepsen at Openwater talked about her team's
| efforts to create that tech in a Long Now Foundation talk
| back in 2018
|
| https://www.openwater.cc/
|
| https://longnow.org/seminars/02018/oct/29/toward-
| practical-t...
| Tsiklon wrote:
| One thing that I find interesting to think on is if there is
| a form of self awareness so greater in scope than our frame
| of reference.
|
| That an outside entity possessing such a perspective would
| look upon us in a fashion not unlike how we would look at
| individual ants or bees in a hive.
|
| Those animals don't have the capacity to perceive our self
| awareness with the tools they have, perhaps more base
| motivations but never understanding more than our actions.
| How would we look upon a creature so much more expansive than
| ourselves? Would widespread cthonian-esque cosmic horror
| unfold among our kind, coupled to cultism and deification?
|
| Much like the interpretation of the Thing from the alien
| perspective linked on the source article. It's understanding
| of the universe is so profoundly different to ours that it is
| horrified by us.
| canadianfella wrote:
| You split your first sentence into two paragraphs.
| drclau wrote:
| If you like this, you should really pick up Peter Watts' books.
| He is the author of the post, the owner of rifters.com and one of
| the best hard SF authors out there. I can't recommend him enough.
|
| Also, importantly, he published part of his work, including full
| books, for free in multiple electronic formats, here [0].
|
| Refs:
|
| [0]: https://rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
| matheusd wrote:
| Any recommendation on where to start on his material?
| _alxk wrote:
| Blindsight is the best SciFi book I've read, and one of my
| top 10 books of all time.
|
| It's not for everyone though, I tried to get friends and
| family to read it, I don't think a single one got through it.
|
| You pretty much need Wikipedia open to make sense of it and
| meditate on chapters. It's a challenging read.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| "The Things", [0] as mentioned in the featured article
| itself, is ridiculously relevant. It's the story of The
| Thing, but told from the perspective of the Thing.
|
| [0] https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/watts_01_10/
| drclau wrote:
| My personal favorite is Blindsight [0][1]. I read it multiple
| times (3 or 4, I think) over the years.
|
| If you like Blindsight, you'll probably want to continue with
| the sidequel, Echopraxia. You can also find them bundled
| together under the name Firefall.
|
| And I think out of his main works, Blindsight is probably the
| most accessible. It also led me to Thomas Metzinger's "The
| Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self"
| [2], which Watts used as a source material in his research
| and had good things to say about.
|
| The Rifters series is great, too, but there's a sort of
| darkness or heaviness to it that may not work for everyone.
|
| And bonus content, a fan made short movie based on
| Blindsight, here: [3].
|
| I hope this helps. :)
|
| Links:
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight_(Watts_novel)
|
| [1]: https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm
|
| [2]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5895503
|
| [3]: https://vimeo.com/myshli/blindsight
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > If you like Blindsight,
|
| Not sure that I _like_ Blindsight even though I think it a
| great book. The same goes for some of his other books;
| deeply unsettling
| finiteseries wrote:
| Ensure communities of people have spent years trying to
| find books similar to Blindsight/Firefall in general to
| scratch the itch (with 0 success), so, be careful in maybe
| not finishing them too quickly.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| Can't recommend Watts enough - Blindsight is one of my top
| 3 favorite novels. He periodically drops hints about his
| progress on the sequel to Echopraxia.
|
| For quick recommendations, I'd single out two of his short
| stories (which are two of my favorite stories in general):
|
| The 21 Second God - https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=5968
| Malak -
| https://rifters.com/real/shorts/PeterWatts_Malak.pdf
|
| Edit: I always forget HN doesn't use markdown.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Blindsight really fucked with my head, and not in a good
| way.
|
| Books can do that. Like, read Tom Robbins and you'll fall
| in love with the next person you see. Read Peter Watts and
| you'll spend the next four years looking at the person next
| to you like they're an alien who's plotting to lay eggs in
| you without themselves even knowing it.
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| Can confirm, I think about Blindsight a lot (I think it's
| good), and when I was 21 I fell for a girl after we found
| out we were both reading Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
| (Robbins)
| saeranv wrote:
| My experience with Echopraxia is that it's significantly
| more confusing and complex then Blindsight. There are
| chunks of Blindsight that go over my head, but in general
| you can get the gist of it from context (and was rewarded
| on rereads as things progressively became clearer).
| Echopraxia somehow was not able to navigate the tension
| between ambiguity and outright confusion. I believe Peter
| Watts has acknowledged this as a problem in Echopraxia and
| spent a Reddit AMA explaining to readers what the plot was.
|
| I do need to reread Echopraxia though, and perhaps my
| opinion will change after that. Blindsight was brilliant
| enough that it deserves the extra effort to appreciate.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Questions of identity are some of the oldest in metaphysics. It
| is important that one take a disciplined in this respect because
| there is nothing impressive about posing half-baked "what ifs" if
| you can't be bothered to work out the consequences to any serious
| degree and to observe the absurdities you've gotten yourself
| into.
|
| An explanation cannot undermine the fact it tries to explain
| without ceasing to be an explanation.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Pepper et al's paper on Somatic Evolution [...] : how can
| multicellular life evolve in the presence of Darwinian processes
| that should, by rights, turn every individual cell against its
| neighbors in a competition for resources? Why isn't every somatic
| cell in it for themselves, why doesn't all multicellular life
| devolve into cancer?_
|
| > _Planarians ... [a]re not exactly worms. They're not even
| individuals. What they are is habitats: cellular substrates
| containing individuals. Individuals who may not even like each
| other very much_
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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