Distributed Intelligence and the Arrogance of the Statist
December 19, 2009
Let’s talk honey bees. They are some darned impressive bugs. They swarm, they build complex nests, they heat the nest in the winter and they cool it in the summer, they create airflow to force out carbon dioxide, they build complex nests, they scout out pollen and then communicate the location of their finds to other bees using the angle of the sun and they manufacture honey. They also have a complex social structure with workers, drones, mating males and queen bees. All of this is extremely complex yet tiny little bees with their tiny little bee brains are able to do it all.
Of course no bee can go into business for himself. No single bee has the knowledge to do everything described above. Bees just go about their business following a few simple rules encoded in their tiny brains and the aggregate result is a very complex system of labor distribution, jobs, construction and survival. Ants and termites do the same thing. Termite colonies are some of the most complex systems on earth.
All of this is accomplished through what scientists call “distributed intelligence.” In distributive intelligence, the knowledge to complete complex tasks and manage complex systems is not held by any individual, but is rather distributed across the aggregate of all individuals of the society. Individuals need not understand or even comprehend the effect of the joint effort. To bees, the results of their efforts must seem miraculous.
For humans, it is hard to imagine how all this can occur without a master plan, architects, engineers and leaders. We imagine that ourselves to be far too complex to be subject to the same forces as insects. After all, we do have master plans, architects, engineers and leaders. We are different, right?
The answer is that we are only different in the degree of complexity. Individual bees do know how to conduct certain tasks. They know how to, for example, find and gather pollen and bring it back to the nest. This is an individual task and that bees can do without distributed intelligence.
Humans also conduct individual tasks. Our individual tasks are more complex than those conducted by insects, of course. Individual humans can design bridges, program software, write music, perform heart surgery or lead armies to war. Our individual tasks are much more complex than the individual tasks of insects, but otherwise we are similar. Both insects and humans have rules by which they go about performing their daily tasks. That isn’t the most interesting similarity between these social insects and humans, however.
In both human societies and the societies of social insects the aggregate effects of our work is beyond the comprehension of any individual. No individual bee understands the complexity of the hive and no individual human understands the complexity of the global economy. The actions and effects of the aggregate of human intelligence on the global economy are what Adam Smith called “the invisible hand.”
Our brains are no more complex today than they were 10,000 years ago when our societies were no more complex than small bands of hunter/gatherers. Nevertheless, there has been a steady increase in the complexity of intellectual work and an increasing distribution of complex activities among many minds. No individual human has the knowledge to create or manage human civilization. The knowledge that allows modern human civilization to exist is distributed across billions of minds and is controlled by tens of billions of individual actions every day. Individual humans are no more capable of running civilization than individual bees are able to run the hive. It just isn’t possible. If civilization were limited by the planning and innovation of individual minds, we would still be living as Stone Age hunter/gatherers.
The failure to understand this concept is the flaw in the reasoning of statists like Obama. Statists believe that they can, in fact, understand the overall workings of civilization and manage them better than is accomplished by the distributed intelligence of billions. They believe that the hive can be better managed through centralized planning. They have the arrogance of a bee who wants to redesign role of the hive: “No more honey, it is maple syrup from now on.”
The statists and central planners, however, are flattering themselves. They are no more capable of improving civilization than an individual bee is in improving the hive. When they take over of the economy through foolish programs like Obamacare, cap and trade and dozens of other bureaucracies, it is as arrogant and misconceived as if a bee attempted a coup in the hive.
R.D. Walker :
Date: December 19, 2009
By the way, I took that photo of the bee hive. I was exploring the caves on Guam used by the Japanese during World War II (this one on Nimitz Hill) and I heard a low buzzing. I looked up and that hive was about three feet above my head. I backed away slowly and took some photos. Here is another with a wider perspective. Click to enlarge.
R.D. Walker :
Date: December 19, 2009
Oh, I made post of the flocking starlings because I was rolling this post around in my head. Starlings have no leaders, yet they manage to flock anyway.
notamobster :
Date: December 19, 2009
Bee hives are truly magnificent specimens of mindless labor. This is the ideal social structure behind the idealist’ faith Marxist statism.
Everyone performing their task for the good of the colony, subjugating their individuality and personal needs for the good of the hive. Scary stuff.
R.D. Walker :
Date: December 19, 2009
Notamobster: I disagree. Bees are not engaging in mindless labor. Each bee knows its simple job. It is the aggregation of thousands of individuals doing their individual jobs that create complex outcomes. This is very much like a free market economy. We each do our individual jobs and the result is a massive, complex global economy that is beyond the comprehension of any individual.
Socialists want to try to re-engineer this into a centralized control system that is doomed to fail. There is just no way that any indivdidual can do what the aggragate our distributed intelligence can achieve.
Now, having said that, the metaphor isn’t perfect and bees have no individual will or self interest. In that way they are very different from humans and I think that is what you were referring to. Still, our individual will and self interest are what makes the statists fail. They can’t turn us into the automations that are bees no more than a bee dictator can make the bees stop making honey and start making maple syrup.
The bottom line is that all of us are much, much smarter than any of us. Obama, however, doesn’t believe that.
R.D. Walker :
Date: December 19, 2009
The point is that nobody tells individual bees what to do. Nobody has a plan to build the hive. No bees direct other bees. There is no centralized planning. There is no bureaucracy. Individual bees do what they “want” to do and the result is a magnificently complex and mutually beneficial society.
When humans are allowed to do what they want to do, when they are allowed to go about their business, when there is no master plan or centralized planners, the result is a magnificently complex global economy and a mutually beneficial society.
That over simplifies it, but it is logically sound. A centralized planning bureaucracy is no more able to improve the global economy than a few bees can form a bureaucracy to improve the hive.
AW Mens :
Date: December 19, 2009
There may come a time down the road where I will have to seek a new hive. The one I’m in now appears headed for a major fucking disaster. Do you suppose some sort of mite has drilled into the pea brains of about half the people in this country??
Natural selection will eventually fix all this I suppose but damn that’s gonna take a long time and be pretty painful.
R.D. Walker :
Date: December 19, 2009
Bees are blessed with the absence of individuals who believe they are destined to improve the lives of their fellow bees. We, on the other hand, are cursed with an over abundance of these types. They have been a plague on man since the dawn of civilization.
Jim 22 :
Date: December 19, 2009
Notamobster has it right, I think. The liberal/progressive leaders feel that people can be forced into ‘Mindless labor’. With ‘Everyone performing their task for the good of the colony, subjugating their individuality and personal needs for the good of the hive.’
These are typical socialist slogans which sound good to a lot of stupid or evil people.
The problem is that it has been tried many times throughout the history of mankind – and has always failed.
The other problem is that the Untied States is currently in the control of the sloganeers and it is indeed scary stuff.
R.D., you also are right. We need to fight these guys and take back our country.
I challenge all Revo readers to get involved. Help make a difference in the 2010 election. Get to know your local, county, and state party leaders. Get involved. Become a Precinct chair, delegate, or help at phone banks. Something.
I am a registered R. I held my nose and voted for McCain in ’08. I want Conservatives to take control of the Republican party and I want to root out the corrupt.
I think if we can make that happen we can ally ourselves with many Libertarians. They know they don’t have a chance of winning with a Libertarian candidate but they want some powerful things: small government, more individual freedom, and less tax.
These ideals are not incompatible with conservative ideas.
The left has created an alliance of disparate groups and it has made them strong. Now it seems to be starting to come apart because many of their idealists are learning that they were lied to.
Conservatives can create alliances as well. And we don’t have to tell lies to do it.
A large part of being a conservative is staying out of someone else’s business. In order to create alliances we need to concentrate on how we agree with each other and not fight about our differences. That requires wisdom, patience, and adults. We can do this.
R.D. Walker :
Date: December 19, 2009
Again, my point is that the hive is a metaphor for how human interactions work in a free society. No individual has a plan, but each individual “doing his thing” creates a magnificently complex and mutually beneficial society.
That is as far as I am trying to take the metaphor. Neither civilization nor hives are the result of individual planning. They are evolving entities that transcend the knowledge of any individual member. Both the global economy and the creation of a hive are the result of some sort of “invisible hand” as described by Adam Smith.
A different metaphor is that the individual bees are mindless drones working without any purpose other than the greater good. Socialists and collectivists of every stripe want to emulate that with humans. I don’t disagree with that view and it is an equally valid metaphor. It, however, has nothing to do with the point regarding distributive intelligence as the preferable means of creating civilization I was trying (and obviously failing) to make.
notamobster :
Date: December 19, 2009
RD – Your point was not lost on me… I agree completely – and you’re right.. Your logic is absolutely sound.
It was I who failed, I think, to explain my point. I was merely illustrating the other metaphor, because it pooped into my head when I was thinking about bee hives…
ooooh! butterflies! —
sorry, I have a short attention span and it leads into all manner of wierd directions – which is what happened there.
I was (quite literally) in the middle of a sentence (1st sentence, previous comment) that was going to going off on a tangent about the natural beauty of a bee hive when the words “mindless labor” and East Germany popped into my head.
I never even considered commenting on the distributive intelligence, because I was distracted by the ‘shiny object’ that is a bee hive, and then somehow another track was picked up.
R.D. Walker :
Date: December 19, 2009
Thanks for the clarification bro.
Bman :
Date: December 19, 2009
I hear exactly what you are saying RD. There is a short essay written by Leonard Read called “I, Pencil”. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you do. To make a pencil, there are thousands of transactions being completed just to create one. From the loggers who cut down the trees, to the workers at the mill, to the grafite that was mined, to the tools that were created to complete the job, to the truck drivers who deliver the materials, etc…the list goes on and on and on. And yet, there is not one person “in charge” to achieve the miracle of creating, say, a pencil. Spontaneous order creates the goods and services that make our world go round. There is absolutely no way, that a centeralized plan would make this happen in the efficiancy we see today.
Now, I understand what notamobster is saying as well. I think he is referring to a bee hive as say, a facist type government, where nothing lives outside of the state. There is no “thou shalt” or “though shall”, there is only, “though art”. The individual IS the state, and the state IS the individual. I guess I can look at a bee hive and see both ways, depending on how one looks at it…
Jim 22 :
Date: December 19, 2009
R.D.
I am sorry if I was too strident. That’s one of my character flaws and it keeps popping up. Please bear with me.
Mad Brad :
Date: December 19, 2009
An original RD Walker literary masterpiece.
The Bees, the Bees, you’re looking at the Bees. Sometimes he goes a bit too far but he’s always the first to admit it.
Perhaps this one should find its way to “Must read Revo”.
Locke n Load :
Date: December 19, 2009
Brad, I was thinking the same thing. RD, this piece is really quite good. The analagy works as you were trying to convey it. In fact when I finally get home I am going to clip it for dual use for my kids, science and intro to politics. Sure, the girls are only 5 and 6 but this is exactly the same kind of lesson I’m always giving them using other examples. Yours however is quite elegant. I’m actually jealous I didn’t think of it myself,lol. Makes me (probably unjustifiably) proud to be a part of the group.
And Jim, chill. You were in no way too strident though maybe you strayed from RD’s point a bit. God help us all if we don’t have the courage and balls to do as you suggest. The battle has been brung to us so now we must engage. you sir, have been engaged for some time. Kudos.
R.D. Walker :
Date: December 20, 2009
Thank you all for the kind words. This post was inspired by Michael Crichton’s novel “Prey” which I read while in Florida. In it, nanotechnology and distributed intelligence code writing go very, very wrong. Good stuff.