Are we individuals?

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It has been estimated that there are 150 species of bacteria in our gut with a megagenome correspondingly larger than the human genome; and that 90% of the cells in our bodies are bacterial [1].  This challenges a simple understanding of individual identity because on one level we are a collection of organisms, mainly bacteria, rather than a single entity.  The complexity is almost incomprehensible with 30 trillion cells in the human body each with about a billion protein molecules [2].  Each cell is apparently autonomous, making decisions about its role in the system based on information acquired through communicating and signalling with its neighbours, the rest of the system and the environment.  Its autonomy would appear to imbue it with a sense of individual identity which is shaped by its relationships within the network of cells [3].  This also holds for human beings within society although you could argue the network is simpler because the global population is only about 8 billion; however the quantity of information being communicated is probably greater than between cells, so perhaps that makes the network more complex.  Networks are horizontal hierarchies with no one or thing in overall control and they can adapt to cope with changes in the environment.  By contrast, vertical hierarchies depend on top-down obedience and tend to eliminate dissent, yet without dissent there is little or no innovation or adaptation.  Hence, vertical hierarchies can appear to be robust but are actually brittle [4].  In a network we can build connections and share knowledge leading to the development of a collective intelligence that enables us to solve otherwise intractable problems.  Our ability to acquire knowledge not just from own our experiences but also from the experience of others, and hence to progressively grow collective intelligence, is one of the secrets of our success as a species [5].  It also underpins the competitive advantage of many successful organisations; however, it needs a horizontal, stable structure with high levels of trust and mutual dependence, in which our sense of individual identity is shaped by our relationships.

References:

  1. Gilbert SF, Sapp J, Tauber AI, A symbiotic view of life: we have never been individuals, Quarterly Review of Biology, 87(4):325-341, 2012.
  2. Ball P, How Life Works, Picador, 2023.
  3. Wheatley M, Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World, 2nd Edition, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc, San Francisco, 1999.
  4. McWilliams D, Money – A Story of Humanity, Simon & Schuster, London, 2024.
  5. Henrich J, The secret of our success: how culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.

Its all in the mind

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Decorative image of a flowerWe all exist in our own minds where we construct a world based on our proprioceptive and mental experiences.  I have written previously about the accumulation of experiences over time leading to the building of our consciousness [see ‘Is there a real ‘you’ or ‘I’?’ on March 6th 2019].  In Jonathan Coe’s recent novel, ‘The Proof of Innocence’ during a tiff between a young couple on a train travelling along the south coast of France, the girl, who is watching an episode of the TV show ‘Friends’ on her phone, says to the boy, who is admiring the view and admonishing her for not doing the same, ‘You don’t know what’s going on in my head. Because you are not there.’  Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe took advantage of the inaccessibility to others of our minds to create a parallel world of her own in order to free herself from constraints and conditions of imprisonment in Iran.  She has described feeling liberated when she realised that no one could take the parallel world away from her.  She chose not allow others access to her parallel world; however, we can choose to give some level of access through communicating with others.  I am confident that my wife has a pretty good idea of what is going on in my head, or least a much better idea than that of the young couple in Jonathan Coe’s novel, because we have been communicating with each other for about forty years.  If you are a regular reader of this blog then you have been on a journey which will have provided glimpses of my mind.  Reading allows us to learn about humanity through looking into the inner lives of others [see ‘Reading offline’ on March 19th 2014] who are prepared share, probably in the spirit of reciprocal altruism.  There is some risk involved in sharing because the closedness of your inner life appears to be essential to its role as a survival tool; however, understanding others also helps to navigate and thrive in society, which implies that sharing also has an important role.

Sources:

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, The feeling of freedom, FT Weekend, 7th & 8th December 2024..

Jonathan Coe, The proof of my innocence, Penguin, 2024.

Reproducibility in science and technology

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Schematic diagram from cited paper in Open Research EuropeIt has been suggested that there is crisis in science concerning the reproducibility of data [1].  New research findings are usually published based on data collected only by the group reporting the new findings, which raises the probability of bias in the results as well as reducing their likely validity.  It also creates a temptation to tamper with or falsify data given the incentives to publish.  It is unlikely that any prestigious journal would publish work that simply demonstrates that previously published findings can be reproduced consistently.  Yet, when they have tried to reproduce published data from experiments, many researchers have been unable to do so [2], which perhaps perversely makes the attempt to reproduce results publishable.  However, if no one has attempted to reproduce a published dataset then it stands until demonstrated to not be reproducible, which implies that much of the data in the published literature could be irreproducible and hence of dubious value.  This is a bigger problem than it might seem, because most scientific and technological innovation is built on the findings of fundamental research.  Hence, we are building on shaky foundations if results are not reproducible. Similarly, the transition from prototypes to reliable products is dependent on achieving reproducibility in the real-world of results obtained with a prototype in the laboratory.  I have been discussing these issues with a close collaborator for a number of years and last week we published a letter, in Open Research Europe, summarizing our views.  In ‘Achieving reproducibility in the innovation process’ [3], we propose that a different approach to reproducibility is required for each phase of the innovation process, i.e., discovery, translation and application, because reproducibility has different implications in each phase.  The diagram, reproduced from the paper (CC-BY-4.0), shows our ideas schematically but follow the link to read and comment on them.

References

[1] Baker, M. (2016). Reproducibility crisis. Nature, 533(26), 353-66.

[2] Camerer, C. F., Dreber, A., Holzmeister, F., Ho, T. H., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., … & Wu, H. (2018). Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015. Nature Human Behaviour, 2(9), 637-644.

[3] Whelan M & Patterson EA, (2025). Achieving reproducibility in the innovation process, Open Research Europe, 5:25. https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.19408.1

Is the autonomous individual ceasing to exist?

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Society consists of a series of bubbles.  A century or so ago, your bubble was largely defined by where you lived, your village or neighbourhood, because few people travelled any significant distance and you probably knew everyone living around you.  A decade or so ago, your bubble was probably defined by the newspaper you read or the radio/TV channels you preferred [see ‘You’re all weird!’ on February 8th, 2017]. Today social media defines bubbles that are geographically widely-dispersed.  This both fractures local communities and gives a global reach to influencers on social media.  Some social media ‘dictates what you shall think, it creates an ideology for you, it tries to govern your emotional life’.  The quote is from George Orwell’s 1941 essay, Literature and Totalitarianism.  He goes on ‘And as far as possible it isolates you from the outside world, it shuts you up in an artificial universe in which you have no standards of comparison.’  Of course, he is writing about totalitarianism not social media but his words seem sinisterly appropriate to the apparent intention of some social media influencers and platforms that promote alternative narratives which are not consistent with reality.  Orwell suggested that if totalitarianism becomes world-wide and permanent then literature, the truthful expression of what one person thinks and feels, could not survive.  Despite Orwell’s fear that he was living ‘in an age in which the autonomous individual is ceasing to exist’, totalitarianism did not abolish freedom of thought in the 1940s.  Now in the 2020s, we have to ensure that social media does not become a modern instrument of totalitarianism, suffocating freedom of thought, isolating large sections of society from reality, dictating ideology and governing emotional life. We need to think for ourselves and encourage others to do the same.  In their book, ‘Radical Uncertainty – Decision-making for an Unknowable Future‘, John Kay and Mervyn King repeatedly ask ‘What is going on here?’ as a device for thinking about and reviewing the evidence before reaching a conclusion.  It is a simple device that we could all usefully deploy in 2025. Happy New Year!

Sources:

George Orwell, Literature and Totalitarianism, 1941 available at https://hackneybooks.co.uk/books/64/1006/LiteratureAndTotalitarianism.html

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, The feeling of freedom, FT Weekend, 7th & 8th December 2024.

John Kay and Mervyn King, Radical Uncertainty – Decision-making for an Unknowable Future, Little Brown Book Group, 2020.