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by TeMPOraL 1968 days ago
I mostly agree with the points, except for:

> Evolution has always proceeded as a loosely coupled federation of highly cohesive units

No, it did not. Evolution does what it does, things that are good enough at surviving survive. For instance, multicellular organisms, and in particular large animals, are "megapolises with huge populations and pegged to a 'common currency'". Fragility is a more nuanced topic too, large coupled systems are vulnerable to internal problems, but they can also withstand external forces that would kill the equivalently populous "loosely coupled federation". All in all, evolution is probably not the best thing to draw lessons about organization from, because a) any system of organization you can think of is likely already effectively used in some organisms, somewhere, and b) evolution doesn't care about well-being of individual cells, but we care about the well-being of individual humans. That last constraint means we can't just do thing the way evolution does, which is throwing crap at the wall and seeing what sticks.