| I think groups of people are conscious in a sense. When I say conscious I'll use a definition where consciousness is the behavior of a physical system that is: * directional/goal oriented * exhibits higher order patterns / behaviors which are greater than the sum of its parts. A riot would probably be the easiest example to start with. You get a group of mildly angry people together and they can become enraged and do things they wouldn't normally do. Not only that, the anger of the group can rise and fall together. It's like people synchronize with each other and the riot becomes this living agent of chaos. Basically a human is a higher order pattern on top of cells and biochemistry while a group of people can exhibit higher order patterns like a riot. When you get to the nation state level you can see higher order patterns as well. For example the BLM protests. A single even triggered this burst of goal
-oriented activity among millions of disparate individuals like a wildfire. Or it's like the country, not just the people in the country but the country itself, became enraged. And I'm not just talking about protests and riots that's just an example. If you look at history, there are lots of other examples of collective, higher-order, goal-oriented activity at the nation state level. Groups building cities or opening up areas to farming or setting up trade networks or going to war. Sometimes these actions are based on the will of one person like a king but other times they are the result of thousands of individuals coordinating autonomously. |