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Well, that's precisely the point of the article. According to the author, the United States indeed "walks like a duck and talks like a duck," to the extent that
by xenophon 11y ago
Well, that's precisely the point of the article. According to the author, the United States indeed "walks like a duck and talks like a duck," to the extent that it is homeostatic (feeds itself, defends itself, undertakes coordinated actions such as trade embargoes) and large scale information transfer does occur between its constituent subsystems (humans, say).
Of course there is something intuitively bothersome about that: somehow, we don't believe that there is something it is like to be the United States, but we do believe there is something it is like to be xenophon. That's why the core question isn't absurd at all -- the author is trying to understand what truly differentiates a conscious system.
- noobermin 11y agoAs I said below, if you really are a materialist, then this shouldn't bother you. As a materialist, you can't judge something from the inside, you can only apply the duck rule.[0] And the US, a book club, a couple, all of these deliberate, form consensus, act for self-survival...they act like living things just like us bags of meat do, so they should be "concious", just like a person or a rabbit or a duck is. Or, if this still does bother you, may be you should question your faith in materialism.
- SilasX 11y agoIt doesn't seem like that much of a bullet to bite. If you accept that many-celled organisms can be conscious, and that eusocial colonies (ants, bees) behave more like intelligent organisms than any one member, it's not much if a stretch to say "hm, a country belongs on that scale". It's moderately surprising that a consistent system would put the US at eg 25% of a human by consciousness, but it's not the kind of thing that makes you say "oops I made a wrong choice somewhere". The lense of homeostasis (or autopoiesis more generally) is useful: it does allow you to put things on a meaningful, insight-yielding scale: there are humans, and rocks, and then fire and hurricanes somewhere in between. So what does it take to make something past human in the scale?
- foldr 11y agoIt's a huge bullet to byte if you think about the ethical implications downstream. Individualism assumes that the relationship between a nation state and the individuals that make it up is exactly not like this.
- quadrangle 11y agoFWIW, any theory that tries to say that larger scale relationships exactly match smaller scale ones is surely wrong, but so is any theory that tries to deny holistic aspects at larger scales. Just like organs do not work like large cells and people aren't large-scale organs, societies aren't large scale people. But there are social elements that bind us into a society. Dogmatic individualism is wrong, and treating society as an individual is also wrong.
- javajosh 11y agoCan I just say "Thank you" for pointing out the key difference between looking at things that look similar at different space scales but remembering that no, actually they are completely different. That dust storm from space may look like the beach at my feet, but they are two very different systems that move differently, and arise for different reasons. It's cool that they look the same, and no doubt that's meaningful for some reason, but it doesn't mean they are the same. In any event the US acts like a person because it is basically the President plus Congress plus the leaders of the top 100 public and private American institutions. Any group that small is going to act coherently.
- quadrangle 11y agoI'm not ready to accept the simplification of a few leaders and powerful people having quite that level of significance. I think the U.S. is still a much more massive complex system. Your assertion is sorta like saying that the human body is like an organ because it is basically the heart, brain, and eyes. We obviously do not live in anarchy, but I don't think our world can be so simplified accurately either.