Comment by wavemode
16 hours ago
> So I get confused when I read things like "feedback doesn't scale". Because what am I, if not a self-organizing collective of a trillion cells.
Well, yeah, that feedback scales perfectly because your cells don't have free will.
I think there are plenty of real-world examples of large-scale projects where feedback scaled well, for similar reasons... though I doubt we want to use those as a guide.
"because your cells don't have free will"
They are still independent cells. If they stop cooperating with the rest of the body, they become literally cancer.
They are not independent. They're specialized. They're machines bred to perform highly specific functions in a very specific environment. They cannot survive outside of it.
Edit: in fact, this "negative space" is probably underappreciated as the force defining the concept of a "living organism" itself. The fact that we can't just swap cells or pieces of cells around, that there is no universal, general-purpose cell that can be a skin cell today, a muscle cell tomorrow, a brain cell next week - is what makes nature be composed of organisms, instead of just being one big soup of cells.
Yes, you are right. Independent was not the right word, but I don't find a better one. My point was, cells used to be independent, but if they act independent now, out of sync with the feedback from the whole organism, the results are bad.
And tons of people get cancer, or muscle cramps, or, or, or. So clearly even on that level feedback doesn't scale.
This is a great example of when feedback breaks down. The cells should be dying, but don't. I think we say that cancer is influenced by signals that are misinterpreted or ignored.
It does, otherwise you would not be alive. No one said it does work always ..