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Comment by w_for_wumbo | Hacker News Reader

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. That seems like feedback which scales right there.

This seems like a concrete example of why this logic is flawed.

To me I believe it more useful to start with the premise of: I'm already communicating and leading trillions, how do I actually do that?

A common issue is that we hold thoughts, logic and language as a type of universal gold standard, while ignoring that most of our communication isn't even verbal to begin with. It's context, observation, pattern recognition, a self-serving goal which aligns with the collective, because we're all wanting the same things. What feels good, what's expansive, what's beautiful etc. These are the reward functions for healthy communication in the human body, the more that we align and work with these, the better the results.

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> Because what am I, if not a self-organizing collective of a trillion cells. That seems like feedback which scales right there.

You're not, not in this sense. There is no body-wide feedback at all at the cellular level, any single cell is disposable and nothing will notice if it dies. Any meaningful feedback exists between and within functional units of the body.

There is, however, the other, original form of feedback that allows the body to exist - the one that allows you to not have this commonly understood "feedback" in the first place. That is, feedback loops, the control theory concept of systems that self-stabilize or self-amplify. This, not some top-level control, is what's keeping the body together.

The body is a perfect example of a naturally hierarchical system. Society is another. That's what scales.

> 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.

It does, otherwise you would not be alive. No one said it does work always ..

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.

Might be the biggest example of false equivalence I have seen in a long time.

Cancer.

Most people who live in a city want the city to function well, and actively do their tiny little bit to see this happen. This doesn't stop them from flipping each other off on the freeway.

More broadly I think you're missing the point of the article. A single person can command a military of millions, but that single person can't ensure that everyone in that military have all of their needs met, personal emergencies dealt with, or just plain care enough to not half-ass it. Much less hear and respond to everyone's ideas on what would make things better, or what's making things worse.

Our individual cells have very simple needs in order to keep our larger structure functioning, and even then sometimes things go catastrophically wrong.

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