Replicating Bundles of Sticks
17 Jan 2023
Last year when walking in the park I noticed a small bundle of twigs, no larger than a melon, clinging to a tree. I made nothing of it at the time, but some months later when walking in that same park I saw that similar bundles had appeared in adjacent trees.
I was perplexed by how the little groupings of twigs were able to replicate. By the look of it their existence was completely sedentary (I had not once seen them move), so how they managed to gather the twigs necessary to assemble new bundles was a true mystery. However I am happy to report that after strolling the park daily, I have learned of the genius strategy that they employ for their propagation.
You see, to propagate twig-bundles grow an organism in their intestines that they then enter into a symbiotic relationship with. This organism is unable to breed anywhere except for inside the intestines of other twig-bundles, and for this reason it has no choice but to keep on creating more bundles, lest it go extinct.
The organism in its turn has a number of lower level activities it carries out, however detailing these would not serve much purpose. They are simply the mechanistic result of needing to gather the resources necessary to spawn more bundles.
Who is in control?
By now I am sure that you have figured out that I am describing nests and birds. The point of my story is to show that even an apparently absurd switch in perspective on agency, can be made without obvious logical errors. There seems to be nothing fundamental that would require us to view the bird as the acting entity, and the nest as a mere result of the bird’s behaviour.
One might be tempted to say the bundle of sticks cannot have agency because it does not have the capability to form thoughts. However this viewpoint is erroneous and stems from a human-centric world view.
We would like to think that what we commonly refer to as “thought” is the ultimate marker of agency. I believe this is because we happen to be the organism most adept at thinking on this planet. However an entity with complex structured neural activity (i.e. thoughts) does not inherently have more agency than an entity with very simple, or no, neural activity.
This becomes clear when we consider how even complex organisms like ourselves are often subverted by much simpler entities.
Bacteria make us sneeze and cough involuntarily because it helps the bacteria reach new hosts. The rabies virus can make us attack other humans to help its transmission. The bacteria in our gut is even likely to drive the type of food we crave.
There exists no lack of examples of simple life-forms controlling the behaviour of more complex ones.
Alternative masters
If we let go of the idea that complex thought similar to ours is necessary to be considered "in charge", then a lot of potential alternative masters emerge.
As per Richard Dawkins, perhaps memes (ideas) can be considered self-interested entities that simply use humans as vehicles for their replication. Or perhaps technological progress itself is the supreme master, and all the work that we put into making things faster, better, stronger, is ultimately in its service.
I do not think there is one correct position to take when it comes to deciding what entity has superior agency. However I do think that we should not take for granted that humans are always in control of what happens.
There seems to exist many forces driving us in ways detrimental to our survival. Perhaps if we can humble ourselves and look at the course of history from new and different perspectives, we can also learn how to negotiate with these other masters.