> If you believe that consciousness is an emergent property of information processing (as I'm inclined to), you also start to wonder if that can be applied to meta-organisms also.

That is it, exactly.

> Can a city have a consciousness? What's it like to "be" meta-Tyson?

Dude, please post more.

elvismercury

mostly_harmless

Some thoughts on Mike Tyson as meta-organism

Yes, Bitcoin being a prime example.

In fact, perhaps Bitcoin is a rare example of an internet-based meta-organism which has grown beyond the attention economy and started consuming real-world resources (i.e. electricity) for its own end.

If you believe that consciousness is an emergent property of information processing (as I'm inclined to), you also start to wonder if that can be applied to meta-organisms also.

Can a city have a consciousness? What's it like to "be" meta-Tyson? Could Bitcoin have subjective experience, albeit in such a non-human fashion we could scarcely understand it?

The universe is weird. 