Among the various conceptions of beauty, the one that’s always felt most true to me is that the perception of beauty is evoked by an object’s (or idea’s) resonance with natural patterns.

“The beauty of a formula may result from simplicity, symmetry, elegance or the expression of an immutable truth.”

One of these patterns is evident in distributed, cooperative systems. Evolutionary theorist John E. Stewart, has written extensively about the “direction of evolution,” arguing that there is no teleology required to see that:

“Evolution has been heading towards the emergence of a coordinated and integrated global entity.”

“When we stand back from the evolutionary process on this planet and consider it as a coherent whole, we see that there are two great trends within evolution. One is towards diversification. The other is towards integration and cooperation. As we have seen in some detail, both trends are driven by selection processes that are consistent with mainstream evolutionary theory.”

This same pattern of integration and cooperation is also visible in our evolution as humans. In studying the unique differences in the human brain, scientists Andrea I. Luppi, Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas, Negin Holland, Tim D. Fryer, John T. O’Brien, James B. Rowe, David K. Menon, Daniel Bor and Emmanuel A. Stamatakis write:

“Synergistic interactions instead support integrative processes and complex cognition across higher-order brain networks. The human brain leverages synergistic information to a greater extent than nonhuman primates, with high-synergy association cortices exhibiting the highest degree of evolutionary cortical expansion.”

Summarizing this for laypeople like me:

This led us to the conclusion that additional human brain tissue, acquired as a result of evolution, may be primarily dedicated to synergy. In turn, it is tempting to speculate that the advantages of greater synergy may, in part, explain our species’ additional cognitive capabilities.

I envision this as distributed, collaborative cognition that takes place within one’s brain. And if that metaphor holds, again this same pattern emerges at a different scale when thinking about how humans work together through time and space.

Our cognitive abilities share much in common with other primates, but our cognition sets us apart. Our ability to synthesize and integrate diverse inputs, ideas and viewpoints. Anthropologist Edwin Hutchins takes this idea further with his theory of Distributed Cognition - classifying three different types:

When one applies these principles to the observation of human activity “in the wild”, at least three interesting kinds of distribution of cognitive process become apparent: cognitive processes may be distributed across the members of a social group, cognitive processes may be distributed in the sense that the operation of the cognitive system involves coordination between internal and external (material or environmental) structure, and processes may be distributed through time in such a way that the products of earlier events can transform the nature of later events. The effects of these kinds of distribution of process are extremely important to an understanding of human cognition.

Distributed cognition is a uniquely human form of cognition which emerges from natural processes of diversification, integration and cooperation.

The theory of distributed cognition has arguably gained the most traction in the fields of cognitive science, anthropology, computer science and artificial intelligence. We don’t simply collaborate when we work with other people and different tools, our consciousness and perception expands to encompass a new set of abilities and a new set of possibilities.

These ideas begin to explain why I see web3 as both a collection of disruptive, technological protocols as well as a possibility for a more natural, more beautiful economy. Why AI is both a threat to our humanity, and also - through distributed cognition - the possibility to become even more human. These are choices yet to be made and futures yet to be written, but which can only happen if we balance the prevailing mechanistic, pessimistic mental models with ones that show better futures are possible, plausible and perhaps even more likely.

This is the job that David Graeber and David Wengrow sought to achieve with their brilliant book the Dawn of Everything:

This book is an attempt to begin to tell another, more hopeful and more interesting story; one which, at the same time, takes better account of what the last few decades of research have taught us.

To give just a sense of how different the emerging picture is: it is clear now that human societies before the advent of farming were not confined to small, egalitarian bands. On the contrary, the world of hunter-gatherers as it existed before the coming of agriculture was one of bold social experiments, resembling a carnival parade of political forms, far more than it does the drab abstractions of evolutionary theory. Agriculture, in turn, did not mean the inception of private property, nor did it mark an irreversible step towards inequality. In fact, many of the first farming communities were relatively free of ranks and hierarchies.

And far from setting class differences in stone, a surprising number of the world’s earliest cities were organized on robustly egalitarian lines, with no need for authoritarian rulers, ambitious warrior-politicians, or even bossy administrators.

Is it possible that web3 can support our biological, evolutionary processes of diversification, integration and cooperation?

Is it possible that AI can enable a more distributed, creative and intelligent cognition?

Is it possible that we are evolving towards a more natural, more beautiful and more human future? I believe so, and will be exploring that more here.