[ExI] The Chess Room

[Spencer Campbell]

Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>:
> Anyhow--back to an emergent mind.  What sways me towards the idea is that a group can have intention and trends, sometimes without total comprehension of any within the group as singular units.  Humanity progresses, but the specifics are not known to any one of us.  This may just be an emergent necessity, but maybe our awarenesses are as well, given some special interactions.

Crowds make a perfect example of how this works. Put enough people in
one place, direct their attention toward a single thing, and the mob
mentality sets in. This is merely disconcerting when the mob-mind is
focused on some physical phenomenon (music concerts, comedy clubs),
but it can become outright dangerous when it gets an idea (protests,
riots). Angry mobs are, somehow, angrier than the sum of their parts.

Organizations of all kinds illustrate the concept on longer time
scales. Microsoft seems to have its own dysfunctional personality,
distinct from its constituent owners and employees. The willfulness of
nations is well-documented; even in a democracy, which has no
consistent "head" to speak of, the nation as a whole continues to have
predictable behavior and preferences that distinguish it from every
other nation.

These aren't new ideas by any means, so Google can dig up gold. Here's
a typologist talking about the personality type of a system of
typology:

http://socionist.blogspot.com/2008/01/socionics-game.html