Multi-level agency

Coarse-graining empowerment

2025-06-09 — 2025-07-09

agents
AI safety
bounded compute
collective knowledge
computers are awful together
concurrency hell
distributed
economics
edge computing
extended self
game theory
incentive mechanisms
machine learning
networks

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Looking at a complicated system such as a human society or a microchip or a neural network, at what level of abstraction do we want to think about it to best understand what it is doing? E.g. is technology itself an agent?

Probably some classic question about “emergence” and “complexity” and “hierarchy” and “levels of organisation”. We might also think about the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology, which is a theory of how evolution works at different levels of organisation, from genes to organisms to populations.

Figure 1

1 Incoming

2 References

Brunet, and Doolittle. 2015. “Multilevel Selection Theory and the Evolutionary Functions of Transposable Elements.” Genome Biology and Evolution.
Fletcher, and Zwick. 2007. “The evolution of altruism: game theory in multilevel selection and inclusive fitness.” Journal of Theoretical Biology.
Okasha. 2009. “Individuals, Groups, Fitness and Utility: Multi-Level Selection Meets Social Choice Theory.” Biology & Philosophy.
Simon. 1973. “The Organization of Complex Systems.” Hierarchy Theory: The Challenge of Complex Systems.