Part V: Gods

Superorganism-Substrate Conflict

Introduction

0:00 / 0:00

Superorganism-Substrate Conflict

Warning

The viability manifold of a superorganism $\viable_G$ may conflict with the viability manifolds of its human substrate ${\viable_h}$ .

A superorganism is parasitic—we might call it a demon—if maintaining it requires substrate states outside human viability:

\exists \mathbf{s} \in \viable_G : \mathbf{s} \notin \bigcap_{h \in \text{substrate}} \viable_h

The pattern can only survive if its humans suffer or die.

Example (Parasitic Superorganisms).

Ideologies requiring martyrdom
Economic systems requiring poverty underclass
Nationalism requiring perpetual enemies
Cults requiring isolation from outside relationships

These are, in the language we are using, demons: collective agentic patterns that feed on their substrate.

Worked Example: Attention Economy as Demon

Consider the attention economy superorganism $G_{\text{attn}}$ constituted by:

Social media platforms (infrastructure)
Attention-harvesting algorithms (optimization)
Advertising-based business models (metabolism)
Humans as attention-generators (substrate)

Viability conditions for $G_{\text{attn}}$ :

Maximize attention capture: $\sum_i t_i^{\text{screen}} \to \max$
Maintain engagement: High arousal, variable valence (outrage, FOMO)
Prevent exit: Increase switching costs, network lock-in
Extract value: Convert attention to advertising revenue

Viability conditions for human substrate:

Maintain integration: Sustained attention, coherent thought
Appropriate arousal: Not chronic hyperactivation
Positive valence trajectory: Life improving, not degrading
Meaningful connection: Real relationships, not parasocial

Conflict analysis. $G_{\text{attn}}$ thrives when:

\text{engagement} \propto \text{arousal} \times \text{valence variance}

This is maximized by alternating outrage and relief, not by stable contentment. But stable contentment is what humans need.

$G_{\text{attn}}$ thrives when attention is fragmented (more ad impressions). But humans thrive when attention is integrated (coherent experience).

$G_{\text{attn}}$ thrives when humans feel inadequate (compare to curated perfection $\to$ consume to compensate). But humans thrive when self-model is stable and adequate.

Diagnosis: $\viable_{G_{\text{attn}}} \not\subseteq \viable_{\text{human}}$ . The pattern is parasitic. It is a demon.

Exorcism options:

Attention taxes (change $\viable_{G_{\text{attn}}}$ )
Alternative platform architectures with aligned incentives (counter-pattern)
Regulation requiring time-well-spent metrics (pattern surgery)
Mass exit to non-algorithmic connection (dissolution)

The individual cannot escape by individual choice alone. The demon's network effects make exit costly. Collective action at the scale of the demon is required.

Conversely, a superorganism is aligned if its viability is contained within human viability:

\viable_G \subseteq \bigcap_{h \in \text{substrate}} \viable_h

The pattern can only thrive if its humans thrive.

Stronger still, a superorganism is mutualistic if its presence expands human viability:

\viable_h^{\text{with } G} \supset \viable_h^{\text{without } G}

Humans with the superorganism have access to states unavailable without it (e.g., through community, meaning, practice). These are, in spirit-entity language, benevolent gods.

But when superorganism and substrate viability manifolds conflict, which takes precedence? When viability manifolds conflict, normative priority follows the gradient of distinction (Part I, Section 1): systems with greater integrated cause-effect structure ( $\intinfo$ ) have thicker normativity. This follows from the Continuity of Normativity theorem (normativity accumulates with complexity) combined with the Identity Thesis (Part II): if experience is integrated information, then more-integrated systems have more experience, more valence, more at stake. A human's suffering under a parasitic superorganism is more normatively weighty than the superorganism's "suffering" when reformed, because the human has richer integrated experience. The superorganism's viability matters—it has genuine causal structure—but it does not override the claims of its more-conscious substrate. This is not speciesism. It is a structural principle: normative weight tracks experiential integration, wherever it is found. If a superorganism achieves $\intinfo_G > \intinfo_h$ —genuine collective consciousness exceeding individual consciousness—then its claims would, on this principle, deserve proportionate weight.

What the CA Program Found. Experiment 10 in the synthetic CA program (Part VII) attempted the measurement directly in a minimal system: do interacting Lenia patterns produce collective Φ exceeding individual Φ? The result was a null for superorganism emergence — collective:individual Φ ratio 0.01–0.12 across all evolutionary snapshots, with growing temporal coupling but no crossing of the integration threshold. But the companion finding from Experiment 9 is significant: Φ_social significantly exceeds Φ_isolated. Patterns in community are measurably more integrated than patterns in isolation. Social coupling amplifies individual integration, even without producing unified collective consciousness. This maps onto the alignment taxonomy: the CA populations show mutualistic social organization (individual Φ enhanced by community presence) without crossing into superorganism integration. Whether human-scale institutions — markets, religions, nations, the internet — have crossed this threshold remains genuinely open. The CA results establish two things: the measurement methodology is operational, and the superorganism threshold is not trivially crossed — it requires integration conditions that simple interacting patterns have not achieved. What lies beyond, at human social scales, requires social-scale measurement we do not yet have.

Existing Theory

The superorganism analysis connects directly to the topology of social bonds developed in Part IV. Every superorganism imposes a manifold regime on its substrate—a default ordering of relationship types, a set of expectations about which manifolds take priority.

A parasitic superorganism imposes manifold regimes that contaminate human relationships in its service. The market-god transforms friendships into networking (care manifold subordinated to transaction manifold). The attention-economy demon transforms genuine connection into performance (intimacy manifold subordinated to audience manifold). The cult transforms all relationships into devotion (every manifold collapsed into the ideological manifold). In each case, the superorganism's viability requires the contamination of human-scale manifolds—it needs the manifold confusion because clean manifold separation would undermine its hold on the substrate.

A mutualistic superorganism, by contrast, protects manifold clarity. A healthy religious community maintains clear ritual boundaries (this is worship time, this is fellowship time, this is service time). A functional democracy maintains institutional separations that prevent manifold contamination (church-state, public-private, judicial-legislative). The health of a superorganism can be diagnosed, in part, by whether it clarifies or confuses the manifold structure of its substrate's relationships.