Mind Amplifier

Stigmergy is the name for the way complex activities or structures can emerge without any kind of central planning and control. In this case, individual ants leave traces in the environment that coordinate, trigger, and channel further behavior by other ants.

How would we redesign future communication tools for the social systems in which they are embedded if we weren’t so ignorant about the reasons people choose — and fail to choose — cooperation over self-interest?

Simply being able to reason more effectively is not only unlikely to improve the human condition in the absence of other, more humane capacities, Weizenbaum warned: it can do harm.