Nehaveigur

There is an optimal intermediate degree of fragmentation, that a too-unified society is a disadvantage, and a too-fragmented society is also a disadvantage

Jared Diamond

Previously, I have written about the idea that singletons are hard to achieve. Singletons are agents that can enact their goals and maintain a high level of coherence over the long term. I first came across the idea of singletons in the context of artificial intelligence agents here, but thinking about coherence of agents equally makes sense in the context of organic entities, organizations and even societies.

For example, our bodies, made up of 30 trillion cells, are highly coherent in their goals, even though individual cells are continuously replaced. This coherence is enforced by each cell having the same genotype, even though it expresses a different phenotype according to its cell type. As we age, the genomes within our cells accumulate mutations, eventually resulting in diseases like cancer and a breakdown of coherence.

While we have some understanding of what causes the high level of coherence in multicellular organisms, our understanding of how coherence comes about in organizations and societies is more limited. Some organizations enforce coherence by being hierarchical, which comes at a cost to both individuals and the organization as a whole. What other mechanisms are there to increase coherence, what are the tradeoffs, and what is the optimal level of coherence given an organization’s aims?

More abstractly, is there a theoretical framework for evaluating coherence and understanding its tradeoffs across different levels of organization? If there is, I’d love to hear about it.