pitfalls & workarounds

Previous posts have hinted at shortcomings of organism-centricity as a general trait of human communications & perception. Two special cases of the problem, namely anthropocentricity where we think of our species collectively as the center of the universe, and self-centricity which may leave our individual actions un-informed to the perspective of even those closest to us, are already familiar themes.

One of the less-recognized consequences of organism-centricity in general is our pre-occupation with individuals for credit and blame, while collective processes (like the effects of evolving media, policy design, and self-assembly) remain largely invisible or at best treated anecdotally. Data-driven approaches to these collective-processes are starting to get attention (cf. Picketty in economics), although multi-layer approaches i.e. systematic consideration of processes on multiple-levels of organization at once are still in their infancy.