Category: Journal

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Systems and sociodrama

Associative conditioning in gene regulatory network models increases integrative causal emergence

Federico Pigozzi, Adam Goldstein & Michael Levin — 09 July 2025

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-025-08411-2

When is a system more than the sum of its parts? When and how do the properties of active components enable the emergence of a high-level, integrated decision-making entity1,2,3,4,5? These questions bear on issues in ecology, philosophy mind, psychiatry, swarm robotics, and developmental biology6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13. In a sense, all intelligence is collective intelligence14,15 because even human minds supervene on a collection of cells which are themselves active agents. One practical way to define integrated emergent systems is by the fact that they have goals, memories, preferences, and problem-solving capabilities that their parts do not have. For example, while individual cells solve problems in metabolic, physiological, and transcriptional spaces, what makes an embryo more than a collection of cells is the alignment of cellular activity toward a specific outcome in anatomical morphospace16. Here, we focus on one aspect of emergent agency: integrated, distributed memory.

What does this mean for psychodrama and group work  

(see Logeman 1999)

Let me summarize what I’m reading above.

A group is more than the sum of its parts, and there’s a of leap in intelligence (cognition/governance/awareness) at a certain point, where the group can influence the structures within  it.  e.g. the embryo grows fingers in the right place.  This is true of groups of cells.

I think it’s true of groups of people. It’s not to say that all groups have reached some form of higher understanding and agency.

Psychodrama groups definitely bring together people who can then discover a theme  or concern and work on it together for days, finding more and more enabling solutions. People are healed, educated, and may have new consciousness. I’m thinking of consciousness here as a leap of understanding that reverberates through the person’s life and being.

I’m convinced the psychodrama stage and structure facilitate this process. There are structural guidelines; warm-up, action sharing, director and auxiliaries, protagonist and auxiliaries. These formalities and traditions are part of the holding space.

A group can facilitate delving into the psyche together, and there’s a lot of language that supports that, e.g collective unconscious.  People share such things as feelings or relationship dynamics for instance, the victim-persecuted triangle These structures can be revealed; they’re commonly tundeerstood, they can be worked on together.

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What about social forces and social reality? Can we learn about those together? Can we look outward together?

Moreno talks about sociometric revolution, he likes small scale micro revolutions.

That’s sounds like psychodrama to me. It is still looking into the group and the relationship dynamic and sociometry in the group?

 

Look outwards! 

How to do that in sociodrama?

 

  • Look at history,
  • Political frameworks.
  • Moments of colonialism.
  • Victories for the oppressed
  • Make it a part of the warm up to read or watch something.
  • Director  directed warm up  e.g. Action for a Better World 

How does this relate to the next level of cognition theory presented by Levin et al?

From the abstract above:

One practical way to define integrated emergent systems is by the fact that they have goals, memories, preferences, and problem-solving capabilities that their parts do not have.

But how to get there?  Can sociodrama help?

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If its alive – its a computer!

Long Now talk by Blaise Agüera y Arcas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhSJuqDUJME

From the blurb:

13,364 views 10 Oct 2025 Long Now Talks
Blaise Agüera y Arcas’s Long Now Talk took us on a journey through What is Intelligence?, his groundbreaking new work connecting the evolutionary dots between life, computation, and symbiogenesis.
He explores how, in our symbiotic world, things combine to make larger things all the time. We might think of humanity in terms of the individual — but we’re already part of everything we’re creating, which is in turn co-creating us.
In the story of technology and humanity, are we distinct from the technologies that we make?
Agüera y Arcas’ cuts through the essentialist dogma with a functionalist view: Biological computing — computation through DNA, RNA, and proteins — is not a strange outcropping of life but its very nature.
This talk was presented September 16, 02025 at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco. Episode notes: https://longnow.org/talks/02025-aguer… The event livestream is here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/NKxAWa7wKbU This talk is part of Long Now Talks.

 

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Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP and Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society and founder of Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi). Pi is an organization working on basic research in AI and related fields, especially the foundations of neural computing, active inference, sociality, evolution, and Artificial Life. In 2008, Blaise was awarded MIT’s TR35 prize. During his tenure at Google, Blaise has innovated on-device machine learning for Android and Pixel; invented Federated Learning, an approach to decentralized model training that avoids sharing private data; and founded the Artists + Machine Intelligence program. Prior to Google, Blaise was a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft, where he worked in a variety of roles, from inventor to strategist, and led teams with strengths in experience design, pro­to­typ­ing, machine vision, augmented reality, wearable com­put­ing and mapping.

(from https://research.google/people/106776/?& )

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Some thoughts from me

There’s a hierarchy of complexity, the collective directs the the smaller parts below it in the hierarchy in accordance with its higher function.

My meditation:

What is the entity that is larger than a human being? A nation, a corporation, a psychodrama group, (see Logeman 1999)  or a couple? Those have their own systemic life and intelligence compelling the individuals in certain directions.

What about functionalism of production in society? Is there an intelligence computing the relations of production, the ownership of the means of production?

Is there a base and superstructure. There is a materiality in the relations of production that does not exist in something like geography or race.

But what does that mean for tapping into class consciousness? Will the consciousness effuse like chemicals under pressure in a tectonic plate?

 

 

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Marxism 101

A one page summary of Marxism as I understand it.  Maybe expand with a link to a page on each point?  With reading & references!  Nice project.

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Marxism 101

  1. The basic idea

Marxism starts with the question: who does the work, and who gets the benefit?

In most societies, a small group own and control the means to extract wealth: land, factories, companies and banks.  Most people have to work to survive.

  1. Class struggle

Owners and workers have conflicting interests and different forms of power. That tension is everywhere: money, education, health, media, culture. Differences in race, gender, age etc. are used to divide the working class. Class conflict shapes our unconscious and our relationships.

  1. Capitalism

Workers are paid less than the value of what they produce. Marx saw this as built into the system. It’s systemic, not psychological, not about greed or human nature

  1. The State

The State exists to maintain class power for capitalists. It disguises its nature to make it look like it is there for everyone. It is active in law, education, enforcement and military.

  1. Revolution

Workers become conscious of their shared situation. Then as a class conscious force they organise to transform society. The prime directives of society change.

  1. Socialism

The stage where workers have their own State and use it to ensure ownership of the means of production is social and not private. There is no need to disguise its class nature.  It is now in the hands of the many.

  1. Communism

Communism is an aspirational society where no one owns another’s labour. People contribute according to their ability, and receive according to need. There is no class struggle and thus no need for a State.

  1. Why it matters

Marxism helps see beneath the surface of politics, ads, work, and media, who benefits and who doesn’t. It’s a lens for understanding power.

 

Marxism 101. PDF

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Punishment for Māori reveals true nature of race relations in Aotearoa

 

Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipa-Clarke was among those to perform a haka, at Parliament, after the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill, on 14 November, 2024.Te Pāti Māori MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipa-Clarke at Parliament, after the first reading of the Treaty Principles Bill in November.

Te Pāti Māori co-leaders suspended from Parliament for 21 days

From RNZ news. Friday, 06 June 2025 :

And former Speaker Adrian Rurawhe cautioned: “When you come into this House, you swear the oath… you agree to the rules of this House. You can’t have it both ways.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins’ recent comments also tell a story. Speaking to RNZ last week, he questioned Te Pāti Māori’s choice of priorities, a line aimed squarely at centrist voters who might support Māori aspirations but baulk at Te Pāti Māori’s tactics.

This is so disgusting. The word punishment itself should be banned for this action. It is a ghostly echo of children being punished for speaking Māori, Te Reo, in schools all those years ago. Māori sovereignty is at stake behind these actions because the Treaty Principles Bill to attacked Māori sovereignty, and now the action here speaks louder than words. I hope there is a ferocious counter-attack, especially on Labour for going along with this. demeaning colonisation.

No punishment, no apology.

 

 

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Marx in Moreno’s Writing

Karl Marx: A Singer to the Hammer and Sad Eyes

I’ve been writing here about my close reading of Moreno’s writing on Marx and revolution.  I’ve been reading Who Shall Survive and other sources.

I’ve stopped posting chapters here as I’m editing in Google Drive

See my whole effort here. 

That link is auto updated with every edit!!

 

 

 

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