Can We Improve the Science of Solving Global Coordination Problems? Anders Sandberg

A metasystem transition is the evolutionary emergence of a higher level of organisation or control in a system. A number of systems become integrated into a higher-order system, producing a multi-level hierarchy of control. Within biology such evolutionary transitions have occurred through the evolution of self-replication, multicellularity, sexual reproduction, societies etc. where smaller subsystems merge without losing differentiation yet often become dependent on the larger entity. At the beginning of the process the control mechanism is rudimentary, mainly coordinating the subsystems. As the whole system develops further the subsystems specialize and the control systems become more effective. While metasystem transitions in biology are seen as caused by biological evolution, other systems might exhibit other forms of evolution (e.g. social change or deliberate organisation) to cause metasystem transitions. Extrapolated to humans, future transitions might involve parts or the whole of the human species becoming a super-organism.Anders Sandberg