Scalability is a fascinating hurdle to ponder. Scaling up or down is a good way to find the breaking point of a system. It is observed in physics with quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is present in social dynamics – family behavior vs societal behavior. It feels particularly tangible in marketing and economics. We can’t follow a linear path to predict the behavior of a large amount of people based on the behavior of a few.

I am skeptical about deterministic thinking around free will when it is based on the predictability or set pathways/logic of a human’s molecular and atomic level functioning. Why should that scale so easily into a fully predictable and predetermined human being? When all the parts come together to make the whole, the level of complexity requires more than just linear reasoning. Probability is required – and probability seeks to predict, not to enforce, a rule.

One of the more tantalizing thought streams that this topic has opened for me is the concept of influence. The smallest, micro level functions within me are activating and engaging with other functions in seemingly infinite ways and resulting in me – a being who feels in control of my macro level functions. And perhaps if I could watch one individual atom within, it would appear to be trapped in a routine. It might even be true that on its own it has no influence over my macro experience. But when combined with the millions of other atoms that are acting and reacting, it begins to look like a system. Start scaling everything up and I find myself experiencing consciousness and the ability to ponder my own inner workings.

A similar observation could be made about markets and economics – what Adam Smith called the Invisible Hand. One individual’s behavior may be predictable to a high degree of certainty, but when many individuals are interacting in a market, that predictability transforms into its own life force. The parts, by following their own paths and interactions, create a whole that no longer feels controllable by one individual part. A single, average individual like me does not exert influence over the whole. Influence from micro to macro requires a large number at the micro level operating in sync. I wonder if that number, or threshold, could be determined in a probabilistic manner.  Of course, I am imagining this as a closed system for simplicity, when, in reality, influence is also coming from outside the system. This is why power imbalance is a problem, especially when it is at the scale of a billionaire or a monopoly. A micro level individual who has such enormous resource ownership that they can opt out of participating in the micro system (at least in any way that comes close to the system level prediction) finds themselves, in their small individuality, with an enormously weighted influence – acting with one part as if they are hundreds, thousands, or millions.  

Democracy attempts to safeguard again this rearing its head in politics. But an autocratic government could do the same if the ruler chose to respect the generalized will of the people. It is just much less likely that a single person in power would be able to do so without losing themselves in their imbalanced and siloed experience (which begins to appear like an anti-reality to the individuals who share and comingle their influence and experience).

On its flip side, I wonder to myself how the emergent product of a system – like a market, or a human being – can influence its parts. This is what I find very interesting, although I’m not sure why exactly. I’m talking about a true system influence – not a dictator or billionaire who is outside the system influencing it, but the system itself trying to influence its individual part. I can imagine this most clearly as my trying to influence my own atoms. And this thought came to me because I was probing the concepts of death and suffering from the perspective of my individual atoms. I suspect that the ingrained rules that my micro levels follow are resistant to ending. This resistance allows me to live as a biological creature by guarding against harm. If I could tame the resistance, would I give up both death and life simultaneously?  Or, is suffering the boundary condition of living an embodied existence?