It's a very different perspective when we realize that our bodies consist of an entire ecology of bacteria and viruses that are also passed to our ancestors. Mammals rear their young and as a consequence transfer the microbiome and virome to their offspring.

What does it mean to treat our individuality as ecologies? We are all ecologies existing in other ecologies. Nature is constantly performing a balancing act across multiple scales of existence.
There are bacteria and viruses that are unique to your ancestry as that of your own DNA. They have lived in symbiosis with your ancestor and will do so for your descendants.
It is an empirical fact that the microbiome in our stomach can influence not only our own moods but also our metabolism and thus our weight and health.
It is also intriguing to know that brains evolved out of stomachs and that our stomachs contain hundreds of millions of neurons. Humans can literally think with their gut.
But when we think with our gut or if our gut is influenced by the microbiome and virome, then we can't really claim that we act completely independently of the ecology we carry.
When we claim that the mind is inextricably connected to the body, do we also mean that it is also connected to the microbiome and the virome. That is organisms that have evolved independently of our DNA?
When we speak of the epigenome that expresses traits based on its environment, are we not also talking about the environment that also includes the microbiome and virome?
This also places in question the tired debate of nature vs nurture. Can we truly create a crisp boundary between the two ideas. Is there really such a thing as a core nature now that we realize that it's more than our DNA that generates who we are?
We are the holistic sum of a milieu of processes, processes that our epigenome is in constant interaction with. These processes include our local ecology and the much wider culture that we live in. This happens at a multitude of scales and thus under an unimaginable complexity.
The discovery of quantum mechanics revealed the fuzziness of the most elementary of things. It also revealed the inescapable subjectivity of reality. The discovery of the complexity of biology also has revealed both but at the scale of our individuality.
We are walking ecologies analogous to the fuzziness and subjectivity intrinsic in every atom that we consist of. It is irreducible complexity and subjectivity all the way down.
@threadreaderapp unroll

More from Carlos E. Perez

Programming in abstractions is very different from a system that is capable of its own 'abstracting'. But what does abstracting mean? We only know of its inputs and outputs, but we fail to describe its inner workings.

I like this short video about living in space. This is because it makes you realize the gaps in your knowledge when you turn off something (i.e. gravity) that you have always assumed to be present.


Perhaps we can understand 'abstracting' better if we turn of many assumptions that we unconsciously carry around. Perhaps we need to get rid of the excess baggage that is confusing our thinking about abstraction.

Turning off gravity and living in space is a perfect analogy. We somehow have to turn off a cognitive process to understand the meaning of abstraction.

The first step to divorce ourselves from our habitual cognitive processes is to realize the pervasiveness of 'noun-thinking' .

More from Health

🚨Important changes to lockdown/self-isolation regulations from 5pm

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers and Self-Isolation) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

£800 'house party' FPN & police can now access track & trace data

https://t.co/k9XCpVsXhC


“Large gathering offence”

As trailed by Home Secretary last week there is now a fixed penalty notice of £800 (or £400 if you pay within 14 days) for participating in an gathering of over 15 people in a private residence


Fixed Penalty Notices double for each subsequent “large gathering offence” up to £6,400

Compare:
- Ordinary fixed penalty notice is £200 or £100 if paid in 14 days
- Holding or being involved in the holding of a gathering of over 30 people is £10,000


Second big change:

Since September has been a legal requirement to sell-isolate if you test positive/notified by Track & Trace of exposure to someone else who tested positive

Police can now be given access to NHS Track & Trace data if for the purpose of enforcement/prosecution


This will make it easier for police to enforce people breaking self-isolation rules. Currently there has been practically no enforcement.

Data says only a small proportion of people meant to be self-isolating are fully doing so.

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