How Stigmergy Results In A Better Run Society

Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash

Regardless how you might feel about the pandemic, this story shows how the Copiosis Organization, stigmergy and data collection on the part of autonomous individuals will collect all data needed to reward NBR.

The story starts in Provincetown, Mass. here in the United States. An annual convergence happens in this small northeastern town each year. Thousands of gay men descend on the place preparing for revelry and…ahem…connection.

Apparently, COVID-19 couldn’t put the kibosh on celebrations this year. Gay men do what gay men do! Pandemic be damned!

But post celebrations, with gay crowds gone, one man noticed something among his friends.

News reports name this someone Michael Donnelly. They also call him a “citizen scientist”. Passionate about meanings numbers carry, Donnelly always enjoyed mining numbers, particularly collections of numbers for meaning.

We’re talking data mining, not numerology.

Remember, Copiosis’ ultimate goal happens when humanity finds itself totally free. From there, individuals tap into their passions. Do that and people enrich themselves. They also make the world a better place, as all passions do.

Net Benefit Value creation

So when nearly all his friends started complaining about COVID-like symptoms after their revelry, Donnelly whipped out his spreadsheet software. He collected friends’ names and other data. In time, as his data grew, trends emerged. That’s when he realized his data might help Centers For Disease Control (CDC) efforts (and create Net Benefit Value).

In less than a week, Donnelly collected information on 51 cases, including people’s COVID-19 and vaccination statuses, their symptoms, where people came from, telephone numbers, and whether their households’ experienced breakthrough infections.

In todays’ world, you’d think people skittish around giving such personal information. Donnelly said, the reason his friends eagerly shared comes from the gay community’s experience with HIV and AIDS.

“The norms of the gay community say: Share your medical history, share your risks with other people so that they can be responsible and take care of themselves as well,” he said in an NPR interview. “That came with years of practice within the community, particularly around HIV and AIDS.”

Donnelly’s data collection was so sound, when he shared it with the CDC they sent 10 data scientists and others to Donnelly’s community. Once there, they worked with Donnelly directly. They collected more data from talking to people Donnelly knew. In time, the data gave CDC officials enough to change their national guidance for vaccinated people.

That’s when Donnelly became a hero.

A model of the future

In essence, the Copiosis Organization works exactly the same way. Experts populate the organization but alongside these experts stand ordinary people passionate about ensuring the organization work effectively at its one job: ensuring NBR gets awarded generously and fairly.

But tens of thousands of others outside the organization may do work significant enough that it influences organizational decisions. Just as Donnelly’s work here did with the CDC’s pandemic policy.

In this way, the Copiosis Organization is not a formal structured organization listening only to its own guidance. Many others in the general public, driven by their own passions, influence Copiosis Organization decisions in the same way Donnelly significantly influenced the CDC’s guidance. They act as citizen statisticians, citizen observers and sousvellience experts.

Citizen biologists, geologists, historians…the variety knows no bounds…support the organization by feeding it all kinds of data which helps keep the Copiosis software and algorithm relevant.

Donnelly in a tweet encouraging friends to testing centers based on what his data told him.

Stigmergy in action

Donnelly’s actions also illustrate our principle of individual stewardship and action known as Stigmergy. He didn’t wait for someone giving him orders. He didn’t leave his data collection to others. Instead, he acted on impulses born of his passion for numbers, science and data. The result: Net Benefit Value creation on a national scale.

Of course, we’re not in Copiosis today. Rather than getting paid for his contribution, Donnelly gets kudos and nice news stories about his work.

But in Copiosis, Donnelly would get a healthy NBR income stream that likely would keep coming as the CDC replicated his grass-roots data collection efforts elsewhere.

If he chose, Donnelly could generate more NBR by visiting other gay communities. Should he succeed in organizing networks of gay men willing to do what he did in their communities, his results might amplify across the nation further benefitting the CDC and his own NBR account.

It’s cool seeing so much evidence of Copiosis happening naturally in today’s world. It supports our assertion that Copiosis can happen.

And upon that assertion we make a promise: Copiosis is happening. Watch as it naturally flows out of humanity’s natural evolution from capitalism, communism and socialism, into the future we all know possible.

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