“Brains made of very simple cells produce extraordinary thoughts, whereas human societies, kind of made of extraordinary individual thoughts, produces a total shit show in the aggregate. … If you have very smart parts, you don't necessarily have a smart whole.”
StarTalk Radio · Ideas & Essays · October 2026
The conversation is on collective behaviour, with a host bringing up schools of fish that change direction all at once. Krakauer points to what he finds surprising about the relationship between parts and wholes.
Transcript
I mean, this is emergent things like flocking of birds, I guess.
Or, yeah, or when you see fish change all directions all at once. Yeah. Even though I don't even know if that's like electrochemical or not, but who knows?
No, but there's an interesting thing that happens here that's surprising, right? Which is that brains made of very simple cells produce extraordinary thoughts, whereas human societies, kind of made of extraordinary individual thoughts, produces a total shit show in the aggregate. So there's an interesting relationship between parts and wholes. If you have very smart parts, you don't necessarily have a smart whole.
That's true. Because there's nothing less intelligent than a mob of people with pitchforks and tiki torches.
True.
It seems to be inverse correlated with the number of people who are part of the mob.
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