Distinctions that many agree on may include...

Types of lifeform

Scientists in a variety of fields, and perhaps others as well, seem to be finding it useful to distinguish different kinds of life. For example:

• microbial lifeforms: organisms in symbiosis with molecular codes (e.g. nucleic acid and amino acid sequences), including bacteria, skin cells, etc.,
• metazoan lifeforms: multi-cellular organisms, including plants, animals, etc.
• sentient lifeforms: organisms in symbiosis with memetic codes (e.g. ideas capable of replication), including humans whose relationship with language and other replicable codes has literally developed a life of its own in recent centuries,
• cultural communities: multi-sentient groups, including societies organized around ritual, language, belief and/or knowledge, book clubs, dance communities, adoptive families, etc.

Awareness of these distinctions may be crucial in clarifying one's logic today, and for tracking the planet's inventory of correlations in years ahead. For example, reconciling our colorful natural history of invention with the many size scales and time scales involved, as well as the geological observation that the earth's age of plants and animals may be about halfway over, will likely be helped by ways to keep track of the standing crop of complex correlations on many levels.

Idea types

The study of correlation-based complexity suggests that it may be helpful to distinguish ideas which focus inward and outward with respect to ourselves, our family, and our culture. For example, extra-cultural observations include assertions like:

• 1+1=2,
• rain is mostly water,
• our data analysis predicts a 30% chance of rain tomorrow,
• genetic codes show some correlations that agree with quantitative models of inheritance within or between species,
• the bad guy has more dangerous tools than we do, but we can't tell you how we know,
• societies with a free press, separation between church & state, competitive economics, and voting rights for all, in each case examined show better population stability in the past 100 years than those without,
• etc.

On the other hand, intra-cultural beliefs might be expressed by statements like:

• bow to your opponent before the contest begins,
• take shoes off outside before entering the theatre,
• pray nightly,
• thou shalt not use cameras,
• you should do in folks that you or your leader say are bad,
• we believe in free press, separation between church & state, competitive economics, and voting rights for all,
• etc.

We can also work our way down to statements about the way families and members of families interact in a social heirarchy, a collection of statements that we might also refer to as outward-looking gene-pool we-memes. Examples of these might include:

• can you drive me home, as I've had one too many to drink,
• if you manage to sell thirty widgets again this week, you can expect a raise,
• if you keep making these unsolicited phone calls, I will file a complaint with the better business bureau,
• expect legal action if you impede our free press, separation between church & state, competitive economics, or voting rights for all,
• etc.

Of course, you can probably also think of many ideas focussed on the way things work within a family (e.g. it's your turn to take out the trash), between individuals (e.g. a good friend will be there when the chips are down), and internal to individuals (e.g. too much fried food is bad for your health). Recognizing the independent importance of idea sets on all six of these levels, as well as their capacity for inheritance, might be worthwhile.

The importance of multiple time scales and multiple perspectives in facing the challenges to life on our planet suggest a live (as distinct from static) form of over-constrained ethics, informed not only to cultural codes but to challenges posed on all 6 levels. For example, we might want to recommend of one another that the likely effects of our actions on our community's offspring a century from now be taken into account. Had these level insights been available to Greenland's Norse community, to put isolationist preachings of their priests into context while an Inuit community with complementary technology looked on, the Norse extinction in the 15th Century might have been avoided. In fact the success and failure of many past societies (cf. Collapse by Jared Diamond) has been determined by the extent to which the action of individuals in a community has considered such multi-level constraints.