When I studied chemistry, some experiments would involve us using manual pipettes. They're essentially precision mechanical droppers, operated by hand, used for moving amounts of liquid via a thin tip.

While we worked in groups, it was emphasized to not only stabilize our main hand with other hand but also always carry out the pipetting process solo. This would help avoid accidental miscoordination arising from shakiness and two people's organic movements — which would have an amplified impact given the very minute scale of the pipette's operation.

I think about this occasionally given situations where multiple individuals interact. Similar to the observations about pipette coordination, we might look more closely at the unintentional buildup of organic human behavior, especially those compounding in complex effects and hidden until later. Much like artistic direction given to committees, behavior often flows with whatever is common between those involved. Whoever we spend a large amount of time with — be it roommates, coworkers, partners, and parents - our behavior and conversations' conclusions are a bit of alchemy where the "research topic" is our personalities and futures.

At the individual level, these would include goals, hobbies, optimism, talking points, cynicism, beliefs, "vices" (as we call them) and energy levels. At the collective level, it includes shared experiences and communal self-perception. The future is formed mainly by the evolution of these behaviors — certain ones are often accelerated to an extreme point of collapse, that results in a large effect on other behaviors.

But, per individual, the constraints of time and attention universally remain. Among the commonalities that bind us, the most likely to be expressed are those related to these constraints and each of our paths of least resistance. This is furthered by the reduced resolution and specialization in our scaled coordination systems — yields cheap spectacles of performance for satisfaction. The common end result is universally subpar service, where all members of a culture must continue to mentally fend off their expectation of cynicism and prisoner's dilemmas, as well as them being drawn into the collective themselves

Humans' minds haven't yet scaled with our own society. But once we develop the true "technology" to advance ourselves psychologically, and then culturally, then connectivity will be the right accelerant to apply. These exceedingly, amazingly human societies will see all members continuing to hold each other to their best, contributing their effort to finding nonspecialized and future-flexible alignment. In this setting, our commonalities will be our exceptionalities.

The current frontier of effort is the still-intact border maintained by individual agency. Just like any emergent behavior in a population, these steps start somewhere — an individual's activation energy — but is unique in its unparalleled opportunity ahead.