Johnicolas: The clear identifiable edges between humans may be historical accidents, sometime around the evolution of multicellularity and/or immune systems. Accidents, that with careful refactoring, might be smoothed away.

I always felt that this very important truism is neglected around these parts. People here often construct thought experiments about the well-being of populations in the very long run. And often these thought experiments become meaningless when considering that in the long run, individua (?) can gradually become parts of larger systems and give up some or most of their free will. (Gradually is an important word here. Any numerical formalization of the well-being of a population must be robust to this, without artificial phase-transitions.)

I call this half-jokingly the "Individualism Bias" at Less Wrong, and was thinking about writing it up as a post. Frankly, it would be better if you did.