ARTIFACT · LIVING SYSTEMS
Symbiosis Ladder
Symbiosis progresses from benefit-sharing to dependence, ending when two organisms become evolutionarily linked by each other’s missing capabilities.
HUMAN VIEW
Genes:
- Mutualism: A relationship where both organisms gain something useful from the other.
- Commensalism: A relationship where one organism benefits while the other is not clearly harmed or helped.
- Shared Fate: The partnership becomes tied enough that each organism's success or failure affects the other.
- Co-evolution: Each species exerts selection pressure on the other, shaping traits over time.
- Missing Capacity: Each organism supplies something the other cannot make for itself.
Relationships:
- Mutualism adjacent forms Commensalism
- Commensalism deepens into Shared Fate
- Shared Fate leads to Co-evolution
- Missing Capacity enables Mutualism
- Missing Capacity drives Co-evolution
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RELATIONS
- SHARES CONSTRAINT Customer Retention LeversIn both artifacts, dependency becomes stable only when the other side supplies a capability or value that is hard to replace, so the relationship persists through switching costs and missing capacity.
- SHARES TRAJECTORY Compounding HabitsBoth move from small repeated interactions toward a durable state that emerges over time: one through co-evolved dependence, the other through compounded identity from repeated actions.
- SHARES MECHANISM Cities as NetworksBoth describe systems where proximity and interdependence create outsized gains through mutual reliance and co-adaptation.
- SHARES MECHANISM Network Effects SequenceBoth depend on mutual dependence forming only after each side fills a missing capability that makes the relationship increasingly self-reinforcing.
- SHARES MECHANISM Graceful Degradation PatternBoth depend on a system surviving because one part can supply a capability another part lacks, rather than because every part is fully self-sufficient.