Somatic Engineering Manifesto

Design principles for clonal multi-agent systems

5. Sacrifice many: Most cells are cannon fodder. The math is stark: 37 trillion cells, maybe a few thousand matter for lineage continuation. The rest are tissue paper.

6. Loyalty over competence: This is counterintuitive. You’d think evolution would pick the best cells. But the “best” are the most dangerous. So it picks the most docile. Efficiency is a liability.

7. Nail hammered: Immune surveillance and cell competition are relentless censors. They don’t care about potential benefits of variation. Variation = risk.

8. Specialize by forgetting: You literally break the genome’s ability to access other states. It’s like welding doors