Things that are used are conserved.

We don't build in a vacuum, we build on foundations we find useful.

The foundations were left by other people before us, a form of stigmergy.

We build together without coordination explicitly, leaving hints of our judgment and ability for others to respond to.

Swarms are not just Brownian motion.

It's only in the very short term they look like that.

If you look closely, they grow things.

Look at the Sea Shanty TikTok meme trend of 2021.

No one organized it, it emerged organically.

Tons and tons of creators remixed various clips they liked.

Most of the remixes were not very good and were quickly forgotten by the swarm.

But some subset of the remixes were found to be good by some subset of the audience, and those were the ones that were more likely to be seen more often and then also remixed.

The swarm accumulated some significantly high-quality remixes by building on the best branches of the evolving swarm.

Interesting and distinctive things emerged, without any coordination.

Everyone in the swarm just used "yes, and" energy… but they applied their judgment to decide which foundation to build on.

That collective judgment applying process creates significant value, greater than what any one member of the swarm could have done.