By Steve Davis
“My philosophy, just in a very potted form, is that information organises matter. Take a long-term view: how much matter will be organised around [humans’] information systems in the future? A lot, basically. Maybe that will be an enduring thing for millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years.”
“And maybe the only way we have that sort of impact, is by working together.” (Tim Flannery, What we’re seeing is the last gasp of the patriarchy, 2025).
How does intelligence fit into the story of life?
Intelligence can be seen in all life forms.
Even plants communicate, and communication requires intelligence.
The fact that intelligence exists at all levels from micro-organisms through to blue whales, tells us that intelligence is a feature of life itself, similar to the other recognisable features of life; metabolism, reproduction and homeostasis.
But metabolism reproduction and homeostasis seem to be in a different class altogether to intelligence.
They are what we might call tangible features; processes that can be observed, possibly measured.
Does this leave intelligence in a category of its own?
Not at all.
It sits on a level with cooperation.
There is no problem here if we consider the possibility that cooperation IS intelligence.
Can that be demonstrated? Certainly!
The direct relationship between cooperation and intelligence can be widely seen in the natural world.
The great Russian geographer, Peter Kropotkin, by way of several examples, made the important point in Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, that as a general rule the most social animals are the most intelligent animals.
An observed increase in sociality generally goes hand in hand with an observable increase in intelligence.
What is sociality but cooperation?
The higher the level of cooperation, the higher the level of intelligence.
But differing levels of cooperation/intelligence are not just seen between species. Cooperation becomes more complex and advanced as we move from cell to organism to community, and intelligence follows exactly the same pattern on that pathway as well.
The correlation between cooperation and intelligence is so close and so consistent, that for all practical purposes we can assume that they are the same concept. Intelligence is cooperation.
It seems incongruous to link the two, but their dissimilarity is an illusion created by natural limits to the way we think.
Those limits to our understanding are due to the fact that intelligence initially developed for survival and reproduction.
Humans have not been subjected to survival pressures that select for the ability to contemplate abstractions. The survival and reproduction of our early ancestors was never threatened by an idea. The focus of our early ancestors was objects and the potential impact of objects. The things they could see, hear, smell, taste and touch. So our understanding, wonderful though we might think it to be, has been limited by our biological history.
It might be a little difficult to see the equivalence of intelligence and cooperation, but if we accept the reality that all life forms, from the first cooperating molecules to cells and organisms and communities are all based on group activity, then we see that any initiation of cooperative activity anywhere, anytime, immediately creates a new living entity, a new community with an expanded vitality and intelligence.
That intelligence and vitality did not come from nothing.
The input was cooperation, so intelligence is cooperation.
Here’s an example of the creation of a community with increased cooperation/intelligence.
The astounding and rapid advances that took place in the 20th Century in the field of genetics were the result of a global sharing of information and hardware among laboratories. This raised level of cooperation effectively equated to a raised level of intelligence, as was proved by the results.
As soon as one laboratory cooperated with another, the intelligence of the new unit was higher than the sum of the two separate units. (See NOTES: synergism) And as the number of participating laboratories grew and the cooperation developed, so did the intelligence.
The cooperation created the intelligence, because the cooperation was the intelligence.
At this point we might argue that the higher level of intelligence followed the cooperation – that it was a consequence of the cooperation. But that is not the case because you can’t make something out of nothing.
As my blogger colleague from years back pointed out in a reference to AI:
“… the notion that if you just cobble together enough pieces then intelligence will emerge is simply magical thinking.”
The intelligence did not simply emerge out of nowhere; it grew as an integral part of the cooperation.
It’s not magical, it’s not mysterious, and it’s not complex.
In fact, it’s as simple as the old saying that two heads are smarter than one. So why are two heads smarter than one?
It’s not because two is greater than one, after all, if the two don’t cooperate they achieve nothing. Two heads are only better than one if they cooperate.
The more cooperative the two, the smarter they become.
Because intelligence is cooperation.
There is a school of thought in quantum physics that claims that the universe is ultimately comprised of nothing more than information. That matter is, in the final analysis, bits of information. This sounds outrageous, but in both physics and chemistry, matter exhibits both wave-like and particle-like properties (the so-called wave–particle duality). That’s outrageous.
Or we have Einstein’s E=Mc2 where matter is energy. That’s outrageous.
When we go deep enough, when we look at the quantum arena, everything is outrageous. Mind-boggling.
So if matter is information then life forms can be defined as entities that interpret and use information. That is what distinguishes them from non-living matter. There can be no dispute over that if the original premise is valid. But as we’ve seen, a description of a living entity is not an explanation/definition of life.
To find what life is from this perspective, we have to find the underlying essence of a process that interprets and uses information. It can only be intelligence that interprets information. So life is intelligence.
And as life is also cooperation, then intelligence is cooperation and examples of that can be seen everywhere in the natural world, as explained earlier.
So not only do we have explanations of life that are capable of standing alone, they support each other.
Now, try to imagine a world in which cooperation and intelligence are the highest values of society, and are nurtured and developed for the benefit of the community as a whole. That truly would be mind-boggling.
NOTES
From news-medical.net “Analysis of microbial models and comparative genomics studies confirm that microbes have evolved diverse means of memory, learning, and processing information; all of which are classified as ‘intelligent behavior’.”
From APA Dictionary of Psychology – Intelligence – the ability to derive information, learn from experience, adapt to the environment, understand, and correctly utilize thought and reason.
From Science News Today: Plant intelligence does not look like human intelligence. There are no thoughts, no consciousness in the way we experience it, no deliberate planning. Instead, plant intelligence is decentralized, chemical, electrical, and exquisitely tuned to survival. It is slow by our standards but astonishingly effective. These organisms make decisions, solve problems, and adapt to changing environments without a brain at all.
Synergism: the combined power of two or more things when they are working together that is greater than the total power achieved by each working separately
Further reading:
The basis of the universe may not be energy or matter but information, Philip Perry, BIG THINK.
Is information the fifth state of matter? Physicist says there’s one way to find out, Tibi Puiu, ZME Science
See also:
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