We humans like to think of ourselves as the dominant lifeform of Earth, having the power to help or hurt any and all life on the planet. Mainstream science depicts us as naturally intelligent beings using technology to help us do things, harnessing nature as we see fit. Do we have it backwards? Is nature harnessing us? What if we are the technology?
First of all, can a physical system have intelligence? Science proposes that our own intelligence is a result o the matter and energy in our brains, with all their patterns. In other words physical systems such as ourselves are capable of having intelligence, without the need for a metaphysical soul. Presumably, our intelligence developed naturally, through the process of evolution, again ultimately relying on the laws of physics and physical matter.
Why should we assume that other physical systems are not capable of developing and possessing intelligence? From a math(-ish) perspective, a physical system that contains a human is at least as intelligent as the human it contains. Obviously, the universe as a system possesses intelligence, since it contains us. Or looking at complexity in terms of the number of atoms and molecules, the universe is much more complex than us, even without including life like us. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the universe itself may very well possess intelligence independent of us.
Unfortunately we might expect communication from something as old and large as the universe to be at similar scales of time and size. So a message from the universe itself might use patterns spanning light years and lasting centuries or millennia. Basically the universe might simply be too old and vast for us to easily observe it as intelligent. Similarly, all of humanity might seem like nothing more than a temporary speck of dust to such an entity, relatively speaking. That intelligence may still exist, but it would be a challenge for us to detect or interact with it.
There are smaller physical systems that are still larger and more complex than individual humans, implying the possibility of intelligence on a more compatible scale. Possibly planet Earth may even possess some intelligence aside from known intelligent species. If so, then it may have noticed us by now (and should probably be very unhappy with us). But the Earth is still very large and billions of years old, so it might not comprehend the existence of humanity, assuming it has intelligence separate from us humans.
We may still need something closer to our scale for it to intelligently interact with us or possibly make use of us. I’ve already written about the possibility of a forest being able to potentially protect itself.[1] Both the physical forest environment and the organisms it contains would have evolved together so that a forest may have self-regulating mechanisms in place to both guide and protect those organisms. On the other hand, individual humans – or even groups of humans – are so mobile these days, that co-evolution is not such a factor for an environment that contains humans. So in that sense we are not as in touch with nature as we we were in past millennia.
With us humans constantly moving about, what might be stable enough on something like an individual basis? A person’s DNA generally doesn’t change for that individual, at least in their lifetime. Can DNA be intelligent? Though I would not consider a strand of DNA itself as intelligent, the use of DNA in nature is quite complex. For starters, the survival of our species depends on DNA reproducing. Also the well-known concepts of evolution and inheritance tell us that our species has been changing over time, along with countless other species. As for intelligence, many cultures attribute the existence of human life – or even all life – to intelligent deities.
More recently, biological evolution has been modeled with genetic algorithms, which have been successfully used to solve engineering problems. Inspired by nature, maybe it’s not surprising that genetic algorithms are sometimes lumped with artificial intelligence. Considering the association of life’s existence with deities and genetic algorithms with AI, maybe there’s something to the idea of DNA being part of an intelligent process separate from human intelligence.
Though it may seem backwards for DNA to be in control of us, consider how complex our culture is. Other animals that are biologically similar to us, do not have such elaborate systems and artifacts. The point is not that we are so advanced, but that we are capable of such things in spite of not being so different from those other animals. Just as we use our culture to help us survive, DNA uses its host (whatever lifeform “owns” it) to help it survive. DNA naturally divides, but somehow complex cell structures developed to help DNA survive and reproduce. And the cells themselves eventually adapted to form multicellular lifeforms.
It would be nice to have some kind of conclusion, but mainly I have questions. Is DNA using cells, or are cells using DNA? Are both using the process of evolution or vice versa? Are cells using the multicellular life it belongs to or vice versa? Similarly are we using our culture, or is culture using us? After all, human culture is also somewhat complex.
Basically between any two successive layers, it’s hard to say what uses what. Maybe that’s a two-way street. All this also raises the question of which levels besides us humans are intelligent. My tentative conclusion is that nature and our place in it are not necessarily how we think they are. Maybe it’s another case of co-evolution (or several).
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(c) Copyright 2022 by Mike Ferrell
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