A new way to think about intelligence
Over the last few years, AI has dazzled us all. It can write our emails, optimize our workflows, and create alarmingly realistic videos. But is it intelligent? Can it actually understand things?
I’m not so sure. This week, I published an essay for my Long Game column in Big Think about this idea. To do that, I tell a story about a slime mold that might just be more “intelligent” than a human — even though it has no brain. (No, I haven’t lost my marbles yet; read it and you’ll understand.)
The basic premise is this: the world is pouring incomprehensible amounts of energy and capital into building systems that mimic a single, narrow form of human intelligence. But in the process, we may be ignoring a far older, and potentially wiser, form of intelligence. It’s also a type of intelligence that is in high demand as the world changes faster than ever.
Key quote: “In our rush to create artificial minds, we seem to have forgotten to study the real ones. Because once you start noticing the intelligence threaded through the natural world, you realize that the planet is already saturated with superintelligent systems. We just don’t recognize them because they don’t use language or wear lab coats or hoodies. To me, water possesses intelligence: the way it adapts to its container, negotiates obstacles, carves canyons given enough time. Trees possess intelligence: the way they share nutrients underground, warn neighbors of threats, modulate growth according to light, shadow, and wind stress. Whole forests operate like decentralized minds.”
In defense of a good night’s sleep
Readers of this newsletter will know that I have — and sometimes complain about — having two young children who keep me up at odd hours of the night.
In modern tech, investing, and business culture, that’s almost a badge of honor. Sleep is treated as a kind of weakness. I’ll sleep when I’m dead, the ambitious founder says, eyes bloodshot, productivity app glowing. Occasionally, the counterargument appears: that sleep is essential for performance and creativity. This, of course, is true. But it still frames sleep as a tool or a means to an end.
But this essay by Sara Protasi, a professor of philosophy at the University of Puget Sound in Washington state, pushes the idea somewhere far more interesting. To her, sleep is one of the few things we do that makes us truly human. It’s an opportunity to turn our conscious minds off, and become more connected to the universe.
Key quote: “In this sense, sleeping is intrinsically valuable because it involves the experience of radical vulnerability. When we sleep, we are first and foremost living beings — we are not, and ought not to be, machines in perpetual motion, constantly recharging and plugged in. We are animals inhabiting a planet in a solar system, with lives shaped by natural rhythms that stem from its particular characteristics: alternating seasons, days and nights.”
A few more links I enjoyed:
Key quote: “I don’t think you can understand the economy until you understand how we talk about the economy. I think there we are dealing with a combination of (1) postpandemic adaptation and (2) the whole smartphone-induced micro-solipsism thing layered onto (3) younger generations watching objective unkindness rewarded by politics. People (understandably) are dealing with epistemic drift too, what some might call “medieval peasant brain” due to the constant influx of Internet (people are putting potatoes in their socks to draw out toxins, for example).”
Key quote: “When was the last time reading the news made you wiser? Not more informed — wiser. We stuff ourselves with headlines and updates, believing that more information makes us smarter. Yet this daily flood of news does the opposite: the more we take in, the less we actually understand. It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose — we’re drowning in facts but starving for real knowledge. The modern news cycle is ruthless by design. Stories flash bright and die fast, like striking a match. As technology has made news free and instant, we’ve traded careful thought for speed, real insight for endless updates. The result? The few truly important things get lost in an endless stream of chatter.”
