What Is Intelligence? Studies on Slime Mold and Ants Challenge Our Understanding

When someone says that an organism doesn't make decisions and instead all of its outcomes are due to chemical or mechanical processes, they are sneaking in dualism through the backdoor, because the unspoken corollary of that statement is that humans *do* make decisions that are *not* mechanical or chemical processes.

The basis of intelligence is the ability to perceive the environment, react to it, and record the reaction and then use that memory to influence future reaction. In that reguard basicly all life exhibits rudimentary intelligence limited only by amount of perception, storage, and most importantly, the organisms need.

Consciousness is a spectrum. The spectrum of awareness of experience.

Dr Levin is a great watch for anyone more interested in this topic.

I might not be too intelligent myself but i see intelligence in every single aspect of the universe. A beautiful symphony, infinitely complex.

Intelligence and memory are often mixed up. Very popular quizzes that claim to be finding the smartest person are actually testing their knowledge and specifically capability to remember information.

DOUBLE the Anton! Two videos for the price of one.

Hello wonderful Anton!, this is Jurabird! I've been studying this topic for a long while, and I've always had my own theories about the intelligence of plants, trees, and even planets. This video beautifully helps me affirm the idea that intelligence doesn't require a central brain. I’ve always been fascinated by the complexity of celestial objects. On a large scale, they are, similar to a brain, massive clusters of activity and feedback loops. Planetary changes in climate, wind speeds, volcanic activity, and cooling cycles look a lot like decision-making based on massive-scale environmental data. The idea that a planet or a nebula could be "thinking" (not alive, but mechanically processing data) due to sheer systemic complexity is just mind-blowing. Great video! :)

Myxomycetes are SO COOL! I'm kind-of in love with them. It just takes a single nucleus deciding that "conditions are getting bad" which is triggered by either loss of moisture (getting too dry),, not enough food, etc, and it sends a chemical signal that each nuclei relays and the WHOLE THING, millions of individuals go into "abandon ship!" mode where they make the spores and all die in the process. And that whole process is also AMAZING!

I studied a bit of stigmergy in the past. Some people consider the entire colony an existence similar to a brain. Instead of neurons, the hive uses individuals (ants, termites) as processing elements. Many tasks end up being made as an emergent behavior. The colony grows, but each individual has no idea what's happening.