The Psilocybin Solution

mere and not the actual processes that science documents. Nature is ultrasmart, and it is we who “merely” reflect that fact.

Similarly, terribly thick textbooks detail the physical and mathematical processes underlying cosmological phenomena like star formation and supernovae. Again, the neat equations and so on that govern precisely these phenomena are in a real sense written by Nature. Consider also the text in a leather-bound book about the highly organized microstructure of paper and leather—the integrated and mathematically precise atomic configurations of carbon and other organic elements of which leather and paper consist. You would certainly require a fair degree of intelligence to really understand such a book. But surely the book itself (the actual paper and leather) is more representative of intelligently constructed units of information than the text it carries? Science serves only to reflect the intelligent structures already “out there” in reality.

The living proof of natural intelligence is everywhere around us and inside us. Our bodies are spun from it. The text found in a biology book detailing the fantastic inner wisdom of, say, the immune system, is merely a reflection in the formal system of words of the formal system that we call biology. Both are intelligible, and a hallmark of intelligent systems is precisely their intelligibility. This means that biological systems and their evolution can be regarded as a manifestation of natural intelligence. Thus, NASA’s hubristic SETI program in which communicatory cries are broadcast out into space reveals a distinct failure to look closer to home, for it is Nature in its totality that is the highly advanced intelligence we are so keenly interested in locating.

Ah, but Can Nature Pass an IQ Test?

If we find it difficult to accept that Nature is intelligent, then perhaps this represents a too-limited view of what constitutes intelligence. Or maybe we confuse intelligence with consciousness. In any case, don’t be fooled into thinking that intelligence is something to be measured solely by IQ tests. These are mere inventions of the psychologist, designed to tap specific aspects of intelligence. In its strictest sense, intelligence means “the ability to learn and to understand.” This definition implies the capacity to increase information such that sense is made and uncertainty is reduced. If you use intelligence, you can work things out, make sense of things, and thereby increase your internal state of knowledge. Intelligent processes foster the integration of more information. In my book Darwin’s Unfinished Business, I discuss this at length.

The absorption of information, the storing of information, and the ability to learn from that information are, I contend, the principal ingredients of intelligence. Indeed, they are precisely the sort of thing that we do so well and that the robots of AI engineers attempt to do. Our senses continually take in information about the environment, our brains store this information, and then we use the information to learn more and more about the environment. These are all processes, not static things. Bearing this in mind, it should be apparent that the end result of these three processes working in combination is intelligence. Intelligence is all these processes combined into one, the term intelligence being a convenient way of explaining their combined action. So intelligence is definitely not a thing like a table is a thing. Nor is it merely an attribute. It’s more of a process, moreover a process concerned with information and the constructive manipulation of information. The science of AI is all about substantiating this process in robotic form, or “in silico,” as some AI scientists call it.^{45}

Evolution is precisely an information-gaining process and can be considered a form of natural learning. As information is built up within the biosphere and its gene pools, uncertainty is reduced, the result being specific organisms with specific behaviors and specific relations to the environment. The natural intelligence that is life has learned to express itself through the language of DNA, has learned to utilize the sun’s energy through photosynthesis, has learned to fly through wings, has learned to breathe, sleep, dream, think, communicate, reproduce, recycle, and so on. The evolution of the tree of life therefore represents a natural learning process that is inscribed in DNA and that emerges in response to an environmental context that serves to elicit the learning.

Natural Intelligence Is Everywhere

Although natural intelligence becomes apparent everywhere we care to look in the natural world, the modern version of Homo sapiens seems to miss it. If, say, we were to venture into a desert and stumble across some strange, whirring, solar-powered machine that transforms sand into circuit boards so that it can replicate itself, repair itself, and even reproduce, then we would certainly take notice and infer that the machine embodies some measure of artificial intelligence. Yet if we later stumble across a hardy cactus quietly converting sunlight into usable energy and constructing reproductive organs that cunningly lure insects into transferring its pollen, then we immediately infer it to be “merely” the result of natural selection and not of intelligence. No doubt we would pass over the cactus and return to the ostensibly more interesting manufactured machine. To date, most scientists stubbornly refuse to equate the process of evolution with intelligent information processing, despite the fact that the most complex things we know of are living organisms.

Recall Mr. von Neumann. He was considered a highly intelligent man because, among other things, he showed that in principle, self-replicating machines could be built. Von Neumann was himself a replicating machine, albeit of the organic kind. Why should he be considered intelligent while the process that generated him is not? Given the fact that, like us, von Neumann was built of a hundred trillion cells tightly woven into a triumph of organic engineering, the case for natural intelligence becomes even more conspicuous. Nothing von Neumann did came anywhere near matching the genius of evolution itself. Only the human ego can deny this. And yet the human ego is itself dependent in some way on the human cortex for its existence. And we already know how brilliantly Nature has designed the cortex.

Let us also consider photosynthesis a tad more closely, embodied as it is in the green film covering the Earth. Without this downplayed biomolecular wizardry (which has yet to be technologically mirrored in a globally viable cost-effective way) there would be little life at all, for almost all life is based on this ultrasmart process. Because photons (of which light consists) behave sensibly and have sensible energetic properties, biological photosynthesis can evolve in response to this (just as dolphin biology and shark biology have evolved in response to the sensible properties of water). Yet it is easy to play the imagination game and hypothesize a reality in which organic chemicals could not in any way form themselves into neat, energy-utilizing organisms. For life to flourish it had to reside as an immanent potential within organic chemistry, and the context of the Universe at large had to be conducive to eliciting such a potential right down to the formation of suns that eventually go supernova. In short, I would argue that it is valid for us to wonder why reality is so amenable to the process of biological evolution, just as it is valid to ask why the Universe is intelligible.

Traditional Darwinism cannot adequately answer these questions. It can only shrug and state with nonchalance that Nature just happens to be that way, that Nature has been, well, lucky—lucky in the sense that it eventually brought forth conscious brains able to grasp the processes that led to conscious brains. However, if we conceive of evolution as the ongoing expression of a natural intelligence, we can connect it to those other fortunate aspects of the reality process that have allowed interesting things to happen in the Universe. Eventually we can discern that Nature is, at heart, a creatively intelligent system. Don’t forget, I am not implying some new phenomenon here or introducing something supernatural; rather, I am suggesting that overall, in its entirety, Nature is a smart system and that biological evolution is a direct consequence of this. Such a view, such a new angle through which to conceive reality, is not merely a case of words, but an attempt to redefine our place within Nature and to reappraise the significance and meaning of our conscious existence.