Measuring-intelligence

Our measure of intelligence may actually limit our ability to understand the world.

When most people view creatures like ants seemingly walk in random patterns across a surface, we assume they are randomly searching for food. By narrowly applying our understanding to their lives, we are likely overlooking ways that life uses the chemistry of the planet to survive. There is no assumptive science in place to check if ants are actually changing direction according to a molecular pattern needed for their communication.

It’s also assumed since reptiles like snakes don’t form bonds with humans, that they are ignorant of higher intelligence when in fact their world may be so foreign that it is impossible for them to discern us as more than a presence. From a practical standpoint, it’s hard to believe that the reptiles of today didn’t make significant changes in their adaptation just as humans have in order to survive, and snakes may be reacting to stimuli that we cannot imagine. Obviously snakes are very adapt at sensing vibrations and are possibly manipulating ranges of light radiation that we cannot. Snakes may be quite capable of emotional responses to the world, and the very fact that snakes fight to survive has to indicate intelligence.

There cannot be a level playing field for measuring intelligence simply because there are so many undiscovered ways for life to use the world’s chemistry. Intelligence may actually be the use of renewable chemical processes, and as a result, life organizes itself around these repetitive chemistries.

Since chemistries have a sequence of events tied to a time-frame, it’s also possible to assume that life follows these repetitive patterns, and this explains why animals develop and follow certain niches available in the food chain. For instance studies show that predator to prey ratios have remained unchanged when comparing today’s animals to extinct species from the past. This means that plant eaters who follow the repetitive growing seasons are also followed by the predators that are also locked into a pattern dictated by the rhythm of renewable chemistries on the planet.

Also serving as example of this pattern is how birds in New Zealand, free from mammalian presence on the island, have evolved to fill the same niches filled by other animals in the rest of the world. Birds in New Zealand can be seen scurrying up the branches and jumping from tree to tree to fill the niche that squirrels or monkeys fill elsewhere. At the same time, other birds rummage the forest litter looking for grubs and insects just as foraging mammals and marsupials do elsewhere.

If we define intelligence as the ability to manipulate chemistry, and also agree that repetitive chemistries follow a clock that creates niches, then it is logical that life can be defined as anything striving to survive.

Gene Haynes