Kevin Kelly's "Inevitable Minds"

Earlier this month, Wired's founding executive editor Kevin Kelly posted a fascinating essay on the nature of intelligence, how it can arise in the most unlikely places, and how things we regard as mindless can actually have a surprisingly sophisticated kind of intelligence.

Plants share with animals an almost mathematical ability to optimize their energy efficiency while gathering the most nutrients for the least effort. Plant and animal "foraging" models are almost identical. Roots search for fertile areas while avoiding adversarial competitors.

The essay is full of revelations. I'm still trying to wrap my own monkey brain around the idea that dinosaurs could have been as smart as modern apes.

It is very probable that before they disappeared large dinosaurs were way ahead of archaic mammals (typically no bigger than gophers) on the race to reach complex intelligence. Because birds today with their small brains can surprise us, dinosaurs with much larger brains may have been as smart as apes. Had dinos not vanished under the assault of the heavens, consciousness might have been birthed on earth in a highly evolved reptile, rather than a mammal. We can easily speculate about an alternative world where Saurians ran the place.

Kelly makes intelligence seem so widespread that it's both awe-inspiring and a little horrifying to think about. Minds are everywhere. (Jeez, I already feel guilty enough about eating meat. Now I won't even be able to eat corn on the cob without feeling like a killer!)

(Pictured above is Dinoman, by Dale Russell, Canadian Museum of Nature.)

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