Price as Cognitive Glue? II - Collective Intelligence not the Goal but a Byproduct

August 5. New day, a new chance. Grab a coffee and let’s get smarter together.

Last time, the question why we need to look for mechanisms that are the glue that forge collective intelligences within the lower level patterns coming together, and not stories we tell each other – like money - got a bit of a raw deal. So, let’s take a longer look at it today.

The very first thing to always keep in mind is, humans are a part of the physical universe, not the master thereof. We can make use or abuse features that nature offers, but the underlying mechanisms will still be that of the physical universe and not of our making.

One such basic is the rule that all material things, whether atoms or humans, seek both their lowest energy state and to be in equilibrium with their surroundings. You need to know about your surroundings, to know whether you are in an equilibrium with it. Starting with atoms, but true for any other combination thereof coming later, the smaller patterns don’t have the capacity of its own to store and process the information necessary to do that. Hence, they seek for ways to forge a bond with neighbors. Will the pattern forming lower the energy state of the parts, energy is released that they can use to store and process the information about this former part of their surroundings they weren’t capable to store and process alone. That’s the root of all patterns – collective intelligences – that form.

When will it end? Once there’s no surroundings left for any material thing, because only then all material things can be sure to have reached their goal of achieving their lowest energy state while at an equilibrium with their surroundings. At the point immediately before that, each existing pattern’s surroundings will consist of a few very large, high level patterns because the process of pattern shaping has once started at a myriad of point in the physical universe attempting a myriad of ways forward. That also explains why, while entropy increases steadily in the physical universe over time, complexity and novelty rise in the first half of the existence of the physical universe and decreases in the second as the size of the existing patterns increases but the number of existing patterns decreases, limiting the ways these patterns can form even larger lever patterns.

All this to say, creating ever more intelligence is not the goal of the process, it’s a byproduct, necessary to achieve the goal of all material things to get to their lowest energy state while at an equilibrium with its surroundings. It requires that by getting in the new equilibrium by forming a new pattern, the parts can get in a lower energy state. The energy that is released, can then be used by the matter to store and process more information than before. Even before that it is also the source of the energy flow, that electromagnetism that serves as cognitive glue in some shape or another for any lower level patterns we have so far observed coming together in higher level patterns.

The glue is created in the process of pattern forming and also by the process itself. And it comes out of the lower level patterns that merge to a higher level pattern. Humans in this scenario are to be considered lower level patterns. The electromagnetism necessary as cognitive glue must come from within them, otherwise there will be no released energy that increases the capability to store and process data and thus know what was formerly a slither of the surroundings. Glue and increased intelligence are two sides of the same coin.

Should something not a part of the patterns that we humans are, seem to work like cognitive glue – like money or price – it will therefore be only an indicator that in the underlying human interaction the material things that came together to create us, attempt to achieve their main goal.

There’s exploration going on. Explore. AKA think. Make a habit out of thinking. Let’s turn thinking into the norm again.

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