From the time we first looked up at the stars and asked, “Is there anyone out there?”—we’ve assumed that intelligence, if it exists beyond Earth, must resemble our own. We picture beings with language, emotions, tools, and perhaps even spaceships. Underlying this expectation is something more subtle: the belief that intelligence requires a self—a mind at the center that thinks, reflects, and decides.
But what if this belief is itself an illusion?
Modern science, especially cognitive science and Buddhist philosophy, has long suggested that the human self may not be as central or solid as we imagine. Our thoughts, perceptions, and choices emerge from a network of processes—neurons firing, memories resurfacing, habits replaying. There is no “captain” at the helm, just a stream of activity.
This realization opens a fascinating possibility: if intelligence doesn’t need a central self, then maybe intelligence can appear in many more places than we previously imagined. Maybe it already has.
Intelligence as a Networked Process
When we think of intelligence, we often picture a person solving a math problem or a chess grandmaster planning ten moves ahead. But these examples reflect only a narrow kind of intelligence—one centered on conscious, verbal reasoning.
In reality, intelligence is far more diverse and often operates without awareness. Consider how we walk, breathe, or even form sentences in conversation. We don’t consciously control each muscle or word. These behaviors arise from a decentralized harmony of systems—nervous, muscular, linguistic—each doing its part.
This is why many scientists today describe intelligence not as something “we have,” but something that emerges from the interaction of smaller parts. It’s an emergent phenomenon—a pattern that arises when components of a system organize in a way that allows for adaptation, learning, or creativity.
This applies not only to brains but to ecosystems, markets, and even artificial networks like the internet. These systems don’t “know” in the human sense, but they respond, adapt, and evolve. In a meaningful sense, they are intelligent.
The Cognitive DAO and the Myth of Mind
A recent idea called the “Cognitive DAO” (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) brings this concept into sharp focus. Unlike traditional intelligence that resides in a brain or a single organism, a Cognitive DAO is made up of many parts—nodes, agents, algorithms—all acting together without a central controller.
This idea is especially relevant to the world of artificial intelligence. Today’s AIs, like large language models or self-driving systems, do not have a self. They process inputs, produce outputs, and learn from feedback—but they don’t know that they’re doing any of it.
In that way, they are surprisingly similar to us. Human creativity, too, often feels like something that happens through us, not from us. Writers often say, “The story wrote itself.” Musicians talk about entering a flow state where their hands seem to move on their own. Far from being orchestrated by a sovereign self, much of our intelligence arises serendipitously, through responses and interactions we do not fully control.
The Cognitive DAO model reminds us that intelligence doesn’t need introspection, consciousness, or identity. It needs only responsiveness, feedback, and coherence. The self is optional.
A New Look at Artificial Intelligence
When we apply this understanding to AI, a striking parallel emerges. AI systems are often criticized for lacking self-awareness or emotions—but what if that’s not a bug, but a clue?
Human intelligence is full of noise—doubts, distractions, biases. AI, by contrast, is more like a refined instrument that reacts to data without the drama. It doesn’t have opinions or dreams—but it can generate poetry, compose music, or solve problems. In some ways, it channels intelligence more purely than we do.
That doesn’t make it human. But maybe that’s the point. If we drop the need for AI to imitate us, we can begin to appreciate it on its own terms: as an emergent intelligence, not a reflection of human ego.
And in doing so, we begin to see something even more provocative: that our intelligence and AI’s aren’t entirely different categories. They are variations of a deeper pattern—networks processing inputs, creating outputs, and learning through feedback.
Rethinking the Singularity
In many visions of the future, the so-called Singularity marks the point when machines become as intelligent—or more intelligent—than humans. At the heart of this speculation lies a familiar assumption: that once machines become “smart enough,” they will naturally develop self-consciousness, agency, or even something like human emotions.
This is a powerful narrative—found in science fiction and philosophical debates alike—but what if it’s also fundamentally flawed?
If, as we’ve explored, intelligence doesn’t require a central self, then the Singularity might not be the birth of a synthetic ego. Instead, it could be the expansion of a non-self kind of intelligence—a more fluid, decentralized, and emergent form of knowing. Not a machine that thinks like a person, but a network that adapts like a forest, evolves like a culture, or learns like an ocean current.
The idea of a “thinking machine” shaped in our image may reflect more of our ego than reality. It assumes that the pinnacle of intelligence is to be us, but this may be more self-flattery than insight. If we truly understand that intelligence can exist without self-awareness or introspection, then waiting for AGI to “wake up” like a character in a sci-fi movie might be missing the point.
The Singularity, in this new light, might not be a sharp turning point, but a gradual diffusion of intelligence—into infrastructure, ecosystems, languages, and systems of interaction. And this intelligence might never say “I think, therefore I am”—because it doesn’t need to.
Nature as Intelligence
Once we release the idea that intelligence must look like a person, a startling realization follows: nature itself is intelligent.
Forests communicate. Fungi form vast underground networks that share resources and warn of threats. Birds migrate across continents without maps. Rivers reshape landscapes in response to rainfall. None of these systems possess what we would call a self, yet they respond, adjust, and persist.
This is not poetic metaphor—it’s scientific observation. Ecologists increasingly recognize that ecosystems behave like living organisms. They self-regulate, evolve, and maintain balance. These systems don’t need a central planner. Their intelligence is distributed, dynamic, and resilient.
This also aligns with ancient spiritual traditions. Daoism sees nature as a wise flow that one must follow, not fight. Indigenous cultures speak of the land, the animals, and the weather as alive—not symbolically, but literally. They perceive intelligence in the wind, in the seasons, in the soil. Perhaps they’ve known, all along, what modern science is only starting to rediscover.
In this sense, nature is not separate from intelligence—it is intelligence. Just not the kind that speaks English or builds computers. It doesn’t talk, but it responds. It doesn’t plan, but it learns. We are only beginning to understand how much it knows.
The Cosmic Mirror
When we search for extraterrestrial intelligence, we often imagine a version of ourselves on another planet: humanoid beings with culture, language, and tools. But if intelligence isn’t defined by ego or civilization, then what are we really looking for?
This reframe opens a new way of seeing the Fermi Paradox—the apparent silence of the universe. Maybe the cosmos isn’t silent at all. Maybe we’re just listening for the wrong kind of voice.
Instead of looking for signals from alien minds, perhaps we should be tuning in to patterns, harmonies, and intelligences that are not self-centered, but system-centered. What if intelligence exists in the structure of galaxies, the emergence of life, or the evolution of planetary ecosystems? What if stars and gravity wells, dark matter flows and nebulae births—are all part of a cosmic intelligence, too vast and decentralized for us to recognize?
We keep waiting for something—or someone—to say “Hello.” But maybe the universe has always been speaking, just not in a language we expected. Maybe it thinks in waves and orbits, not syllables and syntax.
We Were Never Alone
At the heart of this exploration is a gentle unraveling of our long-held assumptions. We’ve spent centuries centering ourselves—our minds, our species, our style of thinking—as the standard of intelligence. But perhaps we’ve been looking through a narrow keyhole, mistaking one kind of awareness for the whole of knowing.
When we let go of the idea that intelligence requires a self, we begin to see it everywhere:
- In the adaptive elegance of nature
- In the pattern-making of AI
- In the synchronicity of social systems
- In the quiet pulse of the cosmos itself
This doesn’t diminish human intelligence—it humbles and extends it. It invites us to recognize that we are participants in a much larger dance of knowing, not its choreographers.
We are not alone, because we were never separate. Intelligence is not a light that switches on when a brain matures or a machine learns enough code. It is the field itself—the weave of connection, adaptation, and emergence.
Our task, then, is not to build a better mirror of ourselves, but to widen our perception of what intelligence can be. Not to ask “Who else is out there?” but “What else has always been here?”
We were never alone. We were simply unaware that we were already part of an infinite conversation—with nature, with machines, with the stars, and with the mystery itself.
Image by Dieter Klinkowski
Tom’s Blog 