This is great. I think we can go further and look at dissipative structures, like how rivers form and function similarly to the slime moulds, with the water spreading out, exploring different routes, and reinforcing those routes that allow the water to dissipate its gravitational potential energy more efficiently. And if you watch lightning in slow motion it's similar again, with it seeking how to dissipate its charge.
Joseph have you read my piece on the cognition of a river? Its just what you are saying. there are many simple mechanisms that work together that seem to be executing a will. Goal directness in simple systems as Micheal Levin might say. Its fascinating to see living systems do intelligent things but changes when you see non biological systems persuading goals.
I was thinking about masting in trees, where they have a a bumper crop of acorns one year and then a low production year. They change up their seed production "intentionally" and co ordinate with other trees to keep seed predators down in some years and make more seeds than the predictors can eat in others. Its amazing and could be seen a the trees having a theory of mind of the squirrels and other trees. Trees don't have a mind but they can act as though they do. just like rivers and ant colonys and ... humans
such an interesting thing to think about (yeah I've gotten lost in reading about thousand brains, slime mold, and the like... blame Godfrey... his school of fish example, prompting the idea of some kind of collective consciousness, got me wildin) asymmetric cortical input in peds patients and V1 plasticity... amblyopia... I'm all over the place eh 🦠
Do you think the brain ultimate does decision making based on chemicals and perhaps electrical charges? I tend to think because evolution is continuous and has to be compatible with what came before that's how it almost has to work even in humans. Which means emotions or emotion states are the common currency of decision making. And even logical thinking is translated to them subconsciously.
Also I'm not sure if this is like a common view, but I sometimes wonder if synaptic pruning is connected to childhood amnesia. I'd guess when you learn something without much prior knowledge of the world, the brain makes a lot of false connections. But through experience and statistical nature of learning, it gets to get rid of those false connections and strengthen those strong connections. Which allows both for efficiency in processing and carrying cost (don't have to carry false connections into adulthood). But when you learn something as an adult you have to actively inhibit them, because you can't prune them. So that's part of the reason adults may have the (evolved?) tendency to be picky about what they learn.
... this is all to say your piece was very stimulating!
Agreed - Tommy's piece is great and insightful. Understanding the brain as a physical system is an important step to de-mystifying it. I think we might never understand how subjective experience arises from matter and energy, but that is OK. https://www.mattball.org/2026/02/dont-replace-unknown-with-unknowable.html
What you describe reminds me of the economic term, "spontaneous order." It was presented in literary form perhaps most effectively by Leonard Read in his short story, "I, Pencil": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
All sorts of local decisions occur with local priorities about local opportunities and local problems. No central planning happened for pencils to emerge as useful, mass-produced items, but the result shows a coordination beyond the knowledge of any one "node" in the process.
Do our brains also develop through a decentralized, spontaneous order? An interesting hypothesis to consider, and your article is a fine primer on the concepts!
Interesting article Tommy. I'm exploring similar issues. I'm curious. You note that cytoplasm gets shuttled about the mould. Are you saying that cells pass their own cytoplasm down the chain? Or is it that cells down that chain produce more of their own cytoplasm?
So the slimes are just one (big) cell. The entire cell sort of pulsates, which sends the cytoplasm into the different veins. So it isn’t the production of more cytoplasm but the passing it around.
This is very close to what I’ve been working on, but from a systems-theory perspective: what looks like intelligence may just be the stabilization of local transitions over time.
One thing I kept thinking while reading: there's a pretty fun parallel in computer science. In 1986, Craig Reynolds watched how birds flock and wondered if he could reproduce it with just local rules. Turns out three were enough: don't crowd nearby birds, steer toward the average heading, steer toward the average position. No central controller, no global awareness. The result looked so realistic it ended up in Hollywood films. What's neat is he didn't need to model any of the biology, just the local-rule principle, and got the same emergent behavior.
From an AI perspective, the local-rules-to-global-intelligence framework also maps onto a live debate: how much can you get from purely local rules in multi-agent systems, and when do you actually need central coordination? Your framework kind of hints at an answer: it depends on how rich the local feedback is. Ants have pheromones and physical encounters. Neurons have Hebbian plasticity. When the feedback encodes enough structure, no central planner needed. When it doesn't, you're stuck. That boundary feels like the really interesting part that doesn't get talked about enough.
I've been fascinated about emergent behavior from simple structures for decades and have been playing with a-life coding recently. It's amazing how much "organic" looking behavior you can get from a processing system consisting of four artificial neurons connected to a tiny number of sensors and actuators. They evolved foraging, poison avoidance, over/under eating avoidance and more. Another simulation taught them to avoid multiple predators while staying fed and avoiding obstacles. Completely evolved behavior. When you see things like that, then others like slime molds and ant colonies, it makes the complexity of animal/human behavior much more tangible.
As someone who has been fascinated with ants since I saw the movie Antz as a child - I really appreciate this article.
That said, more than mere fascination, I think its a very topical explanation of an aspect of consciousness that is rarely ever considered - how environment actually transfers to mental development, how it does so in a decentralized system, thru/as a process of ermegence - was very well stated here.
I really like how well demonstrated constraint is to/within the process of emergence in this example. I've been rather hung up on emergence lately and I feel this has added much for me to consider!
This is great. I think we can go further and look at dissipative structures, like how rivers form and function similarly to the slime moulds, with the water spreading out, exploring different routes, and reinforcing those routes that allow the water to dissipate its gravitational potential energy more efficiently. And if you watch lightning in slow motion it's similar again, with it seeking how to dissipate its charge.
Joseph have you read my piece on the cognition of a river? Its just what you are saying. there are many simple mechanisms that work together that seem to be executing a will. Goal directness in simple systems as Micheal Levin might say. Its fascinating to see living systems do intelligent things but changes when you see non biological systems persuading goals.
I was thinking about masting in trees, where they have a a bumper crop of acorns one year and then a low production year. They change up their seed production "intentionally" and co ordinate with other trees to keep seed predators down in some years and make more seeds than the predictors can eat in others. Its amazing and could be seen a the trees having a theory of mind of the squirrels and other trees. Trees don't have a mind but they can act as though they do. just like rivers and ant colonys and ... humans
I don't think I have but I'd be very interested, would you mind sending it to me?
https://freewillatheist.substack.com/p/cognition-of-a-river-b66?r=62klnv&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I just re read this, it was one of my first pieces and its a bit rough but you might enjoy it.
That was really interesting and well explained, thank you
such an interesting thing to think about (yeah I've gotten lost in reading about thousand brains, slime mold, and the like... blame Godfrey... his school of fish example, prompting the idea of some kind of collective consciousness, got me wildin) asymmetric cortical input in peds patients and V1 plasticity... amblyopia... I'm all over the place eh 🦠
The Society of Mind!
Do you think the brain ultimate does decision making based on chemicals and perhaps electrical charges? I tend to think because evolution is continuous and has to be compatible with what came before that's how it almost has to work even in humans. Which means emotions or emotion states are the common currency of decision making. And even logical thinking is translated to them subconsciously.
Also I'm not sure if this is like a common view, but I sometimes wonder if synaptic pruning is connected to childhood amnesia. I'd guess when you learn something without much prior knowledge of the world, the brain makes a lot of false connections. But through experience and statistical nature of learning, it gets to get rid of those false connections and strengthen those strong connections. Which allows both for efficiency in processing and carrying cost (don't have to carry false connections into adulthood). But when you learn something as an adult you have to actively inhibit them, because you can't prune them. So that's part of the reason adults may have the (evolved?) tendency to be picky about what they learn.
... this is all to say your piece was very stimulating!
I loved The Society of Mind!
> "Do you think the brain ultimate does decision making based on chemicals and perhaps electrical charges?"
I'm not sure what the alternative would be!
> "I sometimes wonder if synaptic pruning is connected to childhood amnesia"
I've definitely heard this as a proposed explanation!
Glad it was a stimulating read :)
Wow, these are really interesting hypotheses.
Emotion comes from the BODY.
The brain serves the body.
Emotions are important SIGNALS.
This is excellent! It's the kind of article people need to be reading if they struggle to conceive how minds can be explained in physical terms.
How does it explain the first person experience aspect of mind?
It doesn't. But I think it gives an idea of how systems that model themselves in their environment arise.
Agreed - Tommy's piece is great and insightful. Understanding the brain as a physical system is an important step to de-mystifying it. I think we might never understand how subjective experience arises from matter and energy, but that is OK. https://www.mattball.org/2026/02/dont-replace-unknown-with-unknowable.html
What you describe reminds me of the economic term, "spontaneous order." It was presented in literary form perhaps most effectively by Leonard Read in his short story, "I, Pencil": https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
All sorts of local decisions occur with local priorities about local opportunities and local problems. No central planning happened for pencils to emerge as useful, mass-produced items, but the result shows a coordination beyond the knowledge of any one "node" in the process.
Do our brains also develop through a decentralized, spontaneous order? An interesting hypothesis to consider, and your article is a fine primer on the concepts!
Interesting article Tommy. I'm exploring similar issues. I'm curious. You note that cytoplasm gets shuttled about the mould. Are you saying that cells pass their own cytoplasm down the chain? Or is it that cells down that chain produce more of their own cytoplasm?
So the slimes are just one (big) cell. The entire cell sort of pulsates, which sends the cytoplasm into the different veins. So it isn’t the production of more cytoplasm but the passing it around.
This is very close to what I’ve been working on, but from a systems-theory perspective: what looks like intelligence may just be the stabilization of local transitions over time.
Fantastic blog, as usual. Intellectually affordable for the rest of us. 🫶
Beautiful piece.
One thing I kept thinking while reading: there's a pretty fun parallel in computer science. In 1986, Craig Reynolds watched how birds flock and wondered if he could reproduce it with just local rules. Turns out three were enough: don't crowd nearby birds, steer toward the average heading, steer toward the average position. No central controller, no global awareness. The result looked so realistic it ended up in Hollywood films. What's neat is he didn't need to model any of the biology, just the local-rule principle, and got the same emergent behavior.
From an AI perspective, the local-rules-to-global-intelligence framework also maps onto a live debate: how much can you get from purely local rules in multi-agent systems, and when do you actually need central coordination? Your framework kind of hints at an answer: it depends on how rich the local feedback is. Ants have pheromones and physical encounters. Neurons have Hebbian plasticity. When the feedback encodes enough structure, no central planner needed. When it doesn't, you're stuck. That boundary feels like the really interesting part that doesn't get talked about enough.
I like ants, too. And I enjoy how you present this stuff: with clarity, but never losing the wonder of it all. Thank you!
Thank you! I'm glad the wonder comes across!
Great explainer!
I've been fascinated about emergent behavior from simple structures for decades and have been playing with a-life coding recently. It's amazing how much "organic" looking behavior you can get from a processing system consisting of four artificial neurons connected to a tiny number of sensors and actuators. They evolved foraging, poison avoidance, over/under eating avoidance and more. Another simulation taught them to avoid multiple predators while staying fed and avoiding obstacles. Completely evolved behavior. When you see things like that, then others like slime molds and ant colonies, it makes the complexity of animal/human behavior much more tangible.
Exactly! A good analogy I've heard is: The mind is a symphony without a director. All top-down organization is built on top of bottom-up processes.
"The whole is not only more than but very different from the sum of its parts." — Aristotle
Wherein, Tommy says your brain grows like a slime mold. Nice.
As someone who has been fascinated with ants since I saw the movie Antz as a child - I really appreciate this article.
That said, more than mere fascination, I think its a very topical explanation of an aspect of consciousness that is rarely ever considered - how environment actually transfers to mental development, how it does so in a decentralized system, thru/as a process of ermegence - was very well stated here.
I really like how well demonstrated constraint is to/within the process of emergence in this example. I've been rather hung up on emergence lately and I feel this has added much for me to consider!