Against Intelligence
Just me rambling, might refine later with more research
I’ve always been suspicious of how we define intelligence. It’s not just a gut feeling I have; it’s a lifetime of noticing how intelligence wears different faces. From the wisdom of my traditional village nestled by the Himalayas to the modern academic rituals of the Ivy League, it’s clear: intelligence isn’t a singular, measurable entity. It shifts, adapts, and thrives in ways that can’t always be captured by grades, titles, or conventional metrics.
The ways the indigenous people navigate vast jungles or animals exhibit unique forms of intelligence challenge the criteria we use to define it: criteria that often dismiss the skills and knowledge of those outside traditional education systems. Rarely do we call a villager intelligent, as if poverty or lack of formal education diminishes their cognitive abilities. Intelligence is multifaceted, manifesting in countless forms across species. Perhaps it’s time to question the very idea of what it means to be intelligent.
Look at my favorite creatures: the birds! When comparing ourselves to these remarkable creatures, it’s tempting to view our technological advancements as proof of superior intelligence. Yet many animals possess abilities that far surpass ours in certain dimensions. Owls detect prey in pitch black using precise 3D audiolocation; bats and dolphins navigate their worlds with sophisticated echolocation. Owls, for instance, can “see a sound” almost—something we can’t even imagine. (I think their overlapping auditory and visual regions in the brain might explain this?)
We humans are so limited by our senses. We only have five, but would it make sense to assume there are only five major senses to detect? Of course not. These are just the five good enough for our survival, for now. If we had never evolved ears, sound wouldn’t even cross our imagination. There are countless aspects of the world we’re completely unable to interpret, detect, or experience. We have no idea what other creatures perceive in their world. This realization underscores how subjective everything truly is and how it makes no sense to assume we’re better.
Then there’s social and emotional intelligence. Elephants demonstrate emotional depth and memory that baffles everyone. Bees communicate through intricate dances. Ants collaborate in ways that mimic complex societies. Beavers create entire ecosystems with their dams. Dogs can sense diseases in humans. Birds, like crows, grieve lost companions. Animals predict and detect natural calamities long before humans notice. These feats, along with deep empathy, grief, and altruism, show that intelligence isn’t just about tool-making or abstract thought. It’s also about adapting perfectly to one’s environment, forming complex social bonds, and excelling in sensory and emotional realms where humans often fall short. In many ways, animals are far more specialized and adept.
Why stop with animals? Honestly, I’ve always had a theory that plants are even more remarkable than animals. How could trees not be considered among the most sentient beings on Earth? They don’t bother moving. Some of them live over 1,000 years. They attract pollinators to themselves. They tolerate countless harsh conditions. Most astonishingly, they literally capture sunlight (CRAZZYY) , something we can theorize about but never touch. Trees feed themselves with this harvested sunlight and also sustain almost all other life on Earth. And you’re telling me they aren’t intelligent?
Or flowers? Even knowing their beauty exists to charm pollinators, we humans still fall for them. We plant them in gardens, bring them into our homes, and willingly create more spaces for them. They’ve manipulated us completely, and we don’t even notice or act despite all.
If I wanted to go crazier, I have another weird theory we think we are such independent human beings, so sophisticated and evolved, while we act like nothing more than houses for microbes. Even if individual microbes may not be intelligent, community intelligence is an emergent phenomenon. If we look at scales of networks fungi and trees, or our microbiomes in guts and every other organ—the system is efficient and intelligent. Recent research suggests how much microbes alter our behavior. They can influence our socialness, our intelligence, our physical health, and our states of sadness or happiness. When they are well-fed and balanced, they let us be fine. But if we don’t fix them when disrupted, we suffer. Their system doesn’t collapse; if we die, they simply find another house.
What is human intelligence if not an awareness of my own thinking? If microbes can alter the way I think, if it’s the microbes or some other chemicals in my brain, or even hormones that control what I feel, how can I truly have autonomy over my thinking, and if I don’t have that, how am I intelligent? Take my periods, for example. During that time, I am absolutely convinced of the worthlessness of human existence. I feel exhausted with life, and no matter what I tell myself, I cannot see past my melancholy. Then, like clockwork, I return to a state where life starts looking bright again, and I see myself flipping my personality and my view of the world. Watching my own mind shift like that terrifies me.
So, am I just a puppet? Is the balance of hormones in my system the sole factor determining whether I choose to laugh or cry? And it’s not just my own hormones—there’s more. Even the tiny, primitive bacteria living inside me might be controlling me? They’re not even human, and yet their influence could dictate whether I feel sociable, anxious, or depressed. That’s wild.
This microbial influence reminds me of larger-scale networks, like how fungi and tree roots create the “Wood Wide Web,” sharing nutrients and even signaling danger. Intelligence, then, may not always reside in an individual but emerge from complex systems. This suddenly takes me to thinking about artificial intelligence. If we accept that emotions are responses to a combination of enough information—a network processing input, couldn’t AI develop emotional awareness, too? With enough stimuli and a well-designed network, emotions might emerge as an unintended but natural consequence. Who knows?
It’s also fascinating how our relationship with control impacts how we respond to uncertainty. Somehow, not being responsible for yourself feels more liberating than thinking you’re responsible for everything you do and every decision you make. At some point, when you really think about the inevitability of things and how little you control, it feels oddly freeing. There is no big meaning to all this—maybe it’s just about trying to be decent, to do decent things, and to exist in harmony with the world.
The more I think about all this, the more absurd it seems for humans to claim we are the most intelligent or supreme beings. For all our intelligence, we are the only species causing significant harm to this intricate network of life in this earth. Many species have neutral contributions, but most actively sustain the balance and harmony of ecosystems. Humans, on the other hand, have significantly negative contributions. We exploit resources, disrupt systems, and destabilize the very network we depend on for survival. Yet we have the audacity to call ourselves “intelligent.”
If we view humans as just one node in this vast web of life, it becomes clear we’re not behaving like intelligent beings. Intelligence, if it means anything, should include the ability to coexist and contribute positively within this network. Instead, we’ve prioritized dominance and destruction. By underestimating other minds, ignoring the impact of our actions, and inflating our self-importance, we’ve shown that the form of intelligence we contain is not superior it’s just shortsighted. We theorize, but fail to act and are doomed to keep doing so as humans , I fear.
Anyways, all I can say is this idea of vertical intelligence is outdated, restrictive, and far too narrow. Maybe theorizing and abstract thinking aren’t all that. Maybe other animals don’t need our language or poetry to communicate, because they’ve mastered their own methods of exchange. Maybe we’re the ones struggling to match their level and are creating all these abstractions and means of expressing our emotions well, and still feel deeply misunderstood. Even within humans, the hierarchical view of intelligence and favoring certain forms of knowledge over others distorts our understanding of the world. By letting these flawed metrics dictate whom we deem “intelligent,” we limit ourselves. If our metrics are inadequate, so too are our views of the world.
By underestimating other minds, we falsely inflate our own importance. We think we’re “all that,” but in truth? We’re not all that at all.
More about intelligence of other life forms:
References :
Cool and sad animal emotional intelligence factsCool Bird intelligence facts
What An Owl Knows
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2634023/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10940863/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10638804/
Subscribe for free to receive new posts :)