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Let’s start with a simple question:

“If Marie’s daughter has a son, what is the relationship

between Marie and the father of this son?”

No mathematics. This is a simple question about relationships in a family! There should not be any problem!

Listen to what the slime molds have to say:

Slime molds are at the limits of plants, animals, and fungus. They could make us change our idea of ‘intelligence.’ They don’t have a brain. They don’t have a head and they can solve some problems much faster than we can. We use their ‘intelligence’ to improve our computers. Some day they could become an important part of the robots. Imagine robots without a brain doing things that we cannot do ourselves. They could tell us in a millisecond that Marie is the mother-in-law of the father of this son.

A slime mold could say: “The human way to solve a problem is to think about it. You pile up ideas upon ideas. You end up needing the most powerful computers to tackle a problem that I can solve very easily without even thinking about it.” We should accept the idea that

There must be a better way to solve problems

than using the human thinking.

A problem can have more than one solution. The slime has access to one solution. Humans have access to another solution and that is not always the best one. We could find out, someday, that a virus can do even better.

 

Here is a simple example of a problem having more than one solution. Let’s say that you want to have the total of the first 100 numbers:  1+2+3….  +100 = ?  You could start adding 1+2=3  and 3+3= 6 and 6+4 = 10…. This is a lot of work.

A better way would be to say that 1+100 = 101 and 2+99=101 and 3+98 =101…. We have 50 groups of 101. The total is 101x50 =  5050

The first solution is labor intensive. The second one requires access to more thinking. Depending on the thinking at your disposal you would use one solution or the other.

 

Your dog may give you another example of two solutions to a problem. If you throw a ball across its path, your dog will run toward the ball as it sees it.

The curve that he follows is called ‘the pursuit curve’ – aka the dog’s curve.  Human beings would have a better solution.  They would anticipate where the ball is going and get there, waiting for the ball to come to them. What makes the difference is that we have access to better thinking than the dog.
Different beings at different levels have access to different solutions when they face a problem. Animals are closer to the material world than humans. They are likely to use more ‘labor intensive’ solutions.

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What we learn from the slimes is that we should not associate a problem with only one way of thinking and one solution. There are many ways to handle a problem depending on your level of thinking.

Humankind had the constant problem of finding food to survive. Thousands of years ago we collected fruits with our bare hands. Later we used stones to cut meat. That was our first improvement. After the stones we used metal and fire to make tools. That was a new solution to an old problem. An important improvement was to associate ideas with matter and invent agriculture. That was followed by associating power with the tools and having a horse pulling the plow. Today, one man using machinery equipped with a powerful motor can produce enough food to feed many people. The farmers account for only 5% of the total population. As we evolved, we solved our food problem with better and better solutions.

The best way to manage problems is not to use more and more of the resources of the material world. We should try to elevate our thinking and get access to higher worlds.

 

In the meantime, our answer to the slime could be:

“Slimes don’t talk to each other. They don’t know about writing. They don’t know about music. They ignore everything that is not part of their domain of expertise. They are experts in a certain domain, but their domain is limited. Humans also could be experts in a limited domain. Every plant and every animal could fill a slot in nature’s unlimited domain of expertise. Why does nature make flowers grow on top of a mountain where nobody can see them? Because “there was a place for a little domain of possibilities on top of that mountain”.

Humans have a place in the world. They are fulfilling one of the possibilities of nature. The duck, the slime, humans and the rest of creation have something in common: They underestimate what they are not conscious of!

We made computers. That’s an achievement and we can be proud of it. Could that be a proof of our superior thinking?

If you wish to underastand the universe,

think of energy, frequency and vibrations

Tesla

Maybe not! Computers are made of the association of millions of simple ideas coming from millions of different people. That does not mean that the human brain improved the day we started making computers. It only shows that we needed many people to put together many simple ideas.

We search with our brain but we find with our heart

George Sand

Computers are following the general direction of human evolution. We started by making tools to go hunting. Those tools were simple objects. The next step was to make machines. Those required ideas using objects. With computers we keep moving from the material world to the non-physical world.

With A.I. we are going one more step in the same direction. Humans are distancing themselves from the material world. What could be our next step? The development of our feelings?

Every child is an artist.

The problem is how to maintain

an artist once he grows up.

Pablo Picasso

Children seem to know all that. They don’t need logic. They sing, dance, paint and create shapes with modeling clay. They know that the most important is not what we see. They decide in which world they want to live and create their own world. A cardboard can become a racing car.

They could draw our attention to the importance of some aspects of our life that we are neglecting. We need schools where parents could go and learn from the children how to reactivate their imagination!

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