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14.4

Biological Intelligence

But how do living beings escape the Gödel limit? Biological systems like humans can

solve fundamental problems without being stuck with unsolvable decision problems.

Why? Well, we hinted at that in our systems biology chapters above. Biological systems

are selected to quickly make the most optimal (in the sense of “adapted to the environ­

ment”) decisions possible. Whereby a bacterium, of course, does not really think about

itself. But the division rate (i.e. the decision about itself, “to divide or not”?) is constantly

adapted to the environment as optimally as possible (for maximum chances of survival).

We can immediately see the difference between this and formal systems, and this then also

applies to important decision-making processes in higher organisms. A biological system

will, in case of doubt (so that it does not die out from doubt), make a decision between

several variants stochastically (i.e. randomly), but the random weights have again been

selected by evolution in such a way that the resulting action guarantees the best survival

success on average.

Of course, modern neurobiology has already come astonishingly far, especially with

the help of bioinformatics. We made it clear in our chapter introduction that it is important

to recognise that biological brains and computers can basically both perform calculations

amazingly well, but that they come from two different worlds. The computer is accurate

and often amazingly fast. In biology, it is rather amazing that brains are capable of such

fast and accurate computations. Because all these capabilities are only a means to an end,

they are always primarily about survival.

If you like, you can take this away as an important self-knowledge. Our brain may think

a lot, make art or dream of the next galaxy, but it was not designed for that. It is only the

most powerful survival machine this planet has produced, including the risk of speeding

up the evolutionary game so fast that no one can keep up, not even our brain (see next

chapter). Of course, we can do philosophy and even overcome the logical Gödel limit for

computers. But our brains were not selected to think particularly clearly about the world,

but to survive successfully in that world, no matter how difficult the environment. For

example, we got a final evolutionary boost from the Ice Age and a first one about two and

a half million years ago when the savannah expanded. First bipedal pre-humans started

living there, started hunting with hands, hand axes and then spears, while chimpanzees,

since they separated from us about seven million years ago, continued to stay peacefully

in the trees in the forest (and as our closest relatives, deserved much more protection than

they currently get). Let’s now take a closer look at that natural high-performance intelli­

gence, the human brain, next.

14.4  Biological Intelligence