How I Started to See Trees as Smart

When you don't need answers in a hurry, there is no need for all the thinking bits to being one place. A lot less of that is needed because everything doesn't need to be done all at once; the same bits can work on different stages of a problem. It is safer to distribute it all more or less evenly throughout the organism. The bits can do other jobs besides, when not needed for thinking with. There is no need to connect everything directly to everything else; trunking and switching is more efficient. There is no reason to think we would recognize the cells they think with, even if anybody had bothered to look.

A tree can afford any amount of thinking-stuff, because running it slowly can be an arbitrarily tiny part of its energy budget: trees can afford to be very, very smart. What remains is to find how intelligence could enable reproductively advantageous adaptive behavior in trees. What could a smarter tree do to outcompete rivals?

It would be foolish to assume there are no such opportunities.

It's an interesting thought, but not a very interesting article. I guess I expected more.

I can't attest to its veracity but this animal perception is discussed b In this video by musician benn Jordan

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvg242U2YfQ

It puts me in mind of Gibson's quote "the future is here it's just not evenly distributed yet." The folks over at Findhorn have been communicating with "nature spirits" for decades. Levin (mentioned in TFA) has shown that all cells have the machinery of thought. That is, all cells have the same biomachinery as neurons. (It's just concentrated in neurons) All tissues think.

Summarized in a succinct, allegorical, and atavistic way, this man has discovered the wonder of God’s creation.