What would it take to have a world with a "Planet Mind"

[Crossroads Inc.]

The recent discussion in the "Avatar" thread made me think about this. The concept of a whole world that somehow has a sapient, or semi-sapient "WorldMind' is an old one in scifi and cropped up in quite a few stories. I am curious however purely on a scientific level, what you would need biological to have a neural system that indeed would span an entire planet? Realistic could it even happen? Going by materials and biological components could you have a planet spanning organism? Could such a thing exist and you still have a 'normal' looking Planet?

A friend and I were discussing it earlier and we considered the only way to have something like it was either a world with no oceans, thus being truly planet sprawling. Or somesort of landmass stretching organism like an massive endless organism.

[Coalition]

Do you want a single mind, a collection of smaller minds that coordinate their thoughts, or individual minds that are linked?

The single mind can then be broken down into the fast thinkers that require high-speed communications around the globe, or a slow thinker that uses existing nerve tissue 'technology'. The fast thinkers might use a version of fiber optics, or electrical connections.

The other part would be the ecosystem would have to be carefully monitored, to ensure nothing developed to eat the brains. Figure the entire ecology would have to be controlled by the intelligence(s). So you need a way for the brains to communicate with the critters on the world, plus self-modifying genetic code to develop critters to hunt down others. It might appear to be a cultivated forest, but the extra cords that transfer electrical power from the trees to the brains would slowly be noticed. (I am assuming the leaves will be modifed for solar energy rather than photosynthesis, and the energy produced is transferred via electricity; of course, this then gets into the question of what sort of atmosphere would develop.)

You'd need to control the entire ecology, from the plants that take in solar energy, to something that eats the plants, and a set of decay elements. As the story goes along, you'd revealto an exploration group how the whole structure works to funnel energy into the brains, so they can think. Depending on how the explorers arrive, you could have some sort of immune reaction from the intelligences, if the explorers do too much. Of course, once the intelligences figure out that the explorers have new DNA strands, and have access to more, a decent trade could be set up where the explorer crew provides raw chemicals and DNA strands, in exchange for advanced biological items produced.

This is off the top of my head, and a decent biochemist would be able to tell a lot more.

[Sea Skimmer]

I remember a Star Trek episode in which a microscopic life form had a collective conciseness inside a layer of salt water on a planet that was being colonized. Something like that seems like the only feasible way to have a world spanning brain. It could not be just one mind, because even with purely electric communication (vs. the combo of electric impulses and chemicals that human brains use) the time lag to span thousands of miles would be considerable. It would mean a thought could only be processed extremely slowly which does not seem conductive to unified cognitive development, smaller better connected pieces would almost surely end of developing independently of each other. Also you’d just have serious trouble generating the voltages to span the distances, even if the world brain could exploit something unusual, like a web of very pure underground mineral deposits which act as conductors.

I don’t see any specific reason why a distributed collective mind could not exist alongside other earth like planetary life, especially if it were underground. We already know from deep sea vents that life forms can evolve with no sunlight and rely purely on thermo-chemical processes for energy. But all and all this world mind is likely to be dumb as a brick, because it would have only very limited stimulus and no ability to manipulate its surroundings.

[Grog]

How would such a thing evolve? What are the evolutional advantages of being a planet spanning intelligence?

[Starglider]

It could not be just one mind, because even with purely electric communication (vs. the combo of electric impulses and chemicals that human brains use) the time lag to span thousands of miles would be considerable.

Axon transmission speed is in the high tens of meters per second for neurons in the human brain, going up to about 200 m/s for heavily myelinated peripheral nerves. Electronic conduction propagates signals at about 200,000,000 m/s (in mediocre cabling), so if you were using a human-like brain design you could make it a few million times larger (say the size of Western Europe) and still have global consciousness proceeding at the same speed. Covering a whole planet would mean slowing down global thought by a factor of ten, or having a community of a few dozen individuals.

Of course in reality we would not expect a mind on that scale to look anything like the human brain, due to the radically different characteristics and selection pressures at work.

Also you’d just have serious trouble generating the voltages to span the distances

I would expect radio transmission and lots of repeaters - if nervous systems are using electronic conduction, the evolution of natural radio communications, radar imaging and electronic warfare will not be far behind. This opens up all kinds of crazy co-evolution possibilities.

[Sea Skimmer]

Time lags are going to compound themselves though, much more then they do in a normal brain, because a world brain will be very broad but very flat, instead of being roughly oval. This is not very efficient; everything will have to constantly make long trips. Repeaters will led to distortions of the information unless this brain is digital too, which will also compound with distance. So I think after a certain distance the distortion would led to different parts of the brain processing the same information differently, and that’s how the organism would turn into a collective, even if the basic mechanism initially evolved as a single mind.

I did think about radio, but even if we accept the idea that this is physically possible, it seems to me it would then make the world brain extremely sensitive to outside interference from solar flares and plain old lighting strikes ect…. So this path is unlikely to be evolutionary successful. Also bandwidth would be a serious limitation if this was to be the main means of communication. The human brain is supposed to process the equivalent of hundreds of gigabytes of data per second isn’t it? You would need a whole constellation of communications satellites to handle that by radio. Though perhaps with a distributed collective some kind of natural radio might be used to send only short, specific kinds of information of the highest importance

Hmm maybe the world brain could also be kept warm underground/be powered by some of those natural fission reactors from Gabon.

[Kuroneko]

A ganglionic intelligences, like that of an earthworm, is already something like many semi-independent organisms glued together and acting in concert, but lacking any centralized control. A planetary-scale version would not need to have extremely fast communication pathways, because a local stimuli can be dealt mostly by the nearest ganglion, as it happens in terrestrial creatures of that sort.

[Lord of the Abyss]

How would such a thing evolve? What are the evolutional advantages of being a planet spanning intelligence?

My guess is that it would be the winner of an evolutionary competition between less vast intelligences. If some sort of "intelligent ecosystem" arose like described above, an ecosystem where everything serves the controlling brain/brain network, I would expect it to outcompete and consume the Earth-style mindless ecosystems. At that point, you have a world covered in animal-level intelligent ecosystems, which will try to outcompete each other for resources. Over time, they could evolve towards greater and greater intelligence, until one gains such an edge in intelligence and resources that it overwhelms and replaces all the others.

Also, such a ( for lack of a better term ) metaspecies could evolve an instinctive drive and program for selective breeding of the species that compose it. The overmind could deliberately breed its components for greater ability according to instincts, which might well include breeding brain-subunits for greater intelligence. At that point, the drift towards greater intelligence could continue even if all competing intelligent ecosystems were destroyed. So even if one wins while still an animal in intellect, it might still gain great intelligence.

As for oceans; it seems to me such a being could cover the oceans as well. Especially once it becomes intelligent enough to direct its collective growth. I envision a double layer organic "carpet", a mat of plants growing on the surface to gather sunlight, and another on the sea floor to suck up useful minerals. As it extends into the ocean, here and there long flexible vines grow under the direction of the controlling intelligence, connecting the surface mat to the sea floor mat. As a single system, surface and sea floor exchange resources; energy from the surface, fertilizer from below, and both from the land as necessary. You don't see anything like that on our world because our ecosystem has no plan or direction to it; but I don't see why it would be impossible under the direction of a mind.

[Feil]

A ganglionic intelligences, like that of an earthworm, is already something like many semi-independent organisms glued together and acting in concert, but lacking any centralized control. A planetary-scale version would not need to have extremely fast communication pathways, because a local stimuli can be dealt mostly by the nearest ganglion, as it happens in terrestrial creatures of that sort.

How would one differentiate such a world from a world inhabited by discrete intelligences with pervasive worldwide communications, e.g. ours?

[Starglider]

A ganglionic intelligences, like that of an earthworm, is already something like many semi-independent organisms glued together and acting in concert, but lacking any centralized control.

How would one differentiate such a world from a world inhabited by discrete intelligences with pervasive worldwide communications, e.g. ours?

A single intelligence has a unified model of reality and goal set; it won't normally 'disagree with itself' (or rather such contradictions will almost always be local and temporary, as they are in a human mind).

[Spoonist]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_organisms
I'd have to say that anything on a planetary scale would have to be plant based. (It takes to much of a plot device to have moving individuals to be able to organize like that). It would also have to be of the kind where you can break out a piece and it would still be a smaller functioning "hive". (Otherwise it would not evolve or it would have simply died out at one point or the other). But then when brought back it can exchange stimuli & memory with the rest of the worldmindTM.
It doesn't need to have an all-knowing quality, just like Kuroneko says. All it would take for a worldmind to form would be the exchange of stimuli & memory which then would result in a consensus in the worldmindTM. Sort of the sum is greater than the parts thingie. So one part receive a stimuli and stores the reaction to that stimuli, while it at the same time sends that result along to the next individual. Now those 'share' that 'memory'. If you have enough of these exchanges both individuals would start to act similarily. If you multiply this by a couple of thousand individuals where each individual does not have access to the 'whole' but instead gets a subset of 'how to act'. Then suddenly regardless of which individual you would 'prod' it would respond as if it was only one mind.
If you then enter a social component where the individuals compete for dominant 'how to react' sets you can evolve intelligence, where those groups that are more successful get to imprint more of their reaction patterns. You would soon evolve smarter and smarter sub-minds, which then would influence each other until the dominant party would be the same worldmindTM consensus.

[Shroom Man 777]

Why not just a very huge planet-sized organism in the shape and form of a jellyfish? No brain. Or a sponge, or something that's very simple, with each manageable segment (each square mile of the critter) having self-autonomous biological functions. A giant... photosynthetic... thing, an entire plant kingdom that's somehow decided to live in symbiosis with each other. These would nourish symbiotic "cellular organisms" in the form of animal life that's replenished by the organism's "plants". Rivers could act as bloodstreams... plankton... basically imagine the body of any living organism, but with biological functions replaced by entire ecosystems and countless of species of flora and fauna.

You'd have a living planet that's just like planet Earth, except with an ecosystem and a biosphere that's not competitive but one that instead works on a singular purpose. How on Earth would this naturally evolve, I don't know. But it would be possible to have these things evolved artificially?

[Akhlut]

As Spoonist said, this organism is going to be extremely plant-like for a lot of practical concerns. That would be the easiest way to colonize most of a planet (through something akin to rhizome colonization, a la aspen trees or certain fungi) as well as something hardy enough and long-lived enough to span a considerable size.

This organism could potentially utilize something like metal wires for the conduction of electricity, though, as some microorganisms can precipitate metals out of their environment into their pure state, and organisms can generate electricity, so it wouldn't be preposterous for the two to be combined into one organism to propagate neural signals across vast distances.