As we explore the full potential of human cooperation, we need to examine our ability to generate collective intelligence. What we are especially interested in is how large human organizations should make their decisions in the future. In our quest to maximize human well-being, the goal is to create the best possible outcomes with the resources and knowledge we have.

While intelligence itself is a multifaceted phenomenon, intelligent behavior is easier to define. It is the ability to react to changes in one’s environment appropriately. In evolutionary terms, it is the ability to adapt in order to stay alive and to procreate. This requires the ability to perceive one’s environment, choose the best course of action based on prior knowledge and to act. When we perceive the reactions our actions create in our environment and adjust our behavior accordingly, we behave intelligently.

Surprisingly, you don’t need a brain to act intelligently. Even slime molds, which lack brains, can react intelligently to their environment. They can even exhibit primitive signs of learning and memory retention.

Animals don’t only transmit information from one generation to the next in the form of DNA–their everyday existence is based on a constant transmission of sensory information within their bodies. The body uses electricity to transmit this vital information through the nervous system, which allows organisms to react almost instantaneously to changes in their environment. By reacting appropriately to its environment, an organism increases its chances of survival.

The simplest sign of intelligence is the ability to make better than average yes or no decisions. Left or right; attack or flee; cooperate or defect?

Making a binary yes or no decision also happens to be the definition of one bit of data in a computer. Making a good decision out of two available choices is made easier when an organism can sense its surrounding environment. Receiving constant feedback from your environment increases your ability to make intelligent decisions, even if you have only two options to choose from.

In this sense, evolution is not a random or haphazard process, but something that is actively shaped by the intelligent choices made by all the organisms in question. The human brain, called the most complex object in the known universe, developed as a result of an endless string of good or good enough decisions made by our ancestors.

Intelligent behavior can be considered to be a loop made up of a constant interaction between us and our environment. The first part of this loop consists of our senses, which perceive both our environment and our internal state, and the sensory data that are transmitted to our brains.

The second part of the intelligent behavior loop is our ability to interpret what our senses tell us about our environment and infer cause and effect relationships within it. By accessing our memory and previous experiences, we can compare the situation to what we already know about the world to select an appropriate response. A child experiencing a situation for the first time will interpret it much differently from an experienced adult. Cumulative personal and communal experience increases our ability to make better choices, which is why we need to savor what the past can teach us about the future.

The third part of the intelligent behavior loop is our reaction to what we experience. By observing the consequences of our actions, the intelligent behavior loop closes and we start another cycle of sensing, interpreting and reacting to what we experience.

Using this simple definition, humanity’s failure to act intelligently becomes glaringly obvious. Despite all our vast scientific knowledge and technological prowess, humanity is unable to pass the simplest requirement for intelligent behavior when it comes to our own survival. For at least 50 years, the evidence has been clear that extracting and burning fossil fuels will cook the planet. Intelligent behavior would demand that humanity change course, yet this is not what we are doing.

Despite having all the necessary knowledge about the impending climate catastrophe, we are unable to react to it appropriately. This means that by definition, our behavior is irrational. What makes the situation worse is that we are not just ignoring warning signals–we have built an economic system that actually rewards this irrational behavior. In fact, according to our economic system, destroying our own habitat makes perfect business sense and should be financially remunerated.

When the most intelligent species in the known universe knowingly disregards warning signals that threaten its existence, something is seriously off. To solve this problem, we need to reinvent decision-making, and democratic processes in particular, for the digital age. This requires us to rewire the information flows that our three-step intelligent behavior loop depend on.

First, we need to maximize the sensory inputs from the field. Second, we need to filter the relevant information to the people with expert knowledge on the subject for evaluation and policy recommendations. Finally, we need to empower everybody affected by the situation to take appropriate action in their particular environment.

As we do this, we should remember that both life and our society are ultimately just energy/matter organized by information. How we construct our signal pathways will determine how we allocate our precious resources. And since our task is to maximize human well-being, how we construct our society’s information wiring diagram becomes an optimization challenge.

According to Einstein, imagination is the highest form of intelligence. Creating this wiring diagram will require its close cousin, creativity. Democratic ideals give us a great starting point. By spreading our decision-making from a handful of chosen politicians operating at the top to including every citizen, we essentially open billions of new sensory inputs–eyes, ears, noses etc.–into our environment. When we do this, we form a much more accurate and dynamic understanding of what is going on around us.

Our environment is already filled with these sensors–they just aren’t utilized by anyone besides the individuals in question. And since the great majority of individuals have been cut off from making important decisions, these sensory data are simply lost to the rest of the community. What average citizens see and experience has little to no effect on the important decisions affecting their community. Accessing this treasure trove of sensory data would greatly improve our ability to make better decisions.

Not only do we gain more sensory inputs, we also gain trillions more brain cells to interpret the sensory data. This will yield a much wider range of interpretations of what is going on as they are filtered through different experiences, educational background and many other individual factors. Having a wider spectrum of interpretations is more likely to yield the most useful interpretation. Variation, after all, is an essential component of the evolutionary algorithm.

Since each interpretation of the situation yields a slightly different response, the larger range of responses there are, the better we can decipher what works and what doesn’t. The optimum response, if there is one, will emerge more quickly, after which it can be copied by everybody else who can observe the superior results it produces.

This is how we can better adapt to our changing environment. As we face existential threats on multiple fronts, learning these lessons will be essential for our very survival.