Your essay is a striking provocation, and I think you’re right to suggest that rocks are more than passive matter — they already act as archives of history, and in their crystalline flaws and tectonic shifts they resemble natural processors of information. In material science, this isn’t just metaphor: memristive oxides, neuromorphic crystals, and topological materials are already being studied for computation, showing that minerals can “remember” states and route signals much like logic gates. On the planetary scale, tectonics looks like an algorithm for balance, and in philosophy, your suggestion that life discovered computation in the mineral world aligns with current thinking that intelligence is a continuum, not a binary. My advice would be to ground your vision in these real research frontiers while leaning even harder into the cultural leap: not that rocks are “conscious,” but that computation may be a universal property of matter, with brains and silicon as just one expression of a much older mineral code.
I really appreciate this, thanks Chameleon! The way you connected it to real research on memristive oxides, neuromorphic crystals, and topological materials makes the idea of a mineral code feel very tangible.
Your point about tectonics as an algorithm also stuck with me. It shows how the planet itself balances through shifting rock. And I agree, it is less about rocks being conscious and more about computation as a property of matter, with brains and silicon as just one expression of something older.
That framing sharpens the vision a lot, thank you!
Intelligence doesn't emerge from biological life. Biological life emerges from Intelligence.
We see intelligence in the self organizing structure of the universe. How crystalline structures form in rock, how water forms snowflakes, how rivers form a fractal flows. The math and physics shows us invariants that keep popping up.
c (light speed), alpha (the fine constant), h (the plank constant the unit of quantum action)... there are more but this is the intelligence of the universe encoded in the "dead stuff".
I believe a process of Abiogenesis, happens when simple compounds are encased in crystalline structures that form geologically. This allows for the right mixing of compounds and time to pass to allow for the spark of the self organizing principal to take effect. proto-life emerges (chemistry produces proteins and enzimes) and thru a recursive process it can evolve into humans (self aware beings) that can look at their bofy and say "ah I'm made of star dust. Interesting".
We see the code of universe produced Pi, Golden Ratio, Fibionacci spirals... These fractal patterns and ratios are not flukes. This is intelligence outside, and pre-dating the meat computers we call the brain.
So keep on this line of inquiry, fertile lands ahead :)
I really like how you framed this! Thinking of life as something that comes out of intelligence already woven into the universe feels like such a shift. You can almost see it in the way crystals, rivers, and snowflakes take shape.
The part about crystals giving chemistry a place to start is such a clear image. And those patterns that keep showing up, pi, the golden ratio, Fibonacci spirals, they make it feel like the universe has been carrying its own kind of intelligence all along.
Your essay is a striking provocation, and I think you’re right to suggest that rocks are more than passive matter — they already act as archives of history, and in their crystalline flaws and tectonic shifts they resemble natural processors of information. In material science, this isn’t just metaphor: memristive oxides, neuromorphic crystals, and topological materials are already being studied for computation, showing that minerals can “remember” states and route signals much like logic gates. On the planetary scale, tectonics looks like an algorithm for balance, and in philosophy, your suggestion that life discovered computation in the mineral world aligns with current thinking that intelligence is a continuum, not a binary. My advice would be to ground your vision in these real research frontiers while leaning even harder into the cultural leap: not that rocks are “conscious,” but that computation may be a universal property of matter, with brains and silicon as just one expression of a much older mineral code.
I really appreciate this, thanks Chameleon! The way you connected it to real research on memristive oxides, neuromorphic crystals, and topological materials makes the idea of a mineral code feel very tangible.
Your point about tectonics as an algorithm also stuck with me. It shows how the planet itself balances through shifting rock. And I agree, it is less about rocks being conscious and more about computation as a property of matter, with brains and silicon as just one expression of something older.
That framing sharpens the vision a lot, thank you!
Intelligence doesn't emerge from biological life. Biological life emerges from Intelligence.
We see intelligence in the self organizing structure of the universe. How crystalline structures form in rock, how water forms snowflakes, how rivers form a fractal flows. The math and physics shows us invariants that keep popping up.
c (light speed), alpha (the fine constant), h (the plank constant the unit of quantum action)... there are more but this is the intelligence of the universe encoded in the "dead stuff".
I believe a process of Abiogenesis, happens when simple compounds are encased in crystalline structures that form geologically. This allows for the right mixing of compounds and time to pass to allow for the spark of the self organizing principal to take effect. proto-life emerges (chemistry produces proteins and enzimes) and thru a recursive process it can evolve into humans (self aware beings) that can look at their bofy and say "ah I'm made of star dust. Interesting".
We see the code of universe produced Pi, Golden Ratio, Fibionacci spirals... These fractal patterns and ratios are not flukes. This is intelligence outside, and pre-dating the meat computers we call the brain.
So keep on this line of inquiry, fertile lands ahead :)
I really like how you framed this! Thinking of life as something that comes out of intelligence already woven into the universe feels like such a shift. You can almost see it in the way crystals, rivers, and snowflakes take shape.
The part about crystals giving chemistry a place to start is such a clear image. And those patterns that keep showing up, pi, the golden ratio, Fibonacci spirals, they make it feel like the universe has been carrying its own kind of intelligence all along.
Very interesting
Thank you!