The Mysterious Phenomenon of Stupid Things Becoming Much Smarter When Working Together

In another of their incredibly insightful and fascinating animations, the ever-philosophical design house Kurzgesagt explains the concept of emergence, the gathering of smaller things to work together to make a bigger thing with different properties than the individual parts. This can be used to describe water molecules, cells, fungi and atoms. It also accounts for the high intelligence embedded in a colony of ants, despite the fact that a solo insect is actually rather dumb.

An ant is pretty stupid. It doesn’t have much of a brain, no will, no plan and yet many ants together are smart. An ant colony can construct complex structures…how is this possible how can a bunch of stupid things do smart things together.