Is physics what happens when obstacles to reaching goal states are low?

The apparent difference between physics and intelligent action is that the former proceeds automatically while the latter is deliberate and chosen. But some intelligent systems appear to behave automatically when obstacles to their goals are low. The economy, for example, is a collective intelligence, but when transaction costs are low, the economy will automatically find the optimal equilibrium. So is the economy intelligent, or does it behave automatically like physics?

It may be the case that physics is just what intelligent agency looks like when obstacles to goals are very low. Intelligence is something we notice by seeing how systems navigate around obstacles toward their goals, so if the obstacles are few and small, then intelligence will be hard to observe.

This is how intelligence works in human beings. Humans behave automatically in economic models—choosing their optimal bundles to purchase and so on—when obstacles to their goals are very low. But clearly humans are intelligent agents, so this shows that intelligent agents will behave automatically when there’s nothing for them to navigate around.

To find the intelligence of an system, we need to put obstacles in its path—not its path on a physical trajectory, but its path to its goal state, in whatever space that may be. These will be obstacles that the system observes in its cognitive light cone, and how it navigates around them shows us its intelligence. It’s possible that we’ll discover the intelligence of atoms and so on when we figure out how to make it harder for them to get what they want.