Re:

I suggest the expression really should be "I think, therefore I believe I am"

I believe that I think, but am "I" the agent of thinking?

i is a mental construct that gives an evolutionary advantage.

absolutely. so are truth and meaning

i wonder in game theory what advantage it gives..

Law of large numbers is all that is needed

I am not sure how to relate that to game theory; you may be able to get that without evolutionary competition. However, game theory is probably the way to explain how we evolve submission to norms beyond indirect reciprocity.

they may have physical prothesitcs like cat whiskers.=C2* to enable it to
guage widith of hole.

Exactly! Sensors like that are often =ne of these solution that get you 80% of the way with 20% of the effort. E=cept that minds that take 15 years to train are o dramatically more expens=ve that almost no species can afford them (but they end up getting you to =he moon, which no prosthesis can).

So you don4,=99t think that practical intelligence is the ability to build arbitrary

pr=sthetics?

I agree that humans share an important =imilarity with cells, i.e. they have mechanisms that suppress individual c=mpetition when it conflicts too much with group selection. Without such me=hanisms, group selection fails, because within each group, defectors have = local advantage.

The simplest mechanism to enfor=e cooperation is reputation, but it works only when others are looking, an= manage to keep tallies. To do better than that, evolution has to breed a =irtual next level regulator into the individual, which may be your missing="top down for humans". A system of norms and taboos, for inst=nce a religion or ideology that people pick up from their environment.

Individuals can decide, but in social contexts, the u=ility of decisions is given by how well we understand the constraints unde= which we operate.

watch the octupus, find its prey, is it creative=? is it intelligent? are virus creatvie? 4)=A0 finding new methods to infect the host. . hackers 4P=A0

Octopi have a reputatio= for extreme creativity, i.e. they can observe things in their environment= simulate them mentally in several ways, come up with a solution and then =nact it.

Virus intelligence is an emergent thing, over many viru=es. The individual virus either succeeds or fails. A virus is like a thoug=t, not like a mind.

it was a class of virus , is more like a mknd than t=e creativity of a neuron