I find that plausible, but I am a layman. At the very least there's no evidence that the scales can be separated, because despite all attempts a brain in an org

I find that plausible, but I am a layman. At the very least there's no evidence that the scales can be separated, because despite all attempts a brain in an organism is the only thing recognized as showing "intelligence". What you describe seems very similar to what's happening in an ecosystem. Our understanding of ecology is maturing though while these fields seem not to be. We have made very impressive calculators of course, and I don't mean to minimize them per se -- mainly people are just reckless with their claims. It an interesting connection, I think, that natural selection is the only other process that is arguably doing something intelligent. This is a controversial idea and might well be wrong, but I don't believe that's proven merely by the fact that some key mechanisms have no intrinsic "goal". I agree that the language is imprecise, and (especially for what I just said) has misleading connotations that are unfortunate... I'm really curious to learn more about the processes you've alluded to and their relations, if you can recommend any reading or care to elaborate.