Kind: captions
Language: en
it turns out that if you train a
planarian and then cut their heads off
the tail will regenerate a brand new
brain that still remembers the original
information I think planaria hold the
answer to pretty much every deep
question of life for one thing they're
similar to our ancestors so they have
true symmetry they have a true brain
they're not like earthworms they're you
know they're much more advanced life
form they have lots of different
internal organs but they're these little
um they're about you know maybe two
centimeters in in the centimeter to two
in size
I have a head in the tail and the first
thing is plenary are Immortal so they do
not age there's no such thing as an old
planarian so that right there tells you
that these theories of thermodynamic
limitations of on lifespan are wrong
it's not it's not that well over time of
everything degrades no planaria can keep
it going for uh probably you know how
long have they've been around 400
million years right so these are the
actual so the planaria in our lab are
actually in physical continuity with
planaria that we're here 400 million
years ago
the following is a conversation with
Michael Levin one of the most
fascinating and Brilliant biologists
I've ever talked to he and his lab at
Tufts University works on novel ways to
understand and control complex pattern
formation in biological systems Andre
carpathi a world-class AI researcher is
the person who first introduced me to
Michael Levin's work
I bring this up because these two people
make me realize that biology has a lot
to teach us about Ai and AI might have a
lot to teach us about biology
this is Alex Friedman podcast to support
it please check out our sponsors in the
description and now dear friends here's
Michael Levin
embryogenesis is the process of building
the human body from a single cell I
think it's one of the most incredible
things that exists on Earth from a
single embryo so how does this process
work yeah it is it is an incredible
process uh I think it's maybe the most
magical process there is and I think one
of the most fundamentally interesting
things about it is that it shows that
each of us takes the journey from
so-called just physics to mind right
because we all Start Life as a single
quiescent unfertilized oocyte and it's
basically a bag of chemicals and you
look at that and you say okay this is
chemistry and physics and then nine
months and some years later you have an
organism with high level cognition and
preferences and an inner life and so on
and what embryogenesis tells us is that
that transformation from physics to mind
is gradual it's smooth there is no
special place where you know a lightning
bolt says boom now you've gone from from
physics to True cognition that doesn't
happen and so we can see in this process
that the whole mystery you know the
biggest mystery of the you of the
universe basically how you get mind from
matter from just physics in quotes yeah
so where's the magic into the thing how
do we get from information encoded in
DNA
and make physical reality out of that
information so one of the things that I
think is really important if we're going
to bring in DNA into this picture is to
think about the fact that what DNA
encodes is the hardware of Life DNA
contains the instructions for the kind
of micro level Hardware that every cell
gets to play with so all the proteins
all the signaling factors the ion
channels all the cool little pieces of
Hardware that cells have that's what's
in the DNA the rest of it is in
so-called generic laws and these are
laws of mathematics these are laws of
computation these are laws of um of
physics of all all kinds of interesting
things that are not directly in the DNA
and that that process you know I think I
think the reason the reason I always put
just physics in quotes is because I
don't think there is such a thing as
just physics I think that thinking about
these things in binary categories like
this is physics this is true cognition
this is as if it's only faking other
these kinds of things I think that's
what gets us in trouble I think that we
really have to understand that it's a
Continuum and we have to work up the
scaling the laws of scaling and we can
and we can certainly talk about that
there's a lot of really interesting
thoughts to be had there so the physics
is deeply integrated with the
information so the DNA doesn't exist on
its own the DNA is a integrated as in
some sense in response to the the laws
of physics at every scale the laws
of the environment it exists in yeah the
environment and also the laws of the
Universe I mean the thing about the
thing about the the DNA is that it's um
once Evolution discovers a certain kind
of machine that if if the physical
implementation is appropriate it's sort
of uh and this is hard to talk about
because we don't have a good vocabulary
for this yet but it's a very kind of a
platonic notion that if the machine is
there it pulls down interesting uh
interesting things that you do not have
to evolve from scratch because the laws
of physics give it to you for free so
just as a really stupid example if
you're trying to evolve a particular
triangle you can evolve the first angle
and you evolve the second angle but you
don't need to evolve the third you know
what it is already now why do you know
that's that's a gift for free from
geometry in a particular space you know
what that angle has to be and if you
evolve an ion Channel which is Ion
channels are basically transistors right
they're voltage-gated current
conductances if you evolve that ION
channel you immediately get to use
things like truth tables you get logic
functions you don't have to evolve the
logic function you don't have to evolve
a truth table doesn't have to be in the
DNA it's you get it for free right and
the fact that if you have nand Gates you
can build anything you want you get that
for free all you have to evolve is that
that first step a first little machine
that that enables you to couple to those
laws and there's laws of adhesion and
and many other things and this is all um
that interplay between the the hardware
that's set up by the genetics and the
software that's paid right the
physiological software that basically
does all the computation and the
cognition and everything else is a real
interplay between the information and
the DNA and the laws of physics of
computation and so on so is it fair to
say just like this idea that the laws of
mathematics are discovered
they're Laden within the fabric of the
universe in that same way the laws of
biology are kind of discovered yeah I
think that's absolutely and it's
probably not a popular view but I think
that's right on the money yeah well I
think that's a really deep idea
then embryogenesis is the process of
revealing
of um
embodying of manifesting these laws
you're not building the laws you're just
creating the capacity to reveal yes I
think again not the standard view of
molecular biology by any means but I
think that's right on the money I'll
give you a simple example you know some
of our latest work with these xenobots
right so what we've done is to take some
skin cells off of an early frog embryo
and basically ask about their plasticity
if we give you a chance to sort of
reboot your multicellularity in a
different context what would you do
because what you might assume by the
thing about embryogenesis is that it's
super reliable right it's very robust
and that really obscures some of its
most interesting features we get used to
it we get used to the fact that acorns
make oak trees and frog eggs make frogs
and we say well what else is it going to
make that's what it you know that's what
it makes that's a standard story but the
reality is and so and so you look at
these um these skin cells you say well
what do they know how to do well they
know how to be a passive boring
two-dimensional outer layer keeping the
bacteria from getting into the embryo
that's what they know how to do well it
turns out that if you take these skin
cells and you remove the rest of the
embryo so you remove all of the rest of
the cells and you say well you're by
yourself now what do you want to do so
what they do is they form this little um
this multi-little creature that runs
around the dish they have all kinds of
incredible capacities they navigate
through mazes they have various
behaviors that they do both
independently and and together they uh
they have a uh but they basically they
Implement Von Neumann's dream of
self-replication because if you sprinkle
a bunch of loose cells into the dish
what they do is they run around they
collect those cells into little piles
they they sort of mush them together
until those little piles become the next
generation of xenobots so you've got
this machine that builds copies of
itself from loose material in its
environment none of this are
things that you would have expected from
the Frog genome in fact there's wild
type the genome was wild type there's
nothing wrong with their genetics
nothing has been added no Nano materials
no genomic editing nothing and so what
we have done there is engineer by
subtraction which you've done is you've
removed the other cells that normally
basically bully these cells into being
skin cells and you find out that what
they really want to do is is to be this
they want their default behaviors to be
a xenobot but in Vivo in the embryo they
get told to be skinned by these other
cell types and so so now so now here
comes this this really interesting
question that you just posed
when you ask where does the form of the
tadpole and the Frog come from the
standard answer as well it's it's it's a
selection so over over millions of years
right it's been shaped to to produce the
specific body with that's fit for froggy
environments where does the shape of the
xenobot come from there's never been any
zenobots there's never been selection to
be a good xenobot these cells find
themselves in the new environment in 48
hours they figure out how to be an
entirely different uh proto-organism
with new capacities like kinematic
self-replication that's not how frogs or
tadpoles replicate we've made it
impossible for them to replicate their
normal way within a couple days these
guys find a new way of doing it that's
not done anywhere else in the biosphere
well actually let's step back and Define
what are xenobots
so a xenobod is uh self-assembling
little proto-organism it's also a
biological robot those things are not um
distinct it's a member of both classes
how much is a biology how much is it
robot
at this point most of it is biology
because what we're doing is we're
discovering natural uh behaviors of
these uh of these of the cells and also
of the cell collectives now one of the
really important parts of this was that
we're working together with Josh
bongard's group at University of Vermont
their computer scientists do Ai and
they've basically been able to use an
evolutionary a simulated Evolution
approach to ask how can we manipulate
these cells give them signals not rewire
their DNA so not Hardware but experience
as signals so can we remove some cells
can we add some cells can we poke them
in different ways to get them to do
other things so in the future there's
going to be you know we're now and this
is this is future on published work but
we're doing all sorts of interesting
ways to reprogram them to new behaviors
but before you can start to reprogram
these things you have to understand what
their innate capacities are okay so that
means
engineering programming you're
engineering them in in the future and in
some sense the the definition of a robot
is something you impart engineer yeah
and first versus evolve I mean um
it's such a fuzzy definition anyway in
some sense many of the organisms within
our body are kinds of robots yes yes and
I think robots is a weird line because
it's we tend to see robots as the other
I think there will be a time in the
future when there's going to be
something akin to the Civil Rights
movements for robots but we'll talk
about that later perhaps sure anyway
um
so how do you can we just Linger on it
how do you build a zenobot what are we
talking about here
from from whence does it start and how
does it become
the Glorious zenobot yeah so just to
take one step back one of the things
that a lot of people uh get stuck on is
they say well uh you know engineering
requires new DNA circuits or it requires
new nanomaterials you know what the
thing is we are now moving from Old
School engineering which use passive
materials right that things like you
know wood metal things like this that
basically the only thing you could
depend on is that they were going to
keep their shape that's it they don't do
anything else you it's on you as an
engineer to make them do everything
they're going to do and then there were
active materials and now computationals
this is a whole new era these are
agential materials this is your you're
now collaborating with your substrate
because your material has an agenda
these cells have you know billions of
years of evolution they have goals they
have preferences they're not just going
to sit where you put them that's
hilarious that you have to talk your
material and to keep your kitchen that's
it that is exactly right that is exactly
right stay there it's like getting a
bunch of cats or something and trying to
organize the shape out of them it's
funny we're on the same page here
because in a paper this is this is
currently um just been accepted in
nature by engineering one of the figures
I have is building a tower out of Legos
versus dogs right yeah so think about
the difference right if you build out of
Legos you have full control over where
it's going to go but if somebody knocks
it over it's game over with the dogs you
cannot just come and stack them they're
not going to stay that way but the good
news is that if you train them then
somebody knocks it over they'll get
right back up so it's all right so as an
engineer what you really want to know is
what can they depend on this thing to do
right that's really you know a lot of
people have definitions of robots as far
as what they're made of or how they got
here you know design versus evolve
whatever I don't think any of that is
useful I think I think as an engineer
what you want to know is how much can I
depend on this thing to do when I'm not
around to micromanage it what level of
uh what level of dependency can I can I
give this thing how much agency does it
have which then tells you what
techniques do you use so do you use
micromanagement like you put everything
where it goes do you train it do you
give it signals do you try to convince
it to do things right how much you know
how intelligent is your substrate and so
now we're moving into this into this
area where you're you're working with
agential materials that's a
collaboration that's not that's not old
old style what's the word you're using a
gentle a gentle what's that mean agency
if it comes from the word agency so so
basically the material has agency
meaning that it has some some level of
obviously not human level but some level
of uh preferences goals memories ability
to remember things to compute into the
future meaning anticipate uh you know
when you're working with cells they have
all of that to some to various degrees
is that empowering or limiting having
material as a mind of its own literally
I think it's both right so it raises
difficulties because it means that it if
you if you're using the old mindset
which is a linear
um kind of extrapolation of what's going
to happen you're going to be surprised
and shocked all the time because biology
uh does not do what we linearly expect
materials to do on the other hand it's
massively liberating and so in the
following way I've argued that advances
in regenerative medicine require us to
take advantage of this because what it
means is that you can get the material
to do things that you don't know how to
micromanage so just as a simple example
right if you if you you had a rat and uh
you wanted this rat to do a circus trick
put a ball in the little hoop you can do
it the micromanagement way which is try
to control every neuron and try to play
the thing like a puppet right and maybe
someday that'll be possible maybe or you
can train the rat and this is why
Humanity for thousands of years before
we knew any Neuroscience we had no idea
what's behind what's between the ears of
any animal we were able to train these
animals because once you recognize the
level of agency of a certain system you
can use appropriate techniques if you
know the currency of motivation reward
and Punishment you know how smart it is
you know what kinds of things it likes
to do you are searching a much more much
smoother much nicer problem space than
if you try to micromanage the thing and
then regenerative medicine when you're
trying to get let's say an arm to grow
back or an eye to repair so birth defect
or something do you really want to be
controlling tens of thousands of genes
at each point to try to micromanage it
or do you want to find the high level
modular control roles let's say build an
arm here you already know how to build
an arm you did it before do it again so
that's I I think it's it's both it's
both the difficult and it challenges us
to develop new ways of engineering and
it's it's hugely empowering okay so how
do you do I mean maybe sticking with the
metaphor of dogs and cats
I presume you have to figure out the
find the dogs and uh dispose of the cats
um because you know it's like the old
herding cats is an issue so you may be
able to train dogs
I suspect you will not be able to train
cats
or if you do you're never going to be
able to trust them so is there a way to
figure out which material is amenable
to hurting is it in the lab work or is
it in simulation right now it's largely
in the lab because we are our
simulations do not capture yet the most
uh interesting and Powerful things about
biology so the simulation what what
we're pretty good at simulating are feed
forward emergent types of things right
so cellular automata if you have simple
rules and you sort of roll those forward
for every every agent or every cell in
the simulation then complex things
happen you know ant colony or algorithms
things like that we're we're good at
that and that's and that's fine the
difficulty with all of that is that it's
incredibly hard to reverse so this is a
really hard inverse problem right if you
look at a bunch of termites and they
make a you know a thing with a single
chimney and you say well I like it but
I'd like two chimneys how do you change
the rules of behavior for each termite
so they make two chimneys right or or if
you say hear a bunch of cells that are
creating this kind of organism I I don't
think that's optimal I'd like to to
repair that birth defect how do you
control all the all the individual
low-level rules right all the protein
interactions and everything else rolling
it back from the anatomy that you want
to the low-level Hardware rules is in
general intractable it's a it's an
inverse problem that's generally not
soluble so
um right now it's mostly in the lab
because what we need to do is we need to
understand how biology uses top-down
controls so the idea is not not
bottom-up emergence but the idea of
things like gold directed uh test
operate exit kinds of Loops where where
it's basically an error minimization
function over a new space it's not a
space of gene expression but for example
a space of anatomy so just as a simple
example if you have you have a
salamander it's got an arm you can you
can amputate that arm anywhere along the
length it will grow exactly what's
needed and then it stops that's the most
amazing thing about regeneration is that
it stops it knows when to stop when does
it stop it stops when a correct
salamander arm has been completed so
that tells you that's the right that's a
that's a uh a mean Zen's kind of
analysis where it has to know what the
correct limb is supposed to look like
right so it has a way to ascertain the
current shape it has a way to measure
that Delta from from what shape it's
supposed to be and then we'll keep
taking actions meaning Remodeling and
growing and everything else until that's
complete so once you know that and we've
taken advantage of this in the lab to do
some some really wild things with with
both planaria and frog embryos and so on
once you know that
um you can start playing with that uh
with that homeostatic cycle you can ask
for example well how does it remember
what the correct shape is and can we
mess with that memory can we give it a
false memory of what the shape should be
and let the cells build something else
or can we mess with the measurement
apparatus right so it gives you it gives
you those kinds of so so the idea is to
basically appropriate a lot of the um
approaches and Concepts from cognitive
neuroscience and Behavioral Science into
things that uh previously were taken to
be dumb materials and you know you get
yelled at in class if you if you for
being anthropomorphic if you said well
my cells want to do this and my cells
want to do that and I think I think
that's a that's a major mistake that
leaves a ton of capabilities on the
table so thinking about biologic systems
is things that have memory have almost
something like cognitive ability
but
I mean
how incredible is it you know that the
salamander arm is being
rebuilt not with a dictator
it's kind of like the cellular automata
system all the individual workers are
doing their own thing
so where's that oh wait top down signal
that doesn't control coming from like
how can you find it yeah like why does
it stop growing how does it know the
shape how does it have memory of the
shape and how does it tell everybody to
be like whoa whoa slow down we're done
so the first thing to to think about I
think is that there are no examples
anywhere of of a central dictator
because in in this in this kind of
science because everything is made of
parts and so we we even though we we
feel as a unified Central sort of
intelligence and kind of point of of
cognition we are a bag of neurons right
we all intelligence is collective
intelligence there's this this is
important to kind of um and think about
because a lot of people think okay
there's real intelligence like me and
then there's collective intelligence
which is the ants and flocks of birds
and you know termites and things like
that and and you know and and maybe it's
appropriate to think of them as a as a
as an individual and maybe it's not a
lot of people are skeptical about about
that and so on but you've got to realize
that we are not there's no such thing as
this like indivisible Diamond of
intelligence that's like this one
Central thing that's not made of parts
we are all made of parts and so if if
you believe that which I think is is
hard to uh to get around that that we in
fact have a centralized um set of goals
and preferences and we plan and we do
things and so on you are already
committed to the fact that a collection
of cells is able to do this because we
are a collection of cells there's no
getting around that in our case what we
do is we navigate the three-dimensional
world and we have Behavior this is
blowing my mind right now because we are
just a collection of stuff oh yeah yeah
so when I'm moving this arm
I feel like I'm the central dictator of
that action but there's a lot of stuff
going on like every all all the cells
here collaborating in some interesting
way they're getting signal from the
central nervous system well even the
central nervous system is is
misleadingly named because it isn't
really Central again it's it's what it's
just a bunch of cells I mean all of the
right there are no you there are no
singular indivisible intelligences
anywhere we are all every every example
that we've ever seen is is a collective
of some of something it's just that
we're used to it we're used to that you
know we're used to okay this thing is
kind of a single thing but it's really
not you zoom in you know what you see
you see a bunch of cells running around
and so is there some unifying I mean
we're just jumping around but that
something that you look as the the
biological signal versus the biochemical
the
um the chemistry the electricity
maybe the life isn't that
versus the cells
it's the uh there's there's an orchestra
playing and uh the resulting music is
the dictator that's not bad um Dennis
that's Dennis Nobles uh kind of view of
things he has two really good books
where he talks about this musical
analogy right so so I think that's
that's I like it um I like it is it
wrong though I don't think it's no I
don't think it's wrong
um I don't I don't think it's wrong I
think I think the important thing about
it is that we have to come to grips with
the fact that a true a a true proper uh
cognitive intelligence can still be made
of Parts those things are and in fact it
has to be and I I think it's a real
shame but I see this all the time when
you have uh when you have a collective
like this whether it be uh a group of
robots or a you know a collection of
cells or neurons or whatever as soon as
as soon as we gain some insight into how
it works right meaning that oh I see in
order to take this action here's the
information that got processed via this
camera mechanism or whatever immediately
people say oh well then that's not real
cognition that's just physics I think
this is this is fundamentally flawed
because if you zoom into anything what
are you going to see of course you're
just going to see physics what else
could be underneath right that's not
going to be fairy dust it's going to be
physics and chemistry but that doesn't
take away from the magic of the fact
that there are certain ways to arrange
that physics and chemistry and in
particular the bioelectricity which I
like a lot uh to give you an emergent uh
Collective with goals and preferences
and memories and anticipations that do
not belong to any of the subunits so I
think what we're getting into here and
we can talk about how how this happens
during embryogenesis and so on what
we're getting into is the origin of the
of a self yeah with a big with a capital
S so we ourselves there are many other
kinds of selves and we can tell some
really interesting stories about where
selves come from and how they become
unified yeah is this the first
or at least humans tend to think that
this is the the level at which the self
with the capital s is first born
but uh and we really don't want to see
um human civilization or Earth itself as
one living organism yeah that's very
uncomfortable to us it is yeah but is um
yeah where's the self born we have to
grow up past that so what I like to do
is uh I'll tell you two quick stories
about that I like to roll backwards so
so as opposed to so if you start and you
say okay here's a paramecium and you see
it um you know it's a single cell
organism you see it doing various things
and people will say okay I'm sure
there's some chemical story to be told
about how it's doing it so that's not
true cognition right and people will
argue about that I I like to work it
backwards I said let's let's agree that
you and I as as we sit here are examples
of true cognition if anything is if
there's anything that's true cognition
we are we are examples of it now let's
just roll back slowly right so you roll
back to the time when you're a small
child and used to doing whatever and
then just sort of day by day you roll
you roll back and eventually you become
more or less that paramecium and then
and then you sort of even below that
right as an unfertilized Osa so it's no
one has to my knowledge no one has come
up with any convincing discreet Step At
which my cognitive Powers disappear
right it just doesn't the biology
doesn't offer any specific step it's com
it's incredibly smooth and slow and
continuous and so I think this idea that
it just sort of magically shows up uh at
one point and then and then uh you know
humans have true selves that don't exist
elsewhere I think it runs against
everything we know about Evolution
everything we know about developmental
biology these are all slow continua and
the other really important story I want
to tell is where embryos come from so
think about this for a second amniot
embryo so this is humans birds and so on
mammals and birds and so on imagine a
flat disc of cells so there's maybe 50
000 cells and in that so when you get an
egg from a from a fertilizer let's say
you buy a fertilized egg from a farm
right that that egg uh will will have
about 50 000 cells in um in a flat disc
it looks like a little little tiny
little Frisbee and in that flat disc
what will happen is there'll be uh one
one set of cells will uh becomes will
become special and it will tell all the
other cells I'm I'm going to be the head
you guys don't be the head and so it'll
amplify symmetry breaking amplification
you get one embryo there's a there's a
you know there's some neural tissue and
some other stuff forms now now you say
okay I had one egg and one embryo and
then there you go what else could it be
well the reality is and I used to I I
did all of this as a grad student if you
um if you take a little needle and you
make a scratch in that blasted room in
that in that disc such that the cells
can't talk to each other for a while it
heals up but for a while they can't talk
to each other what will happen is that
uh both regions will decide that they
can be the embryo and there will be two
of them and then when they heal up they
become conjoint Twins and you can make
two you can make three you can make lots
so the question of how many selves are
in there cannot be answered until it's
actually played all the way through it
isn't necessarily that there's just one
there can be many so what you have is
you have this medium this this
undifferentiated I'm sure there's a
there's a psychological
um version of this somewhere that I
don't know the proper terminology but
you have this you have this list like
put ocean of potentiality you have these
thousands of cells and some number of
individuals are going to be formed out
of it usually one sometimes zero
sometimes several and they they form out
of these cells because a region of these
cells organizes into a collective that
will have goals goals that individual
cells don't have for example make a limb
make an eye how many eyes well exactly
two so individual cells don't know what
an eye is they don't know how many eyes
you're supposed to have but the
collective does the collective has goals
and memories and anticipations that the
individual cells don't and that that the
establishment of that boundary with its
own ability to maintain to to pursue
certain goals that's the origin of of
selfhood
but I is that goal
in there somewhere but they always
destined like are they discovering that
goal like where the hell did Evolution
um discover this when you went from the
prokaryotes to you you carry out excels
and then they started making groups and
when you make a certain group you make a
you you make it sound
that's such a tricky thing to try to
understand you make it sound like this
cells didn't get together and came up
with a goal but the very Act of them
getting together
revealed the goal that was always there
there was always that potential for that
goal so the first thing to say is that
there are way more questions here than
than certainties okay so everything I'm
telling you is is Cutting Edge
developing you know stuff so so it's not
as if any of us know the answer to this
but but here's here's here's my opinion
on this I think what evolution I I don't
think that Evolution produces solutions
to specific problems in other words
specific environments like here's a frog
that can live well in a froggy
environment I think what evolution
produces is problem-solving machines and
that that will that will solve problems
in different spaces so not just
three-dimensional space this goes back
to what we were talking about before we
the the brain is a evolutionarily a late
development it's a system that is able
to to pursue goals in three-dimensional
Space by giving commands to muscles
where did that system come from that
system evolved from a much more ancient
evolutionarily much more ancient system
where collections of cells gave
instructions to for cell behaviors
meaning cells move to to divide to to
die to change into different cell types
to navigate morphe space the space of
anatomies the space of all possible
anatomies and before that cells were
navigating transcriptional space which
is a space of all possible Gene
expressions and before that metabolic
space so what evolution has done I think
is is is produced Hardware that is very
good at navigating different spaces
using a bag of tricks right which which
I'm sure many of them we can steal for
autonomous vehicles and Robotics and
various things and what happens is that
they navigate these spaces without a
whole lot of commitment to what the
space is in fact they don't know what
the space is right we are all brains in
a vat so to speak every cell does not
know right every cell is some other some
other cells external environment right
so where does the with that border
between you you and the outside world
you don't really know where that is
right every every collection of cell has
to figure that out from scratch
and the fact that Evolution requires all
of these things to figure out what they
are what effectors they have what
sensors they have where does it make
sense to draw a boundary between me and
the outside world the fact that you have
to build all that from scratch this
autopoiesis is what defines uh the
border of a self now biology uses like a
um a multi a multi-scale competency
architecture meaning that every level
has goals so so molecular networks have
goals cells have goals tissues organs
colonies uh and and it's the interplay
of all of those that uh that enable
biology to solve problems in new ways
for example and xenobots and various
other things
um this is
you know uh it's it's exactly as you
said in many ways the cells are
discovering new ways of being but at the
same time Evolution certainly shapes all
this so so evolution is very good at
this agential bioengineering right when
evolution is uh discovering a new way of
being an animal yet one animal or a
plant or something sometimes it's by
changing the hardware you know protein
changing proteins protein structure and
so on but much of the time it's not by
changing the hardware it's by changing
the signals that the cells give to each
other it's doing what we as Engineers do
which is try to convince the cells to do
various things by using signals
experiences stimuli that's what biology
does it has to because it's not dealing
with a blank slate every time as you
know if you're a Evolution and you're
trying to uh uh make make a make an
organism you're not dealing with a
passive material that is is fresh and
you have to specify it already wants to
do certain things so the easiest way to
do that search to find whatever is going
to be adaptive is to find the signals
that are going to um convince cells to
do various things right
your sense is that Evolution operates
both in the software and the hardware
and it's just easier more efficient to
operate in the software yes and I should
also say I I don't think the distinction
is sharp in other words I think it's a
Continuum but I think we can but I think
it's a meaningful distinction where you
can make changes to a particular protein
and now the enzymatic function is
different and it metabolizes differently
and whatever and that will have
implications for Fitness or you can
change the huge
um amount of information in the genome
that isn't structural at all it's it's
uh it's signaling it's when and how do
cells say certain things to each other
and that can have massive changes as far
as how it's going to solve problems I
mean this idea of multi-hierarchical
competence architecture which is
incredible to think about so this
hierarchy that Evolution builds I don't
know who's responsible for this
I also see the incompetence of
bureaucracies of humans when they get
together
so how the hell does evolution build
this where
at every level only the best get to
stick around they somehow figure out how
to do their job without knowing the
bigger picture
and then there's like the bosses that do
the bigger thing
somehow or that you can now abstract
away the small group of cells as a as an
organ or something and then that organ
does something bigger
in the context of the full body or
something like this
how is that built is there some
intuition you can kind of provide of how
that's constructed that that
hierarchical confidence architecture
I love that confidence just the word
confidence is pretty cool in this
context because everybody's good at
their job somehow yeah no it's really
key and the other nice thing about
competency is that so so my my central
belief in all of this is that
engineering is the right perspective on
all of this stuff because it gets you
away from uh subjective uh terms you
know people talk about sentience and
this and that those things very hard to
define or people argue about them
philosophically I think that engineering
terms like competency like um you know
pursuit of goals right all of these
things are uh are empirically incredibly
useful because you know it when you see
it and if it helps you build right if I
if I can pick the right level I say uh
this thing has I believe this is X level
of like con if you competency I think
it's like a thermostat or I think it's
like a a better thermostat or I think
it's a you know a a various other kinds
of you know many many different kinds of
complex systems if that helps me to
control and and predict and build such
system then that's all there is to say
there's no more philosophy to argue
about so so I like competency in that
way because you can quantify you could
you have to in fact you have to you have
to make a claim competent at what and
then or if I say if I tell you it has a
goal the question is what's the goal and
how do you know and I say well because
every time I deviated from this
particular State that's what it spends
energy to get back to that's the goal
and we can quantify and we can be
objective about it so so so the the when
we're not used to thinking about this I
I give a talk sometimes called why don't
robots get cancer right and the reason
robots don't get cancer is because
generally speaking with a few exceptions
are our architectures have been you've
got a bunch of dumb parts and you hope
that if you put them together the the
the the overlying machine will have some
intelligence and do something rather
right but the individual Parts don't
don't care they don't have an agenda
biology isn't like that every level has
an agenda and the final outcome is the
result of cooperation and competition
both within and across levels so for
example during embryogenesis your
tissues and organs are competing with
each other and it's actually a really
important part of development there's a
reason they compete with each other
they're not all just uh you know sort of
helping each other they're also
competing for for information for
metabolic for limited metabolic
constraints
but to get back to your your other point
which is you know which is which is this
seems like really efficient and and good
and and so on compared to some of our
human efforts we also have to keep in
mind that what happens here is that each
level
bends the option space for the level
beneath so that your parts basically
they don't see the the geometry so so
I'm using um and I think I I take this
this seriously uh terminology from from
like um from like relativity right where
the space is literally bent so the
option space is deformed by the higher
level so that the lower levels all they
really have to do is go down their
concentration gradient they don't have
to in fact they don't they can't know
what the big picture is but if you bend
the space just right if they do what
locally seems right they end up doing
your bidding they end up doing things
that are optimal in the in the higher
space conversely because the components
are good at getting their job done you
as the higher level don't need to to try
to compute all the low level controls
all you're doing is bending the space
you don't know or care how they're going
to do it give you a super simple example
in the um in the tadpole we found that
okay so so tadpoles need to become frogs
and to become to go from a tadpole head
to a frog head you have to rearrange the
face so the eyes have to move forward
the Jaws have to to come out the
nostrils move like everything moves it
used to be thought that because all
tadpoles look the same and all frogs
look the same if you just remember if
every piece just moves in the right
direction the right amount then you get
your you get your frog right so we
decided to test we I had this hypothesis
that I thought I thought actually the
system is probably more intelligent than
that so what did we do we made what we
call Picasso tadpoles so these are so
everything is scramble so the eyes are
on the back of the head their jaws are
off to the side everything is scrambled
well guess what they make they make
pretty normal frogs because all the
different things move around in novel
paths configurations until they get to
the correct froggy sort of frog face
configuration then they stop so so the
thing about that is now imagine
Evolution right so so you make some sort
of mutation and it does like every
mutation it does many things so so
something good comes of it but also it
moves your mouth off to the side right
now if if if there wasn't this
multi-scale companies you can see where
this is going if there wasn't this
multi-scale competency the organism
would be dead your Fitness is zero
because you can't eat and you would
never get to explore the other
beneficial consequences of that mutation
you'd have to wait until you find some
other way of doing it without moving
them out that's really hard so so the
fitness landscape would be incredibly
rugged Evolution would take forever the
reason it works one of the reasons it
works so well is because you do that no
worries the mouth will find its way
where where it belongs right so now you
get to explore so so what that means is
that all these mutations that otherwise
would be deleterious are now neutral
because the competency of the parts
make up for all kinds of things so all
the noise of development all the the
variability in the environment all these
things the companies do the parts makes
up for it so the so so that's all that's
all fantastic right that's all that's
all great the only other thing to
remember when we compare this to human
efforts is this every component has its
own goals in various spaces usually with
very little regard for the welfare of
the other levels so so as a simple
example you know
um you as a as a complex system
um you will go out and you will do you
know Jiu Jitsu or whatever you'll have
some to go rock climbing scrape a bunch
of cells off your hands and then you're
happy as a system right you come back
and you've you've accomplished some
goals and you're really happy those
cells are dead they're gone right did
you think about those cells not really
right you had some you had some bruising
out selfish SLB that's it and so and so
that's the thing to remember is that
um you know and we know this from from
history is that is that just being a
collective isn't enough because uh what
the goals of that Collective will be
relative to the welfare of the
individual Parts is a massively open
place justify the means I'm telling you
Stalin was on to something no that's the
danger but we can exactly that's the
danger of uh
for us humans we have to construct
ethical systems
under which we don't take seriously the
full mechanism of biology and apply it
to the way the world functions which is
which is an interesting line we've drawn
the world that built us
is the one we reject in some sense when
we construct human societies the idea
that this country was founded on that
all men are created equal that's such a
fascinating idea it's like uh you're
fighting against
nature
and you're saying well there's something
bigger here than um yeah a hierarchical
competency architecture yeah uh but
there's so many interesting things you
said so from an algorithmic perspective
the act of bending the option space
that's really that's really profound
because if you look at the way AI
systems are built today there's a big
system like I said with robots and as a
goal and he gets better and better at
optimizing that goal at accomplishing
that goal but if biology built a
hierarchical system where everything is
doing computation
and everything is accomplishing the goal
not only that
it's kind of dumb
you know with the uh with the limited
with the bent option space it's just
doing the thing that's the easiest thing
for it in some sense and somehow that
allows you to have
um Turtles on top of turtles literally
dump systems on top of dump systems that
as a whole create something incredibly
smart yeah I mean every system is has
some degree of intelligence in its own
problem domain so so cells will have
problems they're trying to solve in
physiological space and transcriptional
space and then I could give you some
some cool examples of that but the
collective is trying to solve problems
in anatomical space right and forming a
you know a creature and growing your
blood vessels and so on and then the
collect the the the the whole body is
solving yet other problems they may be
in Social space and linguistic space in
three-dimensional space and and who
knows you know the group might be
solving problems and and um you know I
don't know some sort of financial space
or something so one of the major
differences with with most
um uh with most AIS today is is a the
the kind of flatness of the architecture
but also of the fact that they're
constructed
from outside their their borders and
their you know so so if you're so to a
large extent and of course there are
counter examples now but but to a large
extent our technology has been such that
you create a machine or a robot it knows
what its sensors are it knows what its
effectors are it knows the boundary
between it and the outside world all
this is given from the outside
biology constructs this from scratch now
the best example of this that that
originally uh in in robotics was
actually Josh bongard's work in 2006
where he made these these robots that
did not know their shape to start with
so like a baby these are floundered
around they made some hypotheses well I
did this and I moved in this way well
maybe I'm a whatever maybe I have wheels
or maybe I have six legs or whatever
right and they would make a model and
eventually they would crawl around so
that's I mean that's really good that's
part of the autopoiesis but we can go a
step further and some people are doing
this and then we're sort of working on
some of this too is this idea that let's
even go back further you don't even know
what sensors you have you don't know
where you end and the outside world
begins all you have is is certain things
like active inference meaning you're
trying to minimize surprise right you
have some metabolic constraints you
don't have all the energy you need you
don't have all the time in the world to
to think about everything you want to
think about so that means that you can't
afford to be a micro
um reductionist you know all this data
coming in you have to coarse grain it
and say I'm going to take all this stuff
and I'm going to call that a cat I'm
gonna take all this I'm going to call
that the edge of the table I don't want
to follow off of and I don't want to
know anything about the microstates what
I want to know is what is the optimal
way to cut up my world and by the way
this thing over here that's me and the
reason that's me is because I have more
control over this than I have over any
of this other stuff and so now you can
begin to write so that's
self-construction that that figuring out
making models of the outside world and
then turning that inwards and starting
to make a model of yourself right which
immediately starts to get into issues of
agency and control because
in order to if if you are under
metabolic constraints meaning you don't
have the energy right that all the
energy in the world you have to be
efficient that immediately forces you to
start telling stories about course
grained agents that do things right you
don't have the energy to like laplaces
demon you know calculate every every
possible uh State that's going to happen
you have to you have to coarse grain and
you have to say that is the kind of
creature that does things either things
that I avoid or things that I will go
towards that's a mate or food or
whatever it's going to be and so right
at the base of uh simple very simple
organisms starting to make
models of Agents doing things that is
the origin of uh models of of Free Will
basically right because you see the
world around you as having agency and
then you turn that on yourself and you
say wait I have agency too I can I do
things right and and then you make
decisions about what you're going to do
so all of this one one model is to view
all of those kinds of things as
being driven by that early need to
determine what you are and to do so and
to then take actions in the most
energetically efficient space possible
right so free will emerges when you try
to simplify tell a nice narrative about
your environment I think that's very
possible yeah do you think free was an
illusion
so so you're kind of implying that it's
a useful hack
well I'll say two things the first thing
is I think I think it's very plausible
to say that any organism that's self or
any agent that's self whether it's
biological or not any agent that
self-constructs under energy constraints
is going to believe in free will but
we'll get to whether it has free will
momentarily but but I think but I think
what what it definitely drives is a view
of yourself and the outside world as an
agential view I think that's inescapable
so that's true for even primitive
organisms I think so I think that's now
now they don't have now obviously you
have to scale down right so so so so
they don't have for the kinds of complex
metacognition that we have so they can
do long-term planning and thinking about
Free Will and so and so on but but the
sense of agency is really useful to
accomplish a tasks simple or complicated
that's right in in all kinds of spaces
not just in in obvious three-dimensional
space I mean we're very good that the
thing is
humans are very good at detecting agency
of like medium-sized objects moving at
medium speeds in the three-dimensional
world right we see a bowling ball and we
see a mouse and we immediately know what
the difference is right and how we're
gonna mostly things you can eat or get
eaten by yeah yeah that's our that's our
training set right from the time you're
little your training set is visual data
on on this this like little chunk of
your experience but imagine if imagine
if uh from the time that we were born we
had innate senses of your blood
chemistry if you could feel your blood
chemistry the way you can see right you
had a high bandwidth connection and you
could feel your blood chemistry and you
could see you could sense all the things
that your organs were doing so your
pancreas your liver all the things if if
we had that you we would be very good at
detecting intelligence and physiological
space we would know the level of
intelligence that our various organs
were deploying to deal with things that
were coming to anticipate the stimuli to
you know but but we're just terrible at
that we don't in fact in fact people
don't even you know you talk about
intelligence to these other spaces and a
lot of people think that's just crazy
because because all all we're all we
know is motion we do have access to that
information so it's actually possible
that uh so Evolution could if we wanted
to construct an organism that's able to
perceive the flow of blood through your
body the way you see an old friend and
say yo what's up how's the wife and the
kids uh in that same way you would see
that you would feel like a connection to
the liver yeah yeah I think you know
maybe other people's liver no just your
own because you don't have access to
other people's lives not yet but you
could imagine some really interesting
connection right but like sexual
selection like oh that girl's got a nice
liver well that's like the the way her
blood flows the the Dynamics of the
blood
uh is very interesting it's novel I've
never seen one of those but you know
that's that's exactly what we're trying
to half-ass when we when we um uh judge
Judgment of beauty by facial Symmetry
and so on that's that's a half-assed
assessment of exactly that of exactly
that because if your cells could not
cooperate enough to keep your your
organism symmetrical yeah you know you
can make some inferences about what else
is wrong right like that's a that's a
very you know that's a very basic
interesting yeah so that in some deep
sense actually that is what we're doing
where
trying to infer
how
the health we use the word healthy but
basically how functional is this
biological system I'm looking at so I
can con hook up with that one and make
Offspring yeah yeah well what kind of
Hardware might their genomics give me
that that might be useful in the future
I wonder why Evolution didn't give us
um higher resolution signal like why the
whole peacock thing with the feathers it
doesn't seem
the very low bandwidth signal for sexual
selection I'm gonna and I'm not an
expert on on this stuff but on peacocks
well no you know but but I'll take a
stab at the reason I think that it's
because it's an arms race you see you
don't want everybody to know everything
about you so I think that as much as as
much as and in fact there's another
interesting part of this arms race which
is
if you think about this uh the the most
adaptive evolvable system is one that
has the most level of top-down control
right if it's really easy to say to a
bunch of cells make another finger
versus okay here's 10 000 gene
expression changes that you need to do
to make it to change your finger right
the the the the the the system with good
top-down control that has memory and we
need to get back to that by the way
that's a question I neglected to answer
about where the memory is and so on
um a system that uses all of that is
really highly evolvable and that's
fantastic but guess what it's also
highly um subject to hijacking by
parasites by uh by by by cheaters of
various kinds by con specifics like we
we found that um and then that that goes
back to the story of the pattern memory
these in these planaria there's a
bacterium that lives on these planaria
that bacterium has an input into how
many heads the worm is going to have
because it's hijacks that that control
system and it's able to make a chemical
that basically interfaces with the
system that calculates how many heads
you're supposed to have have and they
can have to and they can make them have
two heads and so you can imagine that if
you are two so you want to be
understandable for your own parts to
understand each other but you don't want
to be too understandable because you'll
be too easily controllable and so I
think that that my guess is that that
um that that that that opposing pressure
keeps this from being a super high
bandwidth kind of thing where we can
just look at somebody and know you know
everything about them so it's a kind of
biological game of Texas Hold'em yeah
he's showing some cards and you're
hiding other cards and that's part of it
and there's bluffing and there's and all
that and then just probably whole
species that would do way too much
bluffing that's probably where peacocks
fall I mean there's a there's a book
that I don't remember if I read or if I
if I wrote If I read summaries of the
book but it's about the evolution of
beauty and birds where is that from is
that a book or does Richard Dawkins talk
about it but basically there's some
species start to like over select for
beauty not overselect they just some
reason select for beauty there is a case
to be made actually now I'm starting to
remember I think Darwin himself made a
case that you can select based on beauty
alone
so yeah that beauty there's a point
would be it doesn't represent some
underlying biological truth you start to
select for for beauty itself and I think
the the Deep question is there is some
if is there some evolutionary value to
Beauty but that's an interesting kind of
thought that this
can we deviate completely from the deep
biological truth to actually appreciate
some kind of the the summarization
itself
let me get back to memory because that's
a really interesting idea
um
how do a collection of cells remember
anything how do biological systems
remember anything how is that akin to
the kind of memory we think of humans as
having within our big cognitive engine
yeah one of the ways to start thinking
about bioelectricity is to ask ourselves
where did neurons and all these cool
tricks that the brain uses to run these
amazing problem-solving abilities on and
basically an electrical Network right
where did that come from they didn't
just evolve you know up here out of
nowhere it must have evolved from
something and what it evolved from was a
much more ancient ability of cells to
form networks to solve other kinds of
problems for example to navigate morphos
space to control the body's shape and so
all of the components
of uh of neurons so so ion channels um
neurotransmitter Machinery electrical
synapses all this stuff is way older
than brains way older than neurons in
fact older than multicellularity and so
it was already even even bacterial
biofilms there's some beautiful work
from UCSD on on on brain-like Dynamics
and bacterial biofilms so Evolution
figured out very early on that
electrical networks are amazing at
having memories at integrating
information across distance at different
kinds of optimization tasks you know
image recognition and so on long before
there were brains can you actually step
back we'll return to it what is
bioelectricity what is biochemistry what
is what are electrical networks I think
a lot of the biology Community focuses
on
the chemicals as the signaling
mechanisms that make the whole thing
work you have
I think
to a large degree uniquely maybe you can
correct me on that have focused on the
bioelectricity which is using
electricity for signaling there's also
probably mechanical sure sure knocking
on the door
uh so what what what's the difference
and what's an electrical Network yeah so
I want to make sure and and kind of give
credit where creditors do so so as far
back as 1903 and probably
um late 1800s already people were
thinking about the importance of
electrical phenomena in in life so I'm
for sure not the first person to stress
the importance of electricity
um people there were there were waves of
research in the in the 30s in the 40s
and then again in the kind of uh 70s 80s
and 90s of of sort of the pioneers of
bioelectricity who did some amazing work
on all this I think I think what what
we've done that's new is to step away
from this idea that and I'll describe
what what the bioelectricity is is step
away from the idea that well here's
another piece of physics that you need
to keep track of to understand
physiology and development and to really
start looking at this as saying no this
is a a privileged computational layer
that gives you access to the actual
cognition of the tissue of basal
cognition so so merging that that
developmental biophysics with ideas and
cognition of computation and so on I
think I think that's what we've done
that's new but people have been talking
about bioelectricity for a really long
time and and so also I'll Define that so
um what happens is that uh if you have
uh if you have a single cell cell has a
membrane in that membrane are proteins
called ion channels and those proteins
allow charged molecules potassium sodium
chloride to go in and out under certain
circumstances and when there's an
imbalance of of those ions there becomes
a voltage gradient across that membrane
and so all cells all living cells try to
hold a particular kind of voltage uh
difference across the membrane and they
spend a lot of energy to do so when you
now now so so that's that's a single
cell when you have multiple cells that's
all sitting next to each other they can
communicate their voltage state to each
other via a number of different ways but
one of them is this thing called a gap
Junction which is basically like a
Little Submarine hash that's just kind
of docks right and the ions from one
side can flow to the other side and vice
versa
so isn't it incredible that this evolved
it's not it's not wild because that
didn't exist
correct this had to be this had to be
evolved and had to be invented that's
right somebody invented electricity in
the in the ocean one of this is a good
event yeah so so I mean it is it is
incredible um the guy who discovered Gap
Junctions Werner Lowenstein I visited
him he was really old human being he
discovered because who really discovered
them live probably four billion years
ago good point so your your give credit
where credit is due he he rediscovered
he rediscovered uh Gap Junctions but um
when I visited him in in Woods Hole uh
maybe 20 years ago now uh he told me
that he was writing and unfortunately he
he passed away and I think this this
book never got written he was writing a
book on on Gap Junctions and
Consciousness and I think I think it
would have been a an Incredible Book
because because Gap junctures are magic
I'll explain why in a minute uh what
happens is that just imagine the thing
about both these ion channels and these
Gap Junctions is that many of them are
themselves voltage sensitive
so that's a voltage sensitive current
conductance that's a transistor and as
soon as you've invented one immediately
you now get access to from from this
platonic space of of mathematical truths
you get access to all of the cool things
that transistors do so now when you have
a network of cells not only do they do
they talk to each other but they can
send messages to each other and the
differences of voltage can propagate now
to neuroscientists this is old hat
because you see this in the brain right
this action potential is the you know
the electricity
um you can you can they have they have
these awesome movies where you can take
a zebra like a transparent animal like a
zebrafish you can literally look down
and you can see all the all the firings
as the fish is like making decisions
about what to eat and things like this
right it's amazing well your whole body
is doing that all the time just much
slower so there are very few things that
neurons do that other cells that all the
cells in your body don't do they all
they all do very similar things just on
a much slower time scale and whereas
your brain is thinking about thing how
to uh solve problems in
three-dimensional space the cell embryo
are thinking about how to solve problems
in anatomical space they're trying to
have memories like hey how many fingers
are we supposed to have well how many do
we have now what do we do to get from
here to there that's the kind of
problems they're thinking about and the
reason that Gap Junctions are magic is
Imagine right from the from the from the
earliest from the earliest time
I'm here are two cells this cell uh how
can they communicate well well the
simple version is this cell could send a
chemical a chemical signal it floats
over and it hits a receptor on this cell
right
because it comes from outside this cell
can very easily tell that that came from
outside it's this is whatever
information is coming that's not my
information that information is coming
from the outside so I can I can trust it
I can ignore it I can do various things
with it whatever but I know it comes
from the outside now imagine instead
that you have two cells with a gap
Junction between them something happens
let's say the cell gets poked there's a
calcium Spike the calcium Spike or
whatever small molecule signal
propagates through the Gap Junction to
the cell there's no ownership metadata
on that signal this cell does not know
now that it's didn't that it came from
outside because it looks exactly like
its own memories would have looked like
of being of being of whatever had
happened right so Gap Junctions to some
extent wipe ownership information on
data which means that if I can't if if
you and I are sharing memories and we
can't quite tell who the memories belong
to that's the beginning of a mind melt
that's the beginning of a scale up of
cognition from here's me and here's you
two no now there's just us so they
enforce the collective intelligence
that's our Gap Junction that's right it
helps it's the beginning it's not the
the whole story by any means but it's
the start where's State stored
of the system so there's some is it in
part in the Gap Junctions themselves is
it in the cells there are many many
layers to this as always in biology so
there are
um uh chemical networks so for example
Gene regulatory networks right which
which are or basically any kind of
chemical pathway where different
chemicals activate and repress each
other they can store memories so in the
dynamical system sense they can store
memories they can they can get into
stable states that are hard to pull them
out of right so that's that becomes once
they get in that's a memory a permanent
memory of so or a semi-permanent memory
of something that's happened there are
cytoskeletal structures right that are
physically they store they store
memories in in physical configuration
there are uh electrical memories like
flip-flops where there is no physical
right so so if you look at it I show my
students this example as a flip-flop and
the reason that it stores a zero one is
not because some some uh piece of the
hardware moved it's because there's a
there's a cycling of the current in one
side of the thing if I come over and I
hold
um you know I hold the other side to uh
to a high voltage for for you know a
brief period of time it flips over and
now it's here but the heart none of the
hardware moved the information is in a
stable dynamical sense and if you were
to x-ray the thing you couldn't tell me
if it was zero or one because all you
would see is where the hardware is you
wouldn't see the the energetic state of
the system so there are also so there
are bioelectrical states that are held
in that exact way like like volatile Ram
basically like in the in the electrical
status it's very akin to
the different ways the memory is stored
in a computer
so there's Ram there's hard drives you
can make that mapping right so I think
the interesting thing is that based on
the biology we can have a more
sophisticated you know I think we can
revise some of our some of our um
Computer Engineering methods because
there are some interesting things that
biology does we haven't done yet but but
you can but that map but that mapping is
not bad I mean I think it works in many
ways yeah I wonder because I mean the
way we build computers at the root of
computer science is the idea of proof of
correctness we program things to be
perfect
reliable
you know this idea of resilience and
robustness to unknown conditions is not
as important so that's what biology is
really good at so I don't know what kind
of systems I don't know how we go from a
computer to a biological system in the
future yeah I think that you know you
know the thing about biology like is is
all about making really important
decisions really quickly on very limited
information I mean that's what biology
is all about you have to act you have to
act now that Stakes are very high and
you don't know most of what you need to
know to be perfect and so there's not
even an attempt to be to be perfect or
to get it right in any sense there are
just uh things like active inference
minimize surprise optimize uh some some
efficiency and and some things like this
that that guides the whole the whole
business I mentioned to uh Offline that
um somebody is a Affinity work is Andre
capathi and he's uh amongst many things
also uh writes occasionally a great blog
he came up with this idea I don't know
if he coined the term but of software
2.0 uh where the programming is done in
the space of configuring these
artificial neural networks
is there some sense in which that would
be the future of programming for us
humans where we're
less doing like python-like programming
and more
um
how would you how would that look like
but basically doing the hyper parameters
of something akin to a biological system
and watching it Go and keeping it
adjusting it and creating some kind of
feedback loop within the system so
correct itself yeah and then we watch it
over time
accomplished the goals we wanted to
accomplish is that kind of the the dream
of the the dogs that you described in
the nature paper yeah yeah I mean that's
what you just painted is a very good um
description of our efforts at
regenerative medicine as a kind of
somatic Psychiatry so the idea is that
you're not you know you're not trying to
micromanage I mean think about the
limitations of of a lot of the medicines
today we try to
interact down at the level of Pathways
right so so we're trying to micromanage
it what what's the problem well one
problem is that for almost every
medicine other than antibiotics once you
stop it the problem comes right back you
haven't fixed anything you were
addressing symptoms you weren't actually
curing anything again except for
antibiotics uh that's one problem the
other problem is you have massive amount
of side effects because you were trying
to interact at the lowest level it's
right it's like I'm gonna you know I'm
gonna I'm gonna try to program this
computer by changing the the melting
point of copper like maybe you can do
things that way but my God it's hard to
to program it right at the hardware
level so what what I think we're we're
starting to understand is that and and
by the way this goes back to what you
were saying before about uh that we
could have access to our internal state
right so people who practice that kind
of stuff right so yoga and then
biofeedback and those those are all the
people that uniformly will say things
like well the body has an intelligence
in the scenario like those two sets
overlap perfectly because because that's
exactly right because once you once you
start thinking about it that way you
realize that the better locus of control
is not always at the lowest level this
is why we don't all program with a
soldering iron right we we we take
advantage of of the high level
intelligences that are there which means
trying to figure out okay which of your
tissues can learn what can they learn uh
what you know why is it that um certain
drugs stop working after you take them
for a while with this habituation right
and so can we understand habituation
sensitization associative learning and
these kinds of things in chemical
Pathways we're going to have a
completely different way I think
um we're gonna have a completely
different way of of using drugs and of
medicine in general when we start
focusing on the goal state States and on
the intelligence of our subsystems as
opposed to treating everything as if the
only path was micromanagement from
chemistry upwards well can you speak to
this idea of somatic Psychiatry what are
somatic cells how do they form
networks that use bioelectricity to have
memory and all those kinds of things
yeah what are somatic cells like Basics
here systematic cells just means the
cells of your body so much just means
body right so so somatic cells are just
this I'm not even specifically making a
distinction between somatic cells and
stem cells or anything like that I mean
basically all the cells in your body not
just neurons but all the cells in your
body
they form electrical networks during
embryogenesis during regeneration what
those networks are doing
in part is processing information about
what our current shape is and what the
goal shape is now how do I know this
because I can give you a couple of
examples one one example is when we
started studying this we said okay
here's a here's a planarian a planarian
is a flatworm it has one head and one
tail normally and the amazing the
several amazing things about planaria
but basically they kind of I think I
think planaria hold the answer to pretty
much every deep question of life for one
thing they're similar to our ancestors
so they have true symmetry they have a
true brain they're not like earthworms
they're you know they're much more
advanced life form they have lots of
different internal organs but they're
these little um they're about you know
maybe two centimeters in in the
centimeter to two in size
I have a head and a tail and the first
thing is plenary are Immortal so they do
not age there's no such thing as an old
planarian so that right there tells you
that these theories of thermodynamic
limitations of on lifespan are wrong
it's not it's not that well over time of
everything degrades no planaria can keep
it going for uh probably you know how
long have they've been around 400
million years right so these are the
actual so the plenary in our lab are
actually in physical continuity with
planaria that we're here 400 million
years ago so there's planaria that have
lived that long essentially what does it
mean physical continuity because because
what they do is they split in half the
way they reproduce is they split in half
so so the planarian the back the back
end grabs the petri dish the front end
takes off and then they rip themselves
in half but is it isn't in some sense
where
like you are a physical continuation Yes
except that except that we go through a
bottleneck of one cell which is the egg
they do not I mean they can there's
certain planarians so we go through a
very uh ruthless compression process and
they don't yes like an auto encoder you
know squash down to one cell and then
back out these these guys just tear
themselves in half and then each and
then and so the other amazing thing
about them is they regenerate so you can
cut them into pieces the record is I
think 276 or something like that by
Thomas Hunt Morgan uh and each piece
regrows a perfect little worm they know
exactly every piece knows exactly what's
missing what needs to happen uh in fact
in fact if you chop it in half as it
grows the other half uh the original the
original tissue shrinks so that when the
new tiny head shows up they're
proportional so it keeps it keeps
perfect proportion if you if you starve
them they shrink if you feed them again
they expand their control their
anatomical control is is just insane
somebody cut them into over 200 pieces
yeah yeah Thomas Hunt Morgan did hashtag
science yeah amazing yeah and maybe more
I mean they didn't have antibiotics back
then I bet he lost some due to infection
I bet I bet it's actually more than that
you could I bet you could do more than
that humans can do that
because well yeah yes I mean again true
I accept that you can't at the embryonic
level well that's that's the thing right
so so I tell when I talk about this I
said just remember that is as amazing as
it is to grow a whole planarian from a
tiny fragment half of the human
population can grow a full body from one
cell right so so development is really
you can look at development as a as a
just an example of regeneration yeah to
think we'll talk about regenerative
medicine but there's some sense what
would be like that warm in like 500
years ago
regrow hand yep I with we're given time
it takes time to grow large things but
for now yeah I think so I think you can
probably why not accelerate oh biology
takes his time I'm not going to say
anything is impossible but I don't know
of a way to accelerate these processes I
think it's possible I think we are going
to be regenerative but I don't know of a
way to make it fast if you just think
people from a few centuries from now be
like well they have to they used to have
to wait a week for the hand to regrow
it's like when the microwave was
invented you can you can toast your
um what's that called when you put a
cheese on a toast
um
foreign
all right so uh planaria why were we
talking about the magical planaria that
they have the Mystery of Life yeah so
the reason we're talking about plenary
is not only are they Immortal okay not
only do they regenerate every part of
the body uh they do they generally don't
get cancer right so which we can talk
about why that's important they're smart
they can learn things so you can train
them and it turns out that if you train
a planarian and then cut their heads off
the tail will regenerate a brand new
brain that still remembers the original
information do they have a biological
Network going on or no yes so their
somatic cells are forming a network and
that's that's what you mean by true
brain what's the requirement for a true
brain I I like everything else it's a
Continuum but but a true brain has
certain characteristics as far as the
density like a localized density of
neuronsa guides behavior in the head
exactly exactly if you cut their head
off uh the the tail doesn't have that
doesn't do anything it just sits there
until the new brain is is you know until
a new brain regenerates they have all
the same neurotransmitters that you and
I have but here's why here's what we're
talking about them in in this in this
context so here's your plenary you cut
off the head you cut off the tail you
have a middle fragment that middle
fragment has to make one head and one
tail how does it know how many of each
to make and where do they go how come it
doesn't switch how come
so so we did a very simple uh thing and
we said okay let's let's make the
hypothesis that there's a somatic
electrical Network that remembers the
correct pattern and then what it's doing
is is recalling that memory and building
to that pattern so what we did was we
used a um a way to visualize electrical
activity in these cells right it's a
it's a it's a variant of what people use
to look for electricity in the brain and
we saw that it has a that that fragment
has a very very particular electrical
pattern you can literally see it once
once we developed a technique it has a
very particular electrical pattern that
shows you where the head and the tail
goes right you can you can just see it
and then we said okay well now let's
test the idea that that's a memory that
actually controls where the head and the
tail goes let's change that pattern so
basically incept a false memory and so
what you can do is you can do that in
many different ways one way is with
drugs the target ion channels to say and
so you pick these drugs and you say okay
I'm going to do it so that instead of so
that instead of this one head one tail
electrical pattern you have a two-headed
pattern right you're just editing the
electrical information in the in the
network when you do that guess what the
cells build they build a two-headed worm
and the coolest thing about it now no
genetic changes so we haven't touched
the genome The genome is totally wild
type but the amazing thing about it is
that when you take these two-headed
animals and you cut them into pieces
again
some of those pieces will continue to
make two-headed animals
so so that information that that memory
that that electrical circuit not only
does it hold the information for how
many heads not only does it use that
information to tell the cells what to do
to regenerate but it stores it once
you've reset it it keeps and we can go
back we can take a two-headed animal and
put it back to one-headed so now imagine
so there's a couple of interesting
things here that um that have
implications for understanding what web
genomes and things like that imagine I
take this two-headed animal
um oh and by the way when they reproduce
when they tear themselves in half you
still get two-headed animals so imagine
they take them I throw them in the
Charles River over here so 100 years
later some scientists come along and
they scoop up some samples and they go
oh here's a single headed form in a
two-headed form wow a speciation event
cool let's sequence The genome and see
why what happened the genomes are
identical there's nothing wrong with the
genome so if you ask the question how
does so so this goes back to your very
first question is where do body plants
come from right how does the planarian
know how many heads it's supposed to
have now it's interesting because you
could say DNA but what hap what what as
it turns out the DNA produces a piece of
of Hardware that by default
says one head the way that when you turn
on a calculator by default it's a zero
every single time right when you turn it
on just a zero but it's a programmable
calculator as it turns out so once
you've changed that next time it won't
say zero it'll say something else and
the same thing here so you can make you
can make one-headed two-headed you can
make no headed worms we've done some
other things along these lines some
other really weird constructs
so so this this is this this question
all right so again it's really important
the the hardware software distinction is
really important because the hardware is
essential because without proper
Hardware you're never going to get to
the right physiology of having that
memory but once you have it it doesn't
fully determine what the information is
going to be you can have other
information in there and it's
reprogrammable by us by bacteria by
various parasites probably
um things like that the other amazing
thing about these planarias think about
this most animals when we get a mutation
in our bodies our children don't inherit
it right so you could go on you could
run around for 50 60 years getting
mutations your children don't have those
mutations because we go through the egg
stage planaria tear themselves in half
and that's how they reproduce so for 400
million years they keep every mutation
that they've had that doesn't kill the
cell that it's in so when you look at
these planaria their bodies are what's
called mixoploid meaning that every cell
might have a different number of
chromosomes they look like a tumor if
you look at the the the the the the the
the the the genome is an incredible mess
because they accumulate all this stuff
and yet the the their body structure is
they are the best regenerators on the
planet their Anatomy is Rock Solid even
though their genome is always all kinds
of crap so this is uh kind of a scandal
right that you know when we learn that
well you know what are genomes to what
genomes determine your body okay why is
the animal with the worst genome have
the best anatomical control the most
cancer resistant the most regenerative
right really we're just beginning to
start to understand this um relationship
between the genomically determined
hardware and and by the way just as a as
of a couple of months ago I think I now
somewhat understand why this is but it's
really it's really a major you know a
major puzzle I mean that really throws a
wrench into the whole
nature versus nurture
because you usually associate
electricity within with the nurture
and the hardware with the nature as
there's just this weird integrated mess
yeah that propagates to Generations yeah
it's much more fluid it's much more
complex
um you can you can imagine what's what's
happening here is just imagine the
evolution of a of an animal like this
that multi-skillers goes back to this
multi-scale competency right imagine
that you have two two you have an animal
that um that where it's it's tissues
have some degree of multi-scale
Competency so for example if the like
like we saw in the tadpole you know if
you put an eye on its tail they can
still see out of that eye right that the
you know there's all this incredible
plasticity so if you have an animal and
it comes up for selection and uh the
fitness is quite good
Evolution doesn't know whether the
fitness is good because the genome was
awesome or because the genome was kind
of junky but but the competency made up
for it right and things kind of ended up
good so what that means is that the more
competency you have the harder it is for
selection to pick the best genomes it
hides information right and so that
means that uh so so what happens you
know Evolution starts basically starts
although start all the hard work is
being done to increase the competency
because it's harder and harder to see
the genomes and so I think in planaria
what happened is that there's this
runaway phenomenon where all the effort
went into the algorithm such that we
know you got a crappy genome we can't
keep we can't clean up the genome we
can't keep track of it so what what's
going to happen is what survives are the
algorithms that can create a great worm
no matter what the genome is so
everything went into the algorithm and
which which of course then reduces the
pressure on keeping a you know keeping a
clean genome so this idea of right and
different animals have this in different
to different levels but this idea of
putting energy into an algorithm that
does not over train on priors right it
can't assume I mean I think biology is
this way in general Evolution doesn't
take the past too seriously because it
makes these basically problem-solving
machines as opposed to like exactly what
you know to to deal with exactly what
happened last time yeah problem solving
versus memory recall so a little memory
but a lot of problems so I think so yeah
in many cases yeah problem solving
foreign
I mean it's incredible that those kinds
of systems are able to be constructed
um especially how much they contrast
with the way we build problem solving
systems in the AI world
um back to xenobots
I'm not sure if we ever described
housing about our bill but I mean you
have a paper titled biological robots
perspectives on an emerging
interdisciplinary field and the
beginning you uh you mentioned that the
word zenobots is like
controversial do you guys get in trouble
for using xenobots or what do people not
like the words endobots are you trying
to be provocative with the word xenobots
versus biological robots I don't know
this yeah is there some drama that we
should be aware of so there's a little
bit of drama uh I think I think the
drama is basically related to people
um having very fixed ideas about what
terms mean and I think in many cases
these ideas are completely out of date
with with where science is now and for
sure they're they're out of date with
what's going to be I mean these these
Concepts uh are not going to survive the
next couple of decades so if you ask a
person and including um you know a lot
of people in biology who kind of want to
keep a sharp distinction between
Biologicals and robots right see what's
a robot well a robot it comes out of a
factory it's made by humans it is boring
it is a meaning that you can predict
everything it's going to do it's made of
metal and certain other inorganic
materials living organisms magical they
they arise right and so on so there's
these distinctions I think these these
distinctions I think were were never
good but uh they're going to be
completely useless going forward and so
part of there's a couple of papers that
that's one paper and there's another one
that Josh bongard and I wrote where we
really attacked the terminology and we
say these binary categories are based on
very
um non-essential kind of surface uh
limitations of of technology and
Imagination that were true before but
they've got to go and so and so we call
them xenobot so so Zeno for xenopus
lavis whether it's the frog that these
guys are made of but we think it's an
example of of of of a biobot technology
because
ultimately if we if we under once we
understand how to uh communicate and
manipulate
um the inputs to these cells we will be
able to get them to build whatever we
want them to build and that's robotics
right it's it's the rational
construction of machines that have
useful purposes I I absolutely think
that this is a robotics platform whereas
some biologists don't but it's built in
a way that
uh all the different components of doing
their own computation so in a way that
we've been talking about so you're
trying to do top down control now that's
a biological system and in the future
all of this will will merge together
because of course at some point we're
going to throw in synthetic biology
circuits right new new um you know new
transcriptional circuits to get them to
do new things of course we'll throw some
of that in but we specifically stayed
away from all of that because in the
first few papers and there's some more
coming down the pike that are I think
going to be pretty pretty Dynamite
um that uh we want to show what the
native cells are made of because what
happens is you know if you engineer the
heck out of them right if we were to put
in new you know new transcription
factors and some new metabolic machinery
and whatever people will say well okay
you engineered this and you made it do
whatever and fine
I wanted to show uh and and the whole
team uh wanted to show the plasticity
and the intelligence and the biology
what does it do that's surprising before
you even start manipulating the hardware
in that way yeah don't try to uh Over
Control the thing Let It flourish
the the full beauty of the biological
system why xenopus love is how do you
pronounce it for slavis yeah yeah it's a
very why this frog it's been used since
I think the 50s uh it's just very
convenient because you can you you know
we keep the adults in this in this very
fine frog habitat they lay eggs they lay
tens of thousands of eggs at a time
um the eggs develop right in front of
your eyes it's the most mad magical
thing you can you can see because
normally you know if you were to deal
with mice or rabbits or whatever you
don't see the early stages right because
everything's inside the mother here
everything's in a Petri dish at room
temperature so you just you you have an
egg it's fertilized and you can just
watch it divide and divide and divide
and on all the organs form you can just
see it and at that point
um the community has has developed lots
of different tools for
understanding what's going on and also
but for manipulating right so it's
people use it for um you know for
understanding birth defects and
neurobiology and cancer Immunology also
so you get the whole uh embryogenesis in
the pizza dish
that's so cool to watch Is there videos
of this oh yeah yeah there's been yeah
there's there's amazing videos on on
online I mean mammalian embryos are
super cool too for example monozygotic
twins are what happens when you cut a
mammalian embryo in half you don't get
two half bodies you get two perfectly
normal bodies because it's a
regeneration event right a development
is just it's just the kind of
regeneration really and why this
particular frog is just uh because they
were doing in the 50s and it breeds well
in um you know in in case it's easy to
raise in in the laboratory and uh it's
very prolific and all the tools
basically for decades people have been
developing tools there's other some
people use other frogs but I have to say
this is this is this is important
xenobots are fundamentally not anything
about frogs so
um I I can't say too much about this
because it's not published and
peer-reviewed yet but we've made
xenobots out of other things that have
nothing to do with frogs it's this is
not a frog phenomenon this is it we
started with frog because it's so
convenient but this this plasticity is
not a fraud you know it's not related to
the fact that their frogs what happens
when you kiss it does it turn to a
prince no or princess which way uh
Prince yeah princess yeah that's an
experiment I don't believe we've done
and if we have I don't know we'll
collaborate I can I can take on the lead
uh on that effort okay cool uh how does
the cells coordinate let's focus in on
just the embryogenesis so there's one
cell
so it divides doesn't have to be very
careful about what each cell starts
doing once they divide yes and like yeah
when there's three of them it's like the
co-founders or whatever like what like
slow down you're responsible for this
when do they become specialized and how
do they coordinate that specialization
so so this is the the basic science of
Developmental biology there's a lot
known about all of that but um but what
I'll tell you what I think is the kind
of the most important part which is yes
it's very important who does what
however because going back to this issue
of of well I made this claim that
um biology doesn't take the past too
seriously and what I mean by that is it
doesn't assume that everything is the
way it's it's expected to be right and
here's an example of that
um this was this was done this was this
was an old experiment going back to the
40s but um basically imagine it's a newt
the salamander it's got these little two
tubules that go to the kidneys right
there's a little tube take a cross
section of that tube you see eight to
ten cells that have cooperated to make
this little tube and cross-section right
so one amazing one amazing thing you can
do is
um you can you can mess with the very
early cell division to make the cells
gigantic bigger you can you can make
them different sizes you can force them
to be different sizes so if you make the
cells different sizes the Whole Nude is
still the same size so if you take a
cross section through the through that
tubule instead of eight to ten cells you
might have four or five or you might
have you know three until you make the
cells so enormous that one single cell
wraps around itself
and and gives you that same large-scale
structure by a completely different
molecular mechanism so now instead of
cell to cell communication to make a
tubule instead of that it's one cell
using the cytoskeleton to bend itself
around so think about what that means in
the service of a large scale it talk
about top-down control right and the
service of a large scale anatomical
feature different molecular mechanisms
get called up so now think about this
you're you're you're you're a nude
selling trying to make an embryo if you
had a fixed idea of who was supposed to
do what you'd be screwed because now
your cells are gigantic nothing would
work the there's an incredible tolerance
for changes in the size of the parts in
the amount of DNA in those parts
um all sorts of stuff you can you can
the life is highly interoperable you can
put electrodes in there you can put
weird nanomaterials it still works it's
it's uh this is that problem solving
action right it's able to do what it
needs to do even when circumstances
change that is you know uh the Hallmark
of intelligence right William James
defined intelligence as the ability to
get to the same goal by different means
that's this you get to the same goal by
completely different means and so so why
am I bringing this up is just to say
that yeah it's important for the cells
to do the right stuff but they have
incredible tolerances for things not
being what you expect and to still get
their job done so if you're you know all
of these things are not hardwired there
are organisms that might be hardwired
for example the nematode C elegans in
that organism every cell is numbered
meaning that every AC Elegance has
exactly the same number of cells as
every other C elegans they're all in the
same place they all divide there's
literally a map of how it works that in
that in that sort of system it's it's
much more cookie cutter but but most
most organisms are incredibly plastic in
that way is there something particularly
magical to you about the whole
developmental biology process
is there something you could say because
you just said it they're very good at
accomplishing the goal of the job they
need to do the competency thing but you
get freaking organism for one cell
it's like uh
it's very hard
to Intuit that whole process
to even think about reverse engineering
that process right they're very hard to
the point where I often just imagine I I
sometimes ask my students to do this
thought experiment imagine you were you
were shrunk down to the to the scale of
a single cell and you were in the middle
of an embryo and you were looking around
at what's going on and the cells running
around some cells are dying it you know
every time you look it's kind of a
different number of cells for most
organisms and so I think that if you
didn't know what embryonic development
was you would have no clue that what
you're seeing is always going to make
the same thing never mind knowing what
that what that is never mind being able
to say even with full genomic
information being able to say what the
hell are they building we have no way to
do that but but just even to Guess that
wow the the the outcome of all this
activity is it's always going to be it's
always going to build the same thing the
imperative to create the final you as
you are now is there already
so you can you would so if you start
from the same embryo you create a very
similar organism
yeah on except for cases like the
xenobots when you give them a different
environment they come up with a
different way to be adaptive in that
environment but overall I mean so so I
think so I think to you know kind of
um uh summarize it I think what
evolution is really good at is creating
Hardware that has a very stable Baseline
mode meaning that left to its own
devices it's very good at doing the same
thing but it has a bunch of
problem-solving capacity such that if
any if any assumptions don't hold if
your cells are a weird size or you get
the wrong number of cells or there's a
you know somebody stuck in electrode
halfway through the body whatever it
will still get most of what it needs to
do done
you've talked about the magic and the
power of biology here if we look at the
human brain how special is the brain in
this context you're kind of minimizing
the importance of the brain or lessening
it's we think of all the special
computation happens in the brain
everything else is like the help
you're kind of saying that the whole
thing is the whole thing is doing
computation
but nevertheless how special is the
human brain in this full context of
biology yeah I mean look there's no
getting away from the fact that the
human brain allows us to do things that
we could not do without it you can say
the same thing about the liver
this is true and so and so you know I I
my goal is not no you're right my goal
is you're just being polite to the brain
right now well looking a politician like
listen everybody has everybody has a
role yeah and it's very important role
that's right we have to acknowledge the
importance of the brain you know there
are more than enough people who are um
cheerleading the the brain right so so I
I don't feel like uh nothing I say is
going to reduce people's excitement
about the human brain and so so I I
emphasize others credit I don't think it
gets too much credit I think other
things don't get enough credit I think
the brain is is the human brain is
incredible and special and all that I
think other things need more credit and
and I also think that
this and I'm sort of this way about
everything I don't like binary
categories but almost anything I like a
Continuum and the thing about the human
brain is that it by by accepting that as
as some kind of an important category or
essential um essential thing we end up
with all kinds of weird pseudo problems
and conundrum so for example uh when we
talk about it you know if you don't want
to talk about
um uh uh ethics and other other things
like that uh and and what you know this
this idea that surely if we look out
into the universe surely we don't
believe that this human brain is the
only way to be sentient right surely we
don't you know and to have high level
cognition I just I can't even wrap my
mind around this this idea that that is
the only way to do it no doubt there are
other architectures made made of
completely different principles that
achieve the same thing and once we
believe that then that tells us
something important it tells us that
things that are not quite human brains
or chimeras of human brains and other
tissue or human brains or other kinds of
brains and novel configurations or
things that are sort of brains but not
really or plants or embryos or whatever
might also have important cognitive
status so that's the only thing I think
we have to be really careful about
treating the human brain as if it was
some kind of like sharp binary category
you know you are or you aren't I I don't
believe that exists so when we look out
at all the beautiful variety of
semibological architectures out there in
the universe how many how many
intelligent alien civilizations do you
think are out there yeah boy I have you
know no expertise in that whatsoever
yeah you haven't met any I I have met
the ones we've made I think that I mean
exactly in some sense with synthetic
biology are you not creating aliens I
absolutely think so because because look
all of life all of St all standard model
systems are an N of one course of
evolution on earth right and trying to
make conclusions about biology from
looking at life on Earth is like testing
your theory on the same data that
generated it it's all it's all kind of
like locked in so we absolutely have to
create novel uh examples that have no
history on Earth that don't you know as
xenobots have no history of selection to
be a good xenobot the cells have
selection for various things but but the
xenobot itself never existed before and
so we can make chimeras you know we make
frogalodels that are you know sort of
half frog have Axolotl you can make all
sorts of high brats right constructions
of living to issue with robots and
whatever we need to be making these
things until we find actual aliens
because otherwise we're just looking at
an N of one set of examples all kinds of
Frozen accidents of evolution and so on
we need to go beyond that to really
understand biology but we're still even
if you when you do a synthetic biology
you're locked in to the basic components
of the way biology is done on this Earth
yeah right yeah yeah
and also the basic constraints to the
environment even artificial environments
to construct in the lab are tied up to
the environment I mean what do you okay
let's say there is I mean what I think
is there's
a nearly infinite number of intelligent
civilizations living or dead out there
um
if you pick one out of the box
what do you think it would look like
so
in in when you think about synthetic
biology
or creating synthetic organisms
how hard is it to create something
that's very different
yeah I think it's very hard to create
something that's very different right
it's um uh we are just locked in both
both uh experimentally and in terms of
our imagination right it's very hard and
you also emphasize several times that
the idea of shape yeah the individual
cell get together with other cells and
they kind of
they're gonna build a shape so it's
shape and function but shape is a
critical thing yeah so here I'll take a
stab I mean I I agree with you to
whatever extent though that we can say
anything I I do think that there's you
know probably an infinite number of of
different uh different
um uh architectures with with that are
with interesting cognitive properties
out there uh what can we say about them
I think that
um the only things that are going I I
don't think we can rely on any of the
typical stuff you know carbon based yeah
no no like I think all of that is just
um you know us being having having a
lack of imagination but I think the
things that um are going to be Universal
if anything is are things for example
driven by resource limitation the fact
that you are fighting a hostile world
and you have to draw a boundary between
yourself and the world somewhere the
fact that that boundary is not given to
you by anybody you have to you have to
assume it you know uh estimate it
yourself and the fact that you have to
coarse grain your experience and the
fact that you're going to try to
minimize surprise and the fact that like
these these are the things that I think
are fundamental about biology none of
the you know the facts about the genetic
code or even the fact that we have genes
or or the biochemistry of it I don't
think any of those things are
fundamental but um it's going to be a
lot more about the information and about
the creation of the self the fact that
so in my in my framework selves are
demarcated by uh the scale of the goals
that they can pursue so from little tiny
local goals to like massive you know
planetary scale goals for for certain
humans
um and everything and everything in
between so you can draw this like
cognitive light cone about that that
determines the the scale of the goals
you could possibly pursue I think those
kinds of Frameworks uh like that like
active inference and so on are going to
be universally applicable but but none
of the other things that are that are
typically um discussed
quick pause during the bathroom break
we were just talking about uh you know
aliens and all that that's a funny thing
which is yeah I don't know if you've
seen them there's a kind of debate that
goes on about cognition and plants and
what can you say about different kinds
of computation and cognition implants
and I always I always look at that
something like if if you're weirded out
by cognition in Plants you're not ready
for exobiology right if if you know
something that's that similar here on
Earth is already like freaking you out
then I think there's going to be all
kinds of cognitive life out there that
we're gonna have a really hard time
recognizing
I think robots will help us yeah
like expand our mind about cognition
either that or the word like xenobots so
and they maybe becomes the same thing it
is you know really when the human
Engineers the thing at least in part and
then is able to achieve some kind of
cognition that's different than what
you're used to then you start to
understand like oh
cut you know every living organism is
capable of cognition oh I need to kind
of broaden my understanding what
cognition is but do you think plants um
like when you when you eat them are they
screaming I don't know about screaming I
think you have to see what I think when
I eat a salad yeah good yeah I think you
have to scale down the expectations in
terms of right so so probably they're
not screaming in the way that we would
be screaming however there's plenty of
data on Plants being able to um to do
anticipation and certain kinds of memory
and and so on
um I think you know what you just said
about robots uh I I hope you're right
and I hope that's but but there's two
there's two ways that people can take
that right so one way is exactly what
you just said to try to kind of expand
their expand their their their Notions
for that category the other way people
often go is uh they just sort of Define
the term as if if it's not a natural
product it's it's just faking right it's
not really intelligence if it was made
by somebody else because it's that same
it's the same thing they can see how
it's done and once you see how it's like
a magic trick when you see how it's done
it's not as fun anymore and and I think
people have a real tendency for that and
they sort of which which I find really
strange in the sense that if somebody he
said to me
we have this this sort of blind like
like uh hill climbing search and then
and then we have a really smart team of
Engineers which one do you think is
going to produce a system that has good
intelligence I think it's really weird
to say that it only comes from the blind
search right it can't be done by people
who by the way can also use evolutionary
techniques if they want to but also
rational design I think it's really
weird to say that
um real intelligence only comes from
Natural Evolution
so I hope you're right I hope people
take it the other the other way but
there's a nice shortcut so I work with
Lego robots a lot now from for my own uh
personal pleasure not in that way
internet uh so the four legs
and uh one of the things that
changes my experience with the robots a
lot is um
when I can't understand why I did a
certain thing and there's a lot of ways
to engineer that
meet the person that created the
software that runs it
there's a lot of ways for me to build
that software in such a way that I don't
exactly know why it did a certain basic
decision
of course as an engineer you can go in
and start to look at logs you can log
all kind of data sensory data the the
decisions you made you know all the
outputs and neural networks and so on
but I also try to really experience that
surprise and that really experience as
another person would that totally
doesn't know how it's built and I think
the magic is there and not knowing how
it works
that I think biology does that for you
through the layers of abstraction yeah
it because nobody really knows what's
going on inside the biological like each
one component is clueless about the big
picture I think there's actually really
cheap systems that can that can
illustrate that kind of thing which is
even like um you know uh fractals right
like you have a very small short formula
in Z and you see it and there's no magic
you're just going to crank through you
know Z squared plus C whatever you're
just going to crank through it but the
result of it is this incredibly Rich
beautiful image right that that just
like wow all of that was in this like 10
character long string like amazing so
the fact that you can you can know
everything there is to know about the
details and the process and all the
parts and everything like there's
literally no magic of any kind there and
yet the outcome is something that you
would never have expected and it's just
it just you know is incredibly rich and
complex and beautiful so there's a lot
of that you write that you work on
developing conceptual Frameworks for
understanding unconventional cognition
so the kind of thing we've been talking
about I just like the term
unconventional cognition
and you want to figure out how to detect
study and communicate with a thing
you've already mentioned a few examples
but what is unconventional cognition is
it as simply as everything outside of
what we Define usually as cognition
cognitive science the stuff going on
between our ears or is there some deeper
way to get at the fundamentals of
what is cognition
yeah I think like uh and and if I'm
certainly not the only person who works
in unconvention unconventional um
cognition so it's the term used yeah
that's one that so I've coined a number
of weird terms but that's not one of
mine like that that's an existing thing
so so for example somebody like Andy
adamasky who um I don't know if you've
if you've had him on if you haven't you
you should he's a he's a he's a you know
very interesting guy he's a computer
scientist and he does unconventional
cognition and Sly molds and all kinds of
weird um he's a real weird weird cat
really interesting anyway so so that's
on you know there's a bunch of terms
that I've come up with but that's not
one of mine so I think like many terms
that one is is really defined by the
times meaning that unconventional
cognitive thing things that are
unconventional cognition today are not
going to be considered unconventional
cognition at some point uh it's one of
those it's one of those things and so
it's you know it's it's it's this it's
this really deep question of how do you
recognize communicate with
um um classify cognition when you cannot
rely on the typical Milestones right so
so typical
um you know again if you stick with the
with the uh the history of life on earth
like these these exact model systems you
would say ah here's a particular
structure of the brain and this one has
fewer of those and this one has a bigger
frontal cortex and this one right so
these are these are landmarks that that
we're that we're used to and and it
allows us to make very um kind of Rapid
judgments about things but if you can't
rely on that either because you're
looking at a synthetic thing or or an
engineered thing or an alien thing then
what do you do right how do you and so
and so that's what I'm really interested
I'm interested in mind in all of its
possible implementations not just the
obvious ones that we know from from
looking at brains here on Earth
whenever I think about something like
unconventional cognition I think about
cellular automata I'm just captivated by
the beauty of the thing
the fact that from simple little
uh objects you can create some such
beautiful complexity that very quickly
you forget about the individual objects
and you see the things that it creates
as its own organisms that blows my mind
every time like honestly
I could full time just
eat mushrooms and watch cellular time
don't you have to do mushrooms uh just
just sell your automata it feels like I
mean from an engineering perspective I
love
when a very simple system captures
something really powerful because then
you can study that system to understand
something fundamental about complexity
about life on Earth
anyway how do I communicate with a thing
for cellular automata can can do
cognition if a plant can do cognition if
uh a xenobot can do cognition how do I
like whisper in its ear and and and get
an answer back to how do I have a
conversation yeah
um well how do I have a xenobot on a
podcast that's really a really
interesting line of um investigation
that that that that opens up I mean I
mean we thought about this so you need a
few things you need you need to
understand the space in which they live
so uh what not not just the physical
modality like can they see like can they
feel vibration I mean that's important
of course because that's how you deliver
your message but but not just not just
the ideas for a communication medium not
not just the physical medium but what is
saliency right so so what are these what
what are important to this what's
important to this system and systems of
all kinds of different levels of
sophistication of what you could expect
to get back and I I think what's what's
really important I call this um the the
spectrum of persuadability which is this
this idea that when you're looking at a
system you can't you can't assume where
on the Spectrum it is you have to do
experiments and so so for so so
uh for example uh if you look at a gene
regulatory Network which is just a bunch
of bunch of nodes that turn each other
on and off at various rates you might
look at that and you say wow there's no
magic here I mean clearly this thing is
uh is is as deterministic as it gets
it's a piece of Hardware the only way
we're going to be able to control it is
by rewiring it which is the way my
molecular biology works right we can add
nodes remove notes or whatever well so
we've done simulations and shown that
um biological and now we're doing this
in in the lab the biological networks
like that have have associative memory
so they can actually learn they can
learn from experience they have
habituation they have sensitization they
have associative memory which you
wouldn't have known if you assume that
they have to be on the left side of that
Spectrum so when you're going to
communicate with something and we've
even um uh uh Charles Abramson I've
written a paper on um behaviorist
approaches to synthetic organism meaning
that if you're given something you have
no idea what it is or what it can do how
do you figure out what its psychology is
what its level is what does it and so
and so we literally lay out a set of
protocols starting with the simplest
things that I'm moving up to more
complex things where you can make no
assumptions about what this thing can do
right just from you you have to start
and you'll find out
so so when you're gonna so so here's a
simple I mean here's one way to
communicate with something if you can
train it
that's a way of communicating so if you
can provide if you can figure out what
the currency of reward of positive and
negative reinforcement is right and you
can get it to do something it wasn't
doing before based on experiences you've
given it you have taught it one thing
you have communicated one thing that
that such and such an action is good so
some other action is is not good that's
that's like a basic atom of a primitive
atom of communication what about
in some sense if it gets you to do
something you haven't done before is it
answering back yeah most most certainly
and then there's there's I've seen
cartoons I think maybe Gary Larson or
somebody had had a cartoon of these of
these rats in the Maze and the one rat
you know assists to the other hey look
at this every time every time I walk
over here he starts scribbling in that
on the you know almost the clipboard
that he has it's awesome if we step
outside ourselves
and really measure how much like if I if
I actually measure how much I've changed
because of my interaction with certain
cellular automata and you really have to
take that it's a consideration about
like well these things are changing you
too yes I know you know how it works and
so on but you're being changed by the
thing absolutely I think I think I read
um I don't know any details but I I
think I read something about
um how how wheat and other things of
domesticated humans in terms right but
by their properties change the way that
the human behavior and societal
structures in that sense cats are
running the world
because they they took over the so first
of all so first they while not giving a
shit about humans clearly would ever
with with every ounce of their being
they've somehow got just millions and
millions of humans to to to to take them
home and feed them and then not only the
physical space that they take over they
took over the digital space they
dominate the internet in terms of
cuteness in terms of immutability
and so they're they're like they got
themselves literally inside the memes
they become viral and spread on the
internet
and they're the ones that are probably
controlling humans that's my theory
another that's a follow-up paper after
the frog kissing okay
I mean you mentioned
sentience and consciousness
uh you have a paper titled generalizing
Frameworks for sentience Beyond natural
species
so beyond
normal cognition if we look at
sentience and Consciousness and I wonder
if you draw an interesting distinction
between those two uh elsewhere
outside of humans and uh maybe outside
of Earth
you think aliens are half sentients and
if they do how do we think about it so
when you have this framework what is
this paper what is what is the way you
propose to think about ascensions yeah
that that particular paper was was a
very short um commentary on another
paper that was written about crabs
there's a really good paper on them uh
crabs and and various like like a rubric
of uh of different types of behaviors
that that could be applied to different
creatures and they're trying to apply it
to crabs and so on them I I've
Consciousness we can talk about a
feeling but it's a whole separate kettle
of fish I I I almost never talk about
crabs in this case yes I almost never
talk about Consciousness per se I've
said very very little about it but we
can we can talk about it if you want
mostly what I talk about is is cognition
because I think that that's much easier
to deal with in a um kind of rigorous
experimental experimental way I think
that um all of these all of these terms
have uh you know sentience and and so on
have different definitions and I
fundamentally I think that people can as
long as they specify what they mean
ahead of time
um I think people can Define them in
various ways the one the the the the
only thing that I really kind of insist
on is that
the right way to think about all this
stuff is is an energy from an
engineering perspective what does it
help me to to control predict and uh to
and does it help me do my next
experiment so so so so that that's
that's not a universal perspective so
some people have uh philosophical kind
of underpinnings and those are primary
and if anything runs against that then
it must automatically be wrong so so
some people will say I don't care what
else if your theory says to me that
thermostats have little tiny goals I'm
not I'm not I'm not so that's it I just
like that's my philosophical you know
preconception that like thermostats do
not have goals and that's it so um so
that's one way of doing it and some
people do it that way I do not do it
that way and I think that we can't if we
we can't I don't think we can know much
of anything from our from a
philosophical armchair I think that all
of these theories and ways of doing
things stand or fall based on just just
basically one set of criteria does it
help you run a rich research program
that's it if I agree with you totally
but so forget philosophy what about the
Poetry of ambiguity what about at the
limits of the things you can engineer
using terms that are that can be defined
in multiple ways
and living within that yeah
uncertainty in order to play with words
until something lands that you can
engineer I mean that's to me where
Consciousness sits currently nobody
really understands the the hard problem
of Consciousness is the subject what it
feels like because it really feels like
it feels like something to be this
biological system this conglomerate of a
bunch of cells in this hierarchy of
competencies feels like something and
yeah I feel like one thing and is that
just
is that just a as a side effect of a
complex system
or is there something more
that humans have or is there something
more than any biological system has some
kind of magic some kind of not just the
sense of agency but a real sense with a
capital letter s of agency yeah
uh boy uh yeah that's a deep question
now is there room for poetry and
Engineering or no no there definitely is
and a lot of the Poetry comes in when we
realize that none of the categories we
deal with are sharp as we think they are
right and so and so in the you know in
the different areas of of all these
Spectra are where a lot of the Poetry
sits I have many new theories about
things but I in fact do not have a a
good theory about Consciousness that I
plan to trot out so and you almost don't
see it as useful for your current work
unconsciousness I think it will come I
have some thoughts about it but I don't
feel like they're going to move the
needle yet on on that but do you want to
ground in in engineering always
so well
I mean I don't so so so so if we really
tackle Consciousness per se in terms of
the hard problem I don't I don't that
that isn't necessarily going to be
groundable in engineering right that
that aspect of the cognition is but
actual Consciousness per se you know for
first person perspective I'm not sure
that that's groundable in engineering
and I think specifically what's
different about what's different about
it is there's a couple things so so
let's you know here we go I'll say a
couple things about about Consciousness
one one thing is that what makes it
different is that for every other type
aspect of science
when we think about having a correct or
a good theory of it we have some idea of
what format it that theory makes
predictions in so whether those be
numbers or whatever we we have some idea
we may not know the answer we may not
have the theory but we know that when we
get the theory here's what it's going to
output and then we'll know if it's right
or wrong for actual Consciousness not
Behavior not neural correlates but
actual first person Consciousness if we
had a correct Theory Of Consciousness or
even a good one what the hell would what
what format would would it make
predictions in right because because all
the things that we know about it
basically boil down to observable
behaviors so the only thing I can think
of when I think about that is is is
it'll be poetry or it'll be it'll be
it'll be something to um if if I ask you
okay you've got a great Theory Of
Consciousness and here's this here's
this creature maybe it's a natural maybe
it's an engineer one whatever and I want
you to tell me what your theory says
about this this beings um what it's like
to be this being the only thing I can
imagine you giving me is some piece of
art a poem or or something that once
I've taken it in I share I I I I now
have a similar State as whatever that's
that's about as good as I can come up
with well it's possible that that once
you have a good understanding of
Consciousness it would be mapped to some
things that are more measurable so for
example it's possible that
a conscious being is one that's able to
suffer
so you start to look at pain and
suffering you can start to connect it
closer to
things that
you can measure that in terms of how
they reflect themselves in Behavior
and problem solving and uh creation and
attainment of goals for example which I
think suffering is one of the you know
life is suffering it's one of the one of
the big aspects of the The Human
Condition
and so if Consciousness is somehow a
maybe at least a catalyst for suffering
you could start to get like Echoes of it
and you start you you start to see like
the actual effects of Consciousness and
behavior that it's not just about
subjective experience it's like it's
really deeply integrated in the problem
solving uh decision making of a system
uh something like this but also it's
possible that we realize this is not a
philosophical statement philosophers can
write their books I welcome it uh you
know I I take the touring test really
seriously I I don't know why people
really don't like it
when a robot convinces you that it's
intelligent I think that's a really
incredible accomplishment and there's
some deep sense in which that is
intelligence
if it looks like it's intelligent it is
intelligent and I think there's some
deep aspect
of
um a system that appears to be conscious
it
in some deep sense it is conscious
for these for me we have to consider
that possibility and a system that
appears to be conscious
is an engineering challenge
yeah I don't disagree with any of that I
mean especially intelligence I think is
a publicly observable thing I I and and
I mean you know science fiction has
dealt with this for a century or or much
more maybe uh this idea that when you
are confronted with something that just
doesn't meet any of your typical
assumptions so you can't look in the
skull and say oh well there's that
frontal cortex so then I guess we're
good right if it's if it's you know so
so this thing lands on your front lawn
and this you know with the the little
door opens and something trundles out
and it's sort of like
um you know kind of shiny and aluminum
looking and it hands you this uh you
know it hands you this poem that it
wrote while it was on you know flying
over and how happy it is to meet you
like what's going to be your criteria
right for whether whether you get to
take it apart and see what makes a tick
or whether you have to you know be nice
to it and and whatever right like all
the all the criteria that we have now
and you know that people are using and
as you said a lot of people are down on
the touring tests and things like this
but but what else have we got you know
because measuring measuring a quart
excise isn't gonna isn't gonna cut it
right in the broader scheme of things so
uh I think this is it's it's a wide open
it's a wide open problem that right that
we you know our our solution to the
problem of other Minds it's very
simplistic right we we give each other
credit for having Minds just because we
sort of on uh you know on an anatomical
level we're pretty similar and then so
that's good enough but how how far is
that going to go so I think that's
really primitive so um yeah I think I
think it's a major unsolved problem it's
a really challenging
uh direction of thought to the human
race
uh that you talked about like embodied
Minds if you start to think that other
things other than humans have Minds
that's really challenging yeah because
all men are created equal starts
starts being like all right well we
should probably treat
not just cows with respect yeah but like
plants and not just plants but
uh some kind of organized conglomerates
of cells in a petri dish
in fact some of the work we're we're
doing like you're doing and the whole
community of science is doing with
Biology people might be like we weren't
really mean to viruses yeah
I mean yeah I the thing is you're right
and and I get I get I certainly get
phone calls about uh people complaining
about frog skin and so on but
I think we have to separate the sort of
deep philosophical aspects versus what
actually happened so what actually
happens on Earth is that people with
exactly the same anatomical structure
kill each other you know on a daily
basis right so so so it I think it's
clear that simply knowing that something
else is equally or maybe more uh
cognitive or conscious than you are is
is not a guarantee of of of kind
behavior that that much we know of so
then and so then then we look at a
commercial farming of mammals and
various other things and so so I think
on a practical basis long before we get
to worrying about
um things like frog skin we have to ask
ourselves why are we uh what what can we
do about the way that we've been
behaving with the towards creatures
which we know for a factor because of
our similarities are are basically just
like us you know that's kind of a whole
other this is a social thing but but but
fundamentally you know of course you're
absolutely right in that we we are also
thinking about this we are on this
planet in some way incredibly lucky it's
just dumb luck that we really only have
one dominant species it didn't have to
work out that way so you could easily
imagine that there could be a planet
somewhere with more than one equally or
maybe near equally intelligent species
and then uh but but then they may not
look anything like each other right so
there may be multiple ecosystems where
there are uh things of of similar to
human-like intelligence and then you'd
have all kinds of issues about you know
how do you how do you relate to them
when they're physically not like you at
all but yet yet you know in terms of
behavior and culture and whatever it's
pretty obvious that they've got as you
know as much on the ball as you have or
maybe imagine imagine that there was
another
um group of beings that was like on
average you know 40 IQ points lower
right like like we're just we're pretty
lucky in many ways we you know we don't
really have even though we we sort of
you know we still act badly in many ways
but but but the fact is you know all
humans are more or less in this like in
the same that same range but didn't have
to work out that way well but I think
that's part of the way life works on
Earth maybe human civilization works
is it seems like we want us ourselves to
be quite similar
and then within that you know what
everybody's about the same relatively IQ
intelligence problem solving
capabilities even physical
characteristics
but then we'll find some aspect of that
as different and that seems to be like
I mean it's it's really dark to say but
there seems to be the
I'm not even a bug but like a feature of
the early development of human
civilization you pick the other your
tribe versus the other tribe in your War
it's a kind of evolution evolution in
the space of of memes a space of ideas I
think a new war with each other so we're
very good at finding the other even when
the characteristics are really the same
that's I don't know what
that I mean I'm sure so many of these
things echo in the biological World in
some way yeah there's a fun um
experiment that uh I did my my son
actually came up with this so we we did
um a a biology unit together he would
use so homeschool and so we did this a
couple years ago we did this thing where
it imagines you get the sly mold right
and polycephalum and it grows on them uh
on a uh on a petri dish of agar and it
sort of spreads out and and it's it's
it's a single cell you know produce but
it's like this giant thing and so you
put down a piece of oat and it wants to
go get the oat and it sort of grows
towards the oat so what you do is you
take a razor blade and you just you just
separate the piece of the whole culture
that's growing towards the the oh you
just kind of separate it and so now
think about think about the interesting
decision-making calculus for that little
piece I can I can go get the oat and
therefore I won't have to share those
nutrients with this giant mass over
there so the so the nutrients per unit
volume is going to be amazing so I
should go ethio
but if I first rejoin because faizaram
once you cut it has the ability to join
back up if I first rejoin then that
whole calculus becomes impossible
because there is no more me anymore
there's just we and then and then we
will go eat this thing right so so this
interesting you know this this you can
imagine a kind of game theory where the
number of Agents isn't fixed and that
it's not just cooperate or defect but
it's actually merge and and whatever
right yeah so that kind of that that
competition how does it do that decision
making yeah so so that right so so it's
it's really interesting and so and so
empirically what we found is that it
tends to merge first it tends to merge
first and then the whole thing goes but
but it's really interesting that that
that that that calculus like do we even
have I mean I'm not an expert in the
economic Game Theory and all that but
maybe there's account maybe some sort of
hyperbolic discounting or something but
but maybe you know this idea that the
the actions you take not only change
your payoff but they change who or what
you are and that you may not you you
could take an action after which you
don't exist anymore or you are radically
changed or you are merged with somebody
else like that's I you know as far as I
know that's a whole you know we're still
missing a formalism for even knowing how
to how to model any of that DC evolution
by the way is a process that applies
here on Earth or is it some where did
Evolution come from yeah yeah so this
thing
um that from the very origin of life
that took us to today what what what the
heck is that I think evolution is
inevitable in the sense that if you
combine and and basically I think one of
the most uh useful things that was done
in early Computing I guess in the 60s it
started was was evolutionary computation
and just showing how how uh simple it is
that if you have if you have imperfect
heredity and competition together those
two things were three things right so
heredity imperfect heredity and
competition or selection those three
things and that's it now now now you're
you're off through the races right and
so that can be it's not just on Earth
because it can be done in the computer
it can be done in chemical systems it
can be done in um you know Elise Mullen
says it it works in on on you know
Cosmic scales so I think that uh that
kind of thing is incredibly
um pervasive and and and and general
it's a general feature of life it's it's
interesting to think about
you know the standard uh the standard
thought about this is that it's uh it's
blind right meaning that the the the
intelligence of the process is zero it's
stumbling around
and I think that back in the day when
the options with the options were it's
dumb like machines or it's smart like
humans then of course the scientists
went in this direction because nobody
wanted creationism and so they said okay
it's got to be like completely blind I'm
not actually sure right because because
I I think that um I think that
everything is a Continuum and I think
that it doesn't have to be smart with
foresight like us but it doesn't have to
be completely blind either I think there
may be aspects of it and in particular
this kind of multi-scale Competency
might give it a little bit of look ahead
maybe or a little bit of um problem
solving sort of baked in but but that's
going to be completely different in
different in different systems but I do
think I do think it's General I don't
think it's just on Earth I think it's a
very fundamental thing and it does seem
to have a kind of direction that is
taking us
that's somehow perhaps is defined by the
environment itself
it feels like we're headed towards
something
like
we're playing out a script that was just
like a single cell defines the entire
organism yeah it feels like from the
origin of Earth itself
playing out a kind of script yeah you
can't really go any other way I mean so
this is very controversial and I don't
know the answer but people have people
have argued that this is called uh you
know sort of rewinding the tape of life
right and and some people have argued I
think I think I think Conway Morris
maybe has argued that it it is that
there's a deep attractor for example to
human to the human um
uh kind of uh structure and that and
that if you were to rewind it again
you'd basically get more or less the
same thing and then other people have
argued that no it's it's incredibly
sensitive to Frozen accidents and then
once a certain stochastic decisions are
made Downstream everything is going to
be different I don't know I don't know
you know we're very bad at predicting uh
attractors in the space of complex
systems generally speaking right we
don't know so may so maybe Evolution on
Earth has these deep attractors that no
matter what has happened it pretty much
would likely to end up there or maybe
not I don't know what's a really
difficult idea to imagine that
if you ran Earth a million times 500 000
times you would get Hitler
like yeah we don't like to think like
that we think like because
at least maybe in America
you like to think that individual
decisions can change the world and if
individual decisions can change the
world then surely
any perturbation results in a totally
different trajectory but maybe there's a
in this competency hierarchy it's a
self-correcting system
that's just ultimately there's a bunch
of chaos that ultimately is leading
towards something like a super
intelligent artificial intelligence
system
the answers 42.
I mean there might be a kind of
imperative for life that is headed to
and we're too focused on our day-to-day
life of getting coffee and snacks and
having sex and getting uh a promotion at
work not to see the big imperative of
life on earth that is headed towards
something yeah maybe maybe I don't it's
it's it's difficult I think one of the
things that's important about
um
chimerica by engineer Technologies all
of those things are that we have to
start developing a better science of
predicting the cognitive goals of of
composite systems so we're just not very
good at it right we don't know uh if if
if if I create a composite system and
this could be internet of things or
swarm robotics or a cellular a cellular
swarm or whatever
what is the emergent intelligence of
this thing first of all what level is it
going to be at and if it has goal
directed capacity what are the goals
going to be like we are just not very
good at predicting that yet and I think
that uh it's it's a
it's a it's a existential level uh need
for us to be able to because we're
building these things all the time right
we're building we're building both
physical structures like swarm Robotics
and we're building uh a social Financial
structures and so on with very little
ability to uh predict what sort of
autonomous goals that system is going to
have of which we are now cogs and so
right so so learning learning to predict
and control those things is going to be
critical so we've so so in fact so so if
you're right and there is some kind of
attractor to Evolution it would be nice
to know what that is and then to make a
rational decision of whether we're going
to go along or we're going to pop out of
it or try to pop out of it because
there's no guarantee I mean that's
that's the other you know kind of
important thing a lot of people
I get a lot of complaints uh from from
people email me and say yeah you know
what you're doing uh it isn't natural
you know and I'll say look natural that
that'd be nice if if somebody was making
sure that natural was was was matched up
to our values but no one's doing that
but you know Evolution optimizes for
biomass that's it nobody's optimizing
it's not optimizing for your happiness
it's I don't think necessarily it's
optimizing for for for intelligence or
fairness or any of that stuff I'm gonna
find that person that emailed you beat
them up take their place
um steal everything they own and say now
we're now this is natural this is
natural yeah exactly because because it
comes from it comes from a from an old
world view where you could assume that
whatever is natural that that's probably
for the best and I think we're long out
of that Garden of Eden kind of view so I
think we can do better we I think we and
we have to right natural it just isn't
great for for a lot of a lot of life
forms what are some cool synthetic
organisms that you you think about you
dream about out when you think about
embodied mind what do you imagine what
do you hope to build yeah on a practical
level what I really hope to do is to
gain enough of an understanding of the
embodied intelligence of the organs and
tissues such that we can achieve a
radically different regenerative
medicine so that we can say basically
and I I think about it as um you know in
terms of like okay can you what's the
what's the uh uh what's the goal kind of
uh and and end game for this whole thing
to me the end game is something that you
would call an anatomical compiler so the
idea is you would sit down in front of
the computer and you would draw the the
body or the organ that you wanted not
not molecular details but like this is
what I want I want a six-legged uh you
know frog with a propeller on top or I
want I want a heart that looks like this
or I want a leg that looks like this and
what it would do if we knew what we were
doing is
put out uh it could convert that
anatomical description into a set of
stimuli that would have to be given to
cells to convince them to build exactly
that thing right I probably won't live
to see it but I think it's achievable
and I think what that if if we can have
that then that is basically the solution
to all of medicine except for infectious
disease so birth defects right traumatic
injury cancer aging degenerative disease
if we knew how to tell cells what to
build all of those things go away so
those things go away and the um positive
feedback spiral of economic costs where
all of the advances are increasingly
more heroic and expensive interventions
of a sinking ship when you're like 90
and then and so on right all of that
goes away because basically instead of
trying to fix you up as you as you
degrade you you
um you progressively regenerate you know
you apply the regenerative medicine
early before things degrade so I think
that that'll have massive economic
impacts over what we're trying to do now
which is not at all you know sustainable
and uh and that that's what I hope I
hope that I hope that we get it so so to
me yes the xenobots will be doing useful
things cleaning up the environment
cleaning out you know your or you know
your joints and all that kind of stuff
but more important than that I think we
can use these synthetic systems to try
to understand to to develop a science of
detecting and manipulating the goals of
collective intelligences of cells
specifically for regenerative medicine
and then sort of beyond that if we you
know sort of think further beyond that
what I hope is that kind of like what
you said all of this drives a
reconsideration of how we formulate um
ethical Norms because this old school so
so so in the olden days what you could
do is obviously we were confronted with
something you you could you could tap on
it right and if you heard a metallic
clanging sound you'd said ah fine right
so you could conclude it was made in a
factory I could take it apart I can do
whatever right if you did that and you
got you know sort of a squishy uh kind
of warm sensation you'd say I need to be
you know more or less nice to it and
whatever that's not going to be feasible
it was never really feasible but it was
good enough because we didn't have any
we didn't know any better that needs to
go and I think that
uh by by breaking down those artificial
barriers someday we can try to build a a
system of of ethical Norms that does not
rely on these completely contingent
facts of of our Earthly history but on
something much much deeper that you know
really um takes takes agency and and the
capacity to suffer and all that takes
that seriously
the capacity to suffer and the Deep
questions I would ask of a system is can
I eat it and can I have sex with it
um which is the the two fundamental
tests of Again The Human Condition
uh so I can basically do what Dali does
that's in the in in the physical space
so print out like a 3D print a Pepe the
frog with a propeller head
propeller hat
uh is the is the Dream well yes and no I
mean I want to get away from the 3D
printing thing because that will be
available for some things much earlier I
mean we can already do bladders and ears
and things like that because it's micro
level control right when you 3D print
you are in charge of where every cell
goes and for some things that you know
for for like this thing they had that I
think 20 years ago or maybe a little
earlier than that you could do that so
yeah I would like to have says the dolly
part where you provide a few words yeah
and it generates a painting so here you
say I want a frog
with these features and then it would go
direct a complex biological system to
construct something like that yeah the
main magic would be I mean I think from
from looking at Dali and so on it looks
like the first part is kind of solved
now where you go from from the words to
the image like that seems more or less
solved the next step is really hard this
is what keeps things like crispr and
genomic editing and so on it's good this
is what limits all the except
uh uh impacts for for gender medicine
because going back to okay this is the
knee joint that I want or this is the
eye that I want
now what genes do I edit to make that
happen right going back in that
direction is really hard so instead of
that it's going to be okay I understand
how to motivate cells to build
particular structures can I rewrite the
memory of what they think they're
supposed to be building such that then I
can you know take my hands off the wheel
and let them let them do their thing so
some of that is experiment but some of
that maybe AI can help too just like
with protein folding this is exactly the
problem that protein folding uh in in
the most simple
medium tried and has solved with Alpha
fold which is how does the sequence of
letters result in this three-dimensional
shape and you have to
um I guess it didn't solve it because
you have to
if you say I want this shape how do I
then have a sequence of letters
yeah the reverse engineering stuff is
really tricky it is I think I think
where where and we're doing some of this
now is is to uh use AI to try and uh
build actionable models of the
intelligence of the cellular collectives
so try to help us to help us gain models
that that
um and and we've had some success in
this so we did something like this for
um uh for you know for repairing uh
birth defects of the brain in frog we've
done some of this for um normalizing
melanoma uh where you can really start
to use AI to make models of how would I
impact this thing if I wanted to given
all the complexities right and and given
all the uh the the the controls that
that it knows how to do so when you say
regenerative medicine so we talked about
creating biological organisms but if you
regrow a hand that information is
already there
right the biological system has that
information
so how does regenerative medicine work
today how do you hope it works what's
the hope there yeah yeah how do you make
it happen well today there's a set of
popular approaches so so one is 3D
printing so the idea is I'm going to
make a scaffold of the thing that I want
I'm going to seed it with cells and then
and then there it is right so kind of
direct and then that works for certain
things you can make a bladder that way
or an ear or something like that
um the other the other ideas is some
sort of stem cell transplant into the
ideas if we uh if we put in stem cells
with appropriate factors we can get them
to generate certain kinds of neurons for
certain you know diseases and so on all
of those things are good for relatively
simple structures but when you want an
eye or a hand or something else I think
in this maybe an unpopular opinion I
think the only hope we have in any
reasonable kind of time frame is to
understand how the thing was motivated
to get made in the first place so what
is it that that made those cells in the
in the beginning create a particular arm
with a particular uh set of sizes and
shapes and number of fingers and all
that and why is it that a salamander can
keep losing theirs and keep regrowing
theirs and a planarian can do the same
even more so to me a kind of ultimate
regenerative medicine was when you can
tell the cells to build whatever it is
you need them to build right and so so
that we can all be like planarian
basically do you have to start at the
very beginning or can you um
do a shortcut okay throwing a hand
you already got the whole organism yeah
so here's what we've done right so so
we've we've more or less solved that in
frog so frogs unlike salamanders do not
regenerate their legs as adults and so
so uh We've shown that with a very um uh
kind of simple intervention so what we
do is there's two things you need to uh
you need to have a signal that tells the
cells what to do and then you need some
way of delivering it and so this is work
together with them with David Kaplan and
I should do a disclosure here we have a
company called morpheuticals and
spin-off where we're trying to uh to
address uh regenerate you know limb
regeneration so we've solved it in the
Frog and we're now in trials and mice so
now we're going we're in mammals now and
I can't say anything about how it's
going but the Frog thing is solved so
what you do is um after you have a
little frog Luke Skywalker with every
growing hand yeah basically basically
yeah yeah so what you do is we did it
with legs instead of forearms and what
you do is after amputation normally they
they don't regenerate you put on a
wearable bioreactor so it's this thing
that um that goes on and Dave kaplan's
lab makes these things and inside it's a
it's a very controlled environment it is
a silk gel that carries uh some drugs
for example ION channel drugs and what
you're doing is you're saying to these
cells
you should regrow what normally goes
here so uh that whole thing is on for 24
hours then you take it off you don't
touch the leg again this is really
important because what we're not looking
for is a set of micromanagement you know
printing or controlling the cells we
want to trigger we want to we want to
interact with it early on and then not
touch it again because because we don't
know how to make a frog leg but the Frog
knows how to make a frog leg so 24 hours
18 months of leg growth after that
without us touching it again and after
18 months you get a pretty good leg that
kind of shows this proof of concept that
early on when the cells right after
injury when they're first making a
decision about what they're going to do
you can you can impact them and once
they've decided to make a leg they don't
need you after that they can you know do
their own thing so that's an approach
that we're now taking what about cancer
suppression that's something you
mentioned earlier how can all of these
ideas help with cancer suppression so
let's let's go back to the beginning and
ask what what what what cancer is so I
think um you know asking why there's
cancer is the wrong question I think the
right question is why is there ever
anything but cancer so so in the normal
State you have a bunch of cells that are
all cooperating towards a large-scale
goal if that process of cooperation
breaks down and you've got a cell that
is isolated from that electrical Network
that lets you remember what the big goal
is you revert back to your unicellular
lifestyle as far as now think about that
border between self and world right
normally when all these cells are
connected by gab Junctions into an
electrical Network they are all one self
right meaning that um their goals they
have these large tissue level goals and
so on as soon as the cell is
disconnected from that the self is Tiny
right and so at that point and so so
people a lot of people model cancer cell
cells as being more selfish and all that
they're not more selfish they're equally
selfish it's just that their self is
smaller normally the self is huge now
they got tiny little selves now what are
the goals of tiny little selves well
proliferate right and migrate to
wherever life is good and that's
metastasis so that's proliferation of
metastasis so so one thing we found and
people have noticed years ago that when
cells convert to cancer the first thing
they see is they close the gap Junctions
and it's a lot like I think it's a lot
like that experiment with the slime mold
where until you close that Gap Junction
you can't even entertain the idea of
leaving the collective because there is
no you at that point right your mind
melded with this with this whole other
network but as soon as the Gap Junction
is closed now the boundary between you
now now the rest of the body is just
outside environment to you you're just a
you're just a unicellular organism on
the rest of the body's environment so so
we so we study this process and we
worked out a way to artificially control
troll the bioelectric state of these
cells to physically force them to remain
in that Network and so then then what
that what that means is that nasty
mutations like k-ras and things like
that these are these really tough
oncogenic mutations that cause tumors if
you if you do them and then but but then
but then artificially um uh control of
the bioelectrics you you you greatly
reduce tumor Genesis or or normalized
cells that had already begun to convert
to basically they go back to being
normal cells and so this is another much
like with the planaria this is another
way in which the bioelectric state uh
kind of uh dominates what the what the
genetic state is so if you sequence the
the you know if you sequence the nucleic
acids you'll see the k-aras mutation
you'll say ah well that's going to be a
tumor but there isn't a tumor because
because biologically you've kept the
cells connected and they're just working
on making nice skin and kidneys and
whatever else so so we've started moving
that to um to to human glioblastoma
cells and we're hoping for um you know a
patient in the future um interaction
with patients foreign
possible ways in which we may quote uh
cure cancer I think so yeah I think so I
think I think the actual cure I mean
there are other technology you know
immune therapy I think it's a great um
technology
um chemotherapy I don't think is a good
is a good technology I think we got to
get out get off of that so chemotherapy
just kills cells yeah well chemotherapy
uh hopes to kill more of the tumor cells
than of your cells that's it it's a fine
balance the the problem is the cells are
very similar because they are yourselves
and so if you don't have a very tight
way of distinguishing between them then
uh the toll that chemo takes on the rest
of the body is just unbelievable so an
immunotherapy tries to get the immune
system to do some of the work exactly
yeah I think that's potentially a very
good uh very good approach
um if if the immune system can be taught
to recognize uh enough of of the cancer
cells that's a pretty good approach but
I but I think but I think our approach
is in a way more fundamental because if
you can if you can keep the cells
harnessed toward words organ level goals
as opposed to individual cell goals then
nobody will be making a tumor or
metastasizing and so on
so we've been living through a pandemic
what do you think about viruses in this
full beautiful biological context we've
been talking about are they beautiful to
you are they terrifying
also maybe let's say are they
since we've been discriminating this
whole conversation are they living
are they embodied Minds
embodied Minds that are assholes
as far as I know and I haven't been able
to find this paper again but but
somewhere I saw in the last couple of
months there was some there was some
papers showing an example of a virus
that actually had physiology so there
was some something was going on I think
proton flux or something on the virus
itself but but barring that uh generally
speaking viruses are very passive they
don't do anything by themselves and so I
don't see any particular reason to
attribute much of a mind to them I think
um you know uh they represent a way to
hijack other Minds for sure like like
cells and and other things but that's an
interesting interplay though if they're
hijacking other Minds
you know the way we're we were talking
about living organisms that they can
interact with each other and have it uh
alter each other's trajectory
by having interacted I mean there that's
that's a deep
meaningful connection between a virus
and a cell
and I think both are transformed by the
experience and so in that sense both are
living
yeah yeah you know the whole category
that I um
I don't this question of what's living
and what's not living I I really am I'm
not sure I and I know there's people
that work on this and I want to I don't
want to piss anybody off but but
um I have not found that particularly
useful as as to try and make that a
binary um kind of uh distinction I think
level of cognition is very interesting
but as a Continuum but but living a
non-living at you know I don't I really
know what to do with that I don't I
don't know what you do next after after
making that distinction that's why I
make the very binary distinction can I
have sex with it or not can I eat it or
not those because those are actionable
right yeah well I think that's a
critical point that you brought up
because how you relate to something is
really what this is all about right as
an engineer how do I control it but
maybe I shouldn't be controlling it
maybe I should be you know uh can I have
a relationship with it should I be
listening to its advice like like all
the way from you know I need to take it
apart all the way to uh I better do what
it says because it seems to be pretty
smart and everything in between right
that's really what we're asking about
yeah we need to understand our
relationship to it we're searching for
that relationship even in the most
trivial senses
you came up with a lot of interesting
terms
we've mentioned some of them uh agential
material that's a really interesting one
that's a really interesting one for the
future of computation and artificial
intelligence and computer science and
all that
there's also let me go through some of
them if they spark some interesting
thought for you there's teleophobia the
unwarranted fear of airing on the side
of too much agency when considering a
new system
yeah I mean that's the opposite I mean
being afraid of
maybe anthropomorphizing the thing this
will get some people um ticked off I
think but but I I don't think I I think
I think the whole notion of
anthropomorphizing is a holdover from an
A from a pre-scientific uh age where
humans were magic and everything else
wasn't magic and you were
anthropomorphizing when you dared
suggest that uh something else has some
features of humans and I think we need
to be Way Beyond that and this this
issue of anthropomorphizing I think is
um it's a cheap it's a cheap charge I
don't think it it holds any water at all
other than when somebody makes a
cognitive claim I I think all cognitive
claims are engineering claims really so
when somebody says this thing knows or
this thing hopes or this thing wants or
this thing predicts all you can say is
fabulous give me uh the engineering
protocol that you've derived using that
hypothesis and we will see if this thing
helps us or not and then and then we can
you know then we can make a rational
decision I also like Anatomy compiler a
future system representing the long-term
end game of the science of morphogenesis
that reminds us how far away from True
understanding we are someday you will be
able to sit in front of an anatomical
computer specify the shape of the animal
or a plant that you want and it will
convert that shape specification to a
set of stimuli that will have to be
given to cells to build exactly that
shape no matter how weird
it ends up being you have total control
just imagine the possibility for memes
in the physical space one of the
Glorious accomplishments of human
civilizations is memes in digital space
now this could create memes in in
physical space I am both excited and
terrified by that possibility uh
cognitive light cone I think we also
talked about the outer boundary in space
and time of the largest gold a given
system can work towards
is this kind of like shaping the set of
options it's a little different than
options it's it's really focused on so
so so back in uh this this I I first
came up with this back in 2018 I want to
say we had a there was a conference um a
Templeton a conference where they
challenged us to come up with Frameworks
I think actually it's the here it's the
diverse intelligence uh community that
summer Institute yeah they had a summer
Institute but um the logos the B with
some circuits yeah it's got different
different life forms and you know so so
so the whole the whole uh program is
called diverse intelligence and they
sort they challenge you to stick them up
with a framework that was suitable for
analyzing different kinds of
intelligence together right because
because the kinds of things you do to a
human who are not good with an octopus
not good with a plant and so on so so I
started thinking about this and
um I I asked myself what uh what do all
cognitive agents no matter what their
Providence no matter what their um uh uh
architecture is what what what do
cognitive agents have in common and it
seems to me that what they have in
common is some degree of Competency to
pursue a goal and so what you can do
then is you can draw and so what I what
I what I ended up drawing was this thing
that it's kind of like a like a
backwards um minkowski cone diagram
where all of space is could collapsed
into one axis and then and then here and
then time is is this axis and then what
you can do is you can draw for any
creature you can you can
semi-quantitatively estimate what are
the what are the spatial and temporal
goals that it can that it's capable of
pursuing so for example if you are a
tick and all you can uh all you really
are able to pursue is Maxima or
bacterium in the maximizing the level of
some some chemical in your vicinity
right that's all you've got it's a tiny
little icon then then you're a simple
system like a tick or a bacterium if you
are something like a dog well you've got
some ability to um uh to care about some
some spatial region some temporal you
know you can you can remember a little
bit backwards you can you can predict a
little bit forwards but you're never
ever going to care about what happens in
the next town over four weeks from now
it just it's just as far as We Know It's
Just impossible for that kind of
architecture if you're a human you might
be working towards World Peace long
after you're dead right so you might
have a a planetary scale goal that's
that's enormous right and and so and and
then there may be there may be other
greater intelligence is somewhere that
can care in the linear range about
numbers of creatures that you know some
sort of buddha-like character that can
like care about everybody's welfare like
really care the way that we can't
um and so and so that it it's it's not a
it's not a mapping of what you can sense
how far you can sense right it's not a
mapping of where how far you can act
it's a mapping of how big are the goals
you are capable of envisioning and
working towards and I think that enables
you to put
um the
synthetic kinds of constructs AIS aliens
um swarms whatever on the same diagram
because because we're not talking about
What You're Made Of or how you got here
we're talking about what are the what
are the the the the size and complexity
of the gold storage which you can work
is there any other terms that pop into
mind that are interesting
I'm trying to remember this is a I have
a list of them somewhere on my way
Target morphology yeah people yeah
definitely check it out more more
suitable I like that one ionoseutical
yeah yeah I mean those those those refer
to different types of interventions in
the regenerative medicine space so
amorphosutical is something that uh it's
a kind of uh intervention that really
targets the cells
decision making process about what
they're going to build and ionaceuticals
are like that but more focused
specifically on the bioelectrics I mean
there's also of course biochemical
biomechanical who knows what else you
know maybe Optical um kinds of signaling
systems there as well Target morphology
is is interesting it really uh it's
designed to capture this idea that it's
not just feed forward emergence and
oftentimes in biology I mean of course
that happens too but but in many cases
in biology the system is specifically
working towards a Target in anatomical
amorphous space right it's a it's a
navigation task really these kind of
problem solving can be um uh uh ski you
know uh formalized as navigation tasks
and that they're really going towards a
particular region how do you know
because you deviate them and then they
go back
let me ask you because you've
really challenged a lot of ideas in
biology in in the work you do probably
because uh some of your rebelliousness
comes from the fact that you came from a
different field of Computer Engineering
but could you give advice to young
people today in high school or college
they're trying to pave
their life story whether it's in science
or elsewhere how they can have a career
they can be proud of or a life they can
be proud of advice boy it's dangerous to
give advice because things change so
fast but uh one Central thing I can say
moving up and and through Academia and
whatnot you will be surrounded by really
smart people and what you need to do is
be very careful at distinguishing
specific
critique versus kind of Meta Meta advice
and what I mean by that is
if if somebody really smart and
successful and obviously uh competent is
giving you specific
um critiques on what you've done it
that's gold that's an opportunity to
hone your craft to get better at what
you're doing to learn to find your
mistakes like that's great
if they are telling you what you ought
to be studying how you ought to approach
things what is the right way to think
about things
you should probably ignore most of that
and the reason I make that distinction
is that a lot of really
um a really successful uh people are
very well calibrated on their own ideas
and they on in their own field and their
own you know sort of uh area and they
know exactly what works and what doesn't
and what's good and what's bad but
they're not calibrated on your ideas and
so so uh the things they will they will
say oh you know this is a dumb idea
don't do this and you shouldn't do that
that stuff is generally uh worse than
worse than useless it can be very very
um uh demoralizing and and and and
really limiting and so so what I say to
people is read very broadly work really
hard know what you're talking about take
all specific criticism as a
um as an opportunity to improve what
you're doing and then completely ignore
everything else because I I just tell
you from like from from my own
experience um most of what I consider to
be interesting and useful things that
we've done very smart people have said
this is a terrible idea don't don't
don't do that don't you know just um
yeah I think I think we we just don't
know we have no idea beyond beyond our
own like at best we know what we ought
to be doing we very rarely know what
anybody else should be doing yeah and
their ideas
their perspective has been also
calibrated not just on their field and
specific situation but also on a state
of that field at a particular time in
the past so there's not many people in
this world that are able to achieve
revolutionary success multiple times in
their life so whenever you say somebody
very smart usually what that means is
somebody who's smart who achieved the
success at certain point in their life
and people often get stuck in that place
where they found success to be
constantly challenging your world view
is a very difficult thing
um so yeah and that also at the same
time probably if a lot of people tell
that's the weird thing about life if a
lot of people tell you
that something is stupid or is not going
to work
that either means it's stupid it's not
going to work or
it's actually a great opportunity to do
something new
and you don't know which one it is it's
probably equally likely to be either if
no well I don't know the probabilities
depends how lucky you are it depends how
brilliant you are but you don't know and
so you can't take that advice as actual
data yeah you have to um you have to and
this is this is kind of hard and fuzzy
like hard to describe and fuzzy but I
I'm uh a firm believer that you have to
uh build up your own intuition so over
time right you have to take your own
risks that seem like they make sense to
you and then learn from that and build
up so that you can trust your own gut
about what's a good idea even when and
then sometimes you'll make mistakes and
they'll turn out to be a dead end and
that's fine that's that's science but
but um you know what I tell my students
is is uh life is hard and science is is
hard and you're going to sweat and bleed
and everything and you should be doing
that for uh ideas that that really fire
you up inside and and um you know and
and really don't let uh kind of the uh
the the common denominator of
standardized approaches to things slow
you down
so you mentioned planaria being in some
sense Immortal what's the role of death
in life
what's the role of death in this whole
process we have is is it uh when you
look at biological systems
is death an important feature
especially as you climb up the hierarchy
of uh competency boy that's an
interesting question
um I think that uh it's certainly a
factor that promotes change and turnover
and an opportunity to do something
different the next time
for a larger scale system so apoptosis
you know it's really interesting I mean
death is really interesting in a number
of ways one is like you could think
about like what was the first thing to
die you know that's that's an
interesting question what was the first
creature that you could say actually die
it's a tough it's a tough thing because
we don't have a great definition for it
so if you bring a a cabbage home and you
put it in your fridge
at what point are you gonna say it's
died you're right then so so that's it's
kind of hard
um to know there's also there's also uh
the the there's there's one paper in
which I talk about this idea that I mean
think about think about this and and
imagine that uh you have you have a
creature uh that's aquatic let's say
let's say it's a it's a frog or
something or a tadpole and the animal
dies in the in the pond it dies for
whatever reason
most of the cells are still alive so you
could imagine that if when it died there
was some sort of um breakdown of of of
of the of the connectivity between the
cells a bunch of cells crawled off they
could have a life as amoebas they some
of them could join together and become a
zenabot and toodle around right so we
know from planaria that there are cells
that don't obey the hayflick limit and
just sort of live live forever so you
could imagine an organism that when the
organism dies it doesn't disappear
rather the individual cells that are
still alive crawl off and have a
completely different kind of lifestyle
and maybe come back together as
something else or maybe they don't so so
all of this I'm sure is happening
somewhere on some on some on some Planet
so so
um death in any case I mean we already
kind of knew this because the molecules
we you know we know with something nice
the molecules go through the ecosystem
but even the cells don't necessarily die
at that point they might have another
life in a different uh in a different
way you can think about something like
Gila right The Gila cell line you know
that has this that's had this incredible
life uh there are way more Hela cells
now than there ever been than there than
there were when when she was alive it
seems like as the organisms become more
and more complex like if you look at the
mammals their relationship with death
becomes more and more complex
so the survival imperative starts
becoming interesting and humans
are arguably the first species
that have invented the fear of death the
understanding that you're going to die
let's put it this way like a long-term
so not like ins instinctual like I need
to run away from the thing that's going
to eat me but starting to contemplate
the finiteness of Life yeah I mean one
thing so one thing about the human light
cognitive light cone is that for the
first as far as we know for the first
time you might have goals that are
longer than your life that are not
achievable right so if you're if you're
let's say and I I don't know if this is
true but if if you're of goldfish and
you have a 10 minute attention span I'm
not sure if that's true but let's say
let's say there's some organism with a
with a short um you know kind of
cognitive light cone that way
all of your goals are potentially
achievable because you're probably going
to live the next 10 minutes so whatever
goals you have they are totally
achievable if you're a human you could
have all kinds of goals that are
guaranteed not achievable because they
just take too long like guaranteed
you're not going to achieve them so I
wonder if you know is that is that a per
you know like a perennial um you know
sort of thorn in our in our psychology
that drives some some psychosis or
whatever I have no idea another
interesting thing about that actually
I've been thinking about this a lot in
the last couple of weeks this notion of
giving up so you would think that
evolutionarily the most um adaptive way
of being is that you go you you you
fight as long as you physically can and
then when you can't you can't and
there's in there's this Photograph
there's some videos you can find of
insects crawling around where like you
know this like like most of it is
already gone and it's still sort of
crawling you know like
um um a Terminator style right like as
far as as long as you physically can you
keep going
mammals don't do that so so a lot of
mammals including rats have this thing
where when when they think it's it's a
hopeless situation they literally give
up and die when physically they could
have kept going I mean humans certainly
do this and there's there's some like
really unpleasant experiments that the
the this guy forget his name did with
them drowning rats where if he where
where rats normally drown after a couple
of minutes but if you teach them that if
you just tread water for a couple of
minutes you'll get rescued they can
tread water for like an hour and so
right and so they literally just give up
and die and so evolutionarily that
doesn't seem like a good strategy at all
evolutionarily since why would you like
what's the benefit ever of giving up you
just do what you can and you know one
time out of a thousand you'll actually
get rescued right but this issue of of
of actually giving up suggests some very
interesting metacognitive controls where
you've now gotten to the point where
survival actually isn't the top drive
and that for whatever you know there are
other considerations that have like
taken over and I I think that's uniquely
a mammalian thing but um I don't know
yeah the Camus
the existentialist question of Why Live
just the fact that humans commit suicide
is a really fascinating question from an
evolutionary perspective and what was
the first and that's the other thing
like what is the simplest uh system
whether whether evolved or you know
natural or whatever that is able to do
that right like you can think you know
what other animals are actually able to
do that I'm not sure maybe
you could see animals over time for some
reason lowering the value of survive at
all costs gradually until other
objectives might become more important
maybe I don't know how evolutionarily
how that how that gets off the ground
that just seems like that would have
such a strong pressure against it you
know
just imagine a you know a population
with with with a lower
um you know what what if if you were a
mutant in a population that had less of
a uh less of a survival imperative would
you would your genes outperform the
others it seems no is there such a thing
as population selection because maybe
suicide is a way
uh for organisms to decide that
themselves that they're not
fit for the environment somehow yeah
that's a that's a really uh country you
know population level selection is a is
a kind of a deep controversial area but
it's tough because on the face of it if
that was your genome it wouldn't get
propagated because you would die and
then your neighbor who didn't have that
would have all the kids it feels like
there could be some deep truth there
that we're not understanding
um what about you yourself as one
biological system are you afraid of
death
to be honest I'm more concerned with uh
especially now getting older and having
helped a couple of people pass I think
about what's a um
what's a good way to go basically like
nowadays I don't know what that is I you
know sitting in a you know a facility
that sort of tries to uh stretch you out
as as long as you can that doesn't seem
that doesn't seem good and there's not a
lot of opportunities to sort of
um I don't know sacrifice yourself for
something useful right there's not
terribly many opportunities for that in
modern society so I don't know that's
that's that's more of I'm not I'm not
particularly worried about uh death
itself but uh I've I've seen it happen
uh and and it's not it's not pretty and
I don't know what what a better what a
better alternative is so the existential
aspect of it does not
worry you deeply the fact that this ride
ends
no it began I mean the ride began right
so there was I don't know how many
billions of years before that I wasn't
around so that's okay but isn't the
experience of life
it's almost like feels like you're
Immortal because the way you make plans
the way you think about the future I
mean if if you re if you look at your
own personal Rich experience
yes you can understand okay eventually I
died there's people I love that have
died so surely I will die and it hurts
and so on but like it sure doesn't it's
so easy to get lost and feeling like
this is going to go on forever yeah it's
a little bit like the people who say
they don't believe in Free Will right I
mean you can say that but but when you
go to a restaurant you still have to
pick a soup and stuff so right so so I
don't know if I know I've I've actually
seen that that happen at lunch with a
with a well-known philosopher and uh he
wouldn't believe in Free Will and you
know the waitress came around and he was
like well let me see I was like what are
you doing you're gonna choose a sandwich
right so um it's I think it's one of
those things I think you you can know
that you know you're not going to live
forever but you can't you can't it's not
practical to live that way unless you
know so you buy insurance and then you
do some stuff like that but but but
mostly you know
um I think you just you just live as if
uh as if as if you can make plans
fuck
we talked about all kinds of life we
talked about all kinds of embodied Minds
what do you think is the meaning of it
all
what's the meaning
of all the biological eyes I've been
talking about here on Earth why are we
here
I don't know that that's a that that's a
well-posed question other than the
existential question you posed before is
that question hanging out with the
question of what is consciousness and
their uh Edward Retreat somewhere not
sure because sipping pina coladas and
because they're Ambiguously defined
maybe I'm I'm not sure that any of these
things really ride on the the
correctness of our scientific
understanding but I mean just just for
an example right
um I've I've always found I've always
found it weird that uh people get really
worked up uh to find out realities about
their their bodies for for example right
you've seen them uh ex machina right and
so so there's this great scene where
he's cutting his hand to find out he's
you know he's full of cock now to me
right if if I open up and I find out and
I find a bunch of cogs my conclusion is
not oh crap I must not have true
cognition that sucks my conclusion is
wow cogs can have true cognition great
so right so so it seems to me I guess I
guess I'm with Descartes on this one
then whatever whatever the truth uh ends
up being of of how is what is
consciousness how it can be conscious
none of that is going to alter my
primary experience which is this is what
it is and if and if a bunch of molecular
networks can do it fantastic if it turns
out that um there's a there's a
non-corporeal you know Soul uh great we
could you know we'll study that whatever
but but the fundamental
um existential aspect of it is you know
if somebody if somebody told me uh today
that uh yeah yeah you were created
yesterday and all your memories are you
know sort of uh fake you know kind of
like um like like boltzmann brains right
and the human you know human skepticism
and all that uh yeah okay well so so but
but here I am now so so let's experience
is Primal so it like that's the that's
the thing that matters so the the back
story doesn't matter the explanation I
think so from a first person per second
now from a third person like
scientifically it's all very interesting
from a third person perspective I could
say wow that's that's amazing that that
this happens and how does it happen or
whatever but from a first person
perspective I could care less like I
just it's just what I've what I learned
from any of these scientific facts is
okay well I guess then that's that then
I guess that's what is sufficient to to
give me my uh you know amazing first
person perspective well I think if you
dig deeper and deeper and get a
get surprising answers to why the hell
we're here
it might give you some guidance on how
to live
maybe maybe I don't know um that would
be nice on the one hand you might be
right because on the one hand if I don't
know what else could possibly give you
that guidance right so so you would
think that it would have to be that or
it would it would have to be science
because there isn't anything else so so
that's so maybe on the other hand
I am really not sure how you go from any
you know what they call from an is to an
ought right from any factual description
of what's going on this this goes back
to the natural right just because
somebody says oh man that's completely
not natural it's never happened on Earth
before I I'm not you know impressed by
that whatsoever I think I think whatever
has or hasn't happened we are now in a
position to do better if we can right
well there's also good because you said
there's science and there's nothing else
there it's it's really tricky
to know
how to intellectually deal with the
thing that science doesn't currently
understand
right so like
the thing is if you believe that science
solves everything
you can too easily in your mind think
our current understanding like we've
solved everything right right right like
it jumps really quickly to not science
as a mechanism as a as a process
but more like the size of today like you
could just look at human history and
throughout human history just physicists
and everybody would claim we've solved
everything sure sure like there's a few
small things to figure out and just we
basically solved everything uh where in
reality I think asking like what is the
meaning of life
is uh resetting the palette
yeah of like
we might be tiny and confused and don't
have anything figured out it's almost
going to be hilarious a few centuries
from now when they look back how dumb we
were yeah 100 agree so so when I say uh
science and nothing else I certainly
don't mean the science of today because
I think overall I think we are we know
very little I think most of the things
that we're sure of now are going to be
as you said are going to look hilarious
down the line
um so I think we're just at the
beginning of a lot of really important
things
when I say nothing but science I also
include the kind of first person what I
call science that you do so the
interesting thing about um I think about
Consciousness and studying Consciousness
and things like that in the first person
is unlike doing science in the third
person where you as the scientists are
minimally Changed by it maybe not at all
so when I do an experiment I'm still me
there's the experiment whatever I've
done I've learned something so that's a
small change but but overall that's it
in order to really study Consciousness
you will you are part of the experiment
you will be altered by that experiment
right whatever whatever it is that
you're doing whether it's you know some
sort of contemplative practice or
uh or or some sort of uh you know
psychoactive but you know whatever uh
you are now you are now your own
experiment and you are right and so so I
can say I fold that in I think that's
that's part of it I think that exploring
um our own mind and our own
Consciousness is very important I think
much of it is not captured by what
currently is third person science for
sure but ultimately I include all of
that in science
with a capital s in terms of like a um
uh a rational investigation of both
first and third person aspects of our
world
we are our own experiment as beautifully
put and uh when when two systems get to
interact with each other that's the kind
of experiment so I'm deeply honored you
would uh do this experiment with me
today thanks so much I'm a huge fan of
your work likewise thank you for doing
everything you're doing
um I can't wait to see the kind of
incredible things you build so thank you
for talking today really appreciate
being here thank you
thank you for listening to this
conversation with Michael Levin to
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let me leave you with some words from
Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species
from the war of nature from famine and
death
the most exalted object which we're
capable of conceiving namely the
production of the higher animals
directly follows
there's Grandeur in this view of life
with its several Powers having been
originally breathed into a few forms or
into one and that whilst this planet has
gone cycling on according to the fixed
laws of gravity from a so simpler
beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been and are
being evolved
thank you for listening I hope to see
you next time