Memory Engrams, DNA, Evolution, Platonic Realms - Michael Levin (#55)
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- čas přidán 6. 08. 2024
- Michael Levin is a cognitive scientist and biologist at Tufts University.
Conventional biology posits that most of biology's competence and intelligence are encoded in DNA. But what if there is much more to biology?
In this podcast, learn about how the DNA-only view of biology is crumbling, the means of information encoding beyond DNA, the reinterpretive nature of memory, the inherent goal-directedness of biology, and how biology leverages innate intelligent capacities across all scales.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - What is Wrong With DNA-Centric Biology
04:25 - Re-Understanding Cancer and New Approaches to Biology
10:44 - How Biological Collectives Remain Together and Innate Problem-Solving
12:48 - Memory and Platonic Spaces: Why Are Biological Patterns Stored?
17:28 - Butterfly-Caterpillar Memory Transmutation
23:03 - Evolvability and Goal-Directedness Across Different Levels of Evolution
27:22 - Emergent Goal-Directedness and Surprising System Properties
Find Michael and His Lab's Work:
-X:@drmichaellevin
-CZcams: @drmichaellevin
Levin Lab Podcasts:
-Hananel Hazan: Computation in Biology: • Machine Learning, Spik...
-Randy Ellis: Intelligence, Causality, Metascience: • Memory, Intelligence, ...
-Juanita Mathews: Cancer and Collective Intelligence: • Bioelectricity, Regene... - Věda a technologie
Fantastic thank you!
I've watched a lot of Dr. Levin and this one has excited me most of all. His lucidity is stupefying. What a gift! :)
Thank you
Wonderful interview, good questions, thank you!! ❤
Great interview. Dr. Levin seems to understand "general nonspecific" information encoding well (bow tie example). His idea of spaces is interesting, but i think its gene splicing that deals with diversity but yes there are probably other systems that fine tune splicing. One alternative thought, using reductive thinking the smallest part would be a symbol, not quantum foam. Its easier to think in informational and philosophical terms when reasoning about systems than it is in physical terms. Also, its easier to think of symbols belonging to two categories, definable and undefinable. Examples; god, soul, foam are undefinable; splicing, atoms are definable. He seems well rounded in bio, cs, informatics and platonic philosophy. Good fighter.
Michael Levin is a modern day wizard. He takes what is in nature and learns how to put potions and spells on it, which is to say he learns how to uncover enhance nature’s capabilities previously “hidden” to our simple laymen’s eyes, to work towards a goal of befitting humans. I so very much appreciate his generosity of time and energy in his work, and his knowledge sharing with the world.
He's great! I hope you enjoyed the podcast.
Love it!
Very cool shirt!
In tune
25:20 "intelligence and problem-solving is a bigger set than living things... baked into the fabric of the universe" - but what problems to atoms and molecules have? what am i missing !?
When you frame it as a question of what problems do atoms and molecules have, I understand why it might seem odd for Michael Levin to say that intelligence and problem-solving are baked into the fabric of the universe! However, I would point you to Karl Friston and the Free Energy Principle, which explores why things exist at all (as opposed to everything merging together). The FEP can also be applied to human cognition (via active inference theories), but it is more general than that. Is it strange? Perhaps. Why does life emerge, seemingly defying the 2nd law of thermodynamics? Maybe the universe has a preference for it (look up Azarian's book The Romance of Reality for more on this). For more on the complex things basic chemistry can do, look up Nick Lane's book Transformer.
@@JackRoycroftSherry However isn't it is rather incomprehensible to say that problem solving is baked into existence itself, if it has not been properly conceptually distinguished from its usual sense, ie problem solving requires at least a problem, and therefore also an agent whose problem it is? The only necessary consequence of existence as entailing problem solving itself, is that there must always be problems, which is fairly banal. Larger ethical and cosmological questions are more sidelined and relativised by seeing existence as seemingly preoccupied with fixing local technical inefficiencies, if that is what problem solving actually does.
@@lkd982 Sure, maybe we are being too metaphorical if we use the words intelligence and probelm-solving to describe these lower levels. But perhaps there is something analogous between, for example, our intelligence and these lower levels. I think Michael Levin might argue that this is true.
@@JackRoycroftSherry yes but I think he and others are actually equating bare existence and intelligence itself, not just an analogy, and this requires a philosophical redefinition of existence which of course is profound :)
The problem that the universal dynamic (path integral) solves is: to minimize the system’s action (in the physics sense).
The intelligence is in the microtubules, baby! 😊
We have a Eternity-Body, (Rainbow)
as holds our Under-Bodies, (Colors)
Instinct, Red, is the Lowest, Memory, Indigo,
is the Highest. (Fourth Deep Sleep)
Memory, bring us from word to word,
from day to day, from Life to Life,
From Developing-Circuit, to Developing-Circuit.