<\/p>\n
<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Michael Levin discusses his 2022 paper \u201cTechnological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds\u201d and his 2023 paper with Joshua Bongard, \u201cThere\u2019s Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-scale Machines.\u201d Links to papers flagged \ud83d\udea9below.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Levin is a scientist at Tufts University; his lab studies anatomical and behavioral decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems. He works at the intersection of developmental biology, artificial life, bioengineering, synthetic morphology, and cognitive science.<\/p>\n<p>\u2776 Polycomputing (observer-dependent)<br \/> 1:59 Outlining the discussion.<br \/> 3:50 My favorite comment from round 1 interview.<br \/> 5:00 What is polycomputing?<br \/> 8:50 An ode to Richard Feynman\u2019s \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of room at the bottom\u201c<br \/> 11:10 How\/when was this discovered? Reductionism, causal power\u2026<br \/> 14:40 \u201cIt\u2019s a view that steps away from prediction.\u201c<br \/> 16:20 From abstract: Polycomputing is the ability of the same substrate to simultaneously compute different things *but emphasis on the observer(s)*<br \/> 17:05 What\u2019s an example of polycomputing?<br \/> 19:40 They took a different approach and actually did experiments with gene regulatory networks (GRNs)<br \/> 23:18 Different observers extract different utility from the exact same system.<br \/> 26:35 Spatial causal emergence graphs (determinism, degeneracy) | Erik Hoel\u2019s micro\/macro & effective information.<br \/> 29:25 Inventiveness of John Conway\u2019s Game of Life.<\/p>\n<p>\u2777 Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere.<br \/> 34:20 Tell me 3 things to determine intelligence (ball vs mouse on a hill)<br \/> 39:50 Jeff Hawkins\u2019 Thousand Brains Theory.<br \/> 41:05 Agency is not binary, continuum of persuadability.<br \/> 44:50 Where\u2019s the bottom of agency? Plants & insects far off from 0<br \/> 46:55 What is the absolute minimum amount of agency? Some degree of goal directed behavior & indeterminacy\u2026<br \/> 51:05 Life is a system good at scaling.<br \/> 51:41 \u201cTo me, our world doesn\u2019t have 0 agency anywhere.\u201c<br \/> 53:50 As an engineer, what can I take advantage of?<br \/> 55:00 Surely you don\u2019t think the weather has any intelligence to it\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2778 Attractor Landscapes.<br \/> 58:35 Homeostatic loops, morphological spaces, attractor landscapes.<br \/> 1:00:35 \u201cOf course we\u2019re living in a simulation!\u201c<br \/> 1:06:45 Attractor landscapes, topography, anatomical morphous space (D\u2019Arcy Thompson)<br \/> 1:12:28 Planaria stochastic, probability of head shape proportional to evolutionary distance between species.<br \/> 1:15:15 What is the secret of the universe? Attractor landscapes, quantum fields, black holes.<br \/> 1:19:05 We need a new system of ethics for unconventional minds.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udebe Works Cited.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/agency-attractors-observer-dependent-computation-in-biology-beyond\">Continue reading \u201cAgency, Attractors, & Observer-Dependent Computation in Biology & Beyond\u201d | ><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Levin discusses his 2022 paper \u201cTechnological Approach to Mind Everywhere: An Experimentally-Grounded Framework for Understanding Diverse Bodies and Minds\u201d and his 2023 paper with Joshua Bongard, \u201cThere\u2019s Plenty of Room Right Here: Biological Systems as Evolved, Overloaded, Multi-scale Machines.\u201d Links to papers flagged \ud83d\udea9below. Michael Levin is a scientist at Tufts University; his lab [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1527,1523,38,30,412,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-171004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alien-life","category-computing","category-engineering","category-ethics","category-genetics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}