Dr. Michael Levin — Reprogramming Bioelectricity, Updating “Software program” for Anti-Getting old, Treating Most cancers With out Medication, Cognition of Cells, and A lot Extra (#849)

Dr. Michael Levin (@drmichaellevin ) is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts College and director of the Allen Discovery Middle. His background is in pc science and biology, and his group works on the intersection of developmental biophysics, pc science, and cognitive science. He’s primarily considering how intelligence self-organizes in a various vary of pure, engineered, and hybrid embodiments. Levin has been creating a framework for recognizing and speaking with unconventional cognitive techniques.

Utilized to the collective intelligence of cell teams present process morphogenesis, these concepts have allowed the Levin Lab to develop new purposes in start defects, organ regeneration, and most cancers suppression. His lab additionally produces artificial life-forms (e.g., Xenobots and Anthrobots) that function exploration platforms for understanding the supply of patterns of type and habits in a variety of pure, synthetic, and hybrid embodied minds.

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Transcripts

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Join with Dr. Michael Levin:

Private Weblog | Lab Web site | Thoughtforms Life Podcast | YouTube | Twitter

Michael’s TED Speak

Occasions

Articles & Sources

Books & Tales

Movies & Documentaries

Firms, Organizations, & Colleges

Key Ideas & Phrases

Bioelectricity

Regeneration & Improvement

Getting old

Cognition & Intelligence

Computing & Data

Philosophy of Thoughts

Different Scientific Ideas

Analysis & Experiments

Medical & Therapeutic Purposes

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• Erik Vance — The Magic and Energy of Placebo | The Tim Ferriss Present #194

Individuals

TIMESTAMPS

• [00:03:18] The Physique Electrical: A Vancouver bookstore discovery that launched a profession.
• [00:04:19] Bioelectricity 101: Your mind makes use of it to suppose; your physique used it earlier than you had a mind.
• [00:06:05] The lesson realized by scrambled tadpole faces that rearrange themselves.
• [00:08:51] Software program vs. {hardware}: The genome is your manufacturing unit settings, not your future.
• [00:11:43] Two-headed flatworms: Rewriting organic reminiscence with out touching DNA.
• [00:16:20] Seeing reminiscences: Voltage-sensitive dyes reveal the physique’s hidden blueprints.
• [00:20:12] Three killer apps for people: Beginning defects, regeneration, and most cancers.
• [00:24:27] Most cancers as identification disaster: Cells forgetting they’re a part of a workforce.
• [00:25:40] The boredom idea of ageing: Purpose-seeking techniques with nothing left to do.
• [00:30:09] Planaria’s immortality hack: Rip your self in half each two weeks.
• [00:31:27] Manhattan Mission for ageing: Crack mobile cognition, all the things else falls into place.
• [00:33:47] Giving cells new targets: Persuade a intestine to change into a watch.
• [00:37:42] Should mammalian mortality be obligatory?
• [00:40:25] Cross-pollination: Why biologists would profit from programming programs.
• [00:47:15] Does acupuncture truly do something?
• [00:50:57] Placebo as function, not bug: Phrases and medicines share the identical mechanism.
• [00:55:06] The body drawback: Why robots explode and rats intuit what issues.
• [00:59:41] Binary pondering is a entice: “Is it clever?” is the unsuitable query.
• [01:07:46] Minimal mind, regular IQ: Medical instances that break neuroscience.
• [01:08:45] Tremendous panpsychism: Your liver might need opinions.
• [01:13:48] The Platonic area: Our bodies as skinny shoppers for patterns from elsewhere.
• [01:15:24] Maintain asking “why” and you find yourself within the math division.
• [01:23:07] Polycomputing: Sorting algorithms secretly doing facet quests.
• [01:28:24] Energy scaling for the long run and avoiding pink herrings for understanding machine minds.
• [01:34:06] Sci-fi suggestions.
• [01:37:24] Cliff Tabin’s toast and Dan Dennett’s metal manning.
• [01:41:21] Parting ideas.

DR. MICHAEL LEVIN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“So what I attempted to point out in that speak are some examples by which the residing tissues, for instance, flatworms which might be reduce into items and every bit has to determine “What number of heads ought to I’ve? The place do the heads go? What ought to the form of my face be?” These sorts of issues, that actually they do know, and the way in which they know is as a result of they retailer reminiscences, and possibly not shockingly, though it’s actually surprising to a variety of of us, the way in which these reminiscences are saved is in {an electrical} community that’s similar to the way in which that we retailer our goal-directed behavioral repertoires in our mind and that these items are broadly unfold. And so regeneration, most cancers suppression, and most cancers restore and reworking, start defects and start defect restore, all of these items are extensively utilizing electrical sample reminiscences, and we now have a strategy to rewrite these sample reminiscences.” — Dr. Michael Levin

“I all the time say to individuals, ‘In your laptop computer, if you wish to go from Photoshop to Microsoft Phrase, you don’t get out your soldering iron and begin rewiring. It’d be laughable when you needed to, however that’s how we used to do it. Within the ’40s and ’50s, you programmed a pc by pulling and plugging wires, however you don’t try this anymore as a result of it’s reprogrammable. And that’s what the biology is.’” — Dr. Michael Levin

“The secret right here is speaking with the cells. This isn’t about stem cells or gene remedy or scaffolds manufactured from nanomaterials. These are all instruments that is likely to be helpful, however the true trick right here is to speak to a bunch of cells, what would you like them to construct? And that’s what the bioelectric code is all about; it’s about speaking to the collective, to the mobile collective.” — Dr. Michael Levin

“We are able to detect incipient tumor formation and we will stop and normalize tumors after they type … not by killing the cells with chemotherapy, however by electrically reconnecting them to the group such that they’ll type, once more, a reminiscence of what they’re presupposed to be doing.” — Dr. Michael Levin

“Simply think about this customary Judeo-Christian model of Heaven. Let’s say you, your pet snake, and your canine get to Heaven. Every thing is nice, there’s no extra injury, there’s no decay, nothing is broken, all the things is nice, all the things’s implausible. For the following trillion years, what occurs? The snake could also be high quality doing snake issues for day by day is identical as each different day, could also be high quality. The canine, unsure. In all probability okay chasing rabbits on the farm, could also be high quality for ceaselessly, principally. The human although, what do you suppose? What are the chances {that a} human cognitive system could be sane for an infinite — okay, I’ll maintain myself busy for the primary 10,000 years, possibly 100,000 years, however a billion years in, are we nonetheless sane? What occurs?” — Dr. Michael Levin

“When you make a circle of cognitive issues and residing issues, I believe cognition is wider than life. I believe cognition predates life and I believe it’s larger than life.” — Dr. Michael Levin

“It’s completely attainable that in these AIs the factor we’ve got pressured them to do, which is to speak, and the factor that we’re all obsessed about or the issues it says could possibly be an entire pink herring so far as what sort of intelligence is definitely there, what does it need? How will we talk with it? The verbal interface that we’re all type of so glued in on won’t be the fascinating a part of that equation.” — Dr. Michael Levin

“This subject of numerous intelligence combines synthetic intelligence and engineering and cybernetics and evolutionary biology and AI and exobiology and the seek for alien life. All of these items are, collectively, asking what are literally the frequent threads of being an agent — it doesn’t matter what your origin story, whether or not you have been designed or advanced or engineered, or whether or not you have been manufactured from squishy proteins, or whether or not you have been manufactured from silicon or one thing else.” — Dr. Michael Levin

“When you’re like a five-year-old and also you try this factor the place you retain asking, “However why? However why?” When you maintain asking “However why?” lengthy sufficient, finally you all the time find yourself within the math division.” — Dr. Michael Levin

Wish to hear one other episode with a pioneer of bioelectric medication? Hearken to my dialog with neurosurgeon and researcher Dr. Kevin Tracey, during which we mentioned stimulating the vagus nerve to tame irritation, treating rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune issues with out medication, the FDA-approved SetPoint Medical gadget, credible vs. bogus vagus nerve stimulation approaches, the inflammatory reflex, auricular remedy, coronary heart price variability, the connection between despair and irritation, and far more.

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