Dr. Michael Levin — Reprogramming Bioelectricity

[CARDOZZO]

Good stuff. Levin is a GENIUS  

[00:00] Preview.
[00:42] The Body Electric: A Vancouver bookstore discovery that launched a career.
[01:44] Bioelectricity 101: Your brain uses it to think; your body used it before you had a brain.
[03:29] The lesson learned by scrambled tadpole faces that rearrange themselves.
[06:21] Software vs. hardware: The genome is your factory settings, not your destiny.
[09:14] Two-headed flatworms: Rewriting biological memory without touching DNA.
[11:19] Seeing memories: Voltage-sensitive dyes reveal the body’s hidden blueprints.
[15:17] Three killer apps for humans: Birth defects, regeneration, and cancer.
[19:39] Cancer as identity crisis: Cells forgetting they’re part of a team.
[20:54] The boredom theory of aging: Goal-seeking systems with nothing left to do.
[25:41] Planaria’s immortality hack: Rip yourself in half every two weeks.
[27:04] Manhattan Project for aging: Crack cellular cognition, everything else falls into place.
[29:30] Giving cells new goals: Convince a gut to become an eye.
[33:32] Must mammalian mortality be mandatory?
[36:24] Cross-pollination: Why biologists would benefit from programming courses.
[42:19] Does acupuncture actually do anything?
[46:09] Placebo as feature, not bug: Words and drugs share the same mechanism.
[50:24] The frame problem: Why robots explode and rats intuit what matters.
[55:04] Binary thinking is a trap: “Is it intelligent?” is the wrong question.
[01:03:23] Minimal brain, normal IQ: Clinical cases that break neuroscience.
[01:04:24] Super panpsychism: Your liver might have opinions.
[01:09:36] The Platonic space: Bodies as thin clients for patterns from elsewhere.
[01:11:19] Keep asking “why” and you end up in the math department.
[01:19:06] Polycomputing: Sorting algorithms secretly doing side quests.
[01:24:38] Power scaling for the future and avoiding red herrings for understanding machine minds.
[01:30:28] Sci-fi recommendations.
[01:33:38] Cliff Tabin’s toast and Dan Dennett’s steel manning.
[01:37:32] Parting thoughts.

 

[Koeke]

I do wonder why Levin would go on podcasts such as this one. What does he have to gain from it? Is it about public education? I don't understand why he wouldn't talk to more scientists and philosophers closer to his own field.

[CARDOZZO]

1 hour ago, Koeke said:

I do wonder why Levin would go on podcasts such as this one. What does he have to gain from it? Is it about public education? I don't understand why he wouldn't talk to more scientists and philosophers closer to his own field.

Recognition. 

To spread his word to a large audience. 

[Wilhelm44]

He's a beacon of hope, in his mission to cure major diseases. And he has the ability to explain in a way that you want to listen.