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325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | the cells are discovering new ways of being. But at the same time, evolution certainly shapes all | 30:50.640 | 30:56.080 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | this. So so evolution is very good at this agential bioengineering, right? When evolution | 30:56.080 | 31:01.120 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | is discovering a new way of being an animal, you know, an animal or a plant or something, | 31:01.680 | 31:05.200 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | sometimes it's by changing the hardware, you know, protein, changing proteins, protein structure, | 31:06.000 | 31:10.160 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | and so on. But much of the time, it's not by changing the hardware, it's by changing the | 31:10.160 | 31:14.160 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | signals that the cells give to each other. It's doing what we as engineers do, which is try to | 31:14.160 | 31:17.840 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | convince the cells to do various things by using signals, experiences, stimuli. That's what biology | 31:17.840 | 31:22.640 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | does. It has to, because it's not dealing with a blank slate. Every time as you know, if you're | 31:22.640 | 31:27.360 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | evolution, and you're trying to make make a make an organism, you're not dealing with a passive | 31:27.360 | 31:32.960 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | material that is fresh, and you have to specify it already wants to do certain things. So the easiest | 31:32.960 | 31:37.760 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | way to do that search to find whatever is going to be adaptive, is to find the signals that are | 31:37.760 | 31:42.560 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | going to convince cells to do various things, right? Your sense is that evolution operates | 31:42.560 | 31:48.480 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | both in the software and the hardware. And it's just easier, more efficient to operate in the | 31:48.480 | 31:54.000 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | software. Yes. And I should also say, I don't think the distinction is sharp. In other words, | 31:54.000 | 31:58.800 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | I think it's a continuum. But I think we can but I think it's a meaningful distinction where you can | 31:58.800 | 32:03.120 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | make changes to a particular protein, and now the enzymatic function is different, and it metabolizes | 32:03.120 | 32:08.480 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | differently, and whatever, and that will have implications for fitness. Or you can change the | 32:08.480 | 32:14.080 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | huge amount of information in the genome that isn't structural at all. It's, it's, it's signaling, | 32:14.080 | 32:20.480 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | it's when and how do cells say certain things to each other. And that can have massive changes, | 32:20.480 | 32:25.120 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | as far as how it's going to solve problems. I mean, this idea of multi hierarchical | 32:25.120 | 32:29.120 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | competence architecture, which is incredible to think about. So this hierarchy that evolution | 32:29.120 | 32:35.760 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | builds, I don't know who's responsible for this. I also see the incompetence of bureaucracies | 32:35.760 | 32:43.120 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | of humans when they get together. So how the hell does evolution build this, where at every level, | 32:43.840 | 32:52.320 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | only the best get to stick around, they somehow figure out how to do their job without knowing | 32:53.200 | 32:57.360 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | the bigger picture. And then there's like the bosses that do the bigger thing somehow, or that | 32:57.360 | 33:04.160 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | you can now abstract away the small group of cells as a as an organ or something. And then | 33:04.160 | 33:11.040 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | that organ does something bigger in the context of the full body or something like this. | 33:11.040 | 33:16.640 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | How is that built? Is there some intuition you can kind of provide of how that's constructed, | 33:17.920 | 33:23.680 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | that that hierarchical competence architecture? I love that competence, | 33:23.680 | 33:29.680 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | just the word competence is pretty cool in this context, because everybody's good at their job. | 33:29.680 | 33:33.280 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | Yeah, no, it's really key. And the other nice thing about competency is that so my central | 33:34.080 | 33:39.280 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | belief in all of this is that engineering is the right perspective on all of this stuff, | 33:39.280 | 33:43.840 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | because it gets you away from subjective terms. You know, people talk about sentience and this | 33:43.840 | 33:50.480 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | and that those things very hard to define, or people argue about them philosophically. | 33:50.480 | 33:54.880 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | I think that engineering terms like competency, like, you know, pursuit of goals, right? All of | 33:54.880 | 34:02.080 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | these things are, are empirically incredibly useful, because you know, when you see it, | 34:02.080 | 34:06.400 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | and if it helps you build, right, if I if I can pick the right level, I say, this thing has, | 34:06.400 | 34:11.920 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | I believe this is x level of like, competency, I think it's like a thermostat, or I think it's | 34:11.920 | 34:17.200 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | like a better thermostat, or I think it's a, you know, various other kinds of, you know, | 34:17.200 | 34:22.800 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | many, many different kinds of complex systems. If that helps me to control and predict and build | 34:22.800 | 34:28.000 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | such systems, then that's all there is to say, there's no more philosophy to argue about. So I | 34:28.000 | 34:32.000 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | like competency in that way, because you can quantify, you could, you have to, in fact, you | 34:32.000 | 34:35.120 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | have to, you have to make a claim competent at what? And then, or if I say, if I tell you, | 34:35.120 | 34:38.640 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | it has a goal, the question is, what's the goal? And how do you know? And I say, well, because | 34:38.640 | 34:42.400 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | every time I deviated from this particular state, that's what it spends energy to get back to, | 34:42.400 | 34:46.320 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | that's the goal. And we can quantify it, and we can be objective about it. So so so the the, | 34:46.320 | 34:51.920 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | we're not used to thinking about this, I give a talk sometimes called Why don't robots get cancer, | 34:51.920 | 34:56.000 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | right? And the reason robots don't get cancer is because generally speaking, with a few exceptions, | 34:56.000 | 35:00.160 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | our architectures have been, you've got a bunch of dumb parts. And you hope that if you put them | 35:00.160 | 35:05.280 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | together, the the the overlying machine will have some intelligence and do something rather, | 35:05.280 | 35:09.520 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | right, but the individual parts don't don't care, they don't have an agenda. Biology isn't like | 35:09.520 | 35:13.280 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | that every level has an agenda. And the final outcome is the result of cooperation and competition, | 35:13.280 | 35:20.560 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | both within and across levels. So for example, during embryogenesis, your tissues and organs are | 35:20.560 | 35:25.360 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | competing with each other. And it's actually a really important part of development, there's a | 35:25.360 | 35:28.800 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | reason they compete with each other, they're not all just, you know, sort of helping each other, | 35:28.800 | 35:33.440 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | they're also competing for information for metabolic for limited metabolic constraints. | 35:33.440 | 35:38.560 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | But to get back to your your other point, which is, you know, which is which is the seems like | 35:38.560 | 35:43.440 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | really efficient and good and so on compared to some of our human efforts. We also have to keep | 35:43.440 | 35:48.800 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | in mind that what happens here is that each level bends the option space for the level beneath so | 35:48.800 | 35:56.320 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | that your parts basically they don't see the the geometry. So I'm using them. And I think I take | 35:56.320 | 36:03.920 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | I take this the seriously terminology from from like, from like relativity, right, where the space | 36:03.920 | 36:10.160 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | is literally bent. So the option space is deformed by the higher level so that the lower levels, all | 36:10.160 | 36:15.120 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | they really have to do is go down their concentration gradient, they don't have to, | 36:15.120 | 36:18.000 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | in fact, they don't, they can't know what the big picture is. But if you bend the space just right, | 36:18.000 | 36:22.320 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | if they do what locally seems right, they end up doing your bidding, they end up doing things that | 36:22.320 | 36:26.720 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | are optimal in the in the higher space. Conversely, because the components are good at getting their | 36:26.720 | 36:33.840 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | job done, you as the higher level don't need to try to compute all the low level controls, | 36:33.840 | 36:38.880 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | all you're doing is bending the space, you don't know or care how they're going to do it. | 36:38.880 | 36:42.160 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | Give you a super simple example in the in the tappel, we found that okay, so so tappels need | 36:42.160 | 36:47.680 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | to become frogs and to become to go from a tappel head to a frog head, you have to rearrange the | 36:47.680 | 36:51.600 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | face. So the eyes have to move forward, the jaws have to come out the nostrils move like everything | 36:51.600 | 36:55.200 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | moves. It used to be thought that because all tappels look the same, and all frogs look the | 36:55.200 | 36:59.840 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | same. If you just remember, if every piece just moves in the right direction, the right amount, | 36:59.840 | 37:03.200 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | then you get your you get your fraud. Right. So we decided to test we I have this hypothesis that I | 37:03.200 | 37:08.000 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | thought I thought actually, the system is probably more intelligent than that. So what did we do? | 37:08.000 | 37:11.600 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | We made what we call Picasso tappels. So these are so everything is scrambled. So the eyes are on the | 37:11.600 | 37:15.920 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | back of the head, the jaws are off to the side, everything is scrambled. Well, guess what they | 37:15.920 | 37:18.960 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | make, they make pretty normal frogs, because all the different things move around in novel | 37:18.960 | 37:23.600 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | paths configurations until they get to the correct froggy sort of frog face configuration, | 37:23.600 | 37:28.240 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | then they stop. So, so the thing about that is now imagine evolution, right? So, so you make some | 37:28.240 | 37:34.080 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | sort of mutation, and it does, like every mutation, it does many things. So something good comes of it, | 37:34.080 | 37:40.560 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | but also it moves your mouth off to the side, right? Now, if if there wasn't this multi scale | 37:40.560 | 37:46.160 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | competency, you can see where this is going, if there wasn't this multi scale competency, | 37:46.160 | 37:49.360 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | the organism would be dead, your fitness is zero, because you can't eat. And you would never get to | 37:49.360 | 37:53.200 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | explore the other beneficial consequences of that mutation, you'd have to wait until you find some | 37:53.200 | 37:57.680 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | other way of doing it without moving the mouth, that's really hard. So, so the fitness landscape | 37:57.680 | 38:01.840 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | would be incredibly rugged evolution would take forever. The reason it works, one of the reasons | 38:01.840 | 38:06.320 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | it works so well, is because you do that, no worries, the mouth will find its way where where | 38:06.320 | 38:11.360 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | it belongs, right? So now you get to explore. So what that means is that all of these mutations | 38:11.360 | 38:15.680 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | that otherwise would be deleterious are now neutral, because the competency of the parts | 38:15.680 | 38:20.320 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | make up for all kinds of things. So all the noise of development, all the variability in the | 38:21.280 | 38:26.480 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | environment, all these things, the competency of the parts makes up for it. So the so so that's | 38:26.480 | 38:32.080 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | all that's all fantastic, right? That's all that's all great. The only other thing to remember when | 38:32.080 | 38:36.080 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | we compare this to human efforts is this. Every component has its own goals in various spaces, | 38:36.080 | 38:41.040 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | usually with very little regard for the welfare of the other levels. So so as a simple example, | 38:41.040 | 38:46.560 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | you know, you as a as a complex system, you will go out and you will do you know, jiu jitsu, | 38:46.560 | 38:52.000 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | or whatever, you'll have some go you have to go rock climbing, scrape a bunch of cells off your | 38:52.000 | 38:55.520 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | hands. And then you're happy as a system, right? You come back, and you've accomplished some goals, | 38:55.520 | 38:59.680 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | and you're really happy. Those cells are dead. They're gone. Right? Did you think about those | 38:59.680 | 39:03.120 |
325 | Michael Levin | Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots | cells? Not really, right? You had some you had some bruising out selfish SOB. That's it. And so | 39:03.120 | 39:08.640 |