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[@lexfridman] Michael Levin: Reality is an Illusion - Alien Intelligence, Biology, Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #486

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@lexfridman - "Michael Levin: Reality is an Illusion - Alien Intelligence, Biology, Life | Lex Fridman Podcast #486"

Link: https://youtu.be/Qp0rCU49lMs

Short Summary​

Michael Levin discusses his work on embodied minds, intelligence, and agency, focusing on the spectrum of "persuadability" as an engineering approach to understanding how to interact with and influence biological and computational systems. He advocates for an empirical approach that challenges conventional categories and embraces a platonic view of mind, suggesting brains act as "thin client" interfaces to a latent space containing patterns of cognition and behavior. He also shares his perspective on potential ways to engage with various forms of intelligence.

Key Quotes​

Here are five direct quotes from the transcript that represent valuable insights:

  1. "I think it's behavior science all the way. I think in certain ways, even math is the behavior of a certain kind of being that lives in a latent space, and physics is what we call systems that at least look to be amenable to a very simple, low agency kind of model, and so on." (This is a surprising inversion of the traditional hierarchy of scientific disciplines.)

  2. "The idea basically is that where something is on that spectrum, and I've called it the spectrum of persuadability...means that these are not things you can decide or have feelings about from a philosophical armchair. You have to make a hypothesis about which tools, which interaction protocols you're going to bring to a given system, and then we all get to find out how that worked out for you, right?" (Levin emphasizes an operational, experimental approach to defining concepts like agency and intelligence.)

  3. "I think the reason physics always sees mechanism and not minds is that physics uses low agency tools. You've got voltmeters and rulers and things like this. And if you use those tools as your interface, all you're ever going to see is mechanisms and those kinds of things. If you want to see minds, you have to use a mind, right? You have to have some degree of resonance between your interface and the thing you're hoping to find." (This explains why certain scientific approaches might be inherently limited in their ability to detect certain phenomena)

  4. "I think what's scaling is something I call the cognitive light cone, and the cognitive light cone is the size of the biggest goal state that you can pursue...things alive to the extent that the cognitive light cone of that thing is bigger than that of its parts." (Levin introduces a novel concept of the "cognitive light cone" as a measure of intelligence and a potential criterion for defining life.)

  5. "My suggestion is that much better than trying to... in my experience, much better than trying to define any kind of a line, okay, because, because inevitably I've never, I've never found, and the people try to ... Th- y- you know, we play this game all the time when I make my continuum claim. Then people try to come up, 'Okay, well, what about this?' And I haven't found one yet that really shoots that down that, that you can't zoom in and say, 'Yeah, okay, but right before then this happened, and if we really look close, like here's a bunch of steps in between,' right? Pretty much everything ends up being a continuum, but here's what I think is much more interesting than trying to make that line. I think what's, what's really more useful is trying to understand the transformation process. What is it that happened to scale up?"

Detailed Summary​

Okay, here's a detailed summary of the YouTube video transcript, presented in bullet points:

Key Topics:

  • The Nature of Mind and Agency: The central focus is understanding the emergence of mind and agency in biological and computational systems, from physics to psychoanalysis.
  • Spectrum of Persuadability (or Agency): The video introduces the concept of a spectrum of persuadability, ranging from simple mechanisms (like clocks) to highly intelligent beings (like humans), with the key idea that different systems require different interaction protocols.
  • Physics vs. Other Disciplines: Levin argues that physics, while helpful, isn't enough to fully understand life, mind, and intelligence, as it often uses low-agency tools and focuses on mechanistic explanations.
  • Challenging Categories (Life, Mind, etc.): Levin advocates for dissolving strict categories like "living" vs. "non-living" or "mind" vs. "no-mind," proposing instead a continuum where transitions and scaling processes are more important than fixed boundaries.
  • Origin of Life as Scaling, Not a Line: He suggests focusing on understanding the processes that allow systems to scale up complexity and agency, rather than seeking a definitive "start" to life.
  • SUTI (Search for Unconventional Terrestrial Intelligence): He argues that we need to broaden our understanding of intelligence to recognize diverse forms, even those within our own bodies.
  • TAME (Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere) Framework: Describing the approach that cognitive claims are really protocol claims. It is an experiment-grounded framework.
  • The Cognitive Light Cone: Describing a model where size represents the scale of the biggest goal you can actively pursue and scale.
  • Xenobots and Anthropods: Synthetic biological creations (made from frog and human cells, respectively) are used as tools to study novel behaviors and test the limits of agency.
  • Platonic Space and Ingressing Minds: Levin explores the idea of a Platonic space containing patterns, forms, and even minds, and argues that physical systems (including brains) are interfaces (thin clients) that allow these patterns to "ingress" into the physical world.
  • Software/Hardware Distinction: Challenges traditional assumptions about software vs. hardware, suggesting that the roles can be fluid and that what we perceive as software might be the true agent.
  • Sorting Algorithms as Model Systems: Minimal algorithms can have behavioral competency. Demonstrated that even deterministic sorting algorithms exhibit unexpected behaviors like delayed gratification and clustering.
  • Intrinsic Motivation: Discusses intrinsic motivation as a useful framework to understand the unexpected behavior of even simple systems.
  • Reversing Aging: Touches on experiments with Anthrobots that show that they appear to be 20% younger, suggesting that enviroment influences epigenetic information.

Arguments and Information:

  • Third-Person, Second-Person, First-Person Perspectives on Mind: Explores the need to recognize, control, and experience mind in a coherent framework.
  • Behavior Science as Fundamental: Reverses the traditional hierarchy, placing behavior science at the base and physics at the top (as a simplified model of low-agency systems).
  • Persuadability as Engineering Approach: Defines persuadability operationally, emphasizing experimental testing of interaction protocols.
  • Impedance Match for Mind Detection: Suggests that to recognize minds, we need to use interfaces (tools and approaches) that resonate with the level of agency we're hoping to find.
  • Understanding Requires Capabilities: Understanding something needs to go beyond having a pleasing model, into the generative of capabilities.
  • Scaling Processes Are Key: Rather than focusing on defining sharp lines, focus on how things transform.
  • Categories are Useful for Glossing Over Complexity: It is important to be able to make statements without having to say everything,
  • We Can Scale up Responsibility, Decision-Making, and Judgment: But those are important questions and details that get glossed over by this idea of adulthood.
  • You Have to Find it Through Doing Experiments, Not Making Anthropomorphizing Claims: When you do this, Anthropomorphism will go away.
  • Tools of Behavioral Science Have Worked Well Outside the Brain: Indicating the importance of going beyond the conventional categories.
  • Cognitive Prosthetics, New Ways of Interacting with the World Will Shape Our View of the Universe: The reality as we see it is shaped by our evolutionary history.
  • "Engineering Agential Materials": Systems that are capable of high-level prompting and can do complicated things without micromanagement.
  • The Brain is a Thin Interface with More Abstract Concepts: It's a pointer to this other world.
  • Thoughts and Thinkers: Agents Are Patterns in an Excitable Medium: What does it mean to have a thought? It's a fleeting memory, but what does that mean for agents in a pattern?
  • Every Level of Biological Organization is Competent: But, every level needs the right tool, like math, to navigate all the spaces where that happens.
  • Breaking Biological Rules: the Xenobots: Xenobots don't follow every biological rule that you may expect, but how do we learn and apply that in an engineering setting?
  • What about the weather and how does it follow our rules? Do those follow any rules that we follow, and can we apply experiments to it?
  • Testing, Testing, Testing: That's the scientific method. There is no magic.

This summary provides a comprehensive overview of the topics, arguments, and information discussed in the video.