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lex_fridman_podcast

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325
Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Summer Institute.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Yeah, they had a Summer Institute.
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2:34:04.160
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
That's the logos, the bee with some circuits.
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2:34:06.640
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Yeah, it's got different life forms. The whole program is called diverse intelligence. They
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
challenged us to come up with a framework that was suitable for analyzing different
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
kinds of intelligence together. Because the kinds of things you do to a human are not
2:34:18.240
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
good with an octopus, not good with a plant and so on. I started thinking about this.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
I asked myself what do all cognitive agents, no matter what their provenance, no matter
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
what their architecture is, what do cognitive agents have in common? It seems to me that
2:34:35.560
2:34:41.560
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
what they have in common is some degree of competency to pursue a goal. What you can
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
do then is you can draw. What I ended up drawing was this thing that it's kind of like a backwards
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2:34:51.720
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Minkowski cone diagram where all of space is collapsed into one axis and then here and
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
then time is this axis. Then what you can do is you can draw for any creature, you can
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
semi quantitatively estimate what are the spatial and temporal goals that it's capable
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
of pursuing.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
For example, if you are a tick and all you really are able to pursue is maximum or a
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
bacterium and maximizing the level of some chemical in your vicinity, that's all you've
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
got, it's a tiny little icon, then you're a simple system like a tick or a bacterium.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
If you are something like a dog, well, you've got some ability to care about some spatial
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
region, some temporal. You can remember a little bit backwards, you can predict a little
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
bit forwards, but you're never ever going to care about what happens in the next town
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
over four weeks from now. As far as we know, it's just impossible for that kind of architecture.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
If you're a human, you might be working towards world peace long after you're dead. You might
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
have a planetary scale goal that's enormous. Then there may be other greater intelligences
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
somewhere that can care in the linear range about numbers of creatures, some sort of Buddha
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
like character that can care about everybody's welfare, really care the way that we can't.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
It's not a mapping of what you can sense, how far you can sense. It's not a mapping
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
of how far you can act. It's a mapping of how big are the goals you are capable of envisioning
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
and working towards. I think that enables you to put synthetic kinds of constructs,
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
AIs, aliens, swarms, whatever on the same diagram because we're not talking about what
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
you're made of or how you got here. We're talking about what are the size and complexity
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
of the goals towards which you can work.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Is there any other terms that pop into mind that are interesting?
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
I'm trying to remember. I have a list of them somewhere on my website.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Human morphology, yeah, definitely check it out. Morphosutical, I like that one. Ionisutical.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Yeah. Those refer to different types of interventions in the regenerative medicine space. Amorphosutical
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
is something that it's a kind of intervention that really targets the cells decision making
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
process about what they're going to build. Ionisuticals are like that, but more focused
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
specifically on the bioelectrics. There's also, of course, biochemical, biomechanical,
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
who knows what else, maybe optical kinds of signaling systems there as well.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Target morphology is interesting. It's designed to capture this idea that it's not just feedforward
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
emergence and oftentimes in biology, I mean, of course that happens too, but in many cases
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
in biology, the system is specifically working towards a target in anatomical morphospace.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
It's a navigation task really. These kinds of problem solving can be formalized as navigation
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
tasks and that they're really going towards a particular region. How do you know? Because
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
you deviate them and then they go back.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Let me ask you, because you've really challenged a lot of ideas in biology in the work you
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
do, probably because some of your rebelliousness comes from the fact that you came from a different
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
field of computer engineering, but could you give advice to young people today in high
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
school or college that are trying to pave their life story, whether it's in science
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
or elsewhere, how they can have a career they can be proud of or a life they can be proud
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
of advice?
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Boy, it's dangerous to give advice because things change so fast, but one central thing
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
I can say, moving up and through academia and whatnot, you will be surrounded by really
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
smart people. What you need to do is be very careful at distinguishing specific critique
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
versus kind of meta advice. What I mean by that is if somebody really smart and successful
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
and obviously competent is giving you specific critiques on what you've done, that's gold.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
It's an opportunity to hone your craft, to get better at what you're doing, to learn,
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
to find your mistakes. That's great.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
If they are telling you what you ought to be studying, how you ought to approach things,
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
what is the right way to think about things, you should probably ignore most of that. The
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
reason I make that distinction is that a lot of really successful people are very well
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
calibrated on their own ideas and their own field and their own area. They know exactly
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
what works and what doesn't and what's good and what's bad, but they're not calibrated
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
on your ideas. The things they will say, oh, this is a dumb idea, don't do this and you
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
shouldn't do that, that stuff is generally worse than useless. It can be very demoralizing
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
and really limiting. What I say to people is read very broadly, work really hard, know
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
what you're talking about, take all specific criticism as an opportunity to improve what
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
you're doing and then completely ignore everything else. I just tell you from my own experience,
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
most of what I consider to be interesting and useful things that we've done, very smart
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
people have said, this is a terrible idea, don't do that. I think we just don't know.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
We have no idea beyond our own. At best, we know what we ought to be doing. We very rarely
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
know what anybody else should be doing.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Yeah, and their ideas, their perspective has been also calibrated, not just on their field
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
and specific situation, but also on a state of that field at a particular time in the
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
past. There's not many people in this world that are able to achieve revolutionary success
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
multiple times in their life. Whenever you say somebody very smart, usually what that
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
means is somebody who's smart, who achieved a success at a certain point in their life
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
and people often get stuck in that place where they found success. To be constantly challenging
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
your worldview is a very difficult thing. Also at the same time, probably if a lot of
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
people tell, that's the weird thing about life, if a lot of people tell you that something
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
is stupid or is not going to work, that either means it's stupid, it's not going to work,
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
or it's actually a great opportunity to do something new and you don't know which one
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
it is and it's probably equally likely to be either. Well, I don't know, the probabilities.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Depends how lucky you are, depends how brilliant you are, but you don't know and so you can't
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
take that advice as actual data.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Yeah, you have to and this is kind of hard to describe and fuzzy, but I'm a firm believer
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
that you have to build up your own intuition. So over time, you have to take your own risks
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
that seem like they make sense to you and then learn from that and build up so that
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
you can trust your own gut about what's a good idea even when, and then sometimes you'll
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
make mistakes and they'll turn out to be a dead end and that's fine, that's science,
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
but what I tell my students is life is hard and science is hard and you're going to sweat
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
and bleed and everything and you should be doing that for ideas that really fire you
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
up inside and really don't let kind of the common denominator of standardized approaches
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
to things slow you down.
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
So you mentioned planaria being in some sense immortal. What's the role of death in life?
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
What's the role of death in this whole process we have? Is it, when you look at biological
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
systems, is death an important feature, especially as you climb up the hierarchy of competency?
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
Boy, that's an interesting question. I think that it's certainly a factor that promotes
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Michael Levin
Biology, Life, Aliens, Evolution, Embryogenesis & Xenobots
change and turnover and an opportunity to do something different the next time for a
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