Michael Levin

The categories are exactly useful when there's a whole bunch of stuff.

And this is what's important about science is like the art of being able to say something without first having to say everything, right?

Which would make it impossible.

So categories are great when you want to say, look, I know there's a bunch of stuff hidden here.

I'm going to ignore all that.

And we're just going to like, let's get on with this particular thing.

And all of that is great as long as you don't lose track of the stuff that you glossed over.

And that was what I'm afraid is happening in a lot of different ways.

And in terms of, look, I'm very interested in life beyond Earth and all of these kinds of things, although we should also talk about...

what I call SUTI, S-U-T-I, the search for unconventional terrestrial intelligences.

I think we got much bigger issues than actually recognizing aliens off Earth.

But I'll make this claim.

I think the categorical stuff is actually hurting that search.

Because if we try to define categories...

with the kinds of criteria that we've gotten used to, we are going to be very poorly set up to recognize life in novel embodiments.

I think we have a kind of mind blindness.

I think this is really key.

To me, the cognitive spectrum is much more interesting than the spectrum of life.

I think really what we're talking about is a spectrum of cognition.

And it's weird as a biologist to say, I don't think life is all that interesting a category.