Michael Levin
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Appearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And this is all that interplay between the hardware that's set up by the genetics and the software that's made, right?
The physiological software that basically does all the computation and the cognition and everything else is a real interplay between
the information and the DNA and the laws of physics of computation and so on.
Yeah.
I think that's absolutely... And it's probably not a popular view, but I think that's right on the money.
Yes.
I think, again, not the standard view of molecular biology by any means, but I think that's right on the money.
I'll give you a simple example.
Some of our latest work with these xenobots, right?
So what we've done is to take some skin cells off of an early frog embryo and basically ask about their plasticity.
If we give you a chance to sort of reboot your multicellularity in a different context, what would you do?
Because we
what you might assume by the thing about embryogenesis is that it's super reliable, right?
It's very robust.
And that really obscures some of its most interesting features.
We get used to it.
We get used to the fact that acorns make oak trees and frog eggs make frogs.
And we say, well, what else is it going to make?
That's what it, you know, that's what it makes.
That's a standard story.