Michael Levin

You can put electrodes in there and you can put weird nanomaterials.

It still works.

It's it's this is that problem solving action, right?

It's able to do what it needs to do, even when circumstances change.

That is, you know, the hallmark of intelligence, right?

William James defined intelligence as the ability to get to the same goal by different means.

That's this.

You get to the same goal by completely different means.

And so so so why am I bringing this up is just to say that, yeah, it's important for the cells to do the right stuff, but they have incredible tolerances for things not being what you expect, right?

and to still get their job done.

So if you're, you know, all of these things are not hardwired.

There are organisms that might be hardwired.

For example, the nematode C. elegans.

In that organism, every cell is numbered, meaning that every C. elegans has exactly the same number of cells as every other C. elegans.

They're all in the same place.

They all divide.

There's literally a map of how it works.

In that sort of system, it's much more cookie cutter.

But most organisms are incredibly plastic in that way.

Right, very hard, to the point where I often, just imagine, I sometimes ask my students to do this thought experiment.