Michael Levin

So here, I'll take a stab.

I mean, I agree with you to whatever extent that we can say anything.

I do think that there's probably an infinite number of different architectures that are with interest in cognitive properties out there.

What can we say about them?

I think that the only things that are going, I don't think we can rely on any of the typical stuff, you know, carbon based, none of that.

Like, I think all of that is just, you know, us being having a lack of imagination.

I think the things that are going to be universal, if anything, are things, for example, driven by resource limitation.

The fact that you are fighting a hostile world and you have to draw a boundary between yourself and the world somewhere.

The fact that that boundary is not given to you by anybody.

You have to assume it, estimate it yourself.

And the fact that you have to coarse grain your experience and the fact that you're going to try to minimize surprise and the fact that like these, these are the things that I think are fundamental about biology.

None of the, you know, the facts about the genetic code or even the fact that we have genes or the biochemistry of it.

I don't think any of those things are fundamental, but it's going to be a lot more about the information and about the creation of the self.

The fact that,

So in my framework, selves are demarcated by the scale of the goals that they can pursue.

So from little tiny local goals to massive planetary scale goals for certain humans and everything in between.

So you can draw this cognitive light cone that determines the scale of the goals you could possibly pursue.

I think those kinds of frameworks like that, like active inference and so on, are going to be universally applicable, but none of the other things that are typically discussed.

We were just talking about, you know, aliens and all that.

And that's a funny thing, which is, I don't know if you've seen them.