Michael Levin

There's a kind of debate that goes on about cognition in plants.

And what can you say about different kinds of computation and cognition in plants?

And I always look at that something like, if you're weirded out by cognition in plants, you're not ready for exobiology, right?

If, you know, something that's that similar here on Earth is already, like, freaking you out, then I think there's going to be all kinds of cognitive life out there that we're going to have a really hard time recognizing.

I don't know about screaming.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think you have to scale down the expectations in terms of right.

So, so probably they're not screaming in the way that we would be screaming.

However, there's plenty of data on plants being able to, um, to do anticipation and certain kinds of memory and, and, and so on.

Um,

I think, you know, what you just said about robots, I hope you're right, and I hope that's – but there's two ways that people can take that, right?

So one way is exactly what you just said to try to kind of expand their notions for that category.

The other way people often go is –

uh, they just sort of define the term is if, if, if it's not a natural product, it's, it's just faking, right?

It's not really intelligence if it was made by somebody else, because it's that same, it's the same thing.

They can see how it's done.

And once you see how it's, it's like a magic trick when you see how it's done, it's not as fun anymore.

And, and, and I think people have a real tendency for that.

And they sort of, which, which I find really strange in the sense that if somebody said to me,