Michael Levin

And precisely because I think that...

People didn't look at it from those perspectives.

They assumed that it was a low-level kind of thing.

So when I say persuadability, I mean different types of approaches, right?

And we all know if you want to persuade your wind-up clock to do something, you're not going to argue with it or make it feel guilty or anything.

You're going to have to get in there with a wrench and you're going to have to tune it up and do whatever.

If you want to do that same thing to a cell or a thermostat or an animal or a human, you're going to be using other sets of tools that we've given other names to.

Now, of course, that spectrum, the important thing is that as you get to the right of that spectrum, as the agency of the system goes up, it is no longer just about persuading it to do things.

It's a bidirectional relationship, what Richard Watson would call a mutual vulnerable knowing.

So the idea is that

on the right side of that spectrum, when systems reach the higher levels of agency, the idea is that you're willing to let that system persuade you of things as well.

You know, in molecular biology, you do things, hopefully the system does what you want to do, but you haven't changed.

You're still exactly the way you came in.

But on the right side of that spectrum, if you're having interactions with even cells, but certainly, you know, dogs, other animals, maybe other creatures soon,

You're not the same at the end of that interaction as you are going in.

It's a mutual bidirectional relationship.

So it's not just you persuading something else.

It's not you pushing things.

It's a mutual bidirectional set of persuasions, whether those are purely intellectual or of other kinds.

Yeah, yeah.