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Michael Levin

👤 Person
4080 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

And precisely because I think that...

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

People didn't look at it from those perspectives.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

So the idea is that

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

You're still exactly the way you came in.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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,

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

It's a mutual bidirectional relationship.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

So it's not just you persuading something else.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

It's not you pushing things.

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

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

Lex Fridman Podcast
#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

Yeah, yeah.