Michael Levin

Richard, yeah, you should talk to Richard as well.

He's an amazing guy and he's got some very interesting ideas about the intersection of cognition and evolution.

But, you know, I think what you bring up is very important because there has to be a kind of impedance match between what you're looking for and the tools that you're using.

I think the reason physics always sees mechanism and not minds is that physics uses low agency tools.

You've got volt meters and rulers and things like this.

And if you use those tools as your interface, all you're ever going to see is mechanisms and those kinds of things.

If you want to see minds, you have to use a mind, right?

You have to have, there has to be some degree of resonance between your interface and the thing you're hoping to find.

Here's the issue.

Everything here hangs on what it means to understand.

For me, understand doesn't just mean have some sort of pleasing model that seems to capture some important aspect of what's going on.

It also means that you have to be generative and creative in terms of capabilities.

And so for me, that means if I tell you this is what I think about cognition and cells and tissues, it means, for example, that I think we're going to be able to take those ideas and use them to produce new regenerative medicine that actually helps people in various ways, right?

It's just an example.

So if you think as a physicist, you're going to have a complete understanding of what's going on from that perspective of fields and particles and then, you know, who knows what else is at the bottom there.

Does that mean then that when somebody is missing a finger or has a psychological problem or has these other high-level issues that you have something for them, that you're going to be able to do something?

Because my claim is that you're not going to.

And even if you have some theory of physics that is completely compatible with everything that's going on, it's not enough.

That's not specific enough to enable you to solve the problems you need to solve.

In the end, when you need to solve those problems, the person you're going to go to is not a physicist.