Michael Levin - The Prof. who will solve Cancer

[Ero]

Despite this not being my formal background, I have found not only his work, but also his ontology and epistemic openness as a model to aspire to. Bernardo Kastrup coined him 'one of the most important people alive' and after watching his latest interview with Curt Jaimungal, I can't help but share the sentiment. Below I am listing some of the highlights from my 5-6 pages of notes:

- He is a panpsychist/ idealist, i.e sees consciousness as the fundamental ontology. Understands the fact that consciousness cannot be subject to the 'scientific method' due to the fundamental first-person nature of it. Understands the emergent/ holistic nature of reality, i.e different levels of abstraction require different tools - not everything can be or should be described through physical laws. 

- He sees the underlying approach of his work as the study of embodied mind, i.e cognition/intelligence in various embodiments, both biological and synthetic/ cybernetic in nature. Sees the world as varying levels of cognition, including down to the physical level of what he describes as 'basal cognition' in the form of potential energy and least action principles. 

- Developed the first methods for bioelectrical manipulation of cell networks, which leads to manipulations of the phenotype in ways that break the existent paradigm as genes being the only factor for the shape and form of an organism (the first person to induce permanent change in planaria, i.e flat worm, which is a non-genetically-modifiable species). He describes bio-electricity as the 'cognitive glue', allowing for collective intelligence. 

- Introduced the idea of 'cognitive light cones' - the larger parametric/goal-oriented space of the organism's collective intelligence that allows for separate cells to collude/ organize the higher-order complexity and emergence of tissues, organs, limbs and the organism itself. The 'breakdown' of the cognitive light cone is what leads to metastatic cells. Proper function can be restored by establishing bioelectrical networks with neighboring cells. 

There were many other gems. I am going to dive deeper in the technical papers and some of his other talks. Hope you find it as useful, or at least as inspiring as I did. 

[PsychedelicEagle]

Amazing. Thanks for sharing.