Cancer fundamentally involves an

electrical disregulation among cells.

It's basically a dissociative identity

disorder on the part of the cells. It's

literally a disorder of the cognitive

glue that binds individual cells towards

large scale purpose where large scale

purpose I mean building organs and

tissues and things like that as opposed

to being amiebas and doing amieba level

things. And we've shown in these animal

models both that we can detect incipient

tumor information and we can prevent and

normalize tumors after they form by

restoring not by fixing the DNA if there

is any DNA issue not by killing the

cells with chemotherapy but by

electrically reconnecting them to the

group such that they can form again a

memory of what they're supposed to be

doing.

>> Mike, very nice to finally connect.

>> Yeah, wonderful.

>> Thanks for making the time.

>> Of course. Yeah, thanks for having me.

We have lots of ground to explore and I

thought we would begin with a book that

had a spot on my bookshelf when I was a

kid. It seems like you and I may have

found it at the same time, but you did a

lot more with it than I did. The author

is Robert O. Becker. Is that enough of a

cue?

>> Yeah.

>> To tee it off?

>> I think it is.

>> All right. What is the book and why is

it relevant?

>> I'm going to guess it's the Body

Electric.

>> That's right.

>> Yeah, it's very relevant. I discovered

it in an old bookstore that my dad and I

visited when I was in Vancouver, Canada

for the World's Fair in ' 86. And I

found this thing and it's kind of a

patchwork of a number of different

things, right? Like he was into applied

field dangers and things like that. But

I was just stunned with all the

references to prior work that revealed

to me that the kinds of things I'd been

thinking about were actually real and

that people had investigated it.

>> And that book, I guess Dr. Becker was an

orthopedic surgeon and he was

effectively penning a scientific memoir,

right? Describing experiments involving

salamanders and other animals exploring

the role of electricity and many many

different aspects of biology. How would

you define for folks bio electricity?

What is a helpful way to define that

term? and then we'll probably hop to the

video in a sense that introduced me to

your work which I will not be alone in

citing but let's begin with the

definition bioelectricity what is that

>> well bio electricity in general is the

way that living systems exploit physics

in particular the physics of electricity

to do the amazing things that living

systems do and there are roughly

speaking two kinds of bioelect

electricity there's the familiar kind

which is studied by neuroscience and so

this is the electrical activity of the

cells in your brain and I think everyone

has a rough understanding of the fact

that the reason you know things that

your individual neurons don't know and

that you have beliefs and the

preferences and so on that's that are

more than just any of the neurons in

your head is through this amazing

cognitive glue that electricity provides

right it binds your neurons into a

collective intelligence that that

underlies our mind so that's the that's

the bio electricity that everybody's

familiar with and then there's the other

kind also called developmental bioelect

electricity which you can get to by

asking about where did the brain come

from and where did it learn those

amazing tricks and very quickly you

realize that wow some of these things

have been around for a very long time

long before we had brains and neurons

and that the question of what does your

body think about and before it has a

brain what how does it use electricity

is the study of developmental bio

electricity

>> the video that I was referencing you

will not be surprised to hear was an

older TED talk and then subsequent

interview on stage and that sent to me

by Adam Goldstein who's now at Softmax

and that was probably several years ago

I would say at this point that it was

sent to me. Could you perhaps and I know

a lot has happened since but could you

describe some of the experiments that

you covered at TED to give people an

idea of how this becomes tangible,

right? This conversation of

bioelectricity becomes tangible.

>> When we look at biology, we see lots of

amazing things. For example, in a

salamander, if they lose a limb, they

regenerate the limb and they stop when

it's complete. Right? And in fact, there

are many other interesting kinds of

things that when anybody looks at it,

the first thing they ask is how does it

know to do that?

>> And one of the things I discussed in

that video was if you scramble the

cranioacial organs of a tadpole, they

still make a pretty normal frog. All

they sort themselves out, they move in

new paths until they get to a normal

frog face and then they stop. So anybody

sees that and immediately the question

is okay but how do they know what a

proper frog face look like? And if you

do know then how do you know how to get

from here to there right? How do you

navigate? So the way we're all taught in

biology is that that's a bad question.

We are told none of these things know

anything. They are mechanical machines

that sort of roll forward according to

rules of chemistry and in the end some

cool stuff happens and we'll call it

emergence and things like that and

complexity science will will sort of

catalog them. But but don't worry, none

of these things actually know anything.

That's just what they do. And so what I

was trying to describe in that talk is

this idea that well actually the idea

that chemical processes can in fact know

things. It's not magic. It's not

mysterionism. We are chemical processes

that know things. And we've had for for

many decades mature science of including

cybernetics and control theory and

things like that. a mature science of

figuring out how it is that machines of

all different kinds can know things and

they can have goals and so on. So, so

what I tried to show in that talk are

some examples by which the living

tissues for example platforms that are

cut into pieces and every piece has to

figure out how many heads should I have

where do the heads go what should the

shape of my face be these kinds of

things that in fact they do know and the

way they know is because they store

memories and maybe not shockingly

although it's certainly shocking to a

lot of folks the way those memories are

stored is in an electrical network that

is very similar to the way that we store

our goal directed behavioral repertoires

in our in our brain and that these

things are sort of widely spread. And so

regeneration, cancer suppression and

cancer repair and remodeling, birth

defects and birth defect repair, all of

these things are extensively using

electrical pattern memories. And we now

have a way to rewrite those pattern

memories. I've been so excited to have

you on the show because I am an intrepid

muggle kind of blindly half blindly

exploring science to the extent that I

can. And I every once in a while I'll

share a resource like I did recently

this multi-part series called the gene.

This is a Ken Burns produced documentary

about genetics, the history of genetics

starting with Mendle and so on working

all the way up to modern biotech. The

underlying framework for that entire

series is DNA as master copy let's call

it then RNA then protein and that's kind

of how it works right you have this

blueprint that is executed upon and that

produces what we see in the world on

some level but as I understand it you by

manipulating bio electricity have

produced

for instance animals that have two

heads. That trait persists over

generations. And maybe I'm getting the

specifics wrong, but that is not by

virtue of manipulating

DNA. And I'm just wondering if I'm first

of all getting that right, but secondly,

what that says about how we might be

revising our understanding of biology

and what the textbooks might look like,

you know, 5 or 10 years from now or

further out.

>> Yeah, you're not wrong. I could list any

number of scenarios that we and others

have studied in which the genetics not

only don't tell the whole story but in

fact tell a fairly misleading story. And

the way that I would describe it and and

there are two pieces to this and I'll do

the simpler piece first and then we can

talk about the other piece. The simpler

piece is we can get there by thinking

about the distinction between software

and hardware. And by the way I should

preface this because some people get

really upset about this. I am not saying

that the current way that we think about

software and hardware is sufficient to

get everything we need from biology. It

does not cover all of biology. It covers

one important piece of biology.

Reprogrammability is really critical.

And so if you wanted to make that same

movie about computers for example, you

could make a movie that basically goes

electric fields,

silicon and germanmanium

and transistors and the flow the flow of

energy through circuits. Done. Right?

That could be your movie. And it's not

an unimportant part of of the story.

It's a very important part of the story.

But the critical part that that doesn't

get to is that's the hardware. And in

fact, that's what the genome does. So

the genome tells every cell what the

hardware is going to be. So the genome

gives every cell the little tiny sort of

protein level hardware that it gets to

have. But now comes the other

interesting part which is the

reprogrammability. And we've known for a

very long time now that if your hardware

is good enough and the biological

hardware is more than good enough then

that hardware is reprogrammable. So,

what happens just as an example, what

happens in these flatworms, these

two-headed flatworms that you were

referring to, the flatworm has a

bioelectric memory in it that says, and

we can see it. I'm saying these things

because we can now see these memories

and we can rewrite them at will. So,

this is, you know, this is now

actionable in the lab. It has a

biomectric memory that says one head.

That memory is not genetically encoded.

What is genetically encoded is a bunch

of hardware that when you first turn on

the juice, it basically

acquires that memory as a default. It's

the way when you buy a calculator from

the store and you turn on the power,

they all say zero, right? Reliably 100%

of the time. They all say zero. Great.

But that zero is not the only thing that

that circuit can do, right? As you find

out very quickly, they can store memory

and do all these things. the the genetic

hardware of the worm is very good at

making sure that every worm starts out

with a very specific it's a little bit I

think related to instinct and how you

know certain birds are are born knowing

how to make nests and things like that.

>> Mhm.

>> The hardware has defaults and by default

one head but the hardware is

reprogrammable. So what we were able to

do is go in and identify the memory that

actually says how many heads and we can

change it. And when you change it you

don't need to change the hardware. You

don't need to change the genetics any

more than when we form new memories. You

don't need to change the genes in your

brain to form new memories. I always say

to people on your laptop if you want to

go from Photoshop to Microsoft Word. You

don't get out your soldering iron and

start rewiring. It'd be laughable if if

you had to, but that's how we used to do

it in the 40s and 50s. You program a

computer by pulling and plugging wires.

Well, you don't do that anymore because

it's reprogrammable. And that's what the

biology is. And so that's the first

thing. And the second thing just very

quickly and we can get into it if you

want is that this cellular intelligence

that exists not only is is

reprogrammable but it is actually

creative in the sense that it interprets

the DNA and we can talk about this. It

doesn't blindly do what the DNA says and

this is kind of a deep thing because

it's the way our cognition works too. It

interprets memories in a way that is

improvisational. It does not simply

follow what they say counter counter to

what we all learn.

>> All right. So, I'm going to come back to

the sort of how the textbooks might be

revised question in a minute, but before

we get there, you said we can see

memories, right? So, this is empirically

demonstrable in the lab. What does it

mean to see those memories? What does

that actually mean and look like? And

then secondly, with the flatworms with

the two heads, why does that persist if

it does into future generations? So what

we can see directly are the bioelect

electrical properties of tissues. And

we've developed tools using voltage

sensitive fluorescent dyes. And so that

means you take your embryo or your

tissues or whatever you've got and you

soak it in this special chemical that

glows different degrees or different

wavelengths depending on what the local

voltage is. And so back in the olden

days in electrophysiology, you had an

electrode then you would have to poke

like a little needle and you would poke

every cell and you would get the voltage

reading. We don't need I mean of course

we still do that for certain purposes

but what you can now do is get a full

map of the whole tissue all at once and

in fact you can make movies of it and

watch it change over time and we have

these amazing videos of embryos changing

their electrical activities over over

time. It's basically like what

neuroscientists do when they do imaging

in brains but we can do it in the rest

of the body. So there what you see are

the electrical patterns. Now from there

you have to do a lot of experiments to

prove that what you're looking at are in

fact memories. And there are many

different kinds of things we do, but

functionally what you have to show is

that you can decode the electrical

pattern that you're seeing and show that

what it encodes is the future set points

towards which the cells will work. In

other words, I can take a one-headed

worm. I can change the voltage pattern.

It's still a one-headed worm, but it's

internal representation of what a

correct worm should look like now says

two heads. You don't see it because it's

a latent memory, but when you cut the

when you cut the thing into pieces, now

what the cells do is consult the memory

and they say, "Oh, two heads." And then

they build two heads and you get your

two-headed worm. So, so you don't know

right away when you're first looking at

it. You don't know that that's a memory.

You have to do experiments to prove that

that's what it actually is.

>> And then the persistence, the durability

over generations,

>> the process of regeneration and repair

in general is kind of homeostatic

process. So, it's like a thermostat. You

have a set point. If the temperature

gets too low, it tries to go up. If it

gets too high, it tries to come down. It

tries to keep a certain that is exactly

what happens in the body which is

anatomical homeostasis. So cells come

and go all the time, right? So the ship

we're kind of a ship of thesis, right?

In many ways. So so cells and materials

come and go. Sometimes drastic kinds of

injuries for animals that regenerate

past them. Embryogenesis. I mean look,

half our population can regenerate an

entire body from one cell. I mean that's

amazing, right? That's an amazing like

development. And embryionic development

is an incredible example of

regeneration. The whole body

regenerating from just one egg cell. And

in all of those cases, what needs to

happen is just like a thermostat has to

remember what's the right set point.

There has to be a memory mechanism that

stores it. And so the electric circuits

in the body that store these patterns,

they have a memory property as well such

that when you change it, it stays. Now

sometimes there are multiple memories.

And so we've done things like, for

example, in these flatworms, there are

different species that have different

shaped heads, round ones, triangular

ones, flat ones. We've shown that you

can take a worm, change the biological

signaling, and get it to grow ahead of a

different species. But the fun thing

about that is it grows the head of a

different species. You haven't touched

the genetics, by the way. Again, the

genome is totally wild type.

>> So wild,

>> right? But it'll grow the head of a

different species and it'll stay there

for about 30 days and then it goes back

to its original. It's not permanent

unlike the the two-headed thing is

permanent.

>> That never changes. But the head shape

after about 30 days they go back. And so

clearly there are multiple there's more

than one. There's sort of meta some kind

of metacognitive thing that says yeah

you know I know you thought that was

your memory but actually that's wrong.

>> It sort of overwrites some kind of error

correction thing which that one we

haven't we haven't cracked yet. So so

there are kind of layers upon layers.

All right. So, for people who are

listening and wondering, you know, how

this translates or might translate to

humans, sure, I want to get there, but

I'm going to bridge to that simply by

saying that this

topic of bio electricity is is long been

interesting to me. I mean, it's been

interesting to humans for a very long

time, going back to slaves in ancient

Rome stepping on electric eels and

finding relief from gout. But in a more

more modern incarnation, I had Dr. Kevin

Tracy on the podcast some time ago who

was

>> he's incredibly wells cited.

>> Oh yeah.

>> Played a part after his experiences with

patients with septic shock identifying

TNF alpha and a lot of subtleties around

that.

>> Y

>> and has developed hardware in this case.

I mean they're programmable but for vag

nerve stimulation

>> predominantly for at this point

autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid

arthritis and so on. But you can see

some incredible, incredible clinical

effects and we're just touching the tip

of the iceberg. So I'm wondering, it

took a long time to get here though,

even with something that is relatively,

I would say, straightforward to

identify, which is the Vegas nerve, aka

Vegas nerves, these sort of

intercontinental cables running down

either side of the neck with 100,000

fibers on either side. So in this case,

we're talking about flatworms. We could

certainly talk about other species that

are known for regeneration, but broadly

speaking, what might this mean for

humans? How might this be applied to

humans? Do humans have this programmable

layer just as some of these other

species do? What might therapeutics or

morphaceuticals or otherwise look like?

>> Yeah. No, and and that's a great

connection. Yeah, Kevin's work is

amazing. I was just talking to him a

couple weeks ago. It's awesome stuff.

>> Great guy. Great guy. Yeah, he really

is. So, a couple of things to explain

why this is relevant to humans and then

I'll give you like three three broad

areas of application.

>> The reason it's absolutely relevant to

humans is that we are all basically

built on fundamentally the same

principles. People have this idea that

well frogs are sort of a lower creature,

but you know, we're we're mammals and

once once you get past yeast and things

like that, we are all roughly the same

as far as this stuff goes. These kind of

electrical signals were evolution

discovered them around the time of

bacterial biofilms like very long ago.

And so this is all very well conserved

and for that reason for example there

are human mutations in ion channels that

are birth defects. So if you mutate ion

channels in humans you get birth defects

just like we see in in frog and and

chick and zebra fish and things like

that. So those are all well conserved.

And with David Kaplan who's a

collaborator of mine at tufts we've done

a bunch of work on bielectrics of human

meenimal stem cells. This stuff works

for humans as well. It is not some like

frog of platworm specific thing. This is

very very broad. I should say this is a

disclaimer I always have to do. You

mentioned morphaceuticals. So there are

a couple of spin-off companies that have

licensed some of this technology. So I

need to sort of say that as a as a

disclosure. So one is specifically

called morphaceuticals. There's a

company that is pushing forward our limb

regeneration work in bielectrics. And

then there's also this other company

called Astonishing Labs that is doing

some of the stuff in aging and so on.

Having said all that, I firmly believe

that these things are heading for

clinical application in humans and

probably not that far off. I hope you

know

>> here are the three applications. So the

first application is birth defects. So

we have shown that we can repair a

number of different birth defects of the

brain, the face, the heart, what else?

The gut, these kinds of things by

restoring correct biological patterns in

vivo. And so this is now in in animal

models. We are moving of course to more

clinical kinds of things and I hope in

the future this will absolutely be of of

human application. So birth defects is

one. Regeneration is another. The name

of the game here is communicating with

the cells. This is not about stem cells

or gene therapy or scaffolds made of

nanomaterials. Like those are all tools

that might be useful. But the real trick

here is to communicate to a group of

cells what do you want them to build?

And that's what the bioctric code is all

about. It's about communicating to the

collective to the cellular collective.

And so we've done work on limb

regeneration. We've done work on

inducing whole organ formation, eyes and

things like this. So I think there are

going to be massive applications

hopefully clinically in restoring the

damaged and and missing limbs and other

other structures like that. And then the

third thing is going to be cancer. So

something else and we can get into what

the kind of more profound aspect is but

but the bottom line is that cancer

fundamentally involves an electrical

disregulation among cells. I'll just say

it and we can unpack it later, but it's

basically a dissociative identity

disorder on the part of the cells. It's

literally a disorder of the cognitive

glue that binds individual cells towards

large scale purpose where large scale

purpose I mean building organs and

tissues and things like that as opposed

to being amiebas and doing amoeba level

things. So cancer is another thing and

we've shown again in in these animal

models both that we can detect incipient

tumor formation and we can prevent and

normalize tumors after they form by

restoring not by fixing the the DNA if

there is any DNA issue which they're not

doesn't have to be not by killing the

cells with chemotherapy but by

electrically reconnecting them to the

group such that they can form again a

memory of what they're supposed to be

doing. So those three things,

regeneration, birth defects, and cancer,

I think are going to be of great value

in humans. Now, there's also issues of

aging. So we also have an aging program

in our lab and looking at why it is that

over time cells forget how to upkeep a

proper organism and we have some some

interesting thoughts about that as well.

>> Let's dive in. I would love to hear more

about the interesting thoughts on aging

and then we're we're definitely going to

get to cognition, which is

I mean that can go in a lot of

directions, but let's start with the

aging piece. what are some of the

implications or experiments

or just maybe conceptual frameworks that

are are sort of due as an as a revision

of what we've thought to date.

>> First of all, one of the things that

we've seen is that over time and by the

way this is fairly recent work. So this

is in no way is this the final story.

This is just kind of what we know now.

I'm sure this will this will be updated

over time. the electrical prepatterns

that tell the cells and tissues what

large scale structure we're supposed to

look like, they get fuzzy. They degrade

over time. And so much like what we do

with birth defects is we try to

reinforce the correct patterns. And this

is this is one of the ways we're we're

addressing aging as well is by

reinforcing these patterns. Now, one

question you might ask is why over time

are these things getting fuzzy, right?

What's going on? And there are a couple

of schools of thought. One is that this

is the consequence of accumulated noise

and damage. So molecular damage entropy

basically right over time you just

accumulate damage and every everything

kind of gets degraded over time. And

then there's also these kind of what

they call programmatic theories where

basically the idea is that you're

programmed to age for whatever reason

evolution has favored a decline and

death. So we have an interesting third

alternative to offer which is the

following. We did a simulation

experiment where we had a kind of a

virtual a virtual body where the cells

cooperate together to build an embryo.

Okay? And so they work really hard to

work together. They build to a

particular pattern memory. So you know

this thing I've been telling you about.

And then I said, "Let it run. Just just

leave it alone and let it run." And so

what you see is something very

interesting. They work really hard

together and they make they make the

correct body. Then it sort of stays that

way as they defend it and then it falls

apart and it begins to degrade. Now

what's interesting is that in our

simulation there was no evolution for a

limited lifespan. There was no noise.

There was no damage. It was sort of

perfect. You know everything was perfect

and still it degraded. Why would it do

that? I had this interesting thought and

I'll back into it this way. Just imagine

this standard Judeo-Christian version of

heaven, right? So you get to heaven and

you get there. Let's say let's say you

your pet snake and your dog get get to

heaven. So okay, everything is great.

There's no more damage. There's no

decay. Nothing is damaged. Everything is

great. Everything's fantastic for the

next trillion years. What happens? So,

the snake may be fine doing snake things

for every day is the same as every other

day. Maybe fine. The dog, not sure.

Probably okay chasing rabbits on the

farm, you know, like maybe fine for

forever. Basically, the human though,

what do you think? I' I'd be interested

in your thoughts like what what are the

odds that a human cognitive system can

be sane for an infinite like okay I'll

keep myself busy for the first 10,000

years maybe 100 thousand years but like

a billion years in are we still sane

like what happens

>> what do you think like what do you think

would happen

>> that's interesting so well if I'm

hearing you correctly I I don't really

have a passing through the pearly gates

timeline prediction for like the the

halflife of sanity but I if I'm hearing

you correctly that the biological

programmed I mean death I suppose is

basically to

intended to ensure biological

death before insanity. Am I misharing

that?

>> So may maybe that's not the claim I was

going to make but but it's not

impossible.

>> Not a claim but I guess I'm trying to

squint and look through the exercise.

>> What I took away from that work that we

did was the following. You have a goal

seeking system

>> that has met its goal.

>> Yeah,

>> it's achieved the goal. It made the body

it was supposed to make. The error falls

to zero. Everything is great. Hangs out

there for a while. But what does a goal

seeking system do when there are no new

goals?

>> Because we're looking at a system that

may or may not be able to give itself

new goals. I mean, cognitively I think

we can, but it's not clear yet that this

system can do that. And so what we were

able to do is we were able to give it

new goals by having interventions and

going back in and saying okay now this

is your new pattern and it will do that.

But I think you know part of the you

could call it the boredom theory of

aging basically not cognitively

sematically like if your body cells over

a long period of time they they've

completed their job they've created a

body during adulthood but at some point

they start to degrade the cells don't

degrade the collective does the the

cohesion the alignment between them

because there's no longer a common goal

I mean this is what makes for an embryo

or a body as opposed to just a billion

independent cells is they're all aligned

towards the same set point towards the

same goal

>> and so When that isn't there,

regeneration, repair, maybe remodeling

becomes something else. I don't know

how, you know, maybe you need to sort of

change up the body every once in a

while. That's also a possibility.

Pleneria, do a pleneria are immortal.

>> And the pleneria or the flatworms we

were talking about earlier.

>> The flatworms. Yeah. Yeah. They're

immortal. Every two weeks they rip

themselves in half and regenerate. So

they give themselves a challenge every

two weeks. And so they've been, you

know, they've been that way for half a

billion years or so. We can see evidence

of this. For example, if you look at

there's a way to look at the age of

certain genes, the evolutionary age of

certain g of genes to see like when did

they show up. The gene expression of a

young person, all the cells are in all

the different tissues have the same idea

of what evolutionary stage they are,

meaning a human. When you look at old

tissue, and this is something we just we

just published recently, when you look

at we call it adivistic dissociation.

When you look at the tissues of old age,

the genes that they express start to

float backwards in evolution and they're

discordant. They're out of sync. So your

your liver versus your neurons, they may

all have different start to get

different ideas in terms of the genes

they express of of where on the

evolutionary tree they are,

>> right? It's like starts to float off and

in the absence of a compelling set point

or goal state, all the subunits start to

sort of float off and do their own

thing. And this is this is I think an

important component of aging. So if you

were put in charge of,

for lack of a better term, the Manhattan

project style initiative related to

aging, right? That was your sole

directive was to really do a deep dive

with the intention of developing some

type of therapeutic for humans.

What might that look like? I mean, for

all extensive purposes, infinite

funding, but you have the resources, you

can get the talent.

Where would you take it if you had a

similarly pressing deadline? And I'm not

asking for the impossible, but if you

had a reasonably tight deadline by which

you needed to try to come up with

something, where would you take it?

>> How would you think about it?

>> Tight deadlines for aging are tough

because you're not going to know for

decades whether your thing works. But I

get the idea.

>> This is what I would say. Fundamentally,

I think that aging,

cancer, birth defects, lack of

regenerative repair throughout our

lifespan,

all of these kinds of things are

downstream of one fundamental

pressure point that if you solve that,

all of these things get solved by by you

know sort of by side effect and that is

regeneration. More specifically, that

that in turn is everything there hangs

on the cognition of groups of cells. In

other words, how do groups of cells know

what to build, when to stop, how do we

communicate with them, and what kind of

intelligence do they have? And I'm being

very specific about this. When I say

they have intelligence, I don't mean

complexity. I don't mean some sort of

linguistic project where I'm going to

take things that are beautiful and

fascinating and I say, well, that's the

intelligence of life. That's not what I

mean. I'm using a very specific

definition of intelligence which is what

behavioral scientists use which is

problem solving, memory, different

degrees of a cognitive light cone of

goal directed the size of your goals,

things like that. So specifically

figuring out what are the competencies

of the living material that we're made

of and how do you communicate new goals

to them. There are lots of amazing

people in the aging field doing

interesting things and that's cool. If I

had a lot of money specifically for

aging, I would put everybody on on that

question. I would say you're not

studying aging. What you're studying is

the goal directedness of of

multisellular systems. Figure out how

they know what to do and how we

communicate goals with them. If you

solve that, all of these other things

get get taken care of as a as a side

effect.

>> What might an example or sample new

directive be to give human cells or

groups of cells a a new goal? What might

that new goal look like? I'll give you

an example and then we can talk about

what the human case might look like.

What we can do is we can take a frog

embryo and

induce a particular electrical pattern

somewhere in the body that we already

know that pattern codes for make an eye.

That's how the other cells interpret

that pattern. It means make an eye. Very

interesting in the sense that we don't

have to say which cells do what. We

don't have to say which genes you need

to turn on. These are all microlevel

details. We don't need to worry about

them because the material is competent.

Just like when I'm talking to you, I

don't need to worry about how your

synaptic proteins are going to, you

know, you're going to take care of all

of that, right? All I need to do is give

you the prompt and vice versa. And we're

having this amazing conversation, but

our hardware takes care of all all the

all the molecular detail.

>> And the same thing here. So, we provide

a biological pattern that says make an

eye here and the cells make an eye. Now,

the first thing that happens, it's

interesting. The first thing that

happens is there's a battle of world

views that takes place. We inject a few

cells. They tell their neighbors, "Let's

make an eye." The neighbors actually

say, "No, we're supposed to be skin or

gut. Don't do it." And some case,

sometimes they win and sometimes we win.

And so the goal of regenerative medicine

is to be as convincing as possible so

that you win 100% of the time. But in

the cases where we are convincing, and

we have amazing videos of cells like

convincing each other to have different

voltages and whatnot, they make an eye.

And so what you've done is you've taken

a bunch of cells that were going to be

for example gut and you've now pushed

them to be an eye at a very high level.

We don't tell I don't know how to build

an eye. I don't know all the genes that

have to be turned on. You do that. I'm

telling you something at the level of

organs. This is going to be an eye. The

eye is of the right size. It has all the

right layers to it. It is functional,

right? So you can see out of these

ectopic eyes. It's really really

amazing. And so that is an example of

giving these cells a new goal. How do I

know it's a goal? because I did not

micromanage you to do it. I was not

there saying turn on this gene, turn on

that gene. I gave you a faroff set

point, by the way, in a wild space that

no individual cell knows anything about.

The anatomical space of organ

structures, no individual cell knows

what an eye is, but the collective does.

And they stop when it's done. I don't

need to be there to tell them to stop.

They stop when it's done.

>> And so this is autonomous goal- directed

activity. It's a navigation of

anatomical space.

>> And so and so we can do this. And we

can't make everything. We can make

portions of the brain. We can make eyes.

We can make in some cases limbs. We can

make some other some other structures.

So in the human you could imagine two

ways to go and I don't know which is

going to be correct and we need to do a

lot of experiments in mammals to nail

this down. One possibility is that it

might be enough to simply reinforce the

existing human pattern. Every so often

you would get like a tuneup that reminds

the all the cellular collectives what

we're supposed to look like.

>> That's one possibility. There's another

possibility and I don't know which is

correct. I hope the first one is right

but I think it wouldn't be the end of

the world if it's the latter. Maybe it

really does get too boring with the same

pattern meaning that okay you can go a

few hundred years with the reminding of

the standard human pattern but

eventually you have to do something

unique. Now the plenary are telling us

that actually it's hundreds of millions

of years that you can make the same

thing. So I'm kind of optimistic that

you can do that but let's say that's not

the case. If that's not the case in

humans, maybe you have some number of

the hundreds of years or whatever of the

standard human body plan. But then if

you want to keep going, you got to make

some changes. What does that mean? Maybe

you wanted some wings. Maybe you want

some tentacles. Maybe you want a third

hemisphere, you know, to crank your IQ.

Maybe you want, I don't know,

>> a third eye. Who knows?

>> Sure. Sure. Sure. Infrared vision out

the back of your head. I don't know. You

know, people email me all the time

asking for all kinds of weird

peripherals. So maybe at some point it

means that you really got to change

things up a little bit. You know,

caterpillar butterfly style.

>> Mhm.

>> Maybe.

>> Wow. And just to come back to a piece

that we covered through the thought

exercise of the the pet snake, the pet

dog. Do you think we have evolved to die

or to age? I mean, if so, why? What

might be a strongman argument for that?

I'm just curious. There certainly are

theories, reasonable theories of why

evolution wants you dead

>> and there have been a number of them.

Overall, I think there may well be

tradeoffs of the kind that for example,

we're not going to put a lot of

evolution, you know, would not put a lot

of effort into maintaining something if

something else is going to go off and

you're going to die anyway, right? So,

there are these ecological trade-offs.

I'll give you an example of something

like that. People ask, "Hey, why can't

humans regenerate their limbs the way

that, you know, axelis can and things

like that?" Nobody knows. But here's a

plausible theory, right? Imagine you're

an early mammal. You're running around

the forest. Somebody bites your leg off.

Now, you have you have a high blood

pressure. You're going to bleed out. If

you don't bleed out, you're going to

walk around and grind that thing into

the forest floor. It's going to get

infected. You're never going to have

time to regenerate. What you might do is

scar, seal the wound, inflammation, so

that you might live, you know, to fight

another day. But you're definitely not

going to have time to regenerate the way

that an axelottle might, you know, sort

of floating around in water for three

weeks or whatever. Basically, what you

might say is that evolution just kind of

decided that it's not worth it. It's

never going to work. It's not worth it.

Right? And by the way, deer antlers,

deer antlers are the one amazing

mamalian example of regeneration. Plus,

the liver, I mean, liver regenerates,

stupid, but deer antlers, right? Adult

large adult mammal that regenerates this

like huge structure of of vascule.

>> The rate of regrowth is just incredible.

centimeter and a half per day of new

bone.

>> So nuts

>> nuts bone vascule intervation and you

don't put weight on it. It's not

loadbearing. It's the one, you know,

appendage that's not loadbearing. So

anyway, why I'm saying that is because

you can imagine evolutionary trade-offs

like that where evolution just didn't

bother optimizing for long age. You

could you can imagine that. But

fundamentally, I do not believe that we

are inevitably mortal. I think that at

some point if we knew what we were

doing, if we had appropriate

regenerative medicine, I don't see any

particular reason why we have to age and

die. And then you face interesting

questions about for example mental

plasticity. We all know with advanced

age people get a little a little less

plastic mentally, right? That that kind

of stuff. Is that a hardware problem or

a software problem? We don't know. You

know, if you had somebody with a

physically young brain at, you know, at

100, would they be like an 18-year-old

in terms of their ability to take on new

ideas and and focus and pay attention,

whatever? Would that still stay or is

there some kind of a cognitive tiredness

that happens that is not a hardware

issue? Like I don't I don't think we

know, but but we need to find out.

>> So, I was going to ask you about

computer science and AI and concepts

that you would like biologists to learn.

Well, let's start there and then I'm

going to ask a question that might

destroy any shred of respect that you

have for me, but I'll save that for

after this one. Do any concepts come to

mind because you certainly have spent a

lot of time in computer science that you

wish you could require biologists to

become familiar with or to study. I'm

I'm wondering about cross pollination

between disciplines within which you've

spent a lot of time. It could go the

other way as well and this could be, you

know, concepts from developmental

biology or biology writ large that you

think computer scientists should pay

more attention to. But, uh, does

anything come to mind for either of

those?

>> My original background is in computer

science. Computer scientists are amazing

generally at

compartmentalizing coarse graining you

know sort of modularizing like hiding

details and asking okay but what's it

actually important here you know and and

like blackboxing things biologists

generally think everything is important

and if you ask a biologist you get a

list of you know 30 genes like these are

you know hard one details right they're

all important but a computer scientist

is like okay but but what is it actually

doing you know and that's really

important. The most basic thing is this

issue of reprogrammability is that

understanding that certain kinds of

hardware is reprogrammable and why that

that I think is really key. The other

thing that I wish and there's not really

time unfortunately for almost any

biologist to do this but one thing I

really love for my students to do if

they can is to take a course in

programming languages. And here's why

not so they could code that that doesn't

matter. It's not the coding aspect. What

happens in a typical course of

programming language is that so let's

say in a single semester you'll spend

three weeks doing different languages

and the thing about those languages and

maybe this is true of some human

languages as well but it's definitely

true of computer languages is that each

language is a different way of looking

at the world you start off with

something that makes sense and you're

like ah step by step you know you sort

of tell it what to do okay and then all

of a sudden bam now there's this other

thing where every piece of data there's

this language called lisp where every

piece of data is also instructions and

you can execute any piece of data. Like

what? And then you get into this other

thing and it's functional programming.

Now there are no variables. You don't

get to have any variables. You have to

like everything is just a function call.

And every time you do this, it sort of

rips the foundation of your of your

world out from under you. And it says

this universe works in a very different

way than you thought before. Forget

everything you knew before. Now you got

to do this. And how are you going to

solve this problem? Now there's

recursion or now you know there's no

global variables or whatever. And what

it's really good for is that mental

plasticity that reminds you that the way

you think things are and the tools you

think you have are not the only things

in town. And so when you do that in a

lightning and things go fast and then

the final exam comes and that's this

other thing you've never seen before,

like being able to do that quickly, I

think is super valuable. And I would

love that to be more known in biology.

But the final thing I'll say is and this

is I think this is true but but just to

be clear this is very controversial and

almost nobody else thinks this is true.

So you know who knows but the

interesting thing that a lot of people

not just biologists but a lot of people

think is is something like this. Okay,

there's something going on with humans,

maybe other animals where

biochemistry does not tell the whole

story, right? You you read the

biochemistry textbook and you say,

"Okay, that's that's cool, but there's

something about my mind and my my

ability to solve problems in abstract

spaces and my inner perspective and all

this stuff is just not captured in these

low-level details." So, that's a little

disturbing. It's like what is that then?

If it's not captured in the chemistry,

like where is that coming from? But

don't worry, we have this other thing

over here which are machines. Dumb

machines, dead matter, dumb machines,

algorithms, computers, and those things

do only exactly what the algorithm tells

them to do. They are perfectly captured

by our formal model. So, we have a

formal model of of chemistry and the

rules of chemistry. And that we think

does not capture all what it is to be an

entire, you know, full-on human. But we

have these other formal models of

touring machines and programming and

code and and you know mechanics and

those things capture exactly what the

machines do. Those get the whole thing.

Okay. I think and this is the part

that's very sort of controversial and

not a widely shared opinion. I think

that's false. I think our formal models

never capture all of what's going on.

And some of the some of the craziest

stuff coming out out of our lab recently

is showing how much even in very simple

sorts of machines, how much interesting

novelty, not just complexity, not just

unpredictability, but things that any

behavioral scientist would recognize as

some kind of a protocognitive capacity

shows up in even minimal systems where

you don't expect it. And so what I'd

like the biologist to sort of

eventually, you know, once we can show

this this widely, the biologist to

understand is that biological systems

are amazing and awesome, but it's a kind

of a larger degree, not kind of what's

already going on in inanimate systems.

And for this reason, I this is this is

also kind of a crazy claim is that I

think the circle, if you make a circle

of cognitive things and living things, I

think cognition is wider than life. I

think cognition predates life and I

think it's bigger than life. And

normally people do that the other way

around. They say here's the inanimate

universe, some chunk of that is living

and some tiny piece of that is

intelligent. I think that's exactly

backwards and that's something we need

to understand both on the biology end

and on the computer science end is like

is there a distinction between what

people commonly think of as living

things and machines? Like are there any

actual machines in the sense that we

like to think that there are? You know,

that's a deep set of questions for both

fields in the future.

>> All right, that's a super tempting

opening to take and I might come back to

it, but I wanted to take the

opportunity, as promised, to destroy any

credibility I might have with you and my

audience.

>> Great.

All right. So, I'm going to try to give

myself some some air cover

by going back, sorry to drag you into

it, Kevin, but to go back to Kevin Tracy

and also actually years before my

interview with Kevin won with Martin

Rothblat and in both cases, Martin is

just an incredible polymath on a lot of

levels. People should look into Martine.

We were chatting Martine and I about

transuricular

stimulation of the vagus nerve and

there's quite a bit of mechanistic

debate around this. How many fibers are

you hitting? Is it actually possible to

do through the skin etc. But suffice to

say, the clinical outcomes of certain

types of placement of certain types of

currents with on the ear seem to produce

pretty dramatic anti-inflammatory

>> effects. And so then that raised the

question for me of wait a second

>> do those maps I've seen in Chinese

medical offices have anything to them

right now chatting with Kevin he's like

well funny thing about that is that it

was a Frenchman who actually put that

together after taking like a ballpoint

pen and pressing on patients ears and

then it made its way back to China. I

don't know the full history but as we're

talking about bio electricity I have to

ask and again this might be a dead end

but if you look at traditional Chinese

medicine I went to two universities in

China and the took a pretty close look

at this at the time in 1996 but is there

anything to meridian'sqi did they get

anything right or was it just

coincidence

is there really nothing defensible to it

I'm just wondering if there's any

overlap

>> I I was wondering how wild you were

going to get that with that question,

like where that was going to go, but

that's not too bad. Okay. I don't know

the epidemiological data on acupuncture

and how it works in clinical trials or

any of that stuff. I I don't know. What

I do know is that I personally know an

amazing there's a guy in Boston called

Tom Tam and I've known him since the

80s, you know, my whole life since I was

a kid and he's treated me, he's treated

my family. I've seen people advance

cancer patients in his clinic. Don't

know anything about the wider

epidemiological aspect of it. To me, as

someone who's interested in practical

results, I would say I can't say

anything other than 100% that I I think

there's something very powerful here.

Very significant. So the next question

is what are those meridians and do they

have any functional overlap with the bio

electricity that we're talking about? I

don't know. We actually had back in 2006

I think we had a little bit of a

collaboration with the New England

School of Acupuncture to try to figure

that out. I wanted an animal model. I

wanted to see if we can do a frog model

of acupuncture or something and it

didn't work for a number of reasons. If

I had to guess and I don't know, right?

The real answer is I don't know. But if

I had to guess, what I would say is that

whatever it is that acupuncturists are

managing with their treatments, it has

the same relationship to the

bioelectricity that the bioelectricity

has to the chemical signaling. In other

words, you know, chemical, physical

protein signaling pathways,

bioelect electrical state, there's some

otherformational state. Maybe it has to

do with a biomechanics of tissues. And

again, like disclaimer, I I still get

acupuncture, right? So, Vanessa Grimes

here in Beverly, like, you know, every

month I get a tuneup like I I I think it

really works. So, you know, take it all

with a grain of salt, but I don't think

they're managing bioelectricity

directly. I think they're managing

something else which is no doubt

relevant to the bielectric layer because

it then has to transduce through that to

the rest of the body, but I suspect it's

not bioelectricity per se. I suspect

it's it's something additional. That's a

that's a guess on my part.

>> Yeah. Cool. I'm glad I asked. Thanks for

answering, too. On the acupuncture side,

I don't get a whole lot of acupuncture.

And you you can look at sham studies and

so on where yes in the case of for

instance my one of my pts in Texas you

can use something called dry needling

instead for muscle spasms and that's

very very effective but then you can

also conversely look at data in say

canines or pain control in animals where

the as far as we know placebo is going

to be pretty tough to defend. And well

>> well maybe I guess you tell me maybe not

or surgery with I mean this is probably

not the right term but sort of

anesthesia via acupuncture also pretty

interesting

>> right so I don't know where to take that

I don't have any domain expertise but it

>> continues to be interesting I suppose

and also pregnancy data

>> acupuncture for conception

>> which may intersect with vagus nerve

stimulation who knows

>> yeah the deal with placebo like I don't

see placebo as a confound Mhm.

>> I mean, it can be if you're trying to

calculate certain things, but I think

it's kind of the main show in a lot of

ways. Yeah.

>> And some of the placebo research like

Fabriio Benedeti is, you know, one of my

favorites and he has a talk where he

says words and drugs have the same

mechanism of action. And it's amazing

because he actually does the experiments

of giving patients drugs that he tells

them what they are and then he looks at

molecular markers in their blood and in

their you know in their cells and yeah

they turn on the downstream like Yeah.

Except that they didn't get any of the

drug.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. So there's something very

interesting going on here and we already

know if I were to come here and tell you

that hey did you know that with the

power of my mind alone I can

electrically depolarize like up to 30%

of of the body right? You'd say what is

that yoga mind matter? like like mind

body inter like what kind of thing is

that they say no it's voluntary motion

we do it every day so so it's an it's an

amazing thing that nobody talks about

like think about this you wake up in the

morning you have these very abstract

highle goals you have social goals

financial goals research like whatever

and in order for you to do any of that

you have to get up out of bed so what

has to happen is these these incredibly

high level abstract intent has to change

the way that calcium and potassium ions

go across your muscle cell membranes

right these abstract mental things have

to change the chemistry of your body

cells. We know that's true. That's every

time you, you know, you lift your arm up

or you take a step voluntarily, that is

what's happening. So, we know that

works. So, if that works, why is it so

bizarre to think that our other mental

states might not affect either through

the electrical transduction of the

nervous system or through other

non-neural bioelectricity or through

other pathways yet could affect ways

that other cells act. It just it it

doesn't seem weird to me at all. It

seems like it would have to be that way.

But what we need to figure out is how it

works and how to communicate. I think

that's an incredibly powerful. If

acupuncture is some kind of entry point

into figuring that out, great. You know,

it's not a compound. It's a it's a

feature.

>> Yeah, I totally agree with the placebo

not necessarily being a compound, as you

mentioned, depending on kind of what

you're optimizing for measuring and so

on.

>> Yeah. I mean as someone who's funded a

lot of basic science

>> and clinical research involving

psychedelic compounds which are just

notoriously difficult to blind. It's

like yeah give someone a meggaos and

nasin plus x y and z or rolin or

something like that but

>> generally the control group knows that

they are the control group

>> but that doesn't invalidate the research

right it just points out maybe some

methodological

revision or or tweaking that might be

helpful. Well, just to add it, there's

something else here that's re that's

really interesting and I haven't seen

anybody in the field, maybe you know

folks that have looked at it. A lot of

times, at least what I understand in

some of Fabriio's data, like what both

for the efficacy and for the side

effects because there's the no SIBO

effect, right?

>> People they start, oh yeah, definitely

like headache or whatever. But what's

interesting to me anyway is that unless

you're like if you're a scientist and I

tell you that okay I just gave you an

SSRI you may know what the what the

downstream steps are going to if you're

a regular person off the street right

participating in this study. Now how how

do you know what the actual consequences

should be?

>> That's the wild part. How do you

actually implement the instructions?

>> That's right. That's right. I think

animal studies should actually be very

this is how we got here is talking about

animal placebo because there are studies

in experimental effects in animals.

There are whole books on this where in

behavioral science they do these

experiments on rats and whatever the

experimentter believes is what the rats

end up doing. They don't need to

understand the place. They're going to

they're going to do it anyway if the

experimentter believes, right? So trying

to understand some of these subtle cues

and influences and how does your body

know things I think is like super super

interesting.

>> Okay, I can't let that one go. So what

do you think is actually happening there

between the experimentter and the rat? I

mean, is it just the subtle body

language, etc. that's being transmitted

to an animal who's perceiving that? That

seems like a stretch even as I say it,

but I don't know what the alternative

explanation would be.

>> Yeah.

>> What might be a theory or two for what

is actually happening?

>> Yeah, good question. I don't have a

theory, but I will mention some things

to think about. One of the remarkable

things that living systems are good at

is in credit assignment, in selective

attention. So for example there's this

old work on bio feedback from I think

the 70s where they can show that a rat

can generate a temperature difference of

a few degrees Celsius between its ears

if you reward for that right and so now

just think and it doesn't take years of

practice it's pretty quick and just

think you're a rat you just got some

reward so let me see while my tail was

pointing north and my whiskers were kind

of vibrating and my gut was doing this

and my toes were like what the hell did

I just get rewarded for right you would

think in This in computer science, this

is called the frame problem because

trying to get robots and AIs to focus on

the important thing. There's an old I

forget who did this example, but imagine

there's a robot and it's in a room with

a bomb and the robot says, "Oh, there's

a bomb. I got to get out of here." And

it leaves. Except the bomb was on a cart

that was connected to the robot, right?

So it goes with him and of course he

blows up. So what does the next robot

do? This maybe Dan Dan, I don't

remember. So the next robot is like,

"Okay, okay, we have to have them

consider all the options, right?" So now

this robot, he goes in, there's the So

the robot's like, "Well, let me see. The

walls are pretty vertical and the paint

is dried." Yeah. And it's a 90° angle.

Cool. And so by the time it's considered

like all these things, of course, it

blows up again. So that's no good. And

so biologicals are like amazing at

knowing what to pay attention to. What

was I just rewarded for? What was the

thing I did which I'm never going to do

again, which, you know, turned out

poorly. Like we don't know how that

works. And that I think is going to be a

major part of that puzzle that you're

asking about. And I I'll just give you

an example from our work. Flatworms

again, plenarium. We put pleneria in a

solution of barium. Barryium is a

non-specific potassium channel blocker.

It like blocks all the potassium

channels. So that makes it very hard for

cells to do their physiology, especially

the neurons freak out. Their heads

explode. Literally overnight their heads

explode. But as it turns out, so it's

called deep progression is a way to put

it. But basically the cells just like

stage.

>> Very polite way.

>> Yeah. Yeah. cuz it sort of deep

progresses.

>> It's like negative treatment in

>> like special ops assassination. Oh yeah.

It's just a negative treatment. Yeah.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Basically, it's a deep

progression. Yeah. But here's the

amazing part. So you take the part

that's left, right, the tail and the mid

the midbody. You leave it in the barium

and within about 14 days, they grow a

new head and the new head doesn't care

at all about the barium. No problem

whatsoever. Right? So the new head is

fine. They said, "How is this possible?"

So what we did was a very simple-minded

experiment. We took all the genes that a

normal head expresses, all the genes

that and and it and but sure this

doesn't have to be in the genes. This is

just a simple thing we did to start with

and what genes does the barium adapted

head express? And we found less than a

dozen genes that make the difference.

Now think about this. Pleneria don't

normally see barium in the wild. You

don't have an evolutionary response to

what happens when I get hit with barium.

You're sitting there. I view that you

you have something like 20,000 genes.

you're hit with this new stressor that

you know you don't you've never seen

before. How do you know which of those

20,000 genes are going to help? I always

visualize this as you're sitting in one

of those nuclear reactor control rooms,

right? There's buttons everywhere. The

thing's melting down. You don't have

time to start flipping switches sort of

randomly. Like you'll be dead long

before that. How did they zero in on the

correct 12 things out of a space of

20,000 dimensions that they could have

like it's a very highdimensional search

problem. We we don't know. No, nobody

knows. And that aspect of it, biology,

finding solutions to problems they

haven't seen before, knowing what's

salient, figuring out what to pay

attention to. There are aspects here

that we haven't even come close to

replicating in our engineering

technologies. I think it's going to be

part of all that.

>> This is a pretty close hop to and I

don't this is a term that has very

specific meaning for you, so it may not

be the right term for me to use, but

cognition. Let's talk about human

cognition in the way that most people

would think about it, right? We have

this big ball of fat inside our skulls.

Bunch of magic seems to happen and we've

got these amazing tools. We've got these

MRIs, PET scans, etc. that we can EEGs

and so on that we can use to try to

study the brain and what's actually

happening. And my question is, and not

to belabor this type of question, but

it's just a forcing function for

conversation sort of 10 years out, 10

years from now, how the textbooks, and

textbooks may or may not even exist at

that point, but how the teaching of

neuroscience might have fundamentally

changed as it relates to cognition.

Because I I look at, for instance,

funding a lot of neuroscience over the

last 10 years. It's like okay sometimes

the scientists are attracted to whatever

the fanciest tools might be. There's

some prestige in that. They produce a

lot of beautiful images. You can slice

and dice the data from a single study 15

different ways and get a lot of

publications.

But and this is not something I could

kind of technically defend. I'm left

feeling as a lot of people do that

there's something missing. it's not

quite capturing the full picture, pun

intended, not just with the MRIs, but

with a lot of these these tools that

we're using. And I'm bringing this up

because of the comment you made about

the gap between the biologics and

current engineering. And this certainly

relates to AI and so on, but I don't

have the the technical chops to

understand quantum effects. But if I

think about some of the cursory reading

I've done about sort of quantum effects

and all faction, let's just say, right?

Smell. I'm just left wondering what we

might be missing fundamentally about how

cognition works and also ties into not

turn this into my own TED talk. I'll try

to wrap this up in a second, but having

conversations with my friend Kevin

Kelly, who is the founding editor of

Wired magazine, who's an avid beekeeper

and about just the collective memory of

hives and properties that you would

never be able to predict and that I'm

not entirely sure you you can at least

at this point engineer from the ground

up. But how do you think our view of

cognition, thinking, mind

change in the next 5 10 years? I want to

talk about two things. One of which I'm

pretty sure is going to be very

different in in that time frame and

another thing which is more fundamental

that may take longer or may not.

>> The one thing that I think for sure is

going to change is that there's a

thriving emerging field out there now

called diverse intelligence. This is the

idea that biology and as I've been

pushing it also nonbiology has been

doing intelligence of different kinds

long before brains and neurons appeared.

It's been solving problems, navigating

spaces, having memories, anticipating

the future long before neurons appeared.

The biggest barriers to this are these

ancient categories that we got saddled

with from pre-scientific times. This

idea that everything is binary. People

ask, is it intelligent? Is it conscious?

Is it this or like that binary framing

has been holding everything back for a

really long time.

>> Is it holding it back because it's

bifurcated between inanimate and animate

or is it something else? It's the idea

that it hides it obscures the fact that

we don't have a good story of scaling.

Just two quick examples. When you go to

court, there's this notion of an adult.

Okay, we all know if you really think

about it, nothing happens on the night

of your 18th birthday. Like literally

nothing. And that's a and b, we don't

actually have a good story of a

scientifically grounded story of what

does it mean to have personal

responsibility? How does that change

over time? How is it impacted by

neurotransmitters, brain tumors,

Twinkies, uh, society, like whatever? We

don't actually have those questions

answered, but you've got to get traffic

court done or whatever. And so, we've

just decided we're going to have this

thing called adult. We're going to clock

it on the 18. The car rental industry

actually does better because they look

at statistics and they'll say, "No,

actually, it's 25 is when you're like

more fully cooked is when you can rent a

car." And so, they do a little better.

But regardless, the idea is that we and

we all say it's an adult. And so what

those kind of binary terms do is they

obscure the fact that yeah, but

underneath we actually still don't have

a proper understanding of what's going

on. And so by saying that something is

or isn't intelligent, what you're

basically assuming is that somewhere

some developmental biologist can tell

you what happened from the time that you

were an oasite, a little blob of

chemicals that presumably was well

handled by biochemistry and physics. And

then eventually, well, now you're the

subject of physiology. And then

eventually you're the subject of

developmental biology. And then, oh

look, now you're the subject of behavior

science. Oh wait, psychoanalysis. You

know, so like each of us made that

journey. It's a smooth continuous

journey. Developmental biology offers no

support for this idea that somewhere

there's a bright, you know, flash of

light and that, okay, now you used to be

just chemistry, but now you've got a

real mind, like that never happens.

>> Because here's the other thing they do.

If I were to say that it's a continuum,

right? If cognition is a continuum from

the most primitive passive matter to,

you know, humans and above,

>> what I could say is I'm going to take

some tools from behavioral neuroscience

and I'm going to apply them to all kinds

of weird things and see how that works

out for me. And that's how we're going

to know what's cognitive and what's not.

And this in fact is what my lab is

doing. That that project is very

disruptive and there are a lot of people

who really think that's crazy because

what they will say is look, it's a

category error. brains and humans think.

Cells and tissues can't think. How do

you know? Well, because the way the word

is defined, right? So, so what they've

done is they've taken something that's

actually should be an empirical

experimental science. Take the tools and

see where they give you benefits and

where they don't. But instead, they've

made it into a philosophical or

linguistic project where these ancient

categories that we got saddled with, you

know, oh, don't make a category error,

you know, that kind of thing. So, I

think it's very disruptive. So I think

what's going to happen in the future is

that all of the applications now that

are coming out from active matter

research from basil cognition from work

in slime molds and single cells and

materials with learning capacity and all

this stuff we're going to realize I

think this is you know again one of

these claims I think that neuroscience

is we're going to realize neuroscience

is not about neurons at all okay and

what neuroscience is really about is

cognitive glue neuroscience is the

question of what kind of architectures

add up to larger scale minds from

aligned simpler components. Now

neuroscience has a lot to teach us about

that because that that's basically what

they've been studying but I think the

majority of them not everybody because

we have all kinds of collaborators in

this field who are doing something else

but the vast majority of traditional

neuroscience think they're studying

neurons that this is something unique to

these you know cellular systems that

they're studying and I think this field

of diverse intelligence combines

artificial intelligence and engineering

and cybernetics and evolutionary biology

and AI and exobiology right in the

search for alien life. Like all of these

things are together asking what are

actually the common threads of being an

agent. No matter what your origin story

whether you were designed or evolved or

you know engineered or evolved or

whether you were made of squishy

proteins or whether you were you know

made of silicon or something else right

I don't know I think science fiction

prepares you for that nicely for that

kind of stuff to really have a broader

conception of it. And so I think really

understanding what neuroscience is

actually about I think is going to be a

massive change. And the final thing I'll

say is in this I don't know how long

it's going to take. Hopefully not that

long. But you might remember the story

that at one point I think in the late

1800s

I think was Lord Kelvin who said that

yeah physics is you know kind of done.

there's just like these two black clouds

or something but but mostly it's just

about like uh more decimal you know more

digits past the decimal point right but

there's these two clouds you know and

the two clouds basically you know became

quantum mechanics right and relativity

and all of that and so I think

neuroscience has a couple of black

clouds I'll just describe one of them

Karina Copman and I she's an amazing she

started as a high school student working

with me remotely we just did a review of

this clinical cases in humans of normal

or above normal IQ while having very

minimal brain volume. I'm sure you've

heard some of these cases, but there are

many to look at right now.

>> It's not that you can't add a bunch of

epicycles to standard neuroscience and

somehow try to squeeze these things into

the mainstream paradigm.

>> Maybe you can, but to me the most

important thing is that it doesn't

predict that that should be possible.

There's nothing we learn, at least that

I've ever seen in neuroscience courses

that tells you that, oh, and by the way,

yeah, you should be able to do all this

with like less than a third of the brain

volume of a chimpanzeee. So, there's

something going on here which I think is

really fundamental. It's one of these

like, you know, observations that you

can try to sweep under the rug, but I

think it's actually telling you that we

have some very, very seriously wrong

assumptions somewhere in the theory.

I've looked at some of that research or

in some cases brain adaptations

around severe injury and they just

raised a lot more questions than we can

currently answer. This could be a

quagmire I'm about to create, but I'm

going to take a stab at it anyway.

A lot of people talk about consciousness

maybe in the same way that people argue

about God without defining it very well.

But then even the best intentions to

define it can end up slipping on banana

peels. But I am curious. You've spent

time with Daniel Dennett who I think you

mentioned a little bit earlier. We're

talking about and I think you can keep

most people probably on the same page

when you're talking about intelligence

as very carefully defined in a specific

way. Right? And I'm paraphrasing here

from memory, so I apologize if I get it

wrong, but you know, goal seeeking

systems that maybe can satisfy those

goals in multiple ways. Maybe this is

kind of along William James lines. Feel

free to fact check that, but I'm

wondering where you go from there or how

you think about consciousness, if you do

at all. Maybe that's just one of those

terms. It's like, well, it's like

success or happiness. It's like so

poorly defined. I don't spend a lot of

time thinking about it because it's a

dead end. But if that's not the case,

how do you think about consciousness?

Because as you're talking, and some

people may have been thinking of this,

they're like, "Well, wait a second. Is,

you know, is Mike a pans psychist?" Is

like, "Where where are we going here?"

>> Yeah. Oh, I'm I'm a I don't know, some

some sort of super pansychist or

something. I don't think it's

unimportant. I think it's a very

important question. Big picture. Like, I

think it's really important. I'm not a

consciousness researcher and in my lab

we haven't done pretty much any