Thoughtforms Life

This is a ~1 hour talk and discussion, comprising part 1 of a conversation with a really interesting young neuroscientist, as well as friend, collaborator, and our Center member, Nicolas Rouleau ( Nic goes over unconventional aspects of neuroscience touching on free will, cybernetics, consciousness, and a lot more. We start a discussion which is continued in part 2. For more information: Nic's web...

This is a ~55 minute discussion following up on Nic's talk and our brief conversation ( comprising part 2 of a conversation with a really interesting young neuroscientist, as well as friend, collaborator, and our Center member, Nicolas Rouleau ( We cover topics of consciousness, neural decoding, the meaning of neuroscience, memory transfer, cognitive plasticity and its relationship to rejuvenation...

This is a second conversation with Lisa Barrett ( Karen Quigley ( and Benjamin Lyons ( about Relational Realism, allostasis, and questions of mind/body/behavior. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Rethinking emotion universals (09:34) Brain evolution and allostasis (17:25) Predictive processing and signaling (30:05) Objectivity and first-person science (38:45) Flexible body-world boundaries (45:46) Relational mean...

This is a 1hr + 23 minutes talk and conversation with Thomas Seyfried, Derek Lee and Tomás Duraj ( Juanita Mathews from my group ( about their work on the metabolic and mitochondrial aspects of cancer. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Metabolic nature of cancer (08:52) Mitochondrial theory of cancer (34:00) Metabolic therapy in practice (40:39) Mitochondria and morphogenetic fields (45:21) Ion channels and metab...

This is a ~53 minute talk + 14 minute Q&A titled "On Biological and Artificial Consciousness: a case for biological computationalism" by Borjan Milinkovic ( and Jaan Aru ( CHAPTERS: (00:00) Speaker background and research (03:16) Motivation and philosophical landscape (09:32) Von Neumann architecture (15:39) Computational metaphor in neuroscience (22:52) Metabolic constraints in neurons (29:04...

This is a ~1 hours 44 minute discussion among contributors to the Platonic Space Hypothesis ( https://thoughtforms.life/symposium-on-the-platonic-space/). CHAPTERS: (00:00) Platonic forms and interaction (07:01) Xenobots and evolutionary cost (11:23) Symbiosis, rectifiers, embeddings (18:06) Free lunches in biology (27:59) Topology of competency space (39:53) Exploration, play, affordances (48:01)...

This is a ~54 minute conversation with Darren Iammarino ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=YNrxRaYAAAAJ&view_op=list_works) about open problems with respect to the Platonic Space model. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Patterns, minds, and causation (09:18) Interfaces and positive pressure (21:50) Randomness and new universals (31:21) Quantum randomness and scale (39:16) Cyborg minds and i...

This is a ~57 minute talk titled "The Bioelectric Interface to the Collective Intelligence of Morphogenesis: development, regeneration, cancer, and beyond" which I gave at a UCSF seminar for an audience of graduate students and post-docs in Biophysics, Bioinformatics, and Chemical Biology. I covered the role of bioelectricity as cognitive glue underlying high-level adaptive plasticity in living ti...

This is a ~1 hour 40 minute discussion among contributors to the Platonic Space Hypothesis ( https://thoughtforms.life/symposium-on-the-platonic-space/) CHAPTERS: (00:00) Math, identity and realms (16:08) Convergence, abstraction and attractors (34:05) Attractors, stress and observers (41:29) Realms, impossibility and simulation (51:40) Simulation, explanation and understanding (01:04:39) Mind eve...

This is a ~1 hour conversation with (including a short talk by) Mijail Serruya ( https://research.jefferson.edu/labs/researcher/serruya-research.html), Alessandro Napoli ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/alessandro-napoli-8383a164/), and Wes Clawson ( https://allencenter.tufts.edu/wesley-clawson-staff-scientist/). We talk about brain-body-machine interfaces, the clinical aspects and the deeper concept...

This is a discussion with with Lisa Feldman Barrett ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WF5c0_8AAAAJ&hl=en), Benjamin Lyons ( https://interestingessays.substack.com/), Eli Sennesh ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3z4ALYgAAAAJ), Jordan Theriault-Brown ( http://www.jordan-theriault.com/), and Karen Quigley ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aZ3qhVUAAAAJ&hl=en) abo...

This is a ~50 minute video on evolution from the perspective of diverse intelligence. I discuss 3 main things: the nature of the mapping between genotype and phenotype (an intelligent, problem-solving process that interprets genomic prompts, not simply a complex mechanical mapping), the implications for evolution of operating over such a multi-scale agential material, and a few recent findings abo...

This is a ~46 minute talk by Michael Levin titled “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of the Behavioral Sciences in Developmental Biology and Biomedicine” given at a developmental biology/bioengineering symposium, explaining the connections between the cognitive/behavioral sciences and the study of morphogenesis, from the lens of our framework and new technology. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Behavioral Science F...

This is a ~54 minute conversation with Katrina Schleisman ( https://www.galois.com/team/katrina-schleisman) and David Burke ( https://www.galois.com/team/david-burke) about issues related to memory, Platonism, diverse intelligence, and similar topics. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Paper comments and impetus (01:38) Math-physics causal dualism (06:19) Unreasonable effectiveness and foundations (12:54) Active P...

This is a ~52 minute conversation with philosopher David Resnik ( https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/bioethicist) about the Platonic Space model and our plan for a new paper about a different variant of it than what I've been writing so far. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Morphogenesis and latent space (15:19) Platonism's scientific utility (27:06) Explanation, models, morphospace (36:51) M...

This is a ~57 minute discussion with Elan Barenholtz ( https://mpcrlab.com/people/Elan-Barenholtz/) about language and its possible autonomy in brains, AI models, and other systems linking to our lab's work on active data and the thoughts-thinkers continuum. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Language As Auto-Generator (21:14) Virtual Governors In Physiology (30:37) Mathematics, Metaphysics, Free Lunches (40:40) L...

This is a ~52 minute discussion between Diana Moga ( https://www.dianamogamd.com/), Alexey Tolchinsky ( https://montgomerycountypsychologist.com/), Chris Fields ( https://chrisfieldsresearch.com/), and I on topics related to autism, ketamine-assisted therapy, and the linking of these concepts to somatic biology. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Ketamine, Trauma, Defining Autism (06:12) Trauma, Gender, Autism Mod...

This is a ~1 hour 5 minute conversation between Nora Belrose ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=p_oBc64AAAAJ&hl=en) and me on the topics of consciousness, AI, and different views of the Platonic Space. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Introductions and Moral Risks (09:11) Intelligence, Sentience, Irreversibility (16:38) Digital Copies and Value (24:54) Dynamic Platonic Mindspace (35:19) Passable For...

This is a ~1 hour conversation between Alexey Tolchinsky ( https://montgomerycountypsychologist.com/), a clinical psychologist and Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University, Center for Professional Psychology, and Thomas Pollak ( https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6171-0810), a neuropsychiatrist and researcher working at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's Colle...

This is a ~1 hour 5 minute working conversation with Chris Fields ( https://chrisfieldsresearch.com/), Mark Solms ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ&hl=en), Karl Friston ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=q_4u0aoAAAAJ&hl=en), and Thomas Pollak ( https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/thomas-pollak) starting on the topic of variable degrees of introspection in natural a...

This is a ~35 min talk titled "Entropic motivation and the roots of agency" by Alex Kiefer ( https://philpeople.org/profiles/alex-kiefer) + ~25 min discussion of the issues of motivation in artificial and natural agents. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Entropy, Motivation, Psychophysical Identity (35:45) Willpower, Purpose, Buddhist Motivation (45:57) Emergent Goals and Uncertainty (58:06) Platonic Patterns and...

This is a ~45 minute talk for an embodied cognition audience, covering my framework for diverse intelligence, our use of morphogenesis as a model system for communicating with unconventional minds, and my views on our new MomBot platform and how it helps understand the symmetries between science and agency, and the novel group minds consisting of technology, living matter, and scientists themselve...

This is a brief (~17 minute) introduction to my argument about Platonic space in biology, using a 1-page simplified argument format and then a quick overview of the research program entailed by it. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Mathematical facts and patterns (01:46) Math explains physical reality (04:28) Physicalism and Platonic space (06:17) Structured space of patterns (07:31) Beyond mathematics, agential...

This ~50 minute talk given at a futurism/AI gathering is a variant of my recent talks on diverse intelligence, focusing on ways to expand our perspective via considerations of non-brain-based intelligence in the body, patterns as agents, synthetic beings as model systems for learning to predict and communicate with agents that do not share our selection history, pattern of form and behavior from t...

This is a ~1 hour discussion with Ben Lyons ( https://interestingessays.substack.com/), Eli Sennesh ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3z4ALYgAAAAJ&hl=en), and Jordan Theriault ( http://www.jordan-theriault.com/), where they each give talks and then we have a brief Q&A on topics related to neuroscience, economics, and specifically the interoception and allostasis view of behaviora...