Thoughtforms Life

This is a ~1 hour discussion with Dr. Alex Schmidt (www.schmidtpsychologicalservices.com) and Alexey Tolchinsky, Psy. D. (https://montgomerycountypsychologist.com/). We touch on issues of trauma, somatic memory, dissociation, and protective mechanisms at the interface of the psychiatry and developmental biology. In private practice, Dr. Schmidt works with children and adults who exhibit severe and...

This is a ~1 hour discussion with Richard Watson (https://www.richardawatson.com/) and Josh Bongard (https://www.uvm.edu/cems/cs/profiles/josh_bongard) touching on topics of agency, polycomputing, oscillations, and evolution. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~1 hour conversation between Josh Bongard (https://www.uvm.edu/cems/cs/profiles/josh_bongard), Tom Froese (https://www.oist.jp/research/tom-froese), and I on Irruption theory, polycomputing, and the mind-body relationship. Some relevant links from the discussion: Tom's paper on irruption theory: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/4/288 Josh and I on polycomputaton: https://www.mdpi.com/23...

This is a ~50 minute conversation between Josh Bongard (https://www.uvm.edu/cems/cs/profiles/josh_bongard), Atoosa Parsa (https://www.atoosaparsa.com/), Richard Watson (https://www.richardawatson.com/), and I on topics of agency, computation, polycomputing, oscillations, selfhood, and similar subjects. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~1 hour conversation between Tim Jackson (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Timothy-Jackson-4), Karl Friston (https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/), Chris Fields (https://chrisfieldsresearch.com/) and I around the free energy principle, philosophy, evolution, and novelty. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~30 minute talk by Rafael Kaufmann, Pranav Gupta, and Jacob Taylor. There is a 30 minute Q&A here: https://thoughtforms.life/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/QA-from-Gupta-Kaufman-Taylor.mp3 ; the paper referred to is: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/23/7/830 Some more relevant links: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bX5GK3rZX8RdgmcvXyfpOGEVYbIePMq8/view?usp=sharing https://www.brookings.ed...

"Metaphysics and the Matter with Things: Thinking with Iain McGilchrist was a collaborative conference put on by the Center for Process Studies (CPS) and the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in March of 2024. This three-day conference brought leading process thinkers across various disciplines, including physics, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and theology into critical dialo...

This is ~1 hour conversation with Daniel McShea (https://scholars.duke.edu/person/dmcshea) and Gunnar Babcock (https://gunnarbabcock.com/) on topics of biology, evolution, causation, explanation, and the machine metaphor. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~25 minute talk and another ~25 minutes of discussion between Benjamin Lyons (https://benjaminflyons.com/) and myself, about his work to understand the commonalities between economics and collective intelligence in biology. Some links mentioned in the discussion: https://interestingessays.substack.com/p/prices-as-memories https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4878765 https:...

This is a ~1 hour-long discussion meeting with Stuart Kauffman and Katherine Peil Kauffman, covering evolution, machines, metaphors in science, etc. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~45 minute discussion with Ricard Sole (http://complex.upf.edu/ricard-sol%C3%A9), a synthetic biologist whose work spans evolution, language, and many other fascinating areas. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a ~45 min discussion with Benjamin Lyons (https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-lyons-ab46717a) and David Bloomin (https://daveey.github.io/) on topics at the intersection of economics, basal cognition, and deep learning. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is the second of our series of discussions with key figures in the field of Bioelectricity. Ken Robinson has a long list of accomplishments in this field, covering the role of electric fields in guiding cell migration and more generally the function of electrogenic epithelia in embryogenesis. This is about a ~1 hour conversation in which he talks about his background, the history of the field...

This is an ~1 hour conversation with Joscha Bach (http://bach.ai/) and Chris Fields (https://chrisfieldsresearch.com/), touching on computation, cognition, error correcting codes, physics, AI, consciousness, etc. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

Don Hoffman, Richard Watson, and I discuss the nature of scientific theories, time, and the physics of cognition. ~1 hour CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is a 1-hour working meeting discussing Alexander Ororbia's and Karl Friston's paper on Mortal Computations and their relevance to our work in reprogramming biology and cognition more generally. A few papers: Alexander and Karl's paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09589 Michael Levin's paper to which they referred a couple of times: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/4b2wj CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast We...

This is a meeting discussion, ~40 minutes, between Tom Froese (Cognitive Scientist at OIST, https://groups.oist.jp/ecsu/tom-froese) and Michael Levin, going over Tom's recent paper on Irruption theory and discussing embodied minds, agency, and models of mind-body interaction. The paper is here: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/4/288 CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify...

This is a discussion meeting (~1 hour 20 minutes) between Michael Levin and Michael Pollan (https://michaelpollan.com/) of the new ideas in this paper: https://osf.io/preprints/osf/4b2wj CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is an ~1 hour talk by Michael Levin on the topic of engineering with agential (living) materials, given for the students and other members of the ETHZ Zurich Soft Robotics Lab led by Prof. Robert Katzschmann). CHAPTERS: (00:00) Introduction: Biorobotics & Materials (02:20) The Anatomical Compiler (04:15) Agential Materials & Competency (07:00) Biological Plasticity Examples (11:50) Na...

This is a ~45 minute talk I gave to some undergraduate students about ideas from biology that might help them think about AI and related topics. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab

This is the second of several interviews we will do with significant contributors to the field of developmental bioelectricity. Min Zhao's work focused on the role of ion currents and applied electric fields in cell migration and wound repair. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=G7-zWBcAAAAJ&hl=en https://health.ucdavis.edu/dermatology/faculty/zhao.html Aastha Jain: https://www.livelonge...

This is a 1-hour conversation with Ali Hanson (https://braininitiative.nih.gov/ali-hanson-md-phd) on her path in science, including a ~45 minute presentation of her data in Hydra. This is the first of a series of videos I will do to highlight some exceptional junior scientists' work. More information will be provided on a blog post on Ali's work at https://thoughtforms.org/ CONNECT WITH ME: Podcas...

This is a talk I gave at a large tech company for non-specialists interested in the intersection of computation, biology, and fundamental questions about Selfhood. It's about 48 minutes long and unfortunately does not capture my cursor movement so you can't see the things on the slides at which I am pointing. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin La...

This is the first of several interviews we will do with significant people in the history of developmental bioelectricity. Richard Nuccitelli is a legend, having invented (with Lionel Jaffe, in 1974) the Vibrating Probe - a technique that allowed the non-invasive sensing of ion currents around living tissues. This is about a ~1 hour conversation in which he talks about his background, the history...

This is a ~1.5 hour discussion between cognitive scientist Don Hoffman (https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/HoffmanPubs.html) and evolutionary biologist/computer scientist Richard Watson (https://www.richardawatson.com/), on evolution, physics, time, and the nature of reality. CONNECT WITH ME: Podcast Website YouTube Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Blog The Levin Lab