Thoughtforms Life

This is a ~57 minute talk titled "Energy Constraints and Tradeoffs: the mitochondrial daily energy expenditure MDEE study" by Martin Picard ( https://www.neurology.columbia.edu/profile/martin-picard-phd ) and a brief set of ideas by me at the end, presaging a full discussion of this for our next meeting. I mentioned these 2 papers: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030326472200143...

This is ~23 minute talk overviewing our recent results and the way we think about aging and longevity. It was for a conference with quite short speaking slots so I had to talk fast... Longer talk coming with more data but this outlines some ideas and overviews our published recent work on aging. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Aging framework overview (01:16) Bodies as setpoints (03:08) Anatomical homeostasis e...

Discussion #2 (57 minutes on computationalism and consciousness) with Borjan Milinkovic ( https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AwaZbzsAAAAJ&hl=en ), Jaan Aru ( https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=FvFOzS8AAAAJ&hl=en%29 ), and Nicolas Rouleau ( https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=FyOpVTAAAAAJ&hl=en ). CHAPTERS: (00:00) AI consciousness middle ground (04:46) Substrate depen...

This is a talk I gave, ~49 minutes long, titled "Free Lunches: Model Systems for Studying the Agential Gifts from the Platonic Space", to a philosophy audience. It covers some more ways I think about the latent space of patterns that in-forms biology and cognitive science. CHAPTERS: (00:02) Research program overview (05:15) Dissolving old categories (10:54) Goal-directed morphogenesis basics (14:1...

This is a ~2 hour discussion among contributors to the Platonic Space Symposium ( CHAPTERS: (00:00) Strong perception framework (10:12) Perception model boundaries (17:41) Penrose and probabilities (30:57) Quantum interpretations debated (39:28) Probability dynamics and gravity (53:50) Relational observer problem (01:00:30) Dance synchronization physics (01:12:02) Rituals and group flow (01:23:43)...

This is a ~2 hours 4 minute discussion among contributors to the Platonic Space Symposium ( CHAPTERS: (00:00) Strong anticipation analogy (08:16) Relational Platonic patterns (25:06) Finite brains, infinite grammar (40:05) Beauty and compression (51:17) Searching for grammar (01:01:58) Patterns and selfhood (01:14:44) Patterns claiming territory (01:29:28) Markets shape selves (01:43:57) Scaling c...

This is a ~1 hour 5 minute discussion with Amahury Jafet Lopez Diaz ( Carlos Gershenson-Garcia ( and Richard Watson ( Stay tuned for part 2 where Amahury will present his ideas in more detail. Amahury's paper: CHAPTERS: (00:00) Common ground and stakes (06:10) Ontology of platonic space (14:50) Testing separate realms (25:52) Acid tests and metaphors (34:55) Interaction and narratives (44:20) Form...

This is a ~1.5 hour talk + discussion, titled "A Multiscale Logic of Collective Intelligence" by Donald Hoffman ( and Chetan Prakash ( with Robert Chis-Ciure ( and Chris Fields ( and me. CHAPTERS: (00:01) Beyond space-time physics (10:10) Minimal observer participants (18:49) Recursive trace logic (35:08) Actions and trace blankets (43:45) Physics and agency together (52:32) Causal emergence and j...

This is a ~1 hour discussion with Lisa Maroski ( and Richard Watson ( about the role of language in shaping our thinking in the field of diverse intelligence and beyond. CHAPTERS: (00:00) Language and systems thinking (04:25) Parts wholes and resonance (07:34) Who versus what (12:45) Recursion and new structures (17:47) Searching for a word (25:16) Holding multiple polarities (29:41) Nested biolog...

This is a ~1 hour meeting with Richard Watson ( Alexey Tolchinsky ( Mark Solms ( and Karl Friston ( where we discuss issues of memory (especially, the role of forgetting) in diverse intelligence (human patients and beyond), and a bit on dreams and psychoanalysis. The original question from me was motivated by some findings on the effects of induced forgetting in models of unconventional cognition...

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...