Conversation of Michael Levin with Iain McGilchrist #2

Here we go. Hello Mike, good to see you. So, how have you been?

Oh, I've been pretty good. Um, going around the world too much, but otherwise fine. You've been very busy. I mean, you're always very busy, but, um, the reason we're talking now is because you sent me that, um, remarkable paper which, with your permission, um, I put up on my subset. Um, and, uh, which I think is, is going to be the contribution to, to that book, uh, from the conference about my stuff in California last year. Um, so I'm very grateful for that and for the ideas, and I thought there was just a lot of richness in it and it would be worth talking about it.

Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much. Um, I, I value, you know, really, really value your, your opinion and taking the time to, to read it. So that's, that's great. I hope, um, I, I, so I hope you, I'll send you the latest version for the, for your, um, for your site and everything because I'm not sure, okay, I'm not sure, I'm not sure if I had the, you know, what, what, what, what you had at the time you put it up. I'm not sure if it's the latest one. So, so I'll send you the latest one. But, um, I think it was version 23, if that's any help.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's pretty good. Close enough, close enough. But no, I'd like to have it and then I can put that up instead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. So, and I saw you did something with my friend Alex Gomez Marin the other day.

I did, I did. Yeah, we had a, we had a very good, yeah, we had a very good discussion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love, I love, I love talking to him.

Yeah, he was great. He's, he's a good man. Yeah.

There was a whole lot of things that, um, I think it would be interesting to talk about. I mean, mainly on a philosophical level. But then, I mean, I'm glad to say you're not frightened of philosophy, which is, which is completely wonderful because it's not true of every biologist. And I do think that philosophy and science, um, need to, need to walk hand in hand, really. I mean, either of them is lacking if it doesn't have the other. So, um, so what would you say about the idea that, um, I think you, you would agree with, you seem to say that intelligence, uh, goes all the way down, really? I mean, in, in everything, not just in life, actually. Is that right? I mean, the whole cosmos is, is imbued with a kind of intelligence.

Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I think that's fair.

And so, would you say you're a panpsychist?

I am, um, with a, with a little bit of a twist in that. I, I think the typical panpsychist position, which is one thing that gets critiqued a lot for, is, is the, is this idea that, well, the, the, the consciousness or the mind of the collective has to be in some way a sum of, or, you know, creative. So there's some sort of addition problem, right? So, right. So I think that's not a thing. I, I think, I think yes, part, the parts have it, and the whole has it. And, and it's not a, it's not, it's not an addition problem.

Oh, thank goodness you said that because a lot of people have said to me, because I think in a way I'm a panpsychist, you know, but what about the combination problem? And I said, well, it's only a combination problem if you think, think about it in the wrong way. If you think about it as a having to be the sum of a whole lot of different parts. But in fact, it's something that, as you say, both in the whole and in the parts, is pregnant with, if you like to put it that way, with some, some kind of mind, some kind of intelligence. Um, which I think is also characterized by, by goal-directedness. And, and that, by that, I certainly don't mean that there is a determinist outcome. There is a deterministic outcome, but there is nonetheless direction. And direction doesn't, doesn't close down possibility at all. But it seems to me that we now have to give up the idea that, um, that, which was given up by, by, by physicists, I guess, some time ago, but the idea that really everything is just random and has no sense of order or direction to it.

Yeah, yeah. I, you know, I think this, I think this combination problem comes from, from two underlying motivations. One is that I think people really want to, as, as is, for example, codified in IIT, they, they want there to be only one mind in anything, right? So if you have a system, you, the, you know, the parts, it's, if it's made of parts, well, let's, you know, show us the one, you know, kind of mind it has. And the part, we can forget about what the parts are doing. So, so I think that's a problem. Is that you try to, right? I mean, I, I like a, I like a continuous heterarchy of, of overlapping minds. Right? And then, and then the other, and then the other is the even more pervasive thing that we, we somehow make minds. And so the idea is that from, from these things, we're going to create this, this, uh, you know, this thing from, sort of from, from scratch. And then, and then you have this combination problem because you have to say, well, how did you, how exactly, you know, was, was, yeah. So, yeah, I think if we can, if we avoid those two things, then, then I don't think there's a combination problem.

No, no. I, I, I completely agree. And, and it's a relief because I hadn't read you saying that. And as I say, it's a constant, um, gripe I have. This is, this is to think, in some ways, it's to think, in my turn, very much as the left hemisphere will construe the world, that it's made up of bits, and the bits, um, have, you know, everything that you find in it can be accounted for in the, in, in the, um, in the putting together of these parts. We put it together in, in the way that we put machines together. And I know you, I mean, we need to talk about that, but I know you say that effectively there is no difference between the machine and the organism.

I, I mean, I think, I don't know whether you would deny that, but I think that there are profound differences between mechanisms and organisms. But I draw the line. I don't say that there is a, a sharp line that divides in what we call inanimate matter from animate matter. In other words, life. I think it is a matter of degree. And I think, like you, that there is, um, a, a, a holarchy, if you like, in which things are nested. And in that holarchy, um, we, we have the inanimate as well as the, as the animate. And the difference is that the animate is just somehow a billionfold more responsive to whatever it is that we find this intelligence, this direction, um, process, this lure towards things. Um, another very important idea that things are not simply pushed blindly from behind, but actually are attracted towards things. I mean, you say somewhere, the, the sort of, the important attractor in the morphosphere, I think is the word, probably, um, that, that draws things towards them. Do you want to say anything about that?

Yeah, um, a couple of things. Well, we can, we can talk about the machine-organism thing, and I completely agree with you that on that spectrum, there are regions which we have, which we have named, which, which have vastly different properties. And, and, and of course, it makes sense to, to distinguish these things as a, as a kind of a large, um, large categories of things. But I think also, anyway, we can, we can talk about that. I want to talk about the, just, just for a second, the attraction bin. Um, this is, this is very much, uh, in progress, so I don't have anything concrete yet to show you, although there's other people that have done relevant things. But, um, I've been working on, uh, this scenario where we have, we, we view, um, so let's say you have an agent that's, that's exploring some problem space. They're trying to find a solution. Um, I've been, I've been working on a, on a, on a formalization where the solution is basically reaching out to the agent as much as the agent is reaching out to it. Right? So a symmetry in that.

That's great. And the weirdest, and the weirdest thing about, so, so, you know, we can sort of like it, almost, I think people can almost buy that on a kind of human creativity scale that, right? That you're, you know, that these things are like drawing you, right? Calling to you.

Yes, yes, exactly. Right. So, so create, I, I think all creative people have this, this experience, right? That the thing is sort of. But, um, the thing that I want to do is, as I like to do, is to show what that looks like all the way down. And when I say all the way down, what I mean is, for example, when you have, um, molecular binding. So you have, right, in, in every cell biology textbook, there's a pathway and they say, well, this thing, you know, this, this, this protein that's made over here, and then it goes and finds its binding partner, and then it kind of, and there's your path there. So, so I remember, and I don't know what the latest, uh, I need, I need to figure this out, what the latest quantitative models of this are. But I remember some, some years back, um, uh, Roy Frieden did a calculation at a conference in Arizona State of like, how long would it actually take for things in a cell, given realistic, you know, diffusion constants and things like this, how long would it actually take for anything to find its binding partner? Because, because the problem is that you don't get the reward, so to speak, until you act. So the free energy doesn't drop until you actually get to the thing and then you bind. That, that's great. But along the way, there's no partial credit, right? There's no partial credit. There's no gradient. You just sort of, you just sort of hang until you find, you know, what. And according to that calculation, it, it would be completely unsupportable, you know, millions of years for anything to. And so, and so, so we're working on some things to look at what does that actually look, what, what would, you know, uh, synchronicity, um, this, this kind of, another way, you know, this library angel phenomenon, right? That, you know, you're, you're sort of, you're working on some problem, you're walking through a library, this, you know, book falls down, you like, oh, look, there's the, like, so, so what, what does that look like all the way down? What does that look like on the molecular level? What, you know, what, what are, could we, could we say that there are ways in which, um, the, the solution to your problem, or your binding partner in the case of the chemistry, or some other things in AI and so on, are attracting you as much as you're searching for them? So that's, you know, these are very early days, but that's, that's some stuff we're working on.

That's fascinating. And, um, for me, expresses a very important point about existence, full stop, which is that everything, everything is relational. The, the idea that there are just these things and then either we find they have relations or we make the relations between them is again, this very reductive view that I associate with, I mean, I'm not just using this metaphorically, this is the way the left hemisphere works. Whereas I think the idea that things are in a kind of partnership, in other words, that there is, um, interdependence, to use this rather wonderful word, which is the title of Christian Schar's book on the relationship between an organism and its environment, not that they just interact serially, the organism affects the environment, the environment affects the organism, but they literally co-create one another. So they're coming into being together. Now, you could apply that view to the idea of the solution arriving, um, much faster. You think reaching out to the problem, that the problem is really a, a manifestation of a felt, a potential solution, and the solution is the manifestation of a potential problem, and they come together. It is extraordinary how these things do, do appear to. I mean, I, I think of a couple of examples, um, they may well be drawn from your work that I use in the matter with things. Um, one, well-known one, is if you take, um, eyeless, the eyeless gene out of Drosophila. Obviously, the, the offspring have no eyes. And if you breed the eyeless flies, their offspring have no flies, no eyes. But after 14 generations without the gene, they have the eyes. So something is, something very powerful is going on, very rapidly, that says no eyes need to be had. And Simon Conway Morris suggests that eyes have been evolved, I think he says, 14 different times in the history of evolution. It's an extraordinary thing that they evolved at all because there, it's such a complex thing, and lots of things have to come together. But the idea that this could have happened separately in different lineages, 14 times, is extraordinary and suggests that there is definitely something about having an eye that is, that is quite important. And the other thing that I think is, is interesting is the idea, and it's closer to what you were saying, um, about it would take far too long, is that, you know, when a cell encounters a danger for which it is not in any way prepared, either programmatically or through experience, it can, it can develop, um, an enzyme, or it can develop, at any rate, a, a change in its chemical milieu that will resolve that problem within as little as four days, whereas it would take billions of years if it was just relying on randomness. So this is all absolutely fascinating.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, absolutely, like, like that last example. Yeah, we, we have examples of, um, planaria challenged with barium, um, that, that basically causes their heads to explode, and then within, you know, about a week's time, they come up with a new solution that enables them to make barium-insensitive heads out of a, um, problem space. It's like a 20,000-dimensional problem space, you know. And, and so, so yeah, so we're very interested in figuring out, um, how, how they do it. And I wonder, I wonder what your thoughts are about, um, I've been thinking about this, just kind of really broadly, this, this issue of, uh, having this kind of relationship with solutions in that space, right? Let's say, I want to talk about the terminology too. So maybe Platonic isn't, isn't a good term, as you pointed out. But, but, but anyway, um, there, there's something I think there's something interesting going on. And I wonder, I wonder what, what you think about this, like, if you look at, at the very bottom of the level, you have some kind, let's say, let's say photons, that, with least action principles, they find their solution, you know, 100% of the time. They don't need complicated internal machinery to calculate, what, which path should I take? They just kind of effortlessly do it, right? They're in that flow state, so to speak, like all the time. Then, then, then you have creatures, you know, like, like, well, I'm solving some sort of problem methodically plotting across that space. First, I do this, and then what does this mean? And okay, well, maybe, right? So you're, and it's a lot of effort, and you're sort of very carefully, um, um, crawling along that space. And then you have, and then you have the people who are creative geniuses, and they don't need, again, they're, they're back to that initial state. They don't need the step-by-step thing. They say, oh, it's, it's, I can see it, it's obvious, you know, I'm already there. So what do you think about this, this, this, this navigation of that, of that space of ideas, like how, you know, why, it, it seems to be like a strange U-shaped kind of thing.

Yeah, that's a very interesting point. And you quote, don't you, Prigogine's thing about, you know, it's not we have to examine all the possibilities, only a highly selected group of possibilities present themselves for examination. And in a, in a way, in the, in the most exotic examples of, um, insight by geniuses, that they go almost immediately to that solution, not always, but they do. Well, I think, I mean, my view is that, for what it's worth, is that we are equipped with the ability to follow algorithms because they are extraordinarily helpful in everyday living. And, you know, the left hemisphere is very much the utilitarian one that does that kind of thinking. And for a lot of things in life, you know, problem, what do I do? I do this, I do that, and the other, and it's solved. But I think there is something which allows, um, a gestalt to form and to either slowly or rapidly come into focus, rather than to have any step-by-step approach. So instead of thinking of arriving at a solution as the end stage of many steps, if one thinks of arriving at a solution as the, the coming into focus of an out-of-focus image. And, and for some people, this image can collapse into a, I use the word collapse almost advisedly because I think it is something like a waveform making a moment. There, now we've got it, we've got it. That, that is a process that seems to me, on, I think, pretty good neurological evidence, to be the way that the right hemisphere prefers to act. And so these two processes need one another. But I think if one's over-wedded to the left hemisphere's way of thinking, one actually disattends. So I think we have faculties that, by not using them, we are allowing to atrophy, as is inevitably the case. And that other, other people, and people with atypical brains, are able to achieve these things by not getting completely locked into the left hemisphere's preferred procedures. And, you know, the archetypal case must be Einstein, you know, who, who was puzzling about something. He wasn't scribbling. He was playing the piano or playing the violin, and then he'd get up and go, I've got it. So I think, and Yanire himself has this story about the, um, Fourier functions, and how he went into town, and the very moment he put his foot on the bus to go home, he realized what the answer is, having sweated over it in the logical kind of way for two weeks, staying up at night with lots of coffee.

Yeah, yeah. So, so this is, you know, I think, I think this is a very important area for investigation where, if we, and, so, so I hypothesize in that paper that basically because the solutions are there, in, out, and they're infected, you know, I say it's positive pressure, they they want to sort of ingress into the physical world. But, but I also, you know, think that we could view them as, as, as agents as well, that are that are like trying to, they have, they have that, they're trying to meet. So, so what makes, you know, what, what is it that makes either certain, um, certain people or certain systems or the right hemisphere, um, what distinguishes the cases where you're able to invite in this, this, this, this amazing pattern versus examples when you're not, and you sort of have to slowly crawl, crawl to it, you know, what, what is right? I mean, that's, that's kind of what, what I'd like to know.

Well, I mean, to come crashing down to neuropsychology of, on, on that one. I mean, all the, the, the descriptions involve a not knowing, a letting go, a potential space that can be filled. And it's often said in, you know, um, in Eastern traditions, that there is this idea of emptiness, but, but not emptiness in the Western sense, which is of something negative. It's emptiness which is the potential space into which something rich and new can grow, rather like a womb has to be empty to begin with in order that the life can grow in it. So I think everybody, um, the scientists, the artists, the sages, say that there is an important period of fallowness in which one is not striving too hard. But on the other hand, you have to put yourself in the way of it happening. And so it may be necessary to do as, um, Wouth described, that you have to strive, you have to read, you have to think, you have to approach the problem. And, you know, you won't get it while you're doing that, but you won't get it unless you've done that. And then you drop it, and then the answer comes. Now, why, why that should be, it seems to me the, the most logical way to think about that is that the, the right hemisphere has extremely wide, um, ranging, um, connective paths, and it has a greater facility for making distant connections than the left hemisphere. And when the more one engages the left hemisphere, the more these connections become tightened down into almost like a concentric, into an area where you're focusing your attention. So that it may be that what, what's happening is that you need to sort of do that and let it go. I mean, it might even be like exercises one can do physically in order to relax, which are to tense one's muscles and then actively let go of the tension, and that allows something to. Does this make any sense, or am I just completely way, way, way off?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, it makes, it makes, it makes total sense. Um, yeah, I, I think, I think that's, you know, I think it's particularly interesting, uh, down at the lower levels, where we can say, you've got, you've got particles and molecules, that, uh, they don't, they don't get confused about what to do. They, they don't make mistakes. The chemistry just does what it does, and it chooses the lowest path every single time. And it's, and it's great. Then, then you have a paramecium, and the paramecium is now in the same bind as we are. It has to make decisions rapidly with limited information. Um, it can misperceive, it can make mistakes, all kinds of things that that layer in between, right? What, what happens? You know, how do you, how do you, you know, how do you get to that level? Because, because we can see all the, you know, in these very simple life forms, we can see all the molecular events happening. And even, you know, some of the things that we're doing in between, like, we, we, we found learning capacities in molecular networks. And so what I'm really interested in is, is, is, is formulating a notion of this, of search, of, of, um, of striving, of navigation in the molecular networks, because we have to, you know, we have to have pictures of it all the way down. And I think it will be very simple, but I, you know, I don't think it's crazy to think about problem-solving. You know, we, we know that happens in cells. I don't think it's crazy to think about it in molecular networks. And all of the things that we think of as creative, you know, um, the creative search for problems and preparing yourself to, to sort of, um, you know, I don't know, be, be, um, in resonance with this, with this download of, of information that is trying to get to you, if you, you know, I, I think there's a molecular story to tell about this that, that I would like to do. And it also, I think it also links to some of these ideas of the mind as a filter. You know, it's an old idea. And, right? You know, and, for, it's very much my idea too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So, so there's, there's an element of this where the more computational capacity you have, in a certain, in a certain sense, it's actually, uh, preventing you, right, from, from finding certain things.

Absolutely. But of course, negation. I mean, another point I think is very rich is that in our world, we think of negation as, well, negative. Whereas in fact, negation is highly creative. And, you know, an example is, you know, Michelangelo creating a sculpture. He doesn't put anything together. All he does for several years is throw stone away. And at the end of it, it's there. So the, is something. And for him, there must have been something calling to him in the stone that enabled him to do this, to find it, if you like. And so, what are your speculations about how this might work at the molecular level? Have you got any thoughts at this stage?

Yeah, I think, I think the, well, well, there's a couple of things. One, there's a rich, um, set of findings coming from, uh, from, from, um, uh, mesoscale physics and then solid state physics, where there's actually, there's actually some amazing papers showing how when you, when you vibrate a medium, a particular way, things that, things that belong together, in the sense that, um, you know, they're going to bind nicely to each other, actually, when you watch the paths, they actually sort of are like navigating it. It, it doesn't look random anymore. But, but there was, you know, nobody's guiding it. There is, at least from overtly, there's no, there's no algorithm for it. There's no mechanism for it. So there's some stuff coming from, from, from, from physics around that. Um, for me, I, I think we really need to think about these issues of, to, to take seriously this idea that, that basically what's happening is that there are various kinds of patterns. Some of these low-agency things that mathematicians deal with, the facts about the prime numbers and such. And then, but, but other of these patterns are the kinds of things that, um, Patrick Grim was looking at, or beyond that, we would recognize as kinds of minds or behavioral propensities or things like this. And that's some of the, you know, some of these, I mean, this is, this is part of that discussion about machines versus organisms and all that, because I'm completely okay with, uh, acknowledging we have to acknowledge that there are the things we call organisms are a completely different type of pattern than the things we call simple machines. They're obviously different. But I think we drastically underestimate the, the material and the level of complexity that you need for that to start to happen. You know, we've been investigating this as, as, you know, in the sorting algorithm and some other crazy stuff that isn't published yet, because we're still getting data. But there's going to be some, some wild things coming down the pike on this, where, where basically, I, I, you know, I, I just think that we have to be humble about the fact that, um, we do, we are not good at predicting what kinds of simple things are going to, uh, serve as pointers to some very sophisticated patterns. And therefore, we have to be really careful before we label things as, as just machines and so on. That's, you know, we, we just, we, we just don't know. And, and I think, I, figuring out that, that relationship between the thing you build, whether it's a physical object, whether it's an embryo, a biobot, you know, a computer, whatever, the things we build, and the things that it, that it pulls down, because it pulls down things that you did not expect, or, or, in fact, you know, make provision for.

Yeah, I mean, that would come onto the question of ethics, which you raised, and I think is important, but we can come back to that. But I, I don't see any reason why, if there are, are not just, if you like, forms, these non-apparently non-physical forms that ingress into phenomenological experience and cause changes in physical bodies, um, but, [Music] also, I mean, I'm, I'm interested in increasingly, uh, in the idea of goals and values as being very real parts of the structure of the universe. And I think that one way to look at, it's interesting because science has, um, quite legitimately and very productively, um, stated that it is going to explore things without reference to, uh, direction, purpose, or values. And that's very useful, and, you know, that's been, been very important. But what science cannot say at the end of the day is that it discovered there is no purpose and there is no value, because it ruled them out and it had no competence to find them, if you like. But if one gets beyond that, there is nothing, um, anti-scientific. It is complimentary to science that science sees a world that does have directions and is lured by certain values. And I think those values are, and you find them very much in the stories of mathematicians coming to their conclusion that there is something beautiful in them, that they are beautiful and complex, and that generally speaking, the universe has a tendency to produce things that are beautiful and complex. I mean, one of the, one of the things that I, forgive me if I'm repeating myself, that I, I often think along with Whitehead, who is an influence on me very much, and, you know, why, why is life at all? And because if it's all about being able to remain in existence and, and, and beat other things that remaining in existence, then the answer is never to have been alive, because you can live for billions of years as a mountain, if like. But once you start really being alive, your lifespan is is limited. But not necessarily that limited, because there are these Actino bacteria in the base of the ocean that are single examples of which are about a million years old. So evolution has not actually, its purpose doesn't seem to have been able been that of making a single organism last for longer. It's been, you know, to end up with people like us that stick around for 70 years or so. So what is it about? And I think what it is about is this drive towards complexity, towards responsiveness, towards the resonance with whatever the source of energy that grounds everything manifests. There's a resonance between us and it. I mean, I'm posing that everybody imagines there must be something that grounds being. We may not ever know what it is, and we may have to say, well, we just leave it at that. But whatever that is, it doesn't seem to be entirely neutral, because the universe that it has grounded is not just a random set of of things bumping into one another. It has order, it has beauty, it has complexity. And I think these are drives. And I think that what life offers is, if you like, that interdependence I was talking about before, in which there is, um, a kind of dance, for want of a better word, between that ground of being and the living, in which the potential that is stored there, that is manifest in this explosive universe, is, is being realized in certain ways, so that it can, can actually bring something about that reflects something back to the origin, the ground of being. Now, the reason why I think that is important is that I see that potential is extremely important, and is often thought of as less important than actuality. And here I'm with, forgive me, Heidegger, who said that it's quite possible that potential is more important than actuality. But yes, and no. But the potential is no good unless anything gets actualized. I mean, and the example I give of that is money. You, money is potential. There it is. And actually, it's nothing until it's actualized. It is the potential for all kinds of beautiful experiences and things to be made and happen. But it has to be spent in order that those things can come about. So the amount of potential diminishes, the, the sort of free potential diminishes and becomes an actualized part of experience. Now, I, I may be misunderstanding Whitehead, but I think that is his terminology. It's an off-putting element for me, but I think that is what he's actually talking about, is that when things come into being, they then add to the sum of what there is. So that when new things, uh, evolve from this field of potential, those actualities have enriched it, and they become more likely to be expressed the next time round. And so I think this explains the continuity and the persistence of certain forms, not the rigid insistence on those forms, the general persistence of those forms over time, that they have been, they've been precipitated out of potential into actuality, and they now change the nature of the universe ever so slightly, if they're small things, but nonetheless, they do. And that what we are seeing is the unfolding of potential into actuality all the time. What do you think?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and especially, um, so I've been, I've been playing with models in which the, so, so if we, if we assume that, um, that there is a set of, uh, there is a set of patterns of, of widely differing complexity and agency that are trying to get into the physical world, then one of the things that happens with evolution could be, you could, you could, you could easily have this, uh, positive feedback loop where, when, when evolution, right, it, it benefits from access to these free lunches, you know, there's many, many useful things you get that you don't need to specifically evolve, because of the these laws of mathematics and computation that just kind of are there for you the minute you, you know, you make a voltage-gated ion channel, and, boom, now you have truth tables, and, you know, all this amazing stuff, because they're basically transistors, and you don't have to, um, evolve a truth table, you just, you just have to make the, you know, make the protein. And, but, but the feedback loop comes because as much as you take advantage of those kinds of free lunches, that enables you to build a more sophisticated interface, meaning a better, a better embodiment, which immediately gives you access to, to other, other more, more sophisticated forms, which then immediately makes you, enables you to make another more sophisticated embodiment. And so it's like, um, it's, it's as you said, it's a co-creation or a co-evolution of, right, of, of these things that are, um, kind of a potentiating, uh, each, each, each other. Yeah.

You know, no, fascinating. And I, I suppose, you know, come back to the machines thing, it seems to me that if these forms exist, and there seems to be very little, little way of accounting for things unless one accepts that something of this kind is the case. And, and if they do have, um, values and direction, purpose, then why would they not, for good or ill, get instantiated in machines? Why, it would it be unreasonable to suppose that, you know, a highly complex AI did not actually itself express certain values and directions? And as you say, we might get some surprises because we don't know exactly what we're doing there. And so, I mean, it's not a reason to, to sort of be a Luddite, but it is a reason to be quite careful about what it is, you know, to be aware of what it is we don't know. I mean, if, effectively, that is the most important thing for any scientist to be aware of is what it is he doesn't know, not just what he does know. Exactly. And it's funny, the, both ends of, in my experience, both ends of the, uh, opinion spectrum, uh, are finding it very hard to appreciate that point. Because you have the, the people who actually make the things, and they say, I've had people say to me, well, I build these AIs, I know what they do, it's just linear algebra. Said, well, well, you're just biochemistry, aren't you? Like, like, of course, make them. But if you know, you don't know what they do. If you don't know what Bubblesort is doing, then, then you sure as heck don't know what, what this thing is doing. And, and then there's the opposite side. I had, I had the, uh, organists, uh, who are extremely interested in a very, um, uh, kind of a, a sharp distinction, right? Between these things. I, I, I gave, I gave a talk to, um, to a group that was like in the kind of Indic philosophy traditions, right? And they were, I, I thought, I thought that some of these things that I was saying would be right up their alley, in terms of these ingressions that basically come to haunt physical bodies and so on. They were, they were, they were adamant that, um, no kind of AI could be, could have any of this, because it was, as they called, dead matter. And I said, well, first, first of all, I'm not, I don't think there is any dead matter. There are, you know, lazy observers, but I'm not sure there are any, there is any actually dead matter. But also, you know, given, given the overall worldview that you have, this, this non-physical mind that, you know, is, is somehow, um, embodied in physical, but who, who are you to say that, that if you build a beautiful, um, you know, synthetic embodiment, some, some mind, it might not be remotely close to a human mind. It might be some very, in fact, I probably, it'll be from some very weird, untapped region of, of, of the space of minds that, who are you to say that this thing is not allowed to come, you know, to come and, and, and sort of, uh, you know, animate this, uh, in a certain sense, this, this novel embodiment? I mean, how, you know, on what basis? But they, they were just completely adamant about that that wasn't going to happen, you know.

Yeah, I mean, I think one can't be adamant about anything in this area. One has to keep a relatively open mind and be aware of what that, that means. So, um, but yeah, it is, it is an interesting point. Um, anyway, yeah, you said somewhere something I'd like you to expand on. I wrote it down. I'll see if I can find it. Um, yeah, um, yeah, you say the mechanisms by which these anatomical pattern memories are stored, recalled, and implemented have been described. And I, I wondered if you could tell me more about that. I mean, where are these anatomical pattern memories stored, recalled, and implemented?

Yeah, um, I, I, I, I will tell you, but, uh, but it is not the same as the, the additional question of where they come from in the first place. And that's, that's no quite, that's a whole other, that's a whole other thing.

As, no, I could see you were, you were separating those questions.

Yeah, well, there's, right, I think, I think there's separate questions. The, the, the conventional side of the story is that we can now see, both as a matter of biology experiments and also computational modeling, how circuits made up of, um, bio-realistic channel, um, um, elements, meaning ion channels and gap junctions, so, so these electrical circuits, they basically make a, a, an excitable medium. And this excitable medium can have, can support, as long as it's alive and there's, um, there's energy to, to do so, they can support a number of stable modes. And you can think about this, it's like Turing patterns in, in mixed chemicals. It's like, basically, um, when you create the network, it will spontaneously, and I think evolution does a very good job of of fine-tuning the channels so that by default, when you, when the system is up and running, basically embryonic development, it settles on a reliable pattern. And you can see this pattern. And what the P, when I say pattern, I mean, it's a distribution of voltage gradients across a set of cells. It's not a single cell thing. But let's say you have, you know, a thousand by a thousand cells, it's a patch of tissue. And if you look, you can actually see, okay, well, there's a, there's a, you know, the electric face is that we, that we found as one, one example of this, where, where you have this thing, and it's spontaneously, and we've now, um, generated a bunch of computational models that show how exactly this happens. It basically settles from, uh, from, from a homogeneous state, it, it settles into a state which got two spots is, is where the eye is going to be. It's got a spot where the mouth is going to be. It's got some stuff around the outside for the limb. And, and, and that, that thing, that thing is, is stored and, um, maintained within the electrical state of the cells. And it's, and it's compatible with the biophysical properties of the channels. And then it is read out by other cells, which are basically paying attention to this pattern and using it to determine, what genes should I express? Where should I migrate? What should I differentiate into? And, and, and we know these things are instructive because if I recreate that pattern somewhere else, this is how you get an eye on the tail, or an extra leg, or, you know, you repair brain defects and, and things like that. So the read, the maintenance, and the readout of these things are now, I mean, we've been at it for 25, but, but, but that, that we have now a handle on. Um, but, but, but then, of course, there's the other thing, which is that, for example, in planarian heads, so they all have different shapes, there's triangular ones, flat ones. You perturb, and, and they're extremely robust. So we know that a set of genetically, um, encoded hardware elements spontaneously will settle on one attractor for head shape, and it works very reliably. But we also know that if you perturb that electrical decision-making process, they will just as happily visit head shape attractors in that space for other species. And now I, you, you'll work on that.

Yeah, yeah. So, so now we have to ask the question, right? So, so this is my point about mapping up that's, that's mapping out that space. We have to now understand how many attractors, why these and not others? Are there, is it, um, and actually, I was going to, I wanted to ask you about this too, um, what you, whether you thought the space was, um, sparse or, um, or just continuously filled in other words, you know, there's Michelangelo's statue that was calling to him around. Are there an, an infinite number of almost as good statues, or really like there are like, I don't, you know, I don't know. I don't know.

Not surprisingly, I don't know either. But, yeah, yeah. There, go ahead, please.

There are a couple of thoughts about that. I mean, presuming going to the question, but how does that pattern? You've suggested that there is a pattern, and you can see that there's a place for the eyes and so on. But how does that pattern arise? Is that going too close to the other question, and we don't know where these things come from?

No, well, how, we know how. So if you want to track, basically, we can track and computationally predict all the steps from zero. In other words, you start with, much like Turing did. This is one, one, I think, I think one of his genius things is that he was interested in, in, uh, intelligence, but also in the self-assembly of the body, right? And I think he saw that these were the same problem. And, and in Turing patterns, it's kind of similar. You start with a well-mixed random, uh, field of chemicals, and before you know it, you've got some tiger stripes, or some leopard spots, or some things like this. And, and there's a precise mathematical, um, formalism that shows you exactly why that happens. The same thing is true here, except it's in the, it's an electrical, um, you know, actually, who was it? Uh, I, I forget who it was, but somebody, somebody pointed out that actually the form of the math for, um, Hodgkin-Huxley and, um, and some of the, um, uh, some of the, uh, original Turing diffusion stuff is actually very parallel. But, but, but regardless, we, we have the model showing when you start with a field where all the voltages are basically equal, given the properties of the channels, spontaneous symmetry breaking and amplification will give you certain kinds of patterns. And some of them are the kinds of things that, that we're interested in, such as face, and, and, so on. And you can, and you can watch this happen step by step. I mean, the, the how of it is much like with Turing patterns, is, is okay, you know, now. But, but, but the part where we now have to understand what, what the available modes are, and, and, and what the bidirectional interaction is, that, that I think pulls some of these, um, planaria and other things into these attractors, that's, that's, that's a whole other thing. And there are some other fascinating things that are not, not understood. But, but the how of it, at least we've got now. Yeah.

That's what I was thinking. Is that that describes the how, but it doesn't describe the why of the thing being like that at all. Um, or at least so it seems to me.

Well, the why. I mean, this is this is exactly when we get into, yeah. I I think we need to know what what we would accept as a proper answer to the question of why. Because because you know, uh, this is where we get into those those those, for example, those fractal shapes, right? The why of any piece of mathematical truth is so so why is it like that? As a because there isn't a fact of physics that's going to give you an answer. There isn't a fact of history. Meaning, right? There's no evolutionary or what else? What what are the other tools in our toolbox for answering why questions? That's that's that.

Now, now we're getting into an area where I I don't even know what a good answer to that would be. Well, there might be an answer of the kind that, um, the reason that the the the tadpole's head reconfigures completely as a frog's head, and we can explain some of the set by step of how that happens. I'm sure. I mean, it's just a matter of not just, but it's a matter of very clever observation. But it is a matter of observation. Whereas where the where the information, the information of the the having to go from the one head to the other, where is that? And why does it why does it in in here or or or ingress in the way that it does? It seems to me another kind of question. That's all it it it is.

And one of the reasons why I started talking about this, I mean, I've been interested in this stuff for for for decades. But but the reason I started talking about it more recently, where I never talked about this before, is that I think we now have even more, uh, practical tools to start addressing some of these questions. And for example, what what I'm, you know, what I'm really interested in are the unexpected, uh, patterns that man in synthetic, uh, synthetic bodies that have never been the the target of selection, specifically such as anthr robots, cabots, these weird chim that we make, right?

Yes, yes. Because because because we can talk about, you know, people who want to have a very kind of, um, um, minimal ontology. They don't want this platonic space. They say, look, the when you say forms, these are just stable, uh, evolutionary. These are these are things that evolution has has learned over time. This is a good way to make a frog. This is not a good way to make a frog. And that's that's all there is to it. And so so I'm interested now in all of these examples where that there is no history of selection to lean on. These things never existed before. There's never been any pressure to be a good zenbot or a good anthr robot or any of this other stuff. And and being able to predict and, uh, make use of these things for for medicine, for for biorobotics, and whatever requires that we give up this this magical notion of emergence as well. It's just a fact that holds about the world. We'll catalog them up, right? And and and commit to some sort of systematic investigation of what what are the patterns? In addition to the ones that evolution has found, what are these patterns? Can we can we find them? Can we, right? And can we make new that, um, that that will will down the ones we want and and by the way avoid the on don't want, which I'm sure don't want.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's an oain. Do you think that there's a worry in it? I I I do think there's a worry in it, uh, because I think we are now in many ways, and I think we have been for a long time, we're just not good at recognizing it. Um, we're we're dipping into a pool of patterns that maybe have never been, uh, We've exactly, maybe certainly not on Earth, maybe maybe nowhere have have ever been inol before. And there are there are dangers in it, uh, on on both ends. There's the obvious thing that people talk about, which which is, you know, what is it going to do to us, right? That's one set of things. But but but equally important is the question, um, what what what is its experience going to be? What do we owe, you know, novel beings that, you know, novel minds with with, right? That we're bringing into the world. This is this is question. It is it is.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, very good. What would you have to say about the penial head having the ability to solve a maze? So you can see this form of the head, and you can change the form of the head. But where are its memories? Do you mean, do you mean, um, oh, oh, behavioral, behavioral memories? So so, you know, you know that if a a plarium has solved a maze, or even a slime mold has solved a maze, and you cut bits off it, yeah, the the the daughters can, you can destroy, burn the head of the plarium, and and the new head will know how to solve the maze. Have you thoughts about that? How that comes about?

Yeah, yeah, good point. So so so yeah, so McConnell found this, um, this this memory surviving regeneration of the brain back in the 60s. We actually show this using modern techniques in 2013. So we built a we built an automated device that, um, uh, completely automates the training and testing of plenaria in that in that assay, which was important because McConnell would get like his his, um, uh, experiments. You had to, you had to manually. Someone would sit there with a pencil and say, oh, I saw this thing turn right versus left, and they would write it down. And then people say, well, just, you know, you're just imagining things. And so and so we made a device. It's this it's this giant thing that automates the process. So we have videos now. So you you know that you can't you can't, you know, say it's an observer, you know, affect anymore. So and and it does work. Um, he was right. And, uh, I think I think there's a couple of things we can say. One is that one of the things this is showing is that memories can be, I I they can, it's like a, um, I I think there are two kinds of pointers that two two patterns to that point to these patterns. There is the, and maybe this maps onto your potentiality versus actuality thing. There are some pointers that are right now, um, uh, connecting us to that pattern. And this might be an existing an existing body. It might be an engram in the brain, whatever mechanism, different people study different mechanisms, right? Those those are things that are that are guiding behavior right now. But I think what's happening in those planaria is that in that, uh, eight to 10 days during which they're regrowing their brain, during which time they have no behavior, there's nothing going. The tail just sits there doing doing nothing. During that time, they they still have access to to that information. And we know this because because the cells have to somehow, um, well, I used to describe it as the cells having to imprint it onto the new brain because because that's when the behavior is really going to get going is once the brain is there. So so it had to, right? The way I used to describe it is that it's it's the information is moving through the body. The cells are in it. They're imprinting it on new brain. So so now I think, uh, more more like what it is, is that we can, I I think we can say that behavioral memories are patterns in that space, just like morphological memories. And that the the engrams in the brain are pointers to that information. And that the rest of the cells are in some way placehold it such that when such that when the brain is going to show up, it'll facilitate it to reconnect to to the patterns that it had before. And we actually have lots of data on moving moving different kinds of memories, both anatomical and behavioral, into bodies by transplants. And one of the one of the we things is that it takes very little tissue to, um, to to put in a new a new a new pattern into into a large recipient organism. It's it really doesn't take very much at all. And one of this this is still unpublished, but but we have we have some work showing that if you cut a tiny little piece out of a two-headed worm and you stick it into a one-headed worm, not not every time, but but some percentage of the time, that little piece convinces all the other cells, which this is what's mindboggling, why are they, you know, why are they going along with this? They should be, they should be suppressing this this aberrant, you know, this aberrant. But sometimes that that that story of of being two-headed is really compelling. And and it and it takes over the, you know, the recipient worm, and and you get two-headed worms, which never saw the gap junction blocker that, you know, it's it's transfers over. And, um, yeah, and soting. And there's some there's some clinical cases which you may have seen that that are a little bit like that of, um, of some some personality changes coming along with things like stem cell transplants and hard lungs, you know, ex exactly. You know, I don't know.

Fascinating. Yeah, it's super fascinating. I I don't know if the if the if the data set is big enough to make firm conclusions yet, but but I think it's very interesting. Um, yeah, so so that's my that's my suspicion on this is that is that I think I think think these memories are patterns, just like just like the morphological patterns. And and I'm sure you're right to point outside of the the the the mere bounds of the brain. That these things can be stored, as you say, in heart, lung, other places. Quite how or what it is that stored, I don't know. But the the literature seems certainly not dismissible on on these these changes that happen.

Well, what do you think of, um, hydran enic individuals who, I mean, just for for for viewers or listeners, this is not just, um, hydris where a lot of the brain space is filled with fluid, and it's extraordinary that there you you get people with very little brain compared to most people who nonetheless function normally and have a perhaps high IQ and can do mathematics to a high level. But with hydron and elic individuals, there aren't that many of them that survive. But they have nothing in the brain space. So basically they stop at the brain stem, and there vestigal or no cerebral tissue. And yet they can they can in some form see things. They can interact with people in an emotionally intelligent way. They can have favorite toys. They can appreciate music. How the hell is this happening? What is going on? Have you any thoughts about that?

Yeah, yeah, this is this is a real problem. And, um, um, Karina Koffman, I just just put out a review of some of that kind of stuff. Uh, some of the, okay, some of the famous cases. Uh, to to me, the problem is so so I I've I I'm not, uh, I'm not super super shocked that it's possible, just be in in the sense that, you know, I've already committed to this idea that a lot of the the processing, as it were, happens offline, you know, outside the physical embodiment. So so, okay, so that's fine. But but but what is a problem, and what I don't have a good explanation for, is if if it is apparently possible to have proper function without as much brain as as as we think, right? If it's if if if if one can access all that stuff with with with much reduced, um, architecture, why is that not more? I mean, you know, my my understanding is that one thing that limits our our, you know, the this pressure on not having a brain that's too big because of child birth and all this kind of stuff, and and the brain eats up a tremendous amount of our our d energy rations. Why if it's possible to do with less, why don't we with less? You know, that's the up, right? Is that I know, right? These examples are showing you that that it can be done with a lot less. Why is it can be done? But I mean, of course, these are not, by contrast with with hydralic subjects, these are not really fully functioning human beings. This is true. I was, yeah, I guess I was talking more about the hydralic ones where where they don't, you know, some of them don't even know there's an issue until they no have a head scan. They do a scan and, oh my God, you know. So so, right. So I just, right, in that CA those cases are are to me very, um, we weird. I don't understand why, you know, why why if if that's possible, why isn't it just that all the time, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I don't know. I don't know. No, no, you you must tell me when you've got to go, Mike, but, um, if you've got time, I just like to put an idea to you. Please, please. Keep going. Oh, oh, okay. Good. Um, one way of thinking about this potential versus actual thing is, um, even more fundamental, which is Ger, I think extraordinary insight that he said, dividing the United, uniting the divided is the whole business of nature. And then he goes on to talk about things in other metaphors. But I think the the point is that the whole business of nature is dividing what is united and then uniting what has been divided. Now, to me, that is also a phenomenal echo of the right versus left thing. Because the right hemisphere sees something as a whole, the left hemisphere takes it to pieces, analyzes it, which literally means breaking it up. And then the right hemisphere takes back what has been analyzed and recomposes it into a now enriched whole. So that is an important, um, journey from Hess to a divided wholeness back to an increased integrity of wholeness. And I suspect that this is actually part of the way that creation in general happens. Now, if you think about the potential and the actual, what is happening there is that the potential is collapsed into the actual. And it has very specific, pin, pinable, downable qualities. But those qualities, having been created in that way, are present in a way they never were before. So they now get taken back into the whole in a way that enriches the whole. Now, the reason I'm I'm saying this is that it seems to me that when we talk about the being forms, and and in my case, I'm not including you unless you want to be included, in the idea that there are drives, purposes, directions to evolution, not just biological evolution, but the evolution of the cosmos in general. And if that is the case, um, it may well be that there are analogues of the force for division and the force for union at very, very low levels. So going down to single cells, not just their reproduction, of course, but and the whole process is interesting in reproduction where thing where the the dance of the chromosomes where they get dived and recomposed in a new form. But actually, the whole business of the drive that are for good or ill, part of of life, can be, I mean, it's a step, it's a large step, and it may be a step too far. I'm perfectly happy to be told that. But it seems to me that there might be some value in reflecting on that as being resonating with, or actually being present at different levels in the cosmos, both the living cosmos and perhaps the the non-living. I don't know if you have any immediate reactions to that other than, oh wow, he's gone into some completely crazy space.

No, I don't think that's crazy at all. Because this is something we think about a lot in terms of, uh, how, um, how collectives form and what happens when when parts join to be a to be a collective. And how, uh, and and, uh, which in in our case, oftentimes is is a is a pathology we try to deal with when there are when there are breakdowns and things are you sort of breaking up. But but that actually, that that cycling back and forth, and and probably it does go all the way down, is I I think I think I think very interesting. We, you know, we came across this, um, um, lauan shisha, a student that I work with, was doing this model of, it's, um, this this will be up on on online shortly, um, uh, iterated prisoners dilemma that is spatialized. So so you have a bunch of agents. They're all playing. They're all playing prisoners dilemma against each other, right? But but there's a but there's a twist here. Normally, in all of the analyses that that we have ever seen, the the number of agents is fixed. So you know how many beings are they all play against each other. There's a payoff table, and and then off you go, and then there's things that happen. So so we added two things. We added, yes, you can cooperate or defect, but you can also merge and split. So what that means is that is that 28 might become one, and then the whole calculus immediately changes. So what happens is it's this it's this recursive thing where your decisions change how many individuals there are, and it changes the border between you and the world, right? So multicellular, basically, you can. But but strange things start to happen because because now your choices determine the number of beings in the world, which completely changes the calculus for you. And your parts are so so all the math normally go that goes along with it doesn't work anymore because because because, you know, it's it's it's it's all recursive, right? So anyway, um, uh, so so there's interesting stuff that happens. But one of the things that happens is that eventually, uh, you get bigger and bigger regions, and eventually you come to a to a position, and I didn't I didn't foresee this at, you know, at the beginning, and and it took us some time time to figure out what was happening. What we noticed is that eventually, so so the the the, um, the energy level of these things goes up and up and up as they get bigger and bigger. So that's great. So we can see there's a drive towards multi solidarity, fine. But then it sort of reaches a cliff and falls off. And we said, what the what the heck is this? And we figured out what was happening. What happened is when these guys merge to the point where there's one one big agent, there's no one for to play with. There's no one for to play against. And so now it's kind of like asking, what's the fitness of the entire biosphere defined? Because there's no one to there's no one to get, you know, right? And so and so now you can imagine, we we imagine three scenarios that that can happen after that. The first scenario, and and they roughly kind of match, I think, um, uh, the the scenarios that have been envisioned for the universe for the end of the universe. So one thing is a kind of heat death where, look, you've gotten to your world, you've eaten all the food, you that's it. Now everything dies. There's nothing more to do. That's that's that's that's one thing to do. Another thing to do that's interesting is this, as you get big, and your energy level starts to drop because there are no more games to benefit from, one of the things that happens is stress. Stress builds up. And when stress builds up, you you fragment, kind of like trauma causing a dissociative St, right? You fragment into pieces. As soon as you fragmented it into pieces, you can start to climb back again because now now can. So right? So now this's this big bang, big crunch thing where you sort of you start off as individuals, you join together into this thing, you fragment back, and you come in, you sort of can can pulse, right? Back and forth. So so so you could do that. And then there's a third version, which which we haven't implemented yet, which is this, maybe what happens is that once you do this, and you've and you've you you've joined together, um, maybe what it allows you to do is now project yourself into a new space that was not accessible to you before. So in biology, we know this happens because individual cells that are navigating physiological and transcriptional spaces, they get together, and now, ah, anatomical morphis space. Now we can now we can we can do all these things we couldn't do before, right? So maybe they can escape the now, in our system, there was no way for them to escape the world because we coded it that way, right? But but but if we if we were smarter, we would have multiple layers where this thing can now escape the universe that it has sort of explored to the edges and, right, and go for. So I don't know. But but but I think what you about this this kind of like basil, you know, joining and and splitting is is is fundamental. And and I remember, I I I remember, um, uh, Bernardo Castrip and Robert Spear saying on one of their on one of their talks that he he they they thought that we we are all, how do you put it? We are all dissociative altars of God. That's what he that's what he said. That we are basically, you know, kind of like this dissociative thing, and and trying to sort of work our way back, right? That's what that's how they put it.

I love all of that. Um, very, very resonant with my own thinking. And although I wouldn't say that we're all, I know that they mean dissociated altars of God, but I think the point is this, that that, you know, in in every creation myth, there is the idea of this founding being, the ground of being. And it needs an other, first of all, because it is relational, like all existence, it is relational. So it has to have something to relate to. And also the otherness is creative. So the otherness, which seems like resistance or negation of the wholeness and beauty of the original, is also the the path from which the manifest latent beauty and complexity can be unpacked. So it's part of the creative process. It's really a very fine idea. And I, I, you know, sorry, this is probably not what you you you normally talk about on on podcasts, but I'm I came across the, um, the extraordinary wisdom of the the Kabbalah, the the the Jewish, uh, you know, mystical tradition. And in the Lurianic Kabbalah, there is this primal being called Ein Sof, which is the ground of being. And he wants to create, as all these beings do. And so its first act is negation of itself. So the first act is to withdraw in order to make space for there to be something other than Ein Sof at all, which is an extraordinarily imaginative idea that actually needs to be the negation to be creative. And then in the space that is now vacant, there are placed the, um, these NS, which are to be the Sefirot. And the one spark of light comes, or spark of fire, I should say, comes out of Ein Sof and falls on the vessels and shatters most of them. And so that's the second phase of creation called she, the shattering of the vessels. And then there comes this third phase, Tikkun, which is that it's humanity's job to take back these fragments that now have sparks of divine fire in them and put them together to make urns that are more beautiful and more special and living. They have divine life in them than the original urns had. So that again is slightly like again this progression from the left to the right to the left and the incorporation of this new element that may seem like it's a negation or a breaking or whatever makes something even more whole and more beautiful than was before. I mean, I just put it forward because I think it's an intuitive. I think these really profound images and myths are not just, you know, nothing. They are way, way in which we our minds contact the shapes, the forms, if you like, and see something that that means something, not because we add meaning, but because we find the meaning that is that. Yeah, anyway, that's what I'd say.

Do you do you think that, um, is is it a prediction of this view that the wide potential variety of beings out there in the universe, that we are going to find some sort of, I don't know if it would have to be physically bilaterally, you know, sort of organized, but but but that they would have to necessarily contain some component that is that is like the left hemisphere in its job and some component right? Like, is this is this a general architecture do you think?

I I would, you know, of course, it's the M's game predicting things about which one has no information. But but nonetheless, I mean, that would be my that would be my supposition that this is so fundamental to the structure of everything, um, living and non-living, that it, yes, it would have to be reflected in some way. And that quite probably things like goodness, beauty, and truth would also be elements that are in this story. And there could be good and evil, there could be beauty and ugliness, there could be truth and falsehood. We, yeah.

So so I'll just I'll just say this. This gives me an interesting idea, which I probably should have realized before, that, you know, we have now the ability to collect, uh, calcium signaling data from from Zenbot and soon from Anthr robots. I I I'm I'm going to start looking for a lateralization of, uh, of function. I wonder if in these things, which, and by the way, we have neur robots now that, um, that have neurons that we we put neurons into these things that have that they don't have a standard architecture. They have some kind of crazy novel architecture. But but but maybe we can find examples of this of of of of processing that's associated with integration versus, you know, versus reductive analysis. Let's we'll take a look.

I think that would be really fascinating. I I can't wait to hear what you find. And what I love about your work is that you have for a very long time, um, not dismissed the idea that asymmetry is extremely important, as well as that the needs to be something beyond the simply mechanistic vision. So thank you very much for your time and your wisdom.

Thank you so much. Likewise. Yeah, this has been this has been amazing. I took a bunch of notes actually, as as we were talking. So, um, thank you. It's a very, so yeah, so I'll I'll keep you a prize. There there's some stuff coming that that should be quite relevant to this, so I'll keep you a prize.

That's fabulous. Thank you very much, mate. Will you will you will you send the will you send the the the tape to to my people? Thanks very much.

Okay, thanks. Tape. You you you know how old I am. I know I know tape. I say it all the time too. Yeah. Run the tape. All right. Thank you very much. We'll see you. Bye.