Michael Levin+

New #preprint about Aging: (Léo Pio-Lopez, Navneet Jawanda) "Theories of Aging

New #preprint about Aging: (Léo Pio-Lopez, Navneet Jawanda) "Theories of Aging: From Damage and Programmed Theories to Goal-Directedness" www.preprints.org/manuscript/2... 🧪

New #preprint: led by @drpatricke.bsky.social An important step in our effort

New #preprint: led by @drpatricke.bsky.social An important step in our efforts to create tools for the community to accelerate discovery in diverse intelligence as relates to biomedicine and beyond: biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... "A platform for automated training of mammalian cell physiology"

New computational modeling paper w/ Josu Egea-Carro, Salvador Mafe, Javier Cerv

New computational modeling paper w/ Josu Egea-Carro, Salvador Mafe, Javier Cervera pubs.aip.org/aip/jcp/arti... "Bioelectrical regionalization of multicellular aggregates by microRNAs"

Final version is out! #bioelectricity Patrick McMillen (scholar.google.com/cit

Final version is out! #bioelectricity Patrick McMillen (scholar.google.com/citations?us...) "Lifetime imaging reveals long-distance non-neural bioelectric patterns on timescales from seconds to hours" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#preprint, two very bright and motivated high-school students: Nikhil Dev and

#preprint, two very bright and motivated high-school students: Nikhil Dev and Angelina Nguyen www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... "Trained Planaria Retain Memories Through Head Regeneration: A Model System for Insights into Non-Neural Memory and Neurodegenerative Diseases"

Possibly! It depends, we'd have to measure the degree of the cognitive glue, tes

Possibly! It depends, we'd have to measure the degree of the cognitive glue, test whether the group knows things and has goals that the individual agents don't have, and perhaps even test various integration and causal emergence metrics (not sure anyone's done that already?).

New paper, Evgeniya Shmeleva "Manipulation of biological systems by self-defect

New paper, Evgeniya Shmeleva "Manipulation of biological systems by self-defecting and foreign agents" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🙏

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outreach to other fields and to young people is important (thus my blog) but not

outreach to other fields and to young people is important (thus my blog) but not more than the work. I can play with the balance a bit, but it won't shift off that basic premise. I don't want to spend even more time on things that aren't the research. But I'm definitely grateful for the interest!!

they clarify the findings and what they might mean. But no time for things that

they clarify the findings and what they might mean. But no time for things that flood the zone just for its own sake. There are many opportunities for such things, and I mostly don't do them but occasionally I do. No idea what the right mix is -

knowledge and much-needed applications - that's priority one. Open Science, so e

knowledge and much-needed applications - that's priority one. Open Science, so everyone can learn, is awesome but my priority is the work. Hitting "Record" on some of the meetings I already have with amazing people is easy and takes no extra time. Some amount of recorded science interviews is ok,

I see. I appreciate the thought! I'm not trying to maximize followers or anythin

I see. I appreciate the thought! I'm not trying to maximize followers or anything like that. The science comes out at the rate it comes out; we work very hard but it can't be rushed. I make intro content by balancing whatever time I scrounge between the research tasks. Moving the needle on basic

I have no clue what a promotional window is :-) My team is almost all scientist

I have no clue what a promotional window is :-) My team is almost all scientists so the only thing we're taking advantage of is doing more science... What did you have in mind?

Thanks, but that's an old version. Updated one here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Thanks, but that's an old version. Updated one here: osf.io/preprints/ps...

new #preprint @pigozzife.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2607.28250 Once you get r

new #preprint @pigozzife.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2607.28250 Once you get replicators, Darwinian evolution can happen. What's happening *before* replicators arise? "Causal Architecture Dynamics Prior to Arrival of Self-replicators in a Model of Catalytic Networks Relevant to Origin-of-Life"

New #preprint: @steffikapsetaki.bsky.social , Tomer Landsberger www.biorxiv.or

New #preprint: @steffikapsetaki.bsky.social , Tomer Landsberger www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Do individual planaria exposed to the same stressor find the same, or different, transcriptional solutions to that problem? 🧪

Final version: @bhartl.bsky.social, Leo Pio-Lopez, Chris Fields www.sciencedirec

Final version: @bhartl.bsky.social, Leo Pio-Lopez, Chris Fields www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Remapping and navigation of an embedding space via error minimization: A fundamental organizational principle of cognition in natural and artificial systems

#naturephotography

#naturephotography

obscures such questions because it makes it seem like we can simply chalk these

obscures such questions because it makes it seem like we can simply chalk these things up to past history. Our model systems are designed to put stress on that explanation and show that something else is going on. I have a hypothesis. youtu.be/K8BmMU1Tm-I?... is a first step. Much more coming.

an evolutionary atavism. And it extends to simple computational model systems, s

an evolutionary atavism. And it extends to simple computational model systems, so it's not a magic trick that "life" does, it's universal and is telling us that our normal ways to accounting for effort are missing something major. "Emergence" doesn't begin to scratch the surface here. Evolution

paths apply. I've written about this and have some focused talks on it coming so

paths apply. I've written about this and have some focused talks on it coming soon. The key are patterns that do not come from a system's past history because it has no special history - novel, synthetic beings with minimal engineering, NO changes to genome, etc. etc. so you can't simply say it's

In other words, the standard ways of paying for competency (intelligence of diff

In other words, the standard ways of paying for competency (intelligence of different kinds, from static patterns to complex problem-solving) is: rational design (engineering), evolution (select what you want), or learning (train for what you want). We now have model systems where none of those 3

This is cool for sure, but there's a much more disruptive story brewing, which I

This is cool for sure, but there's a much more disruptive story brewing, which I've been developing over the last year or so. The entrypoint is systems (biological and computational) that exhibit sophisticated patterns of form, physiology, and behavior with *no* conventional story of their origin.

New #paper: rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/organ... Mostly unaltered conversation amo

New #paper: rosa.uniroma1.it/rosa04/organ... Mostly unaltered conversation among some great people on the definitions of life.

email coming!

email coming!

Let's discuss. This short format is not super conducive. Let's do a zoom and ch

Let's discuss. This short format is not super conducive. Let's do a zoom and chat about it. Want to give a talk for our Center on the topic of what exactly is the secret sauce about "living", and can it be technologically replciated? yes, you get a prize :-) it's virtual, but great nonetheless.

thoughtforms.life/biophysical-... and many papers cited therein.

thoughtforms.life/biophysical-... and many papers cited therein.

thoughtforms.life/a-talk-for-m...

thoughtforms.life/a-talk-for-m...

New #preprint with Chris Fields: www.preprints.org/manuscript/2... "Cognitive

New #preprint with Chris Fields: www.preprints.org/manuscript/2... "Cognitive Offloading Is a Cognitive Universal" 🧪

What is life? Final version is out @blaiseaguera.bsky.social Reed Bender, Kar

What is life? Final version is out @blaiseaguera.bsky.social Reed Bender, Karina Kofman link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧪

The patterns that *force* those facts, that entail other complex patterns as fre

The patterns that *force* those facts, that entail other complex patterns as free gifts that are useful, and that *prevent* you from making arbitrary changes that you can make in any human construction, are precisely the space I want to investigate.

Why can't you make it whatever you want, if it's a human construction? Why were

Why can't you make it whatever you want, if it's a human construction? Why were you forced into e being 2.78... and not some other number, simply by accepting a few basic axioms of logic? (and sure, if you refused to accept those, then maybe you couldn't see e).

If I tell you the speed of light changes over long time periods, pfft - you woul

If I tell you the speed of light changes over long time periods, pfft - you wouldn't freak out. No big deal. If I tell you the digits of e are changing, most people say "impossible". Why? Why is it more solid than physics? Why can't you change it, by changing facts of our physical universe?

I love Carlo, so far be it from to argue with him, but this is why I don't menti

I love Carlo, so far be it from to argue with him, but this is why I don't mention "pi" as my examples because people start talking about Euclid... Forget pi. I talk about e, and Feigenbaum's constant. What kind of world would you have to live in to make those be any different?

I think that in the things we care about here, continuity should be the null hyp

I think that in the things we care about here, continuity should be the null hypothesis, and if you want to argue for phase transitions or emergent new levels, you have to make a strong argument for that and why it practically helps to think of it that way.

My point is that more progress gets made by developing models of continuous tran

My point is that more progress gets made by developing models of continuous transformation than by arguing over the definition of boundaries of new sharp categories that mysteriously "emerge" (and btw if it's not mysterious why one thing emerged than another, then it's not emergence anymore).

Of course, I don't deny appearance of higher levels which get names, or that sta

Of course, I don't deny appearance of higher levels which get names, or that state spaces change (that's a major part of a bunch of my papers, about how collective intelligences project into new state spaces from their parts).

If however, you say there's no reason whatsoever why A emerged vs. B, ok you can

If however, you say there's no reason whatsoever why A emerged vs. B, ok you can call it "emergent", & write it down in the big book of emergent surprises, but that's too pessimistic and mysterian for me. I'll go with the hypothesis that there are reasons for specific things "emerging", & study 'em.

Outcome A emerged rather than B. Whence the specific outcome? if there's a rea

Outcome A emerged rather than B. Whence the specific outcome? if there's a reason, then the space of such reasons, should be studied. Don't call it Platonic space if you don't want, fine; but it should be studied. That is what I'm doing. At that point, "emergence" is not doing much anymore.

My beef with the conventional view is that emergence is a shortcut with which on

My beef with the conventional view is that emergence is a shortcut with which one can explain anything by referring to just surprising facts that "happen to hold in our world."

What are the preferences of novel in silico and in vivo agents that aren't direc

What are the preferences of novel in silico and in vivo agents that aren't directly engineered toward a specific set of behaviors? An example, from the world of Lenia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenia) - here's our #preprint on agnosiophobia (avoidance of the unknown): arxiv.org/abs/2605.30708

My good friend and neuroscientist Oné Pagán: youtu.be/pXMZHPvHRlU?...

My good friend and neuroscientist Oné Pagán: youtu.be/pXMZHPvHRlU?...