Some time ago I expressed the opinion here that the standard model for how evolution works lacks the power to explain how fast evolution has happened. The standard model describes advantageous random mutations being favorably selected for expression in future generations. I suggested this model needs improvement and that intelligence would play a role. I'm not talking about supernatural intelligence. There's plenty of intelligence in nature available. An easy example is in mate selection.

The work by Michael Levin described in the video below shows there's much more to intelligence in nature. And selecting for traits of intelligence which provide navigational abilities in problem spaces is far more powerful for evolution than that provided by the standard model.


Michael Levin | Cell Intelligence in Physiological and Morphological Spaces




PairTheBoard

Wait, what was fast again?

He's trying to establish a scientific theory of intelligent design?

Short video

How evolution creates problem-solving machines | Michael Levin




PairTheBoard

At minute 42 he discusses "Agency" as a lead up to Evolution at minute 49. At minute 57 he adds thoughts on Evolution most pertinent to my comments in the OP.

Discussing 3 Recently Published Papers with Michael Levin




PairTheBoard

Whether the byte that randomly changes in the computer program is part of an opcode or data, could only make the program worse. I agree.

I'll grant the rabbithole i went down to conclude the above was my own karma.
(Theres an interesting question being begged)

But Even after confirming his point he didn't argue how it's even a fair analogy. It's not, apparently.

Gene mutations are changes in the DNA sequence of an organism's genes. In the context of evolution, mutations play a fundamental role as they introduce genetic diversity within a population, which is a key driving force behind natural selection and adaptation.

There are different types of gene mutations:

1. **Point Mutations:** These involve changes in a single nucleotide base pair of DNA. They can be classified into:
- **Substitutions:** One base pair is replaced by another.
- **Insertions:** An extra base pair is added.
- **Deletions:** A base pair is removed.

2. **Frameshift Mutations:** These result from insertions or deletions that shift the reading frame of the genetic code, potentially leading to a completely different protein sequence.

3. **Duplication:** Entire segments of DNA can be duplicated, leading to the presence of extra genetic material.

4. **Inversion:** A segment of DNA is reversed within the chromosome.

5. **Translocation:** Segments of DNA move from one chromosome to another.

In the context of evolution, mutations are crucial because they provide the raw material upon which natural selection acts. Mutations can lead to variations in traits, and if these variations confer a selective advantage, they may become more prevalent in a population over time. This process of accumulating advantageous mutations and eliminating deleterious ones contributes to the adaptation and evolution

he has very short arms, i don't think we can trust him

I waited ten minutes to click on the short video enjoying the sense of mystery....

I heard this same argument given by a fundamentist Christian a few weeks ago.

It's gaining traction now and huge if true. So Catch him right out of the gate. False equivalency to the face!

I fear he has another point. I made it three minutes. The sense of mystery is sweet though again.

I don't agree with the notion we are some fluke byproduct resulting from a stupid universe either but it was simply known as cellular function back when i was banging.

Michael Levin & Josh Bongard On Xenobots




PairTheBoard

do i understand that you are looking to explain something that is seemingly unexplainable in the scale of our evolutionary history?

I think I have an explanation thats quite simple and supported. Is it a thread of one possibility or any possibilities?

I'm interested in that facet of the topic and anything you'd like to say about it one way or the other. However, I think the concept of "Collective Intelligence" explored by Levin in his talks is a paradigm shifting theory providing new angles of perception beyond its possible implications for evolution. Medicine, morphogenesis, regeneration, cognition, agency, consciousness, and artificial intelligence for some examples.


PairTheBoard

I'm interested in anything i don't have to waste my time on. I have a job and my brain space is limited. But i'm interested.

It would be great mr PTB if you could point out for example why say Richard Dawkins missed something? If anything considering all the time he spent foolishly arguing with Abrahamic faith believing idiots.

I don't know what jbouton wants to explain in the scale of evolutionary history until he provides it. But as far as Michael Levin's theory of collective intelligence, it has nothing to do with a so called "Intelligent Design" of life by a supernatural agent nor of anything supernatural at all. His theory of collective intelligence is not even about evolution per se. It stands alone as a theory of how intelligence works in nature.

If you haven't already, try listening to what Levin has to say and the fascinating examples he provides. There's relatively little talk about evolution. He's not Allan Watts but I believe he does get his papers published in scientific journals.


PairTheBoard

Ptb, how else do you explain his short arms?

From Google:
"Michael Levin and Daniel Dennett have proposed the phrase “cognition all the way down” (Levin & Dennett, 2020) to frame this approach. They propose to model individual cells in the multicellular collective as intelligent agents on their own, that coordinate (likely via bioelectrical communication, see: Levin, 2019, p."

Wiki page for Michael Levin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levin_(biologist)


Here is a link to a PDF file of a paper by Levin. It seems to download the file and then you have to click on the downloaded file. Below are excerpts from the paper.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...elX&opi=899784


-------------------------

Collective Intelligence of Morphogenesis as a Teleonomic Process
Michael Levin1,2
1 Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA
2 Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University
Address for correspondence:
200 Boston Ave.,
Suite 4600,
Medford, MA 02155,
Email: michael.levin@tufts.edu
Tel.: (617) 627-6161
Keywords: embryogenesis, regeneration, basal cognition, bioelectricity, gap junctions,
evolution, teleonomy, goals, plasticity
Running title: Apparent purpose in anatomical morphospace
A revised version of this paper will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming
MIT Press volume in 2023.
Abstract
Multiscale competency is a central phenomenon in biology: molecular networks,
cells, tissues, and organisms all solve problems via behavior in various spaces
(metabolic, physiological, anatomical, and the familiar 3D space of movement). These
capabilities require being able reach specific goal states despite perturbations and
changes in their own parts and in the environment: effective teleonomy. Strong examples
of the remarkable scaling of such goal states during teleonomic processes are seen
across development, regeneration, and cancer suppression. I illustrate examples of
regulative morphogenesis of multicellular bodies as the teleonomic behavior of a
collective intelligence composed of cells. This view helps to unify many phenomena
across multiscale biology, and suggests a framework for understanding how teleonomic
capacity increased and diversified during evolution. Thus, teleonomy is a lynchpin
concept that helps address key open questions around evolvability, biological plasticity,
and basal cognition, and a powerful invariant that drives novel empirical research
programs

Introduction
To paraphrase a famous quote (Dobzhansky 1973), nothing in biology makes
sense except in light of teleonomy (Auletta 2011; Ellis, Noble, and O'Connor 2012; Noble
2011, 2010). Most observers, including biologists, physicists, and engineers, have
watched with wonder as biological systems expend energy to achieve a specific state of
affairs different than the current one, despite changing circumstances. This phenomenon
includes workhorse concepts such as stress (the system-level effects of the inability to
reach desired states, and the driver of change), memory (the ability to represent specific
states that are not present right now), intelligence (competency in navigating problem
spaces toward desired goals), and preferences (inherent valence of specific states over
others). The capacity to work toward goals (preferred future states) is ubiquitous across
the biosphere and present at all scales of organization, from the planning capacities of
primates to the abilities of cellular collectives to modify their activity to achieve a specific
embryonic anatomy despite perturbations. It is a defining feature of life, of great
importance to evolutionary biologists (in their quest to understand the origin of various
functions), exobiologists (seeking ways to recognize unconventional life forms),
researchers in artificial intelligence, robotics, and artificial life (trying to develop
autonomous synthetic systems), and workers in regenerative biomedicine (whose goal
requires the reprogramming of cellular and tissue functions toward desired goal states
associated with health). How living systems establish, encode, and pursue goals is a
fundamental question at the heart of numerous fields, including biology, philosophy,
cognitive science, and the information technology sciences.

Teleology and related concepts have been the subject of much debate (Turner
2017; McShea 2016; Lander 2004; Rosenblueth, Wiener, and Bigelow 1943; F.J. Varela,
Thompson, and Rosch 1991; Maturana and Varela 1980b; F.G. Varela, Maturana, and
Uribe 1974; F. Varela and Maturana 1972; Bertalanffy 195). Here, I focus on teleonomy:
apparently purposeful behavior, emphasizing two aspects. “Apparent”, because it is to be
measured and characterized from the perspective of an observer seeking a powerful way
to understand the system (not some objective intrinsic fact about a system itself) (Ashby
1952). “Purposeful”, because great explanatory power and new research can be driven
by a rigorous investigation of what states motivate a system to expend energy as it
navigates various action spaces.

Teleonomy is a lens (akin to the pragmatic intentional stance (Dennett 1987))
through which scientists see biological systems, creatures see each other, and parts of
living systems model other parts and themselves (Wood 2019; Mar et al. 2007). Here, I
focus on teleonomy as a profound way to understand morphogenesis as the teleonomic
behavior of a multiscale collective agent (molecular networks, cells, etc.). A key aim is to
show that goal-directed function is not just the province of advanced brains with selfaware agency, but rather is a primary principle scaled up from basal functions in the most primitive life forms. More than that, it is an essential invariant that pervades, and reveals actionable symmetries across diverse aspects of biology.

The philosophical assumptions of this perspective (Levin 2022) can be explicitly
stated as follows. First, there is a primary goal to drive empirical research, not to preserve
philosophical positions that make “armchair” decisions on questions of agency in the
absence of specific experiment. Second, there is a commitment to evolutionary continuity
of bodies and minds and to a search for minimal examples of key capacities, which will
necessarily blur the boundaries between cognitive phenomena and “just physics”.
Proposals for sharp phase transitions in terms of agency carry the burden of having to
show how discrete changes across one generation create a novel agential capacity in
offspring that didn’t exist in the parents. Thus, I assume gradualism and continuous (not
binary) metrics of all important parameters, such as agency, cognition, intelligence,
memory, goal-directedness, etc.

=================


PairTheBoard

right when you hear Michael introduce planaria "this is a flat worm that has a true brain, central nervous system, many organs" You can cut the head ie the brain off and it can regenerate its memories.... Show me the person not invested after that, and I'll call them an ass. and not one of a planaria.

Geoff and Hoffmann rethinkng fine tuning lately. I see Kastrup and Levin in conversation in my youtube feed. Some catching up to do.

Kastrup has a specialty book publishing organization which publishes a very few (maybe just one) book(s) a year. In a youtube conversation with Levin he said he would very much like to publish Levin's next book.


PairTheBoard

I'm catching up on some things and not sure where they are relevant. My worry is this...its about digesting things and time...

my GUESS here, so sorry if its ignorant, is that our evolution seems mind blowing and seems to have gaps in the explanation of exponentiation of the growth.

This author believes this and so do you. This author posits a theory and it seems to fit nature. You and him feel that makes it all probabilistically worthwhile.

But if i have a simpler explanation...I wanna know that you think its more worthwhile to look into, because its simpler and there is no other determiner...right?

In other words it a thread about the simplest explanation right or is it just this certain one, because if its the latter I have some suspicions already about both you.

If its the former...I want to ask if the inquiry into the fitness of each of other theory 'halts' in each of our cases, in regard to being truth or not.

The fundamentalist Christian threw me off.

He had out a whiteboard in a yt clip. He was literally trying to argue over Levin's audio of the same that a computer program randomly changing at the binary level couldn't lead to a better program.

Before considering evolution, and knowing the fundamentalist Christian was basically blagging the argument, it was already fascinating to ponder. But i was busy. When he began preaching the bible I used it as an excuse to be intellectually lazy and put it on the back burner.

So the clip that should be short. I assumed this levin was doing the same. And in fact for a second time. As Levin is now in two videos using this example. Mistake number in any case. But this had to be done now since i ignored it once.

So I considered the von nuemann architecture or what of it is needed and imagined a generic program performing a function. I considered program code and data changing bits randomly.

Then I questioned the objectivity of what it means to be better. Or more precisely To be improved. I'm reminded of an audio lecture on youtube of a Zen Buddhist with a British accent argue that a person can not improve's one's self.

But this is a program, if just one opcode gets changed, the imaginary game of tic tac toe simply won't run at all. Move on.

But. Self improving AI systems is a core concept of the singularity. But move on. We need to understand evolution too.

Anyway, long story short. Levin simply states two examples of systems that couldn't improve themselves most likely. He argues however that life can, not can't as I assumed. If just simply listened to the end, this post may have improved itself.

Soz for wasting 'time.' I'll get through the rest of the video in the near 'future.' : 0

Yeah, we're going there.

He seems like he wants to explain the theory of evolution with intelligent design.

I felt I knew before i knew. something too big, too quick. It was weird,

Scary and lonely feeling especially with Ptb not giving me his interpretation right away in a sense.

After calling out the extreme, most mind blowing possibilty. The trouble began. I had to balance it out by doing everything from literally declaring im not ready.

To then realising no matter who goes first you must go alone to know.

When they mentioned Buddhism and AI i bailed as it seemed to come out of leftfield. And I had just mentioned it myself in a post prior. I was also reminded of Alan Watts' view that the ground of being must be intelligent. Give me a break lol. ill be back.