Is There Such a Thing as Population Selection?

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Just the fact that humans commit suicide is a really fascinating question from an evolutionary perspective. Maybe you could see animals over time for some reason, lowering the value of survival costs gradually until other objectives might become more important. I don't know how evolutionarily how that how that gets off the ground. That just seems like that would have such a strong pressure against it.

Michael Levin is a biologist at Tufts University working on novel ways to understand and control complex pattern formation in biological systems. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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Michael’s Papers:
Biological Robots: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.00880
Synthetic Organisms: https://tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19420889.2021.2005863
Limb Regeneration: https://science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2164

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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:40) – Embryogenesis
(14:08) – Xenobots: biological robots
(27:55) – Sense of self
(37:27) – Multi-scale competency architecture
(48:58) – Free will
(58:27) – Bioelectricity
(1:11:44) – Planaria
(1:23:33) – Building xenobots
(1:47:08) – Unconventional cognition
(2:11:39) – Origin of evolution
(2:18:42) – Synthetic organisms
(2:25:27) – Regenerative medicine
(2:29:14) – Cancer suppression
(2:33:15) – Viruses
(2:38:28) – Cognitive light cones
(2:43:03) – Advice for young people
(2:47:47) – Death
(2:57:17) – Meaning of life