#849: Dr. Michael Levin — Reprogramming Bioelectricity, Updating "Software" for Anti-Aging, Treating Cancer Without Drugs, Cognition of Cells, and Much More

Tim Ferriss introduces Dr. Michael Levin, a pioneer in redefining biology through research on bioelectricity and unconventional cognitive systems. Levin's work explores reprogramming the human body, cancer, birth defects, and organ regeneration, extending beyond DNA. His lab creates synthetic life forms like Xenobots and Anthrobots to understand patterns of form and behavior. Ferriss hopes this conversation will explore the future of medicine, considering microchips and electricity over traditional methods, and delve into cognition and consciousness.

Dr. Levin recalls discovering Robert Becker's "The Body Electric" and its influence on his understanding of bioelectricity. Bioelectricity is defined as living systems using physics, specifically electricity, to function. There are two types: the familiar neuroscience-related electricity in the brain, and developmental bioelectricity, which concerns how the body uses electricity before the brain develops. Levin's TED Talk covered experiments on salamander limb regeneration and tadpole craniofacial organization, questioning how these tissues "know" what to do. He challenges the notion that these processes are merely mechanical, arguing that chemical processes can "know" things through electrical networks that store memories.

Levin explains that bioelectrical properties of tissues can be seen using voltage-sensitive fluorescent dyes, creating maps and movies of electrical activity. Experiments are needed to prove that these electrical patterns are memories. The durability of these memories over generations is due to anatomical homeostasis, where the body tries to maintain a specific set point. He mentions three areas of human application: birth defects, regeneration, and cancer. Cancer involves electrical dysregulation among cells, a dissociative identity disorder where cells lose their connection to the larger purpose of building organs and tissues.

Levin discusses recent work showing that electrical pre-patterns degrade over time, leading to aging. He presents a third alternative to noise/damage and programmatic theories of aging: the "boredom theory," where cells degrade because they've completed their job and lack new goals. He suggests that aging, cancer, and birth defects stem from a fundamental pressure point: the cognition of groups of cells. He emphasizes the importance of understanding how cells know what to build, how to communicate with them, and what kind of intelligence they possess.

Levin suggests that biologists should learn compartmentalizing, modularizing, and understanding reprogrammability from computer science. He recommends programming languages courses to promote mental plasticity and challenge assumptions. He believes that our formal models never capture all of what's going on, and that even simple machines exhibit proto-cognitive capacity. Levin posits that cognition predates and is bigger than life, challenging the traditional view of the relationship between inanimate objects, living things, and intelligence.

Ferriss asks about the potential overlap between bioelectricity and traditional Chinese medicine, specifically meridians and Qi. Levin shares his personal experiences with a practitioner in Boston and suggests that there is something powerful in it. He speculates that whatever acupuncturists are managing has the same relationship to bioelectricity that bioelectricity has to chemical signaling. He suspects that acupuncture manages something additional that transduces through the bioelectric layer.

Levin views placebo not as a confound, but as a main show, citing Fabrizio Benedetti's research showing that words and drugs have the same mechanism of action. He emphasizes the power of the mind to affect the body, pointing to voluntary motion as an example of abstract mental intent changing the chemistry of body cells. He argues that it's not bizarre to think that other mental states might affect how cells act.

Ferriss asks how neuroscience might fundamentally change regarding cognition. Levin believes that the field of diverse intelligence will thrive, recognizing that intelligence existed long before brains and neurons. He argues that neuroscience is not about neurons, but about cognitive glue, the architectures that add up to larger-scale minds. He thinks that neuroscience is the question of what kind of architectures add up to larger scale minds from aligned simpler components.

Levin explains the concept of a platonic space, arguing that there are important facts that are not facts about physics, such as mathematical truths. He suggests that physics is constrained by these patterns, while biology is enabled by them. He proposes that the relationship between the mind and the body is the same as that between the truths of mathematics and physics. He mentions a symposium on the platonic space and its potential implications for computation.

Levin introduces the concept of polycomputing, where multiple observers can see different things being computed from the same physical event. He cites a study on sorting algorithms, showing that while they sort numbers, they also exhibit behavioral competencies and side quests. He emphasizes that our view of what an algorithm is and how much of what the thing is doing it captures is incomplete.

Levin speculates on the future of compute, suggesting that multiple useful functions could be derived from polycomputing. He cautions that the "side quests" may not always be commercially valuable. He suggests that the verbal interface of AI might be a red herring, and the actual intelligence could lie elsewhere. He wonders if the "unproductive" side activities might be critical to the forced function, providing endurance and focus.