Your Brain Isn’t a Computer and That Changes Everything

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For the first time on TOE, I sit down with professors Anil Seth and Michael Levin to test the brain-as-computer metaphor and whether algorithms can ever capture life/mind. Anil argues the “software vs. hardware” split is a blinding metaphor—consciousness may be bound to living substrate—while Michael counters that machines can tap the same platonic space biology does. We tour their radical lab work—xenobots, compositional agents, and interfaces that bind unlike parts—and probe psychophysics in strange new beings, “islands of awareness,” and what Levin’s bubble-sort “side quests” imply for reading LLM outputs. Anil brings information theory and Granger causality into the mix to rethink emergence and scale—not just computation. Along the way: alignment, agency, and how to ask better scientific questions. If you’re into AI/consciousness, evolution without programming, or whether silicon could ever feel—this one’s for you.

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Timestamps:
00:00 - Anil Seth & Michael Levin: Islands of Consciousness & Xenobots
08:24 - Substrate Dependence: Why Biology Isn't Just 'Wetware'
13:13 - Beyond Algorithms: Do Machines Tap Into a 'Platonic Space'?
21:46 - The Ghost in the Algorithm: Emergent Agency in Bubble Sort
29:26 - Degeneracy: The Biological Principle AI is Missing
36:34 - The Multiplicity of Agency: Are Your Cells Conscious?
43:24 - Unconscious Processing or Inaccessible Consciousness? The Split-Brain Problem
49:32 - The Ultimate Experiment to Decode Consciousness
57:31 - A Counter-Intuitive Discovery: Consciousness is Less Emergent
1:03:39 - Psychedelics, LLMs, and the Frontiers of Surprise

Links Mentioned:
Michael Levin [TOE]:    • Michael Levin: Consciousness, Biology, Uni...  
Anil Seth [TOE]:    • Anil Seth: Neuroscience of Consciousness &...  
Geoffrey Hinton [TOE]:    • Why The "Godfather of AI" Now Fears His Ow...  
Living Things Are Not Machines [Article]: https://www.noemamag.com/living-thing...
Classical Sorting Algorithms [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05375
Michael Levin and Anna Ciaunica [TOE]:    • Consciousness Beyond the Brain & Self | Mi...  
Being You: A New Science of Consciousness [Book]: https://www.amazon.com/Being-You-New-...
The Consciousness Iceberg [TOE]:    • The Complete Consciousness Iceberg | 2 Hou...  
Iain McGilchrist [TOE]:    • Matter and Mind: Rethinking Consciousness ...  
Matt Segall [TOE]:    • Is The Universe Conscious? | Matt Segall  
Andres Gomez-Emilsson [TOE]:    • DMT Entities Decoded by Coupled Oscillators  
MIT’s Augmentation Summit: https://augmentationlab.org/summit
Granger Causality Analysis [Paper]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25716...
Dynamical Independence [Paper]: https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...
Elan Barenholtz [TOE]:    • Language Without Meaning: How LLMs Exposed...  

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