[aeleos]

Recent but great talk posted here, What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System [1] by Prof. Michael Levin. He talks about how long term low energy electrical networks between all cells in living organisms shape how the organism grows. I think what he talks about will be the future of medicine as it allows for an amazing degree of high level control over how animals grow.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg

[kilburn]

Wow, just wow!

I've often felt that we (humanity) have pushed the boundaries of our knowledge right to some really hard lines to cross: relativity won't allow interstellar travel anytime soon, we are making progress in "soft AI" but "hard AI" is still insurmountable, even fusion seems as far as it's always been. Further "real" progress seems sometimes nearly impossible, or very arduous and slow at best.

Then this guy shows up, cuts a frog's leg, shines some weird lights on the wound... and the frog regenerates it! (frogs do not normally regenerate legs). This has been really astonishing to me. I hope this whole research area lives up to my excitement after listening to that talk, because really awesome things may come out of it.

I highly recommend this talk to literally anybody who has scientific curiosity en general!

[aeleos]

I definitely agree with you, this feels like REAL progress. I feel like this is a revolution in our understanding of how life as a collection of cells is able to function with such repeat ability and reliability. What is even more amazing is how this talk isn't even just going over our lack of understanding in this area, its saying hey everyone we just filled in this massive gap in our understanding, and look at what real things we can do with it.

It does feel like this research crosses a big line in science. Especially with the recent articles about how gene editing can cause weird defects that we don't understand, this shows we don't need to tinker at the lower levels when life already has the tools for higher level control.

[kajecounterhack]

+1000

Really cool talk / highly recommend! Some things you might learn / amazing facts:

- Children 7-11 can regrow fingertips

- Planarians (a kind of flatworm) are immortal

- If you teach a planarian to find "home", chop off its head and let it regrow its brain, it will still remember where home is

Note also that this was presented at NeurIPS so the talk also includes some discussion of non-neural information systems this kind of thing could inspire.

[navinsylvester]

Blown away. To me the following(rephrased) stood out:

We are currently good at manipulating molecules and cells(machine code/hardware level) but if we understand the algorithms(software level) which control the large scale form and function - it would bring in radical change.

Hardware/software distinction in biology is a very interesting take and we all know what device independence can do.

[diegoperini]

Electron for living cells? (An honest attempt to make a joke)

[jccalhoun]

It is important to note that this Michael Levin is at Tufts https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/faculty/levin/ and is NOT the Michael Levin that comes up first when you search for that name: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Levin

[pklee]

What an amazing talk. I do stream monitoring and have heard about planaria and have seen specimens. I did not know it is such an amazing creature. What a beautiful talk.

[lorenzorhoades]

Whoa, this completely altered my point view regarding animal complexity. Natures scary.

[myth_drannon]

Just mind blown. Stopped watching talks because I feel that the information delivery is lacking comparing to a book or a good blog post, but this one is just so mind expanding!

[inevrela]

Oh boy, this is cool!

[kangaroodingo]

this is amazing talk - thanx for sharing