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Michael Levin
@drmichaellevin
Scientist at Tufts University; my lab studies anatomical and behavioral decision-making at multiple scales of biological, artificial, and hybrid systems.
drmichaellevin.org
Joined May 2013
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  • Pinned
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Sep 9, 2023
    Wordpress site is up - thoughtforms.life. Register to be notified of book progress, specific events, news, and new posts with photography, essays, interviews, & more. Unlike at drmichaellevin.org, here I will post ideas not fully baked yet, & academic-adjacent content.
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Mar 1, 2019
    "None of your discoveries have been very important and you've never won the Nobel prize." Nasty reviewer? Award rejection? Nope; my (at the time) 4-year-old son, angry upon being told that he has to clean his room immediately.
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    May 1, 2022
    About 11 years ago, our -80 freezer kept getting left open & defrosting everyone's samples. I repeatedly reminded folks to be more careful but it kept happening. Finally I said, next time I'd go to the security cam in the freezer room & whoever keeps doing it was in trouble. 1/n
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Jul 10, 2025
    I'm constantly irritated that I don't have time to read the torrent of cool papers coming faster and faster from amazing people in relevant fields. Other scientists have the same issue and have no time to read most of my lengthy conceptual papers either. So whom are we writing
    746K
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Oct 13, 2025
    Final version is out: aging as the result of loss of goal-directedness advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.10… @BeneHartl @LPiolopez "Although substantial advancements are made in manipulating lifespan in model organisms, the fundamental mechanisms driving aging remain elusive. No
    765K
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Dec 25, 2022
    I've played with GPT Chat, and I'm kind of annoyed at how hard it tries to avoid "misinformation". I get it, we don't want to drown in a sea of nonsense. But when I ask for an imaginative (fiction) text, I get 1 useful line and 4 sentences of disclaimers about how this is
    502K
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    May 1, 2022
    Replying to @drmichaellevin
    Of course it happened again, and I went to the recording. I must have watched that video 100 times. People asked me, well - who's getting in trouble? And I had to show them this video. The resolution is crap, because old cameras, but it's clear enough. I spent hours 2/n
    00:00
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Jan 1, 2023
    I present to you, some images that Midjourney created from some scientific paper titles. I think maybe this should be required with every paper submission to a journal. Let's see some of your favorites!
    763K
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    May 1, 2022
    Replying to @drmichaellevin
    checking for wires or other signs that someone was messing with me. Those of you who have worked with these old -80's, you know how much effort it takes to pull that handle up. It doesn't just usually open by itself. WTF... After that video we never caught it happening again. 3/3
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Jul 12, 2025
    Being a scientist is still the best job in the world. The constant frustrations, all the crap that goes with trying to keep the lab alive and move things forward - it all resets and washes away in those occasional moments when we catch a glimpse of nature revealing something
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Jul 17, 2023
    Many thoughtful people get destabilized by deep questions of science & philosophy - what are the implications for how to live life? Here, my 2 simplistic flowcharts that I created during home study units with my kids. Good news: no matter the answers, the To-Do item is same.
    159K
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Feb 17, 2025
    The official paper is out - Chris Fields and I on the origin of life: tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.10… "We argue here that the Origin of Life (OOL) problem is not just a chemistry problem but is also, and primarily, a cognitive science problem. When interpreted through the lens of the
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  • user avatar
    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Nov 19, 2024
    Bingo! This is what our lab has been working on for 20 years; here are some details for those who want to see how the biology plays out, and the many practical implications of taking seriously the symmetry between the conventional intelligence and those of problem-solving in
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    Erik Hoel
    @erikphoel
    Nov 19, 2024
    Non-neuronal cells look increasingly like neurons, with the same memory pathways. Meaning that nutritionists are confused for the same reason neuroscientists usually are: your body is a mathematical black-box, with its output your morphology. theintrinsicperspective.com/p/your-body-th…
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    Michael Levin
    @drmichaellevin
    Mar 28, 2024
    New paper is out - @DrPTMcMillen nature.com/articles/s4200… "Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates"
    Content cover image
    Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates
    From nature.com
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