#486 – Michael Levin: Hidden Reality of Alien Intelligence & Biological Life

Well, it's very true.

I mean, that, that second, the bifurcation of the mind is beautifully put.

I do think some of the most interesting people I've met are sometimes, uh, fall short on the, on the normie side, on the practical how do I-- Having the emotional intelligence of how do I communicate this with people that have a very different worldview, that are more conservative and more, uh, conventional and more kind of fit into the norm.

You have to be able to have the skill to fit in.

Yeah.

And then you have to, again, beautifully put, be able to shut that off when you go on your own and think.

And having two skills is very important.

Mm-hmm.

I think a lot of radical thinkers think that they're sacrificing something by learning the skill of fitting in.

But I think if you wanna have impact, if you want ideas to resonate and actually lead to, um, first of all, be able to build great teams-

Mm-hmm

... that help bring your ideas to life.

And second of all, for your ideas to have impact and to scale and to, uh, resonate with a large number of people, you have to have that skill.

Yeah.

And those are, those are very different.

Those are very different.

Yeah.

Uh, let me ask a ridiculous question.

You already spoke about it, but, uh, w- what to you is one of the most beautiful ideas that you've encountered in your various explorations? Maybe, maybe not just beautiful, but one that makes you happy to be a scientist, to be able to, um, be-

Yeah

... a curious humans exploring ideas.

I mean, I must say that, you know, I, I sometimes think about, um, these, these ingressions from this, uh, from this space as a kind of steganography.

You know? So, s- so steganography is, is when you hide data and messages within the, the bits of another pattern that don't-

Yeah

... matter, right? And the rule of steganography is you can't mess up the main thing, you know? So if it's a picture of a cat or whatever, you gotta keep the cat.