Introduction: Bioelectricity and Cancer

• Cancer cells can be influenced to stop growing using bioelectricity. Forcing cells into a proper electrical state, connected to their neighbors, prevents tumor growth even with strong oncogene expression.
• Cells naturally “mind meld”, identifying with a larger collective (organ) through bioelectricity, a “cognitive glue.” Cancer cells disconnect from this network.

Bioelectric Fields as Blueprints

• Bioelectric fields contain blueprints of organisms. “Electric face” pre-patterns determine features like eye and mouth placement. These patterns are visible and modifiable.
• Planaria voltage patterns can be altered to grow two heads. This change is heritable without DNA modification, only resetting the “goals” of the system.

Shifting from Hardware to Software

• Traditional biology focuses on genes and molecules (the “hardware”). Levin focuses on the bioelectric “software.”
• It is extremely complex to reverse engineer how an output came about with a complex chain, this method simplifies things to targeting those higher pattern, making engineering of a result easy.
• Morphogenesis (the origin of form) is still mysterious. No individual cell knows what a finger is, but the collective does, such as a salamander which will always regrow the appropriate missing parts of the body when any part of the leg has been removed..

Memory of Forms and Evolution

• Evolution searches for “pointers” into a pre-existing space of forms (a Platonic idea), not just microstates of hardware.
• Even bacterial biofilms, early multicellularity, use electrical networks for communication and information integration.
• All biological categorical thinking, even intelligence, about consciousness and should be eliminated, everything is scalar..

Cognitive Glue and Scaling

• Bioelectricity functions as a “cognitive glue.” Individual neurons combine to form a new entity with goals and memories. Evolution used this principle long before brains.
• Gap junctions are crucial. They create a “mind meld” where cells share information and lose individual identity, forming a collective.
• Cells connected by gap junctions share stress. Reducing stress in one cell benefits others, creating collective concern and enlarging the “cognitive light cone.”
• Bioelectric communication in development takes minutes, not milliseconds like in neural networks, is all a trade off in efficiency with regards to other tasks it has at hand.

Implications and Experiments

• Cancer treatment could potentially involve resetting the goals of cells to cooperate, as demonstrated in frog models.
• It might be possible to test for higher-level intelligences (e.g., ecosystems) by attempting to train them.
• Evidence of larger intelligences might manifest as synchronicity – events connected by meaning, not obvious physical causality.
• There exist larger intelligences (in his view) that can have different meanings and perspectives on things at different levels of scales.

Hardware, Software, and Semantics

• The hardware/software distinction isn’t absolute. DNA defines hardware, but bioelectric states represent a kind of software.
• Living things aren’t Von Neumann computers, but the software paradigm (top-down control, goal-directedness) is useful.
• The distinction between data and machine breaks down with gap junctions. Information flow changes the physical state of the “machine.”
• Semantics arises when an observer can extract adaptive meaning from events. There exist different level intelligences at differing scales that might infer different meanigns from the same observations..

Consciousness

• Consciousness may exist in various body parts, not just the brain.
• Consciousness may track agency – the palpated uncertainty about what to do next, and sense-making of one’s own memories.
• Consciousness might be a fundamental property of the universe, not solely a product of selection.
• Phenomenal Consciousness is about deciding how to interpert external or internal events in the now for your present, or future goals, that may not always be in line with each other.

Personal and Ethical Implications

• Levin’s work has implications for ethics and our relationship with other beings, emphasizing a broader view of compassion.
• Evolution, cognition and scale go hand in hand with considerations to compassion.

导言：生物电与癌症

• 癌细胞的生长可以通过生物电来影响。 即使在强致癌基因表达的情况下，强制细胞进入适当的电状态，并与周围细胞连接，也能阻止肿瘤生长。
• 细胞通过生物电（一种“认知胶水”）自然地“思维融合”，认同于一个更大的集体（器官）。癌细胞会脱离这个网络。

生物电场作为蓝图

• 生物电场包含生物体的蓝图。“电脸”预先模式决定了眼睛和嘴巴等特征的位置。这些模式是可见的并且可以修改的。
• 涡虫的电压模式可以改变以生长出两个头。这种改变无需DNA修饰即可遗传，只需重置系统的“目标”。

从硬件转向软件

• 传统生物学侧重于基因和分子（“硬件”）。莱文侧重于生物电“软件”。
• 对于一个复杂的链条，要逆向工程推导出输出结果是如何产生的，这是极其复杂的。这种方法将问题简化为针对那些更高层次的模式，使结果的工程设计变得容易。
• 形态发生（形式的起源）仍然是神秘的。没有单个细胞知道手指是什么，但集体知道，例如蝾螈，当腿部的任何部分被移除时，它总是会重新生长出身体适当的缺失部分。

形式的记忆与进化

• 进化寻找的是进入预先存在的形式空间（柏拉图式的观念）的“指针”，而不仅仅是硬件的微观状态。
• 即使是细菌生物膜，早期多细胞性，也使用电网络进行通信和信息整合。
• 所有关于意识的生物学范畴性思考，甚至是智力，都应该被消除，一切都是标量的。

认知胶水和尺度

• 生物电充当“认知胶水”。单个神经元组合形成一个具有目标和记忆的新实体。进化早在脑出现之前就使用了这一原理。
• 间隙连接至关重要。它们创造了一种“思维融合”，细胞共享信息并失去个体身份，形成一个集体。
• 通过间隙连接相连的细胞共享压力。减少一个细胞的压力有利于其他细胞，从而产生集体关注并扩大“认知光锥”。
• 发育中的生物电通信需要几分钟，而不是像神经网络中那样需要几毫秒，这都是在效率与其他手头任务之间的权衡。

意义和实验

• 癌症治疗可能涉及重置细胞的目标以进行合作，正如在青蛙模型中证明的那样。
• 可能可以通过尝试训练更高层次的智能（例如，生态系统）来测试它们。
• 更大智能的证据可能表现为同步性——由意义连接的事件，而不是明显的物理因果关系。
• 存在更大的智能（在他看来），它们在不同尺度上对事物可以有不同的含义和观点。

硬件、软件和语义学

• 硬件/软件的区别不是绝对的。DNA定义硬件，但生物电状态代表一种软件。
• 生物不是冯·诺依曼计算机，但软件范式（自上而下的控制，目标导向）是有用的。
• 数据和机器之间的区别随着间隙连接而消失。“信息”的流动改变了“机器”的物理状态。
• 当观察者可以从事件中提取自适应意义时，语义学就出现了。在不同的尺度上存在着不同层次的智能，它们可能从相同的观察中推断出不同的含义。

意识

• 意识可能存在于身体的各个部位，而不仅仅是大脑。
• 意识可能追踪自主性——对下一步该做什么的犹豫不决，以及对自身记忆的意义建构。
• 意识可能是宇宙的基本属性，而不仅仅是选择的产物。
• 现象意识是关于如何解释现在发生的外部或内部事件，为了你现在或未来的目标，这些目标可能并不总是一致的。

个人和伦理意义

• 莱文的工作对伦理学以及我们与其他存在的关系具有启示意义，强调更广泛的同情观。
• 进化、认知和尺度与对同情心的考虑密切相关。