There’s a category of control systems engineering called “Stochastic Control Systems” which is basically “How do you get the autopilot to get the airplane to Boston, even though there’s 114MPH headwind from the northeast, rainstorms and rising masses of air over Ohio.”

The models for this have been very well developed since roughly the 1930s. What it really means is “achieving goals despite high levels of noise coming into the system.”

The biology profession has butchered this term, assumed that stochastic is just a 5 dollar word for random… and then to add insult to injury, imposed this misunderstanding into evolutionary biology. Not realizing, ironically, that the cell and its Natural Genetic Engineering components are an even more sophisticated form of stochastic control system than the autopilot on an airplane.

Collateral Damage

by Mickie Kennedy

Is it too late at 50 years of age to plant roots

and form the kind of friendships that desire

an audience with a dying man, waiting hours

by a bed until he wakes and eats

a bit of vanilla pudding? I suspect it’s not

but life remains a cracked vase that still

holds water, an oven mitt on standby

as the oven timer counts down. It’s a game of

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Dr. Michael Levin of Tufts University crosses many disciplines: computer science, embryo development, cancer and tumor research; limb regeneration; evolutionary theory and neural networks.

If you watch some of Michael’s fascinating talks at https://ase.tufts.edu/biology/labs/levin/research/presentations.htm he’ll take you down his magical rabbit hole including worms that grow new heads when you cut them in half, tumors that heal themselves and eyes planted on tails that actually work.

In this interview, Michael explodes the myth that “we’ve got it mostly figured out.”

The truth is closer to 1% understanding and 99% is Dark Matter.

Discover Michael’s research at https://allencenter.tufts.edu/our-team/michael-levin/ and http://www.drmichaellevin.org.

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Here we illustrate the difference between algorithms and conscious beings playing a simple game on the iPhone: If you ONLY get to use autofill, how long can you keep the game going? Pretty long, so long as you make choices. On the other hand, if you just pick choices at random, or let the phone make the choice for you, you immediately devolve into repetitive gibberish.

This illustrates the fundamental difference between humans and algorithms. Humans anticipate the future, where algorithms can only respond to the present based on patterns in the past. The difference is huge. This problem exists no matter how sophisticated the algorithm. This simple game illustrates one of the most critical limitations of AI as it currently exists.

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Azra Raza treated cancer patients for 30 years, but not even the loss of her Oncologist husband could provoke her to write a book. It took the death of her daughter’s dearest 22 year old friend – when suddenly she realized she had to speak up.

Here we discuss the one most important thing that The System overlooks – THE PATIENT’S ANGUISH – and speaks out about the state of cancer research in the 21st century. Groupthink, sexism, ignorance of history, and absence of empathy… and no one is in charge.

A quarter-trillion dollars later, we’re still carrying out the same punishing treatments we were doling out in the 1970s – where life extensions of six weeks are heralded as “breakthroughs.”

We discuss the “Cancer Cambrian” and the great black hole that is our grasp of cancer cellular evolution.

Finally, witness Azra’s dream of a superior system for detecting and beating cancer.

Azra Raza’s Website — https://azraraza.com/

Azra’s Book, The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last — https://amzn.to/39EC5hg

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James Tour, a renowned nanochemist at Rice University, has been openly critical of Origin Of Life literature for being too optimistic, too sanguine and at times misleading. See this video for example www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU7Lww-sBPg

When Perry Marshall took part in a discussion on the Unbelievable show with Denis Noble and Lee Cronin, host Justin Brierley mentioned Tour and his criticism. A reaction ensued, which led to Tour and Cronin going head to head on an international radio program and podcast. Here, we re-broadcast the scene that provoked the controversy and the debate that followed.

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Addy Pross is a Chemist at Ben Gurion University in Israel. He’s author of “What is Life: How Chemistry Becomes Biology” by Oxford University Press. Here we enjoyed a great conversation about his specialty, Systems Chemistry, a new branch of science that enables us to build complex networks of chemical reactions like those found inside of cells.

We explore the unanswered questions that continue to perplex scientists of all kinds.

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Referencing the Evolution 2.0 Prize: “The largest basic research science prize in history is still on offer for the demonstration of a natural origin of genetic code from chemical organization.”
–Nature Evolution and Ecology, “The early origin of cooperation” by Joana Xavier
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-019-1075-z

Joana Xavier is an Origin Of Life researcher at the Institute for Molecular Evolution, Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany. She has published numerous papers on life’s origin.

Also see her paper, “Systems Biology Perspectives on Minimal and Simpler Cells.”

Lynn Margulis, who died in 2012, was a piercing luminary in the history of evolutionary theory.

She overturned the money changer’s tables in the temple of science and infuriated a lot of people. But history has continued to vindicate her.

In this interview, she and Conner explore a very different way of thinking about life itself and you’ll hear her brilliant mind and feisty posture.

Conner Habib’s Patreon: Patreon.com/connerhabib

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This is Perry Marshall and I’m long overdue to mention a really great book that came out not too long ago. It’s called The Works of His Hands by Sy Garte. 

Sy is a molecular biologist that I met at some science meetings in the last few years. Probably a couple years ago he sent me a manuscript of this book and I read it. I was like, “Dude, you have to get this book published with a good publisher, and you need to really do this justice because this is way above average.”

This is a science and faith book, but it is not like most. In my opinion, most science and faith books are a little starchy or a little too sentimental or they have bad science or whatever. This one was a real gem.

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