The Big Questions with Dr. Lee

The Big Questions with Dr. Lee

By Dr. Ernesto LeeScienceTechnology
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The Big Questions with Dr. Lee episodes

  • Basal Intelligence: Can a Cell With No Brain Make Decisions?

    A single cell with no brain redrew the Tokyo rail map in about a day. Cut a flatworm into pieces and every piece rebuilds the whole worm. Nudge one electrical signal and it grows two heads, for good. No neurons anywhere. So who is making the decisions? We assume intelligence lives in brains. These experiments say it is older than brains. Scientists call it basal intelligence.

    In this episode:

    • A working definition of intelligence: reaching the same goal by different routes, even when something gets in the way
    • The yellow slime mold that solved a maze, then rebuilt the Tokyo rail network in 26 hours
    • Why it didn't think its way there, it grew its way there, and why it's more than paths worn into a park lawn
    • Stentor, the single cell that tries plan A, then plan B
    • Michael Levin's idea: every cell is a tiny battery, and together they draw a voltage map the body builds toward
    • The flatworms that grew two heads and kept doing it, with no gene edited
    • Tadpoles that learned through an eye growing on their tail
    • Why intelligence may be a conversation your parts keep having
    • Dr. Lee's Take: we keep judging AI with a ruler shaped like a human brain, and here is a better one

      • Go hands-on: grow your own slime-mold network in code in the lab for this episode at courselabs.io.

      Series: Mind & Consciousness

      10 min
    • Kant and The Matrix: Is Your Brain Rendering Reality?

      There is a hole in your vision right now, in both eyes, and your brain has been painting over it your whole life. In this episode we catch it in the act with nothing but two thumbs, then follow the philosopher Immanuel Kant's outrageous 1781 claim: you have never once seen the world as it really is. You only see the world as your mind builds it.

      In this episode:

      • The two-thumb blind spot test you can try right now
      • The squeeze: about a billion bits come in through your senses every second, and only about ten make it through to what you think and act on
      • The guess: how your brain fills the hole in your vision so well you never noticed
      • The paint: why "the red was never in the rose" (Isaac Newton, 1704)
      • The stopped clock illusion: your brain backdates your experience
      • The dress that split the internet, and the 150,528 numbers an image AI actually "sees"
      • Why most arguments are two renderings, each mistaking itself for the world
      • Dr. Lee's Take: why Kant may be the most important philosopher for understanding AI

        • Go hands-on: open a photo and see the numbers your AI actually sees in the lab for this episode at courselabs.io.

        Series: The Limits of Knowing

        10 min

      About The Big Questions with Dr. Lee

      From the publisher's feed

      Science, AI and the mind, explained simply. Are you seeing the world, or your brain's rendering of it? How can a computer know that king minus man plus woman equals queen? Why does the number 137…