Giants Shoulder

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Carlos Sonnenschein is Professor of Integrative Physiology and Pathobiology at Tufts University School of Medicine. With Ana Soto, he developed the tissue organisation field theory of cancer: the idea that a tumour begins not in a rogue cell, but in the breakdown of the tissue around it. For fifty years he has argued that cancer research has been looking one level too low. Here he explains why the mutations we find in tumours may be the wreckage, not the cause.

Expect to learn:
- The default state: why every cell's natural tendency is to proliferate
- Growth factors: why he argued they don't exist, and why people laughed
- Mutations without cancer: why he says no gene has been shown to cause a cancer
- Targeted therapy: why he believes the target was never really there
- Cellular agency: how life, proliferation and motility fit together

SPONSORS
Get Jenni Your Intelligent Research Assistant (GIANT20 for 20% off) - http://jenni.ai/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=thegiantsshoulder

GS EPISODES MENTIONED
Michael Levin - Michael Levin: Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM

GUEST LINKS
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VmTCfroAAAAJ
IEA Nantes Fellow Profile: https://www.iea-nantes.fr/en/fellows/carlos-sonnenschein
Biological Purpose Project: https://www.biologicalpurpose.org/people/carlos-sonnenschein
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carlos-Sonnenschein
An Integrative Approach Toward Biology, Organisms, and Cancer (2018): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29119499

LISTEN ON
YouTube - https://youtu.be/AypMhvhWwjg
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249

SKOOL
Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about

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TIMESTAMPS
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:26 From Paediatrics to Cancer Research
0:05:23 The Oestrogen Paradox
0:08:43 Proliferation Is the Default State of Every Cell
0:12:27 Inhibitors of Inhibitors
0:14:06 "Growth Factors Don't Exist"
0:15:31 The Somatic Mutation Theory
0:17:41 The Society of Cells and the Tissue Theory of Cancer
0:21:44 Stars and Dogs: Funding a Minority View
0:23:49 Teaching Cancer Through Genetics
0:25:01 How Does Tissue Keep Cells in Check?
0:26:04 Metastasis
0:28:34 Prostate Cancer and Spontaneous Regression
0:30:38 The Cost of Cancer Treatment
0:31:49 Melanoma, UV and the Standard Model
0:32:24 Mutations Without Cancer
0:35:17 No Gene Causes Cancer: BRCA1, p53 and RAS
0:37:00 Why Targeted Therapy Isn't Targeted
0:38:03 When Treatment Causes Cancer
0:40:39 What Does Genome Sequencing Tell You?
0:42:24 Why Does Cancer Run in Families?
0:45:41 Trauma, Healing and Tissue Robustness
0:47:59 A Theory of Organisms
0:50:59 What Is Life?
0:52:18 Economics Is a Branch of Biology
0:53:36 Cellular Agency
0:58:36 Defining Life: Proliferation and Motility
1:01:36 When Did Cells Become Agents?
1:04:49 The Future of Cancer Research
1:09:52 Final Thoughts

.....Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com

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Alexander Beiner is the writer who volunteered as a guinea pig for the world's first extended-state DMT trial. At Imperial College London, he was one of eleven people kept on a continuous DMT drip for thirty minutes. He is a co-Executive Director of Breaking Convention, Europe's largest psychedelic conference, and the author of The Bigger Picture.

Expect to learn
- The Chinchillas: hyperdimensional beings he had never seen in real life, speaking a visible language
- The Reply: he sent a symbol back, they went ballistic, then got bored and left
- The Pharmacology Problem: why tolerance to LSD and psilocybin does nothing to DMT
- The Synchronicity: the stranger across a London road, and what he learned that night
- The Spider Queen: a planet-sized entity that wrapped him in a web

SPONSORS
Get Jenni Your Intelligent Research Assistant (GIANT20 for 20% off) - http://jenni.ai/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=thegiantsshoulder

GS EPISODES MENTIONED
Rick Strassman - Meet The Father Of Modern DMT Research: https://youtu.be/KeAZOj7tYsc

Robin Carhart-Harris - No. 1 Psychedelic Scientist: The Entropic Brain Hypothesis, Consciousness & DMT Entities: https://youtu.be/t-GkE4YtLRk

David Luke - Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's: https://youtu.be/qLKD1gt1X5o

GUEST LINKS
X: https://x.com/AlexanderBeiner
Kainos (Substack): https://beiner.substack.com/
Personal Site: https://www.alexanderbeiner.com/
Breaking Convention: https://breakingconvention.co.uk/performers/alexander-beiner
The Bigger Picture - Author Page: https://www.penguin.com.au/authors/alexander-beiner

LISTEN ON
YouTube - https://youtu.be/aZnvPt9X3Dc
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249

SKOOL
Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about

FOLLOW EVAN
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00:00 Trailer
0:01:59 Why Changing Minds Isn't Enough
0:02:54 A Magic Mushroom Homecoming In Holland
0:05:33 Joining Europe's Largest Psychedelic Conference
0:06:44 Why He Signed Up To Be A DMT Guinea Pig
0:08:03 Half Of DMT Users Meet Autonomous Entities
0:10:38 Meeting The Hyperdimensional Chinchillas
0:14:25 He'd Never Seen A Chinchilla In Real Life
0:15:14 "They Were Speaking A Visible Language"
0:17:47 Why Priming Can't Explain The Chinchillas
0:21:33 The Metaphysical Shift After 100 Episodes
0:26:21 DMT Immunity And The Cross-Tolerance Mystery
0:28:07 Why Psychedelics Make Avoiding Pain Harder
0:29:28 The Placebo Dose And The Prank Paranoia
0:32:24 Three Heartbeats To The Deepest Trip
0:35:06 Wired Up: The Hidden Rituals Of The Lab
0:39:29 Would He Ever Come Back?
0:40:22 Psychedelic PTSD And The Fear Of Madness
0:41:31 The Synchronicity He Still Can't Explain
0:46:37 If Everything's Conscious, Where's The Telepathy?
0:49:16 Why The East Talks Openly About Ghosts
0:53:45 The Planet-Sized Spider Queen
0:58:51 "This Is So Similar To What McKenna Described"

.....Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com

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Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic is a physicist turned cognitive scientist and Professor Emeritus at Chalmers University of Technology, with doctorates in both physics and computer science. Across three careers she built info-computationalism: the idea that nature is information and computation at every level, from particles to minds. Her conclusion puts her at odds with much of her own field. Cognition arrives with life itself, which puts consciousness in a single bacterium and nowhere in today's AI.

Expect to learn:
- Info-computationalism: why nature is information and computation all the way down
- Cell consciousness: why a single cell is already sensing, deciding and minimally aware
- The Levin divide: where she draws the line Michael Levin won't
- Anaesthetised bacteria: why ether switches off organisms with no brain
- Machines that can't feel: why today's AI has intelligence but no goals of its own

SPONSORS
Get Jenni Your Intelligent Research Assistant (GIANT20 for 20% off) - http://jenni.ai/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=thegiantsshoulder

GS EPISODES MENTIONED
Michael Levin - Michael Levin: Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM

Michael Levin & Earl Miller - Michael Levin & Earl Miller: Platonic Space of Minds, Bioelectricity, Cell Intelligence & Neurobots: https://youtu.be/6mU5nN5nlLA

William B. Miller Jr. - Meet The Scientist Proving Your Cells Are Conscious and Intelligent: https://youtu.be/xrV5oGyyKSI

Mark Solms - Meet the Scientist Proving Dreams Hold the Key to Consciousness! Dr Mark Solms: https://youtu.be/nMWaQ1U6dcc

GUEST LINKS
Chalmers Profile: https://www.chalmers.se/en/persons/dodig/
X: https://x.com/DodigGordana
Chalmers Research Publications: https://research.chalmers.se/en/person/dodig
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=bvc5bBsAAAAJ
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9881-400X
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordana-dodig-crnkovic/

LISTEN ON
YouTube - https://youtu.be/D4jBgWV8BoY
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249

SKOOL
Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about

FOLLOW EVAN
https://x.com/evan_mcgl

TIMESTAMPS
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:44 Physicist, Computer Scientist, Cognitive Scientist
0:08:05 What Is Information, Really?
0:13:16 You Can't Observe Without Changing The System
0:16:14 Are Conscious Agents The Most Fundamental Thing?
0:20:06 A Single Cell Is Already Conscious
0:27:16 Where She Parts Ways With Michael Levin
0:28:41 Can We Build A Machine That Creates Itself?
0:33:38 Why A Book Is Just Food To An Insect
0:39:40 You Are Trillions Of Information Agents
0:44:09 Science's Obsession With Measurement
0:46:40 Xenobots And The Cells Nobody Programmed
0:51:02 Agency Or Just Complicated Chemistry?
0:55:58 Why No Experiment Can Settle This
0:57:22 Where Computation Ends And Cognition Begins
1:01:08 Would Levin Say Gene Networks Think?
1:03:37 Why Survival Might Be Essential For Consciousness
1:07:07 You Can Anaesthetise A Bacterium
1:11:08 Can Consciousness Be Written Down As Maths?
1:19:31 How AI Could Help Us Understand Minds
1:22:35 Should We Ever Build Conscious AI?

.....Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com

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John Vervaeke is an award-winning cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto, where he directs the Cognitive Science programme and the Consciousness and Wisdom Studies Laboratory. He helped pioneer relevance realisation — the claim that underneath your intelligence, your attention and your consciousness sits a single process, and that every living thing is doing it. He has argued since 1997 that this process cannot be a computation, and his field is only now conceding the point: even predictive processing, its dominant framework, is increasingly admitted to presuppose the thing he named. A cell decides what matters to it. So does a bacterium. Possibly everything that has ever been alive, long before there was a brain to think with.

Expect to learn:
- Relevance realisation: how you ignore almost everything in front of you and still land on what matters
- Cognition all the way down: why a single cell is doing the same thing your mind is, only smaller
- The line at life: why a tornado self-organises but never cares, and what that rules out
- Why computation can't do it: the reason large language models collapse on open-ended problems and always will
- Mind as the between: the case that consciousness isn't inside your head but in the coupling with your world

SPONSORS
Download the most scientifically rigorous nutrition app MacroFactor! Use code GIANTS for a 2 week FREE trial - https://app.macrofactor.com/mfgiants

GS EPISODES MENTIONED
Michael Levin - Michael Levin: Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM
Michael Levin & Earl Miller - Meet the Scientist Showing Every Cell In Your Body is Conscious!: https://youtu.be/6mU5nN5nlLA
Philip Ball - Philip Ball: Why Quantum Mechanics is NOT What you think, Consciousness, Brain Organoids, AI & Life!: https://youtu.be/nNbG5lnp51E
Philip Ball - Philip Ball: "Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought": https://youtu.be/9SseGx0R0fY
Andrés Gómez Emilsson - Consciousness Expert Explains The 6 Levels Of The DMT Experience: https://youtu.be/xMdl7zF2MWE
Anil Seth - No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI!: https://youtu.be/lOSA06K0l1o

GUEST LINKS
University of Toronto Faculty Profile: https://www.psych.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/john-vervaeke
Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/
X: https://x.com/vervaeke_john
YouTube (Awakening from the Meaning Crisis): https://www.youtube.com/user/johnvervaeke
Awakening from the Meaning Crisis (book): https://johnvervaeke.com/books/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis/

LISTEN ON
YouTube - https://youtu.be/jcMtjjeUV98

SKOOL
Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about

FOLLOW EVAN
https://x.com/evan_mcgl

TIMESTAMPS
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:54 The Meaning Crisis, Explained by a Cognitive Scientist
0:04:16 The Patterns in This Room Outnumber the Particles in the Universe
0:06:45 How Your Mind Ignores Almost Everything
0:09:09 "Dad, It's Relevance Realisation All The Way Down"
0:10:24 Noise Is Just Information Nobody Needs
0:15:33 Comparing a Human Mind to a Single Cell
0:18:01 Michael Levin's Cognitive Light Cone
0:19:49 The Cone of Caring
0:23:20 How Far Down Does Mind Actually Go?
0:24:15 Why a Tornado Isn't Alive
0:25:34 Pressing Michael Levin to Admit He's a Platonist
0:34:01 The Water Bottle Experiment
0:40:34 Where Levin Leaps From Patterns to Minds
0:48:12 The Problem With Symmetry Theories of Consciousness
0:55:03 Why LLMs Fall Apart on Open-Ended Problems
1:00:16 Obviousness Is Not a Physical Property
1:05:11 The Shark That Dies in the Sahara
1:10:49 What Consciousness Is Actually Doing
1:15:12 Are Neural Correlates a Dead End?
1:22:07 "We Should Stop Funding It"

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Richard Watson is a professor of artificial intelligence and theoretical evolutionary biology at the University of Southampton and the author of Compositional Evolution. He argues that adaptation does not require natural selection at all, and that biology has spent a century mistaking one for the other. With Michael Levin he published Natural Induction, which shows that any network whose connections give way under stress will begin to learn on its own. Ecosystems. Gene networks. Possibly the chemistry of the early Earth, long before anything was alive to be selected.

Expect to learn:
- Cognition before selection: why learning came first and natural selection came second
- The spring mechanism: how falling masses solve hard puzzles with no brain, no genes and no designer
- Ecosystems that compute: the model where an ecosystem solves a Sudoku without reproducing or inheriting
- The limits of the genome: why no amount of sequencing will explain what a cell is actually doing
- Medicine as persuasion: treating tissues as cognitive systems to negotiate with, not machines to fix

SPONSORS
Download the most scientifically rigorous nutrition app MacroFactor! Use code GIANTS for a 2 week FREE trial - https://app.macrofactor.com/mfgiants

GS EPISODES MENTIONED
Michael Levin - Michael Levin: Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM

GUEST LINKS
University of Southampton Profile: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5x27lw/professor-richard-watson
Personal Website: https://www.richardawatson.com
Natural Induction (Entropy, 2024, with Michael Levin): https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/9/765
Publications: https://www.richardawatson.com/publications-1
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Watson-10

LISTEN ON
YouTube - https://youtu.be/wAGFE2S6qXg
Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249

SKOOL
Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about

FOLLOW EVAN
https://x.com/evan_mcgl

TIMESTAMPS
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:43 The Assumptions Every Biologist Knows Are Wrong
0:03:53 "All of Life Is Cognitive"
0:06:58 Survival Is a Consequence, Not the Driver
0:09:32 How Cognition Could Come Before Natural Selection
0:14:03 Adaptation Isn't What Natural Selection Does
0:17:57 What a Sudoku Puzzle Teaches About Life
0:20:41 Masses, Springs and the Physics of Learning
0:23:45 When Springs Start to Remember
0:26:18 Learning as "Second-Order Falling"
0:28:56 No Selection, No Neural Nets, No Design
0:31:03 What "Memory" Actually Means
0:35:59 Gene Networks That Learn
0:38:13 An Ecosystem Solving Sudoku
0:43:22 Natural Selection "Isn't Doing Anything Clever"
0:52:08 No Amount of Sequencing Will Answer This
0:57:23 Will We Ever Model a Cell? "Bottom Up, Never"
1:01:23 Rethinking Medicine: Persuadable Systems
1:08:01 Agency, or Just Complex Biochemistry?
1:20:47 "I Don't Do Consciousness"
1:23:30 Three Things That Changed His Mind
1:25:39 Analytic Idealism and the Dream Argument
1:33:31 Why Doesn't Your Consciousness Blur Into the Chair?
1:35:47 McGilchrist and Why We're Blind to It
1:38:47 It Was Never About Survival

.....Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com