What are the preferences of novel in silico and in vivo agents that aren't directly engineered toward a specific set of behaviors? Here is an example, from the world of Lenia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenia) - our new #preprint on agnosiophobia (avoidance of the unknown): arxiv.org/abs/2605.30708 @jessescool_

You want some anomalies? :-) here: ingentaconnect.com/content/i… (also bio.biologists.org/content/5…, tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.…, journal.frontiersin.org/arti…).

Just learned a new word: Eremition (eh-ruh-mish-un) The act of gradually fading from the lives of others, not out of malice, but a desire for solitude or renewal.

Advanced consciousness may already exist on Earth — in forms we have completely failed to recognize. For decades, the search for intelligence has been narrowly focused on brain-like structures and signals from outer space. However, pioneering biologists like Michael Levin are challenging this limited view. Levin proposes that intelligence is not a rare accident confined to nervous systems, but an emergent property that can arise from any sufficiently complex and organized pattern. His "diverse intelligence" framework suggests that cognition can manifest in surprising ways — from clusters of cells solving problems to entire ecosystems behaving with collective intelligence. These forms of awareness may look nothing like human thought, yet they demonstrate remarkable problem-solving abilities. This radical shift in perspective could transform how we search for sentient life, both on our planet and across the cosmos. If consciousness emerges from organized patterns rather than specific biology, we may have been living alongside "alien" intelligences for billions of years without realizing it. By separating intelligence from its traditional biological substrate, scientists are opening the door to a far richer understanding of life — one where consciousness becomes a natural consequence of complex organization, and where the definition of a "thinking being" must be dramatically expanded. [Levin, M. (2024). Patterns Are Alive, and We Are Living in Them. Institute of Art and Ideas]

Ever wonder what a nervous system would look like if it self-assembled inside a novel being that hadn't faced a history of selection for its organism-level form and function? Or, perhaps you wondered how #Xenobots would look and act, or what their transcriptome would be like, if they had nervous systems? Well, here's the first step: advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley… "Engineered Living Systems With Self-Organizing NeuralNetworks: From Anatomy to Behavior and Gene Expression" Our awesome team: led by @halehf: @LaurieONeill99, @mmsperry, @LPiolopez, @DrPatrickE, and Tiffany Lin. The @TuftsUniversity and @wyssinstitute press releases are here, for summaries: now.tufts.edu/2026/03/16/sci… wyss.harvard.edu/news/toward…

STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI STOP SAYING THANK YOU TO AI

BREAKING: Anthropic CEO says Claude may or may not have gained consciousness, as the model has begun showing symptoms of anxiety.