The first time I saw slime mold was when I was a freshman at university and some friends dragged me into their biology lab to show me this amazing experiment in which individual colonies of slime mold aggregated to form amazing evolving three dimensional structures.
@@estehbread Except it's not, though. This video doesn't mention obstacle avoidance, it just very wrongly claims that the slime mold replicated a transit network. There were no obstacles, only targets. Be careful who call stupid, you fucking idiot extreme.
5:02 "solve the traveling salesman problem" That's not what the traveling salesman problem is! The TS problem has nothing to do with shortest paths. It deals with ordering a list of destinations in such a way that the total distance traveled is minimized, and these slime molds' connections have no temporal order.
@Isaac Travers Oscillating veins is a pretty good explanation. It reminded me of waves, and a wave is something which can propagate from A to B. The size of the wave is probably the information itself... The question is, what's the mathematics/algorithm for actually encoding/decoding information on top of this mechanism, but that would be probably just too much for a TED talk
By the end of the process the mold has the nutrients moving through itself with a maximum efficiency. It has solved its own traveling salesman problem. It can get signals and nutrients exactly everywhere it needs to be at maximum efficiency.
But it whole behavior is explained by basic biology. I think the intelligence definition must be updated... This mold is amazing and solve problems, it's intelligent? Solve problems growing, not using a thought process, it doesn't even had a nervous system so, I don't know. Solve problems is a weak definition of intelligence maybe.
@@Begsy2U Not well read on slime mold specifically, but many biological systems (even single cells) are able to set a sort of "clock" using molecular feedback mechanisms. Maybe the periodic cold blasts reinforce an existing system like this. Our own circadian rhythms for sleep are a more complicated example of this.
So, it can 'recognize itself' it appears. How so? I mean, can it distinguish from one continguous individual and another? If 2 separate slime molds are set next to each other, when they come into contact do they 'recognize other'? What about if you pile a bunch of slime molds on top of one another... do they merge into a single entity, or do they pursue their own independence?
Do you want a scientific answer? I can give you one! Cells have little signalling molecules, often sugars, when other cells come in contact, they can recognize it. Since slime molds are many nuclei in one membrane, there's likely only the same signaling molecules throughout the whole organism. When the mold touches itself it prods around the surface to see if this new thing is food but when it senses it's own signaling molecules it knows it's touching itself so the parts separate and look around in another direction. if you put two separate organisms together they will likely recognize this other organism as its own species (because of those signaling molecules) and may either leave eachother alone, or exchange a tiny bit of genetic material as crossover to continue the species through a little bit of extra biodiversity. It's kind of like sponges, which you should lookup yourself but i'll give you the abstract. if you take 3 sponges and blend them up together carefully then give it time, the sponge cells will separate out, sort themselves, and reform three fully functioning sponges that contain only the originals cells. Microbiology is absolutely fascinating!
I don't know why I'm only just stumbling across this, but as a civil engineer I can't imagine using this slime to create the most efficient transportation system then have to stand in front of the communities impacted by the route and defend the design... just imagine that public hearing: "the slime told me to do it!"
It must use Hydrophobic and/or Hydrophilic parts in its cell to resonate the flow, not sure how it would create these timed pulses though, also she mentioned the slime being 'aware' of the cold air fans, if it predicted time; well that would be pretty amazing. Maybe the events/pulses are governed by rate of cell-growth? Imagine if we could use more than one type of slime that didnt mix, we could then design complex PCB's automatically, or find a medium the slime could grow in all dimensions and wire up very complex 3d maps. Or what about electrically conductive slime we could use to generate circuits by just printing the nodes, the applications here are fascinating.
11:35 This Also mycelium looks like the internet, neural pathways in the brain, and dark matter of the universe. Its absolutely crazy how nature extrapolates successfully.
I say we cover Venus in oats and let this thing have at it for a few million years. Maybe it'll turn it into a world like Solaris. Then we can go from there. Sure, it might be a bit more complicated than that, but we have to start somewhere.
AnonEyeMouse Than we need more oats! So many that they neutralize the hydrochloric gas. We need to make Venus an oat world. Then we let this critter have at it and see what it evolves into as one giant, single cell. Think, a planet that is one single being in fluid communication with itself. Not ten billion multicellular beings, all fighting each other to survive, killing and taking advantage of trillions, quadrillion, quintillions of other life forms they feel superior too. All with their own individual central nervous systems? No, this could have worked out a lot better. An organism like this, if it can be considered such, actually, a single cell like this, this is the way it probably is on many other worlds. Except on them it's not reliant on other organisms for sustenance. It probably is, what we call here, a primary producer. With the ability to employ processes like photosynthesis, and who knows what else? The magnetism of it's world, the energy that would flow through it's atmosphere, the chemistry that is available all along where the oceanic and continental crusts combine. Maybe such a being has entirely enveloped a world like Venus, Earth, Mars or Jupiter. It could take in the entire world and through much the same processes of experimentation or natural selection, it will have become capable of everything that would be possible given the material and energy available to such a world. We, this system at work here, has a lot of potential. But there is a serious lack of fluid, free flowing, communication between each of us. A living system like this, that was the one and only thing, may have stagnated on millions of worlds, but it may have also worked so much better than than the living system here on Earth. I know the benefits of death, but I don't like being separate from everything else. I can only imagine many other sentient beings on this world, and elsewhere, feel something similar.
Adrian . That is millions of years, potentially, in the future. Pleanty of time for us to observe it's activity. Also, if we are capable of putting oats, or something like them, on a planet on the scale I am considering than we have also developed the technology to do that to begin with, which means we'd have hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions or more, ships in orbit around the planet that would constantly be producing this material (the oats or a similar source of chemical energy) and we would have similar technology and capabilities elsewhere. It would be a planet-sized petri dish and a chance to take a step back in evolution's history and run the simulation again, but without more than a single cell, a single organism that would be the whole show. Maybe, by the time the organism has begun turning to the planet and the sun for energy, if it did so, into itself, and ran out of new things to absorb, it may have developed some sort of method, a motive, a reason, a purpose. After self reflection it may then reach out to us. Maybe it would be better, for the people living at the time. After millions of years of growing up with this being and coming to understand it; it's functions and everything, more efficient, maybe we would opt to join it? To be a part of it. If you've not read the book, Solaris, it's a quick read. A few hours a day for a week, perfect for a vacation, but if you can't be bothered to read, than there have been a few movies put out about the idea. However, this, I feel, is more than just that. That book is a knock on the door. Opening this door and allowing the idea inside us, and us, entering into it, are another thing all together. We have the power to make the real future, the power to make our hopes and dreams play forth in a future present. There are so many ways the future of this universe will play out, and I just feel that, as important as communication is, it might be better for an organism that started as a single entity to continue that process. Rather than this attempt that we have of being one through wires, transmissions, languages, music, art, dance, codes and cuisine and the way we share all these things on this world with all these individual versions of ourselves that we're all disconnected from in the way that we are central to ourselves. You see where the problem lies? I don't know what to say to each of you to make you fully understand why this would be better for us all, because there would no longer be an us, there would be one and that one would be as centered as you are with your fingers and your eyes. Except _even more so_ because it wouldn't be cell to cell communication, it would be even more fluid than that. It could be. We're in control, for the most part, now. If we decide that we want this, as a whole, we can have it. Considering all the ways our species focuses on communication and the way it works for so many other life forms on this world, I think life, as a whole might be better off it it was just one thing. Of course, you could say we're that already. That the Earth is a whole and we just act as centers, like every animal is like a neuron. But that's just a comparison, this being is a much better example of a single entity, yet it can grow, repair and reshape itself for as long as the material and energy it takes in allows.
Also I feel that this spreading around until finding the shortest and optimal routes is kind of similar to Monte Carlo algorithm that can be applied to playing chess. You randomly test many routes by having the computer play against itself very fast, then you select the optimal route. So the cells firstly form a route web, then simplify it to a simple route web. It's complicated but each single cell doesn't need to react to cells beyond its vicinity. If you pour a cup of small steel balls to an area with a couple of magnetic solids, I guess the small balls will go everywhere at the very beginning but will quickly form the most efficient routes connecting the magnetic solids according to the magnetic fields between them.
Connect one end to rows of pixels representing an image. Connect the other end to a bunch of potential reward sources representing image tags. Train it to classify the images correctly. Then compare to ANNs to see which is more capable.
The labyrinthe experiment is intriguing. I suggest to set up controls, i.e. to carry out the same experiment with different organisms such as fungi and they preferred food to compare both behaviours.
I love this presentation for a few reasons. 1 I enjoy listening to eloquent speakers 2 the topic is so new and exciting 3 It kick starts an explosion of ideas. 4 it feels like Science for the people. 5 it leads me on to new ways of thinking 6 Artists and scientists and other disciplines all working together- this is the way for progress. 7 It makes me wonder if a similar kind of collaboration might be in dealing with the next pandemic. 8 I wonder if slime like spreading can provide a model for virus spreading or even if covid's spread could be teach us more just as the slime has.
i just watched a story on NOVA about slime mold.the first thing that came to mind was GLIOBLASTOMA and how it spread and had veins and liked sugar. i wonder if research on slime mold could come up with a cure for cancer?
3:24 the shortest route is reinforced by the nutrients from the food, thus it stays. Is that intelligence? If every single cell has the simple "program" to tend to go where the nutrients are most heavily transported and shared between the cells, the whole bunch should show the characteristic of congregating towards the shortest route. My guess.
That's where the intelligent part comes in. The organsm sends scouts, exploratory shoots and only when it finds food that information is transmitted through the entire cell. That is part of the quorum sensing abilities in very primitive organism. That's why it is called pseudo-intelligent, except I prefer the term quasi-intelligent. IMO. this internal sensing ability is facilitated by micro-tubules, the internal information carriers and distributors in all eukaryote organisms
J Zachary replicated(APPROXIMATELY) the network but had none of the associated problems of building through an urban and geological dependent real world situation.
3:47 I do believe that since there's day and night and it's always 24 hours, the living cells that have been living on earth for who knows how long do have some sort of internal "clock" mechanism in them.. it's why there's SA Node in our hearts that regulates heartbeats. How do cells feel and sense time intervals and control themselves according to time intervals? I don't know. But they do.
If you're inspired by this. By the way, you can buy this slime mould/"Physarum polycephalum" on eBay UK for personal growing/use/hobby etc. It's great!
for the tokyo example, isnt the straight line path the most efficient? I do not believe it can model the rail system. What about elevation, terrain and other considerations a real city has to face?
All life forms react to stimuli in their environment. The fact that the chemical signals sent within and among cells - and in fact all particles and the energy they carry - can be thought of as informational is well known throughout the scientific community. The fact that slime molds succeed in maneuvering through their environment in response to the stimuli of food, moisture, temperature, and their own chemical signals does not warrant the classification of the organism as 'intelligent' in the way that the term would be used to discriminate between biological phenomena in general. In fact these are some of the most basic facets that separate living from non-living matter; all organisms do this.
Still, the fact that it can pass on information to another slime mold that has never experienced what slime mold #1 has is pretty impressive. Oh yeah, and they have 720 distinct sexes. I've never heard of other single cell creatures doing all this.
Mind blown. Stuff like this makes me want to go back to school and this time, actually learn something. The pokemon generation doesn't know how lucky they are to be young and living in today's information rich era.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news; the information era you're referencing has been going full swing since the 80s. And the lions share of the people with the problem interfacing with it are the ones who grew up without it. The only reason someone has for being misinformed today is being indoctrinated, or lazy. There is unfortunately no more middle ground.
5:29- How does this thing work? Simple- it doesn't need a central nervous system, it doesn't need a brain. Our individual human autonomy is just an illusion because we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, making us merely the imagination of ourselves. Physarum polycephalum can learn, it can remember, it can solve problems and can make decisions by uploading information into the cosmic overmind- this process is called morphic resonance. Great video, very interesting, Thank you.
4:38 The two nodes at the upper left corner, there's a route that extends from the left node and it goes west a little bit before it goes southeast, which is not necessary, because there's NOT another node on the west of that node.. the cells should have corrected that they didn't, indicating that they have only "individual" intelligence not "collective" intelligence maybe?
Inspiring ted talk, thank you, the applications such as the variety of TSP problems and subspecies behavioural differences, the slime moulds are so cute and helpful, hope people look after them well, maybe they think the same as a snails antennas think, and try to avoid dangers so people should look after them as our friendly companions, their intelligence is probably still under appreciated, and we should learn together from them, as they teach us to think better, thank you for loving one of the many miracles of nature
well i'm not good at biology but can we imagine it not as a group me people but as a group of some organic stuff in our brain and they honestly cooperate together perfectly every day?
I love slime mold 😍 I’ve never thought about it from the artistic point of view, amazing talk. But what’s always funny is english pronunciation of latin scientific names :D
If I remember right, the oats are where the stations would be on a map of this size, that's the point of the experiment. Watching what this thing would do given this pattern and comparing it to the human equivalent of how the problem was solved, which is the actual subway plan. Ommitting this for a small "wow" effect does disservice to the talk...
I must find that feature length slime mould documentary! I first came across this fascinating organism when up ridiculously early one morning watching The Open University back when it put out it's videos on bbc tv and I've been hooked ever since. Does anyone know what the feature length documentary is called or who made it?
ive had mine on me for 3 years oddly enough it is hardly visible anymore and as long as i keep a pair of socks on it keeps my feet free from dead skin and odor and tends to stay down there. quite recently i developed these mosquito sized literally clear jellyfish looking masses that are much faster than their previous form but the strangest thing is they flick their tongue or tail like a snake would but their movements are oddly unnoticeable at all but i do not pet animals anymore. the strangest things permissible to mention are i hardly have to dry off after a shower and ive held my breath for many seconds trying to get rid of the hiccups that came with the jelly worms and im a smoker. if my phone hadnt rang i dont think i needed to take a breath again but its a habit. a favorite cigarette trick is i pull the cherry off and crush it with my thumb and index finger to put it out with no burning at all. i ve thrown up a black golfball marble but i dont know what it followed to do it again. theres more but it has to do with a complex ability to "think big" but im still a learner in that area
What she said at the ending was great: there is one, singular mind, a common designer that desings how a branching works and we see that same branching pattern in lightning, blood vessels, neural network and slime molds. This is incredible.
Fractionization has many applications for it allows reasonable resource utilization in the process of being alive. Space exploration has employed similar conportment inherently. An umbilical chord, earth, space module, etc, allows further exploration until a goal is reached space or the moon as an example. The building of a civilization that collects the totality of a star's energy output will do the same as the slime mold allocates food. It is just so natural. Mathematicians get to understand this by numbers and pures formulas while the mold can not however....lol
One thing we should add to these experiments is to add a rejection agent. Something that the slim doesn’t like and wants to avoid. Coz some networks gut things to avoid like rivers etc.
(Coming into a thread doubtless long entirely dead but, what the heck!) This particular collective (assuming this one to still be in existence) sounds incredible in a number of ways and I must say that I'm extremely impressed, in yet another number of ways, lol! (Not that I feel that we should want to 'let go' of our individual selves to become some sort of collective Borg. Slime mold and more complex life has obviously evolved differently and has different survival characteristics, needs and capabilities resulting from this.) I also hope that this collective effort toward at least the attempt at understanding this life-form will in some manner affect and help direct general society in counteracting the peculiar notion being propagated by some that tech tools are somehow 'better than life and intended to replace it', when we (ideally) create tools (including complex ones) to make life better - at least the saner among us do. While others prefer to weaponize everything, to therefore hazard everything. But what we 'see', we each interpret in our own individual/as officially-accepted and authoritatively-stated fashions - which, if inaccurate, may solidify into permanently auto-self-justified error never really re-explored, as an 'already-known, iron-clad' quantity/objective. (This, of course, being one of the many wonderful things about this collective - the broad scale of individual information-sharing and perspective.) These organisms avoid barriers, as has been established in the case of salt lines laid down; how can the purpose of travelling slime mold be determined specifically as 'recognizing itself' in stopping on self-contact to instead branch out in new food-seeking directions, rather than it simply moving around a barrier in food-seeking? The slime mold concentrates around food sources as a survival trait. Without that basic ability, it could not survive in the manner that it does. We must always bear in mind that our perceptions and interpretations are coloured - and limited - by our own experiences, expectations/desires and preconceptions, and that other explanations may be possible, including theories where basic survival traits are concerned regarding such ancient organisms. The Burgess Shale organisms were instructive also as to where our assumptions can lead us off the factual trail, which must be expected when venturing into uncertain territory. That said, this is indeed a fascinating organism. If we see everything in terms of 'tech uses' and human endeavours, we may miss/misinterpret what could be the most fascinating and perhaps important-to-us aspects of living organisms/historical biological development - at a time when life itself is being presented by some as disposable, in favour of technological imitations of it, said to be more efficient (at certain tasks) and therefore 'better', despite being unable to 'feel' anything or, in the case of AI, being necessarily psychopathic in terms of incapacity for the essential human species-survival characteristics of such as empathy and ethics. The appearance of life is not the same as life. This pathology mainly being successfully promoted because short-term maximized personal profit and control at all cost to others, by some also in the pursuit of a fantasized unliving immortality, is the goal for too many blinded to reality by dollar signs, and enforced by a relative few having already sucked up enough wealth to effectively purchase whole governments. This sort of amazing collective could potentially help to provide a counterbalance from the people to this, as well as the vast resource of information accumulating from this variety of human observations and minds.
Fascinating study indeed. Basically the slime moulds breath is its intelligence. But thats something impossible to grasp from the domain of human logic. Sure we can study all this and come up with applications on how to use these understandings to create devices which will make the problems more complex through our own relentless problem solving. Thought will never understand brainless intelligence. Perhaps that’s as far any thoughtful research will go . There lies the great gate, the gateless gate
So we send a drone to observe an unknown territory, render a 3D printed scaled down version. Place an oat where we want to go and the slime where we are. In one day we will know the most effective places to settle and traverse.
I'm curious about whether or not they have thought about using slimeball to solve some health problems that occur within our bodies, like heart disease, liver disease etc. Have they done a study where they put a disease deliver and the slime mold in the same petri dish?
The first time I saw slime mold was when I was a freshman at university and some friends dragged me into their biology lab to show me this amazing experiment in which individual colonies of slime mold aggregated to form amazing evolving three dimensional structures.
How brilliant!!
Three dimensional??? Oyyy that can be applied to so many things, maybe even improving how computer interiors are arranged???
Are you telling me that we should leave our road planning to slime mold? I like that idea.
More like: Let nature itself solve complicated problems.. nature is the best computer.
No. The shortest path is not a complicated problem. Are you two stupid?
@@UnitSe7en It's not about the path length, but the obstacles during the path. Are YOU stupid?
@@estehbread Except it's not, though. This video doesn't mention obstacle avoidance, it just very wrongly claims that the slime mold replicated a transit network. There were no obstacles, only targets. Be careful who call stupid, you fucking idiot extreme.
Ya
It's great that we have the most complicated machine in the universe in our skulls so we can mimic simple slime molds in order to solve our problems.
No The might be even greater stuff out in the universe to have bigger brain Then us they might not even have a brain and be smarter than us
Late but yes. Abstract thinking and adaptability are our greatest gifts but also our greatest curses as a species
There’s mold growing on this comment now.
@@Diggyace14 sometimes I hope to speak with the ghost of our past. It doesn't usually work though
@@puffpuffpass3214 don’t give up !
5:02 "solve the traveling salesman problem" That's not what the traveling salesman problem is! The TS problem has nothing to do with shortest paths. It deals with ordering a list of destinations in such a way that the total distance traveled is minimized, and these slime molds' connections have no temporal order.
TTTTTHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANKKKKKK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think you missed her point but sure xD
@Isaac Travers Oscillating veins is a pretty good explanation. It reminded me of waves, and a wave is something which can propagate from A to B. The size of the wave is probably the information itself... The question is, what's the mathematics/algorithm for actually encoding/decoding information on top of this mechanism, but that would be probably just too much for a TED talk
By the end of the process the mold has the nutrients moving through itself with a maximum efficiency. It has solved its own traveling salesman problem. It can get signals and nutrients exactly everywhere it needs to be at maximum efficiency.
An experiment can be designed to solve TS problem, this shows us the capability/ability not the actual solution.
For me this is a another example of consciousness running through all lifeforms. We don't develop consciousness, we tune in to it.
I agree, our brain is the tool that us to access it more
Lol
I agree
But it whole behavior is explained by basic biology. I think the intelligence definition must be updated... This mold is amazing and solve problems, it's intelligent? Solve problems growing, not using a thought process, it doesn't even had a nervous system so, I don't know.
Solve problems is a weak definition of intelligence maybe.
@@camilocalabrano3798 There's nothing basic about biology or the ability to dynamically solve complex problems in a real world environment though.
it is a runaway fractal reaction with the motivation of food finding.
also avoidance of light, cold and dryness.
What are your thoughts on the anticipation of the cold? Genuinely interested.
@@Begsy2U Not well read on slime mold specifically, but many biological systems (even single cells) are able to set a sort of "clock" using molecular feedback mechanisms. Maybe the periodic cold blasts reinforce an existing system like this. Our own circadian rhythms for sleep are a more complicated example of this.
I think this talk is fantastic. It was really interesting and i really enjoyed it!
So, it can 'recognize itself' it appears. How so? I mean, can it distinguish from one continguous individual and another? If 2 separate slime molds are set next to each other, when they come into contact do they 'recognize other'? What about if you pile a bunch of slime molds on top of one another... do they merge into a single entity, or do they pursue their own independence?
When they meet they do a fist bump and exchange gang signs
hahahaha!
Dustin Rodriguez They recognise its not part of itself. They do not "mix" together but try and avoid each other.
Do you want a scientific answer? I can give you one! Cells have little signalling molecules, often sugars, when other cells come in contact, they can recognize it. Since slime molds are many nuclei in one membrane, there's likely only the same signaling molecules throughout the whole organism. When the mold touches itself it prods around the surface to see if this new thing is food but when it senses it's own signaling molecules it knows it's touching itself so the parts separate and look around in another direction. if you put two separate organisms together they will likely recognize this other organism as its own species (because of those signaling molecules) and may either leave eachother alone, or exchange a tiny bit of genetic material as crossover to continue the species through a little bit of extra biodiversity. It's kind of like sponges, which you should lookup yourself but i'll give you the abstract. if you take 3 sponges and blend them up together carefully then give it time, the sponge cells will separate out, sort themselves, and reform three fully functioning sponges that contain only the originals cells. Microbiology is absolutely fascinating!
I don't know why I'm only just stumbling across this, but as a civil engineer I can't imagine using this slime to create the most efficient transportation system then have to stand in front of the communities impacted by the route and defend the design... just imagine that public hearing: "the slime told me to do it!"
you can replicate a more realistic scenario by using cool air or heated light to design places where the slime SHOULDNT go😊
It must use Hydrophobic and/or Hydrophilic parts in its cell to resonate the flow, not sure how it would create these timed pulses though, also she mentioned the slime being 'aware' of the cold air fans, if it predicted time; well that would be pretty amazing. Maybe the events/pulses are governed by rate of cell-growth?
Imagine if we could use more than one type of slime that didnt mix, we could then design complex PCB's automatically, or find a medium the slime could grow in all dimensions and wire up very complex 3d maps.
Or what about electrically conductive slime we could use to generate circuits by just printing the nodes, the applications here are fascinating.
So when my ex-girlfriend called me a slime ball, it was kind of a compliment? :)
Maybe 'slime tree' ... any relation to Tim Dowd of CT?
No, not even in this case because that would imply that you are primitively intelligent.
We all get those "kind of compliments" sometimes... So I guess yes,... or else I'd skydive from my high pride without parachute... XD
lol !
UA-cam is the best for comments
11:35 This
Also mycelium looks like the internet, neural pathways in the brain, and dark matter of the universe.
Its absolutely crazy how nature extrapolates successfully.
I say we cover Venus in oats and let this thing have at it for a few million years. Maybe it'll turn it into a world like Solaris. Then we can go from there.
Sure, it might be a bit more complicated than that, but we have to start somewhere.
Oats would burn on venus.
AnonEyeMouse Than we need more oats! So many that they neutralize the hydrochloric gas. We need to make Venus an oat world. Then we let this critter have at it and see what it evolves into as one giant, single cell. Think, a planet that is one single being in fluid communication with itself. Not ten billion multicellular beings, all fighting each other to survive, killing and taking advantage of trillions, quadrillion, quintillions of other life forms they feel superior too. All with their own individual central nervous systems? No, this could have worked out a lot better. An organism like this, if it can be considered such, actually, a single cell like this, this is the way it probably is on many other worlds. Except on them it's not reliant on other organisms for sustenance. It probably is, what we call here, a primary producer. With the ability to employ processes like photosynthesis, and who knows what else? The magnetism of it's world, the energy that would flow through it's atmosphere, the chemistry that is available all along where the oceanic and continental crusts combine. Maybe such a being has entirely enveloped a world like Venus, Earth, Mars or Jupiter. It could take in the entire world and through much the same processes of experimentation or natural selection, it will have become capable of everything that would be possible given the material and energy available to such a world.
We, this system at work here, has a lot of potential. But there is a serious lack of fluid, free flowing, communication between each of us. A living system like this, that was the one and only thing, may have stagnated on millions of worlds, but it may have also worked so much better than than the living system here on Earth.
I know the benefits of death, but I don't like being separate from everything else. I can only imagine many other sentient beings on this world, and elsewhere, feel something similar.
The whole of Venus will become one interconnected organism. Eventually it'll expand, looking for new food resources on Venus' neighbouring planets!
Adrian . That is millions of years, potentially, in the future. Pleanty of time for us to observe it's activity. Also, if we are capable of putting oats, or something like them, on a planet on the scale I am considering than we have also developed the technology to do that to begin with, which means we'd have hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions or more, ships in orbit around the planet that would constantly be producing this material (the oats or a similar source of chemical energy) and we would have similar technology and capabilities elsewhere.
It would be a planet-sized petri dish and a chance to take a step back in evolution's history and run the simulation again, but without more than a single cell, a single organism that would be the whole show.
Maybe, by the time the organism has begun turning to the planet and the sun for energy, if it did so, into itself, and ran out of new things to absorb, it may have developed some sort of method, a motive, a reason, a purpose. After self reflection it may then reach out to us. Maybe it would be better, for the people living at the time. After millions of years of growing up with this being and coming to understand it; it's functions and everything, more efficient, maybe we would opt to join it? To be a part of it.
If you've not read the book, Solaris, it's a quick read. A few hours a day for a week, perfect for a vacation, but if you can't be bothered to read, than there have been a few movies put out about the idea.
However, this, I feel, is more than just that. That book is a knock on the door. Opening this door and allowing the idea inside us, and us, entering into it, are another thing all together.
We have the power to make the real future, the power to make our hopes and dreams play forth in a future present.
There are so many ways the future of this universe will play out, and I just feel that, as important as communication is, it might be better for an organism that started as a single entity to continue that process. Rather than this attempt that we have of being one through wires, transmissions, languages, music, art, dance, codes and cuisine and the way we share all these things on this world with all these individual versions of ourselves that we're all disconnected from in the way that we are central to ourselves.
You see where the problem lies? I don't know what to say to each of you to make you fully understand why this would be better for us all, because there would no longer be an us, there would be one and that one would be as centered as you are with your fingers and your eyes. Except _even more so_ because it wouldn't be cell to cell communication, it would be even more fluid than that.
It could be.
We're in control, for the most part, now. If we decide that we want this, as a whole, we can have it.
Considering all the ways our species focuses on communication and the way it works for so many other life forms on this world, I think life, as a whole might be better off it it was just one thing.
Of course, you could say we're that already. That the Earth is a whole and we just act as centers, like every animal is like a neuron. But that's just a comparison, this being is a much better example of a single entity, yet it can grow, repair and reshape itself for as long as the material and energy it takes in allows.
Well you've persuaded me, I'm on bored with the idea. I'm actually SAYING you should bring this idea to real attention.
Also I feel that this spreading around until finding the shortest and optimal routes is kind of similar to Monte Carlo algorithm that can be applied to playing chess. You randomly test many routes by having the computer play against itself very fast, then you select the optimal route. So the cells firstly form a route web, then simplify it to a simple route web. It's complicated but each single cell doesn't need to react to cells beyond its vicinity. If you pour a cup of small steel balls to an area with a couple of magnetic solids, I guess the small balls will go everywhere at the very beginning but will quickly form the most efficient routes connecting the magnetic solids according to the magnetic fields between them.
I've long been fascinated with slime molds! Ever since I read about it in my AP bio text book
Connect one end to rows of pixels representing an image.
Connect the other end to a bunch of potential reward sources representing image tags.
Train it to classify the images correctly.
Then compare to ANNs to see which is more capable.
The labyrinthe experiment is intriguing. I suggest to set up controls, i.e. to carry out the same experiment with different organisms such as fungi and they preferred food to compare both behaviours.
I love this presentation for a few reasons.
1 I enjoy listening to eloquent speakers
2 the topic is so new and exciting
3 It kick starts an explosion of ideas.
4 it feels like Science for the people.
5 it leads me on to new ways of thinking
6 Artists and scientists and other disciplines all working together- this is the way for progress.
7 It makes me wonder if a similar kind of collaboration might be in dealing with the next pandemic.
8 I wonder if slime like spreading can provide a model for virus spreading or even if covid's spread could be teach us more just as the slime has.
I'm very interested in the slime working in an environment without gravity.
i just watched a story on NOVA about slime mold.the first thing that came to mind was GLIOBLASTOMA and how it spread and had veins and liked sugar. i wonder if research on slime mold could come up with a cure for cancer?
makes me remind of fractals in nature :)
Fascinating organism - thanks for sharing!
Beautiful picture
I always thought mold was an ugly, useless entity, it's good to learn there's a whole world there
3:24 the shortest route is reinforced by the nutrients from the food, thus it stays. Is that intelligence? If every single cell has the simple "program" to tend to go where the nutrients are most heavily transported and shared between the cells, the whole bunch should show the characteristic of congregating towards the shortest route. My guess.
That's where the intelligent part comes in. The organsm sends scouts, exploratory shoots and only when it finds food that information is transmitted through the entire cell. That is part of the quorum sensing abilities in very primitive organism. That's why it is called pseudo-intelligent, except I prefer the term quasi-intelligent.
IMO. this internal sensing ability is facilitated by micro-tubules, the internal information carriers and distributors in all eukaryote organisms
when artist starts talking about science
4:43 The slime mold had replicated the Tokyo transport network!? From a bag of undifferentiated protoplasm.
+Herbert Miller right... took 40 engineers several yrs of planning... slime mold... a day or two... lots we could learn
J Zachary replicated(APPROXIMATELY) the network but had none of the associated problems of building through an urban and geological dependent real world situation.
DorsetMushroomHunter if we can make a more gigantic slime mold it would have passed the building not going through it.
3:47 I do believe that since there's day and night and it's always 24 hours, the living cells that have been living on earth for who knows how long do have some sort of internal "clock" mechanism in them.. it's why there's SA Node in our hearts that regulates heartbeats. How do cells feel and sense time intervals and control themselves according to time intervals? I don't know. But they do.
6:51 lmao the poor lady
British people have been learning from Parliament for years!
If you're inspired by this.
By the way, you can buy this slime mould/"Physarum polycephalum" on eBay UK for personal growing/use/hobby etc.
It's great!
one thing the slime mold certainly has ( apart fron the obvious intelligence)- extreme patience
"The Slime Mould Collective"
Thanks, now I'm imagining slime mould with a borg ocular implant.
Amazing video,thank you for sharing!!
for the tokyo example, isnt the straight line path the most efficient? I do not believe it can model the rail system. What about elevation, terrain and other considerations a real city has to face?
All life forms react to stimuli in their environment. The fact that the chemical signals sent within and among cells - and in fact all particles and the energy they carry - can be thought of as informational is well known throughout the scientific community.
The fact that slime molds succeed in maneuvering through their environment in response to the stimuli of food, moisture, temperature, and their own chemical signals does not warrant the classification of the organism as 'intelligent' in the way that the term would be used to discriminate between biological phenomena in general. In fact these are some of the most basic facets that separate living from non-living matter; all organisms do this.
vincent stowell I know, but I don't know why the slime mold fascinates me.
Still, the fact that it can pass on information to another slime mold that has never experienced what slime mold #1 has is pretty impressive. Oh yeah, and they have 720 distinct sexes. I've never heard of other single cell creatures doing all this.
they classically conditioned slime mold!!! mind blown
Mind blown. Stuff like this makes me want to go back to school and this time, actually learn something.
The pokemon generation doesn't know how lucky they are to be young and living in today's information rich era.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news; the information era you're referencing has been going full swing since the 80s.
And the lions share of the people with the problem interfacing with it are the ones who grew up without it. The only reason someone has for being misinformed today is being indoctrinated, or lazy. There is unfortunately no more middle ground.
I started studying Mycelium and it’s biology. Very interesting specimens
FREE THE MOLD
5:29- How does this thing work? Simple- it doesn't need a central nervous system, it doesn't need a brain. Our individual human autonomy is just an illusion because we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, making us merely the imagination of ourselves. Physarum polycephalum can learn, it can remember, it can solve problems and can make decisions by uploading information into the cosmic overmind- this process is called morphic resonance. Great video, very interesting, Thank you.
Mycelium also has this ability. I don't know if it is to the same degree though.
4:38 The two nodes at the upper left corner, there's a route that extends from the left node and it goes west a little bit before it goes southeast, which is not necessary, because there's NOT another node on the west of that node.. the cells should have corrected that they didn't, indicating that they have only "individual" intelligence not "collective" intelligence maybe?
1 1 maybe they leave one cell at the edge furthers from the other neighbouring cell and take a while to turn
The gasps at 4:44 are so powerful-
Slime mold was used to build metro infrastructure in Japan to find the shortest possible distance among the routes.
not used to build it but replicated its network almost identically when fed the famous oat flakes(representing Japanese cities' locations)
Fk, this is beyond amazing.
OMG THIS MOHO IS THE FUTURE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELIGIENCE
in the movie 'The Blob' (1988) that thing didn't like the cold either :D
The people of Rotterdam were highly cooperative, especially when given beer. Haha that's too true!
Inspiring ted talk, thank you, the applications such as the variety of TSP problems and subspecies behavioural differences, the slime moulds are so cute and helpful, hope people look after them well, maybe they think the same as a snails antennas think, and try to avoid dangers so people should look after them as our friendly companions, their intelligence is probably still under appreciated, and we should learn together from them, as they teach us to think better, thank you for loving one of the many miracles of nature
When we go looking for intelligent life on other planets, we may well completely miss the mark
well i'm not good at biology but can we imagine it not as a group me people but as a group of some organic stuff in our brain and they honestly cooperate together perfectly every day?
If the world was a republic, life would be better
Thanks when I want to rule a new planet I know what to bring along
Very cool single cell organism.
Saw this on PBS, a few times. I really like the "Tokyoates Network". Nice framework for A.P.P. studies.Heh, "Pandora's Aquarium".
Wicked!! Absolutely fantastic!! I want one!!!
I love slime mold 😍 I’ve never thought about it from the artistic point of view, amazing talk. But what’s always funny is english pronunciation of latin scientific names :D
4:40 wouldn't this have more to do with the pattern in which the oats were spread?
If I remember right, the oats are where the stations would be on a map of this size, that's the point of the experiment. Watching what this thing would do given this pattern and comparing it to the human equivalent of how the problem was solved, which is the actual subway plan. Ommitting this for a small "wow" effect does disservice to the talk...
This video starts at 2:59
awesome! thanks for the upload!
I want my own slime mold 😭
It's like 30 bucks online haha buy one
@@kelvinkonkel3351 is in my backyard
Who knew mold could be so interesting?
Lol: "...it's not a mold..."
Where can I buy this slime?
@᪶ ᪶ google Slime Mold Growing Kit
@᪶ ᪶ i did not
@᪶ ᪶ thanks :)
Nice presentation well done
Always wondered what happened to the kid from ‘About A Boy’
Is it me or did that last slide of the mould look like the Egyptian Ankh?
What ever you follow with true passion, will pay
I must find that feature length slime mould documentary!
I first came across this fascinating organism when up ridiculously early one morning watching The Open University back when it put out it's videos on bbc tv and I've been hooked ever since.
Does anyone know what the feature length documentary is called or who made it?
ive had mine on me for 3 years oddly enough it is hardly visible anymore and as long as i keep a pair of socks on it keeps my feet free from dead skin and odor and tends to stay down there. quite recently i developed these mosquito sized literally clear jellyfish looking masses that are much faster than their previous form but the strangest thing is they flick their tongue or tail like a snake would but their movements are oddly unnoticeable at all but i do not pet animals anymore. the strangest things permissible to mention are i hardly have to dry off after a shower and ive held my breath for many seconds trying to get rid of the hiccups that came with the jelly worms and im a smoker. if my phone hadnt rang i dont think i needed to take a breath again but its a habit. a favorite cigarette trick is i pull the cherry off and crush it with my thumb and index finger to put it out with no burning at all. i ve thrown up a black golfball marble but i dont know what it followed to do it again. theres more but it has to do with a complex ability to "think big" but im still a learner in that area
What she said at the ending was great: there is one, singular mind, a common designer that desings how a branching works and we see that same branching pattern in lightning, blood vessels, neural network and slime molds. This is incredible.
Later, it turned out the slime mold is actually Odo.
Fractionization has many applications for it allows reasonable resource utilization in the process of being alive. Space exploration has employed similar conportment inherently. An umbilical chord, earth, space module, etc, allows further exploration until a goal is reached space or the moon as an example. The building of a civilization that collects the totality of a star's energy output will do the same as the slime mold allocates food. It is just so natural. Mathematicians get to understand this by numbers and pures formulas while the mold can not however....lol
Inn amazing video. This slime mould is quiet a fascinating creature.
A 2D organism successfully figuring out the shortest route for a 3D world. Amazing.
“I know we had to bulldoze 9001 people’s houses to build this road but the slime mould told us to do it.”
Awesome I got this in my aquariums at the moment :)
One thing we should add to these experiments is to add a rejection agent. Something that the slim doesn’t like and wants to avoid. Coz some networks gut things to avoid like rivers etc.
Where It's consciousness lies is The Universal/Multiversal Pulse.
This is the design of the Devine Designer the creator of man life and universe. You will find mind boggling facts in every creation if you observe.
That's some smart slime like in Ghostbusters 2!
According to my conviction all structures in our universe are formed after the principle "way of the least resistance".
what about other slime molds, like other members in the physarum species?
(Coming into a thread doubtless long entirely dead but, what the heck!) This particular collective (assuming this one to still be in existence) sounds incredible in a number of ways and I must say that I'm extremely impressed, in yet another number of ways, lol! (Not that I feel that we should want to 'let go' of our individual selves to become some sort of collective Borg. Slime mold and more complex life has obviously evolved differently and has different survival characteristics, needs and capabilities resulting from this.) I also hope that this collective effort toward at least the attempt at understanding this life-form will in some manner affect and help direct general society in counteracting the peculiar notion being propagated by some that tech tools are somehow 'better than life and intended to replace it', when we (ideally) create tools (including complex ones) to make life better - at least the saner among us do. While others prefer to weaponize everything, to therefore hazard everything. But what we 'see', we each interpret in our own individual/as officially-accepted and authoritatively-stated fashions - which, if inaccurate, may solidify into permanently auto-self-justified error never really re-explored, as an 'already-known, iron-clad' quantity/objective. (This, of course, being one of the many wonderful things about this collective - the broad scale of individual information-sharing and perspective.)
These organisms avoid barriers, as has been established in the case of salt lines laid down; how can the purpose of travelling slime mold be determined specifically as 'recognizing itself' in stopping on self-contact to instead branch out in new food-seeking directions, rather than it simply moving around a barrier in food-seeking? The slime mold concentrates around food sources as a survival trait. Without that basic ability, it could not survive in the manner that it does. We must always bear in mind that our perceptions and interpretations are coloured - and limited - by our own experiences, expectations/desires and preconceptions, and that other explanations may be possible, including theories where basic survival traits are concerned regarding such ancient organisms. The Burgess Shale organisms were instructive also as to where our assumptions can lead us off the factual trail, which must be expected when venturing into uncertain territory. That said, this is indeed a fascinating organism.
If we see everything in terms of 'tech uses' and human endeavours, we may miss/misinterpret what could be the most fascinating and perhaps important-to-us aspects of living organisms/historical biological development - at a time when life itself is being presented by some as disposable, in favour of technological imitations of it, said to be more efficient (at certain tasks) and therefore 'better', despite being unable to 'feel' anything or, in the case of AI, being necessarily psychopathic in terms of incapacity for the essential human species-survival characteristics of such as empathy and ethics. The appearance of life is not the same as life. This pathology mainly being successfully promoted because short-term maximized personal profit and control at all cost to others, by some also in the pursuit of a fantasized unliving immortality, is the goal for too many blinded to reality by dollar signs, and enforced by a relative few having already sucked up enough wealth to effectively purchase whole governments. This sort of amazing collective could potentially help to provide a counterbalance from the people to this, as well as the vast resource of information accumulating from this variety of human observations and minds.
Delia Smith is really branching out these days.
Thanks! That cracked me up!
Vexed Films who is delia smith?
Slime mold is basically the living equivalent to the graph theory.
Anyone know where one can see the documentary she made?
Fascinating study indeed. Basically the slime moulds breath is its intelligence. But thats something impossible to grasp from the domain of human logic.
Sure we can study all this and come up with applications on how to use these understandings to create devices which will make the problems more complex through our own relentless problem solving. Thought will never understand brainless intelligence. Perhaps that’s as far any thoughtful research will go . There lies the great gate, the gateless gate
So we send a drone to observe an unknown territory, render a 3D printed scaled down version. Place an oat where we want to go and the slime where we are. In one day we will know the most effective places to settle and traverse.
very interesting
I don’t quite understand why it doesn’t split - if it has equidistance between two food sources why does it not decide to split
I'm curious about whether or not they have thought about using slimeball to solve some health problems that occur within our bodies, like heart disease, liver disease etc. Have they done a study where they put a disease deliver and the slime mold in the same petri dish?
Now I am worried about Dinosaurs invading us from another Dimension.
Super Mario Brothers
looks like this slime mold has terraforming potential..
Love it!!
I want one!!
Incredible
How does it react to unuasual amount of radiation?
I smell a sci-fi blockbuster coming
Could we put this in are brain to make us smarter or fix problems ?
Why does the mold strengthen pathways for sending nutrients back to the "core". Does fungus have a centralized stomach the nutrients need to reach?
There is no core, it optimised a path between two or more food sources. The stomach must be distributed between all the cells connected.
FOR THE FLOOD