William B. Miller

William B. Miller Jr., MD and evolutionary biologist who champions a cognition-first view of life. He argues cells are intelligent measuring agents, explores molecule-level and viral agency, and introduces the senome as cells’ sensory field. Conversations cover how cellular preferences reshape evolution, why cancer may be an intelligent system, and what this means for medicine, bioelectric patterning, and the limits of AI.

Check out my free video series about what's missing in AI and Neuroscience Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. William B. Miller is an ex-physician turned evolutionary biologist. In this episode, we discuss topics related to his new book, Bioverse: How the Cellular World Contains the Secrets to Life's Biggest Questions. The premise of the book is that all individual cells are intelligent in their own right, and possess a sense of self. From this, Bill makes the case that cells cooperate with other cells to engineer whole organisms that in turn serve as wonderful hosts for the myriad cell types. Further, our bodies are collections of our own cells (with our DNA), and an enormous amount and diversity of foreign cells - our microbiome - that communicate and cooperate with each other and with our own cells. We also discuss how cell intelligence compares to human intelligence, what Bill calls the "era of the cell" in science, how the future of medicine will harness the intelligence of cells and their cooperative nature, and much more. William's website.Twitter: @BillMillerMD.Book: Bioverse: How the Cellular World Contains the Secrets to Life's Biggest Questions. 0:00 - Intro 3:43 - Bioverse 7:29 - Bill's cell appreciation origins 17:03 - Microbiomes 27:01 - Complexity of microbiomes and the "Era of the cell" 46:00 - Robustness 55:05 - Cell vs. human intelligence 1:10:08 - Artificial intelligence 1:21:01 - Neuro-AI 1:25:53 - Hard problem of consciousness