Tharin Pillay in Time Magazine:
“I’m not used to getting nasty emails from a holy man,” says Professor Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University.
Levin was presenting his research to a group of engineers interested in spiritual matters in India, arguing that properties like “mind” and “intelligence” can be observed even in cellular systems, and that they exist on a spectrum. His audience loved it. But when he pushed further—arguing that the same properties emerge everywhere, including in computers—the reception shifted. “Dumb machines” and “dead matter” could not have these properties, members of his audience insisted. “A lot of people who are otherwise spiritual and compassionate find that idea very disturbing,” he says. Hence, the angry emails.
More here.
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