Michael Levin: preference

Transcript context

…What advice would you give to scientists, PhD students, grad students, young scientists that are trying to explore the space of ideas given the very unconventional, non-standard, unique set of ideas you’ve explored in your life and career? Let’s see. Well, the first and most important thing I’ve learned is not to take too much advice, and so I don’t like to give too much advice. But I do have one technique that I’ve found very useful, and this isn’t for everybody, but there’s a specific demographic. There’s a lot of unconventional people reach out to me, and I try to respond and help them and so on. This is a technique that I think is useful for some people. How do I describe it? You need to… It’s the act of bifurcating your mind, and you need to have two different regions. One region is the practical region of impact. In other words, how do I get my idea out into the world so that other people recognize it? What should I say? What are people hearing? What are they able to hear? How do I pivot it? What parts do I not talk about? Which journal am I going to publish this in? Is it time now? Do I wait two years for this? Like, all the practical stuff that is all about how it looks from the outside, right? All the stuff that I can’t say this, or I should say this differently, or this is going to freak people out, or this is odd. You know, this community wants to hear this so I can pivot it this way. Like, all that practical stuff. It’s got to be there; otherwise, you’re not going to be in a position to follow up any of your ideas. You’re not going to have a career. You’re not going to have resources to do anything. But it’s very important that that can’t be the only thing. You need another part of your mind that ignores all that shit completely, because this other part of your mind has to be pure. It has to be I don’t care what anybody else thinks about this. I don’t care whether this is publishable, describable. I don’t care if anybody gets it. I don’t care if anybody thinks it’s stupid. This is, this is what I, what I think, and why, and, and give it space to, to sort of grow, right? And if you keep the … If you try to mush them … If you try to mush them together, I, I found that impossible because, because the practical stuff poisons the other stuff. If you’re, if you’re too much … If you’re too much on the creative end, you can be an amazing thinker, it’s just nothing ever materializes. But if you’re very practical, it tends to poison the other stuff because the more you think about how to present things so that other people get it, it, it constrains and it- and it bends how you start to think. And, you know what I tell my students and others is there’s two kinds of advice. There’s very practical, specific things, like somebody says, “Well, you forgot this control,” or, “This isn’t the right method,” or, “You shouldn’t be …” That stuff is gold, and you should take that very seriously, and you should use it to par- to improve your craft, right? And that’s, like, super important. the right method,” or, “You shouldn’t be …” That stuff is gold, and you should take that very seriously, and you should use it to par- to improve your craft, right? And that’s, like, super important. But then there’s the meta advice where people are like, “That’s not a good way to think about it. Don’t work on this. This isn’t …” That, that stuff is, is, is garbage. And, and even very successful people often give very constraining, terrible advice. Like, one of my, one of my reviewers in the paper years ago said … I, I love this. The Freudian slip. He, he said he was gonna give me constrictive criticism, right? And that’s exactly what he gave me.…

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