Project summary

The question of biological agency is this — do organisms make behavioral choices as individuals, or as manifestations of their lineage? The new startup Agential Biology Institute is seeking funding for a critical test of an agency-first view of life, thus defined. This essential question gates how we approach learning, intelligence, intentions, morality, AGI, and what we as humans are. The result dictates the validity of all AI future scenarios, therapeutic approaches to cancer and autoimmunity, and the potential ecological impact of humanity.

Currently, the life sciences treat organisms as molecular machines programmed by genes and shaped only by random variation and natural selection. Single cells are viewed as gene-driven systems, yet as an embryo complexifies in certain eukaryotes, a mind emerges and takes control of certain aspects of behavior. Is the mind only a gene-driven program? Mounting evidence strains this view: genomes underdetermine phenotypes; even single-celled organisms show adaptive plasticity and non-neural learning; and mind-driven behavior reshapes the variation, selection, and inheritance upon which evolution depends. Despite decades of anomalous findings, no coordinated program has been articulated to test whether agency or mind is a product of evolution or a necessary precondition for evolution. If it is a necessary cause, then there may be a non-equilibrium ordering mechanism that produces agential behavior in all cells. The inheritance-based view predicts that organisms are only constrained by prior selection to vary themselves primarily in directions that enhance their fitness as lineages, while an agency-first view predicts that under novel extreme stress they will primarily vary themselves to protect their resilience as individuals without regard to lineage-level fitness. We need funding to test this foundational question.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

An agency-first explanation of life has a well-defined set of empirical consequences. We have a specific laboratory protocol in C. elegans , a double-dissociation mutation accumulation design that will critically distinguish individual-level resilience from lineage-level adaptation to a novel extreme stress over several generations. This relatively simple lab experiment, replicated with several variations, can distinguish whether there is a prior mechanism of biological agency that acts independently from natural selection, a possibility that has only recently been imagined. This result would explain recent puzzling discoveries in epigenetic inheritance, regenerative bioelectricity, horizontal gene transfer, and rapid evolution.

We have the world's best laboratory in transgenerational studies in C. elegans , Oded Rechavi lab at Tel Aviv, signed up for the work. We need funding to organize the scientific community that makes the results legible to a broader audience. As founder of Agential Biology Insititute, I have been organizing the Agential Topics meeting for two years entirely on a volunteer basis, discussing how to empirically test this question with the world's best thinkers, including Michael Levin, Denis Noble, Stuart Kauffman, and Karl Friston, the world's most cited neuroscientist.

I can't continue this effort with no philanthropic funding. Your donation would have a tremendous multiplier effect, as it would free my time from earning money through my arborist business, and allow me to get this critical test done. This test would give us ample publicity and public support for this socially beneficial project.

How will this funding be used?

Personnel --- $40,000  President Charlie Munford: planning coordinator for PI convenings, protocols and preregistration; host and research for Agential Topics working meetings and Biological Relativity Conference planning. Communications Director Dina Rudick: video and podcast output.

Operational Research Costs --- $12,000  C. elegans pilot: strains, reagents, xenobiotic synthesis, assay consumables, computing, data management and open-data deposition.

Travel and Lodging --- $5,000  PI and Scientific Advisory Board travel to convenings; 9.6% of total budget, below the 10% cap.

Events --- $2000 Convention venue, local costs, virtual sessions, and recording/production of public content, honoraria for PIs' and SAB members' planning time.

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

ABI is co-founded by me, Charlie Munford, and Richard Watson, professor at University of Southampton. The Scientific Advisory Board includes Denis Noble FRS, Michael Levin, Stuart Kauffman, Marco Cavaglia, Steven Lehar, and Perry Marshall. Joana Xavier serves as Chief Bioengineer, Dina Rudick of Anthem Multimedia as Communications. Our Strategic Research Partners signed up for testing agential questions include Michael Levin, Oded Rechavi, Josh Bongard, Richard Watson, and Eloi Camprubi-Casas.

I have a background as an entrepreneur in tech and environmental fields. I founded sustainable food system companies Two Run Farm and Forest Free Range, LLC in New Orleans, LA. I helped to build and sell the world's first open-source voting system during Covid as first employee at VotingWorks.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

If this project fails it will be because the fundamental gene-based science of life is correct, and humans have no genuine biological agency. This would mean that we are in fact controlled in a fundamental way by our inherited DNA sequences, and that biological intelligence is a means to functional ends. This would spell disaster for the human species, since AGI would then be a functionalist invention that would be quite near at hand, and there would be no mechanism available to align its intentions with our own. In this case, the fundamental problems with all AI control scenarios laid out by Nick Bostrom would be insurmountable, in my view.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

Despite recruiting a very high-profile team and an impressive community of scholars, we have yet to receive a concrete donation from any source. I am still supporting this entire effort on my credit card.