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Lee Cronin: Origin of Life, Aliens, Complexity, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #269


small model | large model

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The following is a conversation with Lee Cronin,
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a chemist from University of Glasgow,
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who's one of the most fascinating, brilliant,
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out of the box thinking scientists I've ever spoken to.
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This episode was recorded more than two weeks ago,
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so the war in Ukraine is not mentioned.
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I have been spending a lot of time each day
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talking to people in Ukraine and Russia.
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I have family, friends, colleagues,
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and loved ones in both countries.
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I will try to release a solo episode on this war,
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but I've been failing to find the words
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that make sense of it for myself and others,
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so I may not.
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I ask for your understanding no matter which path I take.
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Most of my time is spent trying to help
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as much as I can privately.
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I'm talking to people who are suffering,
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who are angry, afraid.
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When I returned to this conversation with Lee,
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I couldn't help but smile.
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He's a beautiful, brilliant, and hilarious human being.
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He's basically a human manifestation
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of the mad scientist Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty.
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I thought about quitting this podcast for a time,
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but for now at least, I'll keep going.
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I love people too much.
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You, the listener.
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I meet folks on the street or when I run.
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You say a few kind words about the podcast
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and we talk about life, the small things,
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and the big things.
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All of it gives me hope.
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People are just amazing.
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You are amazing.
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I ask for your support, wisdom, and patience
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as I keep going with this silly little podcast,
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including through some difficult conversations
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and hopefully many fascinating and fun ones too.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Lee Cronin.
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How do you think life originated on Earth
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and what insights does that give us about life?
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If we go back to the origin of Earth
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and you think about maybe 4.7, 4.6, 4.5 billion years ago,
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the planet was quite hot.
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There was a limited number of minerals.
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There was some carbon, some water, and I think
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that maybe it's a really simple set of chemistry
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that we really don't understand.
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So that means you've got a finite number of elements
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that are going to react very simply with one another
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and out of that mess comes a cell.
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So literally sand turns into cells
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and it seems to happen quick.
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So what I think I can say with some degree of,
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I think not certainty, but curiosity,
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genuine curiosity is that life happened fast.
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Yeah, so when we say fast,
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this is a pretty surprising fact
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and maybe you can actually correct me and elaborate,
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but it seems like most, like 70 or 80% of the time
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that Earth has been around, there's been life on it,
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like some very significant percentage.
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So when you say fast, like the slow part
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is from single cell or from bacteria
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to something more complicated, organisms.
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It seems like most of the time that Earth has been around,
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it's been single cell or like very basic organisms,
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like a couple billion years.
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But yeah, you're right.
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That's really, I recently kind of revisited our history
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and saw this and I was just looking at the timeline.
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Wait a minute, like how did life just spring up so quickly?
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Like really quickly.
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That makes me think that it really wanted to.
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Like put another way, it's very easy for life to spring.
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Yeah, I agree, I think it's much more inevitable
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and I think I try to kind of, not provoke,
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but try and push chemists to think about,
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because chemists are central to this problem, right?
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Of understanding the origin of life on Earth, at least,
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because we're made of chemistry.
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But I wonder if the origin of life on a planet,
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or sorry, the emergence of life on the planet is as,
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common as the formation of a star.
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And if you start framing it in that way,
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it allows you to then look at the universe
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slightly differently, because,
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and we can get into this, I think, in quite some detail,
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but I think, to come back to your question,
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I have little idea of how life got started,
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but I know it was simple.
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And I know that the process of selection
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had to occur before the, by the end of the day,
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the selection had to occur before the biology
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was established, so that selection built the framework
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from which life kind of grew in complexity
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and capability and functionality and autonomy.
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And I think these are all really important words
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that we can unpack over the next while.
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Can you say all the words again?
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So you said selection, so natural selection,
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the original A, B testing.
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And so, and then complexity,
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and then the degree of autonomy and sophistication,
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because I think that people misunderstand what life is.
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Some people say that life is a cell,
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and some people that say that life is a virus
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or life is an on off switch.
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I don't think it's that,
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life is the universe developing a memory.
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And the laws of physics and the way,
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well, there are no laws of physics.
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It's just memory free stuff, right?
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So there's only a finite number of ways
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you can arrange the fundamental particles to do things.
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Life is the universe developing a memory.
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So it's like sewing a piece of art slowly,
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and then you can look back at it.
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So, so there's a stickiness to life.
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It's like universe doing stuff.
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And when you say memory, it's like there's a stickiness
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to a bunch of the stuff that's building together.
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So like you can, in a stable way,
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like trace back the complexity
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and that tells a coherent story.
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Yeah, and I think, yeah.
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Okay, that's, by the way, very poetic and beautiful.
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Life is the universe developing a memory.
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Okay, and then there's autonomy,
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you said complexity we'll talk about,
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but it's a really interesting idea
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that selection preceded biology.
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Yeah, I think.
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So first of all, what is chemistry?
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Like does sand still count as chemistry?
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Sure, I mean, as a chemist, a card carrying chemist,
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if I'm allowed a card, I don't know.
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Don't know what I am most days, actually.
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What is a card made of?
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That's what I'm thinking.
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What's the chemical composition of the card?
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So what is chemistry?
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Well, chemistry is the thing that happens
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when you bring electrons together and you form bonds.
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So bonds, well, I say to people
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when they talk about life elsewhere,
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and I just say, well, there's bonds, there's hope,
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because bonds allow you to get heterogeneity.
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They allow you to record those memories,
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or at least on Earth.
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You could imagine a Stanislav Lemtri world
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where you might have life emerging
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or intelligence emerging before life.
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That may be something like Solaris or something,
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but to get to selection,
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if you can form, if atoms can combine and form bonds,
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those bonds, those atoms can bond to different elements
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and those molecules will have different identities
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and interact with each other differently,
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and then you can start to have some degree of causation
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or interaction and then selection and then existence.
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And then you go up the kind of the path of complexity.
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And so at least on Earth, as we know it,
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there is a sufficient pool of available chemicals
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to start searching that combinatorial space of bonds.
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So, okay, this is a really interesting question.
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Let's lay it out.
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So bonds, almost like cards.
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We say there's bonds, there is life,
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there's intelligence, there's consciousness.
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And what you just made me realize is
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that those can emerge, let's put bonds aside,
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those can emerge in any order.
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That's really brilliant.
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So intelligence can come before life.
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It's like panpsychists believe that consciousness,
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I guess, comes before life and before intelligence.
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So consciousness permeates all matter,
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it's some kind of fabric of reality.
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Okay, so like within this framework,
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you can kind of arrange everything,
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but you need to have the bonds
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that precedes everything else.
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Oh, and the other thing is selection.
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So like the mechanism of selection, that could proceed.
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See, couldn't that proceed bonds too?
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Whatever the hell selection is.
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So I would say that there is an elegant order to it.
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Bonds allow selection, allows the emergence of life,
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allows the emergence of multicellularity
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and then more information processing,
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building state machines all the way up.
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However, you could imagine a situation if you had,
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I don't know, a neutron star or a sun
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or what a ferromagnetic loops interacting with one another
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and these oscillators building state machines
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and these state machines reading something
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out in the environment.
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Over time, these state machines would be able
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to literally record what happened in the past
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and sense what's going on in the present
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and imagine the future.
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However, I don't think it's ever gonna be
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within a human comprehension, that type of life.
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I wouldn't count it out because whenever you say,
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I know in science, whenever I say something's impossible,
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I then wake up the next day and say,
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no, that's actually wrong.
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I mean, there are some limits, of course.
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I don't see myself traveling fast and light anytime soon,
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but...
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Eric Weinstein says that's possible,
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so he will say you're wrong.
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Sure, but I'm an experimentalist as well,
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so one of my, I have two superpowers.
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My stupidity, and I don't mean that as a,
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I'm like absolutely completely witless,
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but I mean my ability to kind of just start again
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and ask the question and then do it with an experiment.
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I always wanted to be a theoretician growing up,
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but I just didn't have the intellectual capability,
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but I was able to think of experiments in my head
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I could then do in my lab or when I was a child outside
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and then those experiments in my head
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and then outside reinforced one another.
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So I think that's a very good way of kind of
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grounding the science, right?
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Well, that's a nice way to think about theoreticians
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is they're just people who run experiments in their head.
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I mean, that's exactly what Einstein did, right?
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But you were also capable of doing that in the head,
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in your head, inside your head and in the real world
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and the connection between the two
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is when you first discovered your superpower stupidity.
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I like it.
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Yes, there you go.
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What's the second superpower?
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Your accent or is that?
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Well, I don't know.
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I am genuinely curious.
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So I have, like everybody, ego problems,
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but my curiosity is bigger than my ego.
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So as long as that happens, I can cope.
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That's awesome.
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That is so powerful.
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You're just dropping some powerful lines.
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So curiosity is bigger than ego.
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That's something I have to think about
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because you always struggle about the role of ego in life
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and that's so nice to think about,
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don't think about the size of ego,
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the absolute size of ego.
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Think about the relative size of ego
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to the other horses pulling at you.
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If the curiosity one is bigger,
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then ego will do just fine and make you fun to talk to.
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Anyway, so those are the two superpowers.
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How do those connect to natural selection
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or selection and bonds and, I forgot already,
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life and consciousness?
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So we're going back to selection in the universe
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and origin of life on Earth.
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I mean, selection, I'm convinced that selection
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is a force in the universe.
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Not a fundamental force, but it is a directing force
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because existence, although existence appears
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to be the default, the existence of what,
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why does, and we can get to this later, I think,
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but it's amazing that discrete things exist
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and you see this cup.
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It's not the sexiest cup in the world,
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but it's pretty functional.
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This cup, the complexity of this cup
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isn't just in the object.
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It is literally the lineage of people making cups
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and recognizing that, seeing that in their head,
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making an abstraction of a cup,
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and then making a different one.
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So I wonder how many billions of cups
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have come before this one,
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and that's the process of selection and existence,
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and the only reason the cup is still used
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is quite useful.
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I like the handle.
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It's convenient, so I don't die.
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I keep hydration, and so I think we are missing
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something fundamental in the universe about selection,
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and I think what biology is is a selection amplifier,
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and that this is where autonomy comes in,
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and actually I think that how humanity is gonna,
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humans and autonomous robots,
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or whatever we're gonna call them in the future,
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will supercharge that even further.
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So selection is happening in the universe,
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but if you look in the asteroid belt,
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selection, if objects are being kicked in and out
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of the asteroid belt, those trajectories are quite complex.
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You don't really look at that as productive selection
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because it's not doing anything to improve its function,
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but is it?
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The asteroid belt has existed for some time,
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so there is some selection going on,
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but the functionality is somewhat limited.
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On Earth, at the formation of Earth,
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interaction of chemicals and molecules in the environment
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gave selection, and then things could happen,
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because you could think about, in chemistry,
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we could have an infinite number of reactions happen,
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but all the reactions that are allowed to happen
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don't happen, why?
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Because there are energy barriers.
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So there must be some things called catalysts out there,
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or there are bits of minerals that,
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when two molecules get together in that mineral,
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it lowers the energy barrier for the reaction,
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and so the reaction is promoted.
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So suddenly you get one reaction over another
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series of possibilities occurring
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that makes a particular molecule,
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and this keeps happening in steps,
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and before you know it,
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almost these waves as discrete reactions work together,
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and you start to build a machinery
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that is run by existence.
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So as you go forward in time,
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the fact that the molecules, the bonds are getting,
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there are more bonds in a molecule,
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there's more function,
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there's more capability for this molecule
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to interact with other molecules, to redirect them,
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it's like a series of little,
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and I don't want to use this term too much,
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but it's almost thinking about
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the simplest von Neumann constructor,
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that's the simplest molecule
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that could build a more complicated molecule
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to build a more complicated molecule,
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and before you know it,
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when that more complicated molecule
link |
00:15:11.420
can act on the causal chain that's produced itself
link |
00:15:14.740
and change it,
link |
00:15:15.900
suddenly you start to get towards some kind of autonomy,
link |
00:15:18.460
and that's where life, I think, emerges in earnest.
link |
00:15:21.820
Every single word in the past few paragraphs,
link |
00:15:24.700
let's break those apart,
link |
00:15:26.100
but who's von Neumann, what's a constructor,
link |
00:15:30.900
the closing of the loop that you're talking about,
link |
00:15:35.900
the molecule that starts becoming,
link |
00:15:37.940
I think you said like the smallest von Neumann constructor,
link |
00:15:41.820
the smallest, the minimal,
link |
00:15:43.300
so what do all those things mean,
link |
00:15:45.420
and what is, what are we supposed to imagine
link |
00:15:47.980
when we think about the smallest von Neumann constructor?
link |
00:15:51.260
So John von Neumann is a real hero,
link |
00:15:54.220
actually, not just me, but many people, I think,
link |
00:15:56.060
computer science and physics.
link |
00:15:58.580
He was an incredible intellect
link |
00:16:01.500
who probably solved a lot of the problems
link |
00:16:03.020
that we're working on today
link |
00:16:04.140
and just forgot to write them down.
link |
00:16:05.540
Yeah.
link |
00:16:06.540
And I'm not sure if it's John von Neumann or Johnny,
link |
00:16:09.460
as I think his friends called him,
link |
00:16:10.780
but I think he was Hungarian, a mathematician,
link |
00:16:14.820
came to the US,
link |
00:16:16.180
and basically was involved in the Manhattan Project
link |
00:16:19.620
in developing computation
link |
00:16:21.420
and came up with all sorts of ideas,
link |
00:16:24.300
and I think he was one of the first people
link |
00:16:25.700
to come up with cellular automata.
link |
00:16:27.980
And, but he...
link |
00:16:28.820
Oh, really?
link |
00:16:29.660
I didn't know this little fact.
link |
00:16:30.500
I think so, I think so.
link |
00:16:31.860
And I think...
link |
00:16:32.700
Well, anyway, if he didn't come up with it,
link |
00:16:34.860
he probably did come up with it and didn't write it down.
link |
00:16:37.260
There was a couple of people who did at the same time,
link |
00:16:38.820
and then Conway obviously took it on,
link |
00:16:40.140
and then Wolfram loves CAs.
link |
00:16:42.620
There is his fabric of the universe.
link |
00:16:44.740
And what I think he imagined was that he wasn't satisfied,
link |
00:16:48.340
and this may be incorrect recollection,
link |
00:16:51.380
but a lot of what I say is gonna be kind of
link |
00:16:55.060
just way out of my...
link |
00:16:56.140
You're, Lee, you're just part of the universe
link |
00:17:00.380
creating its memory, designing...
link |
00:17:02.300
Exactly, yeah, rewriting history.
link |
00:17:04.180
Rewriting history.
link |
00:17:05.020
Exactly, imperfectly.
link |
00:17:06.380
So, but what I mean is I think he liked this idea
link |
00:17:09.100
of thinking about how could a Turing machine
link |
00:17:14.300
literally build itself without a Turing machine, right?
link |
00:17:16.780
It's like literally how did state machines emerge?
link |
00:17:19.620
And I think that von Neumann constructors,
link |
00:17:21.660
he wanted to conceive of a minimal thing,
link |
00:17:24.780
autonomous, that could build itself.
link |
00:17:28.420
And what would those rules look like in the world?
link |
00:17:30.740
And that's what a von Neumann kind of constructor
link |
00:17:32.820
looked like, like it's a minimal hypothetical object
link |
00:17:35.500
that could build itself, self replicate.
link |
00:17:37.900
And I'm really fascinated by that
link |
00:17:41.340
because I think that although it's probably not
link |
00:17:45.100
exactly what happened, it's a nice model
link |
00:17:47.980
because as chemists, if we could go back
link |
00:17:49.540
to the origin of life and think about
link |
00:17:51.980
what is a minimal machine that can get structured randomly?
link |
00:17:55.980
So like with no prime mover, with no architect,
link |
00:18:01.260
it assembles through just existence.
link |
00:18:03.620
So random stuff bumping in together
link |
00:18:06.220
and you make this first molecule.
link |
00:18:07.860
So you have molecule A and molecule A interacts
link |
00:18:11.540
with another random molecule B and they get together
link |
00:18:14.100
and they realize by working together
link |
00:18:15.540
they can make more of themselves,
link |
00:18:17.620
but then they realize they can mutate
link |
00:18:19.580
so they can make AB prime.
link |
00:18:21.460
So AB prime is different to AB
link |
00:18:24.100
and then AB prime can then act back
link |
00:18:27.500
where A and B are being created
link |
00:18:29.700
and slightly nudge that causal chain
link |
00:18:32.980
and make AB prime more evolvable or learn more.
link |
00:18:38.820
So that's the closing the loop part.
link |
00:18:40.580
Closing the loop part, got it.
link |
00:18:42.060
It feels like the mutation part is not that difficult.
link |
00:18:46.940
It feels like the difficult part
link |
00:18:48.140
is just creating a copy of yourself as step one.
link |
00:18:50.900
That seems like one of the greatest inventions
link |
00:18:56.220
in the history of the universe is the first molecule
link |
00:19:00.580
that figured out, holy shit, I can create a copy of myself.
link |
00:19:04.660
How hard is that?
link |
00:19:06.980
I think it's really, really easy.
link |
00:19:09.780
Okay, I did not expect that.
link |
00:19:11.020
I think it's really, really easy.
link |
00:19:12.660
Well, let's take a step back.
link |
00:19:15.180
I think replicating molecules are rare,
link |
00:19:19.260
but if you say, I think I was saying on,
link |
00:19:22.060
I probably got into trouble on Twitter the other day,
link |
00:19:23.900
so I was trying to work this.
link |
00:19:24.940
There's about more than 18 mils of water in there.
link |
00:19:27.180
So one mole of water, 6.022 times 10 to the 23 molecules.
link |
00:19:31.700
That's about the number of stars in universe, I think,
link |
00:19:33.940
of the order.
link |
00:19:34.780
So there's three universe worth, but between one and.
link |
00:19:37.140
Somebody corrected you on Twitter?
link |
00:19:38.460
Yeah, as if, I'm always being corrected.
link |
00:19:40.860
It's a great, but there's a lot of molecules in the water.
link |
00:19:44.100
And so there's a lot of, so although it's for you and me,
link |
00:19:47.700
really hard to conceive of,
link |
00:19:49.540
if existence is not the default for a long period of time,
link |
00:19:55.220
because what happens is the molecules get degraded.
link |
00:19:57.820
So much of the possibilities in the universe
link |
00:20:00.060
are just broken back into atoms.
link |
00:20:01.860
So you have this kind of destruction of the molecules
link |
00:20:06.020
for our chemical reactions.
link |
00:20:07.700
So you only need one or two molecules
link |
00:20:09.980
to become good at copying themselves
link |
00:20:12.260
for them suddenly to then take resources in the pool
link |
00:20:15.060
and start to grow.
link |
00:20:16.380
And so then replication actually over time,
link |
00:20:18.940
when you have bonds, I think is much simpler, much easier.
link |
00:20:23.020
And I even found this in my lab years ago.
link |
00:20:25.540
I had one of the reasons I started doing inorganic chemistry
link |
00:20:29.460
and making rust, making a bit of rust based on
link |
00:20:32.500
a thing called molybdenum, molybdenum oxide
link |
00:20:35.020
is this molybdenum oxide, very simple.
link |
00:20:38.620
But when you add acid to it and some electrons,
link |
00:20:40.940
they make these molecules you just cannot possibly imagine
link |
00:20:44.700
would be constructed big, gigantic wheels
link |
00:20:46.980
of 154 molybdenum atoms in a wheel
link |
00:20:50.180
or I cost a dodecahedron 132 molybdenum atoms
link |
00:20:54.380
all in the same pot.
link |
00:20:55.460
And I realized when I,
link |
00:20:56.940
and I just finished experiments two years ago,
link |
00:20:58.780
I've just published a couple of papers on this,
link |
00:21:00.940
that they're actually, there is a random small molecule
link |
00:21:05.100
with 12 atoms in it that can form randomly,
link |
00:21:07.860
but it happens to template its own production.
link |
00:21:10.860
And then by chance, it templates the ring,
link |
00:21:14.060
just an accident, just like just an absolute accident.
link |
00:21:17.300
And that ring also helps make the small 12 mer.
link |
00:21:21.980
And so you have what's called an autocatalytic set
link |
00:21:25.500
where A makes B and B helps make A and vice versa.
link |
00:21:32.860
And you then make this loop.
link |
00:21:34.580
So it's a bit like these, they all work in synergy
link |
00:21:39.580
to make this chain of events that grow.
link |
00:21:43.500
And it doesn't take a very sophisticated model
link |
00:21:46.620
to show that if you have these objects are competing
link |
00:21:50.540
and then collaborating to help one another build,
link |
00:21:53.300
they just grow out of the mess.
link |
00:21:55.020
And although they seem improbable,
link |
00:21:56.980
they are improbable, in fact, impossible in one step.
link |
00:22:01.580
There's multiple steps.
link |
00:22:02.820
This is when the blind people look
link |
00:22:04.300
at the blind watchmaker argument
link |
00:22:06.660
and you talk about how could a watch spontaneously emerge?
link |
00:22:10.820
Well, it doesn't.
link |
00:22:11.740
It's a lineage of watches and cruder devices
link |
00:22:14.500
that are bootstrapped onto one another.
link |
00:22:19.140
Right, so it's very improbable,
link |
00:22:23.220
but once you get that little discovery
link |
00:22:25.380
like with the wheel and fire,
link |
00:22:29.540
it just explodes because it's so successful, it explodes.
link |
00:22:34.540
It explodes, it's basically selection.
link |
00:22:37.780
So this templating mechanism that allows you
link |
00:22:40.500
to have a little like blueprint for yourself,
link |
00:22:43.460
how you go through different procedures
link |
00:22:45.100
is to build copies of yourself.
link |
00:22:49.500
So in chemistry somehow it's possible to imagine
link |
00:22:52.940
that that kind of thing is easy to spring up.
link |
00:22:57.020
In more complex organisms, it feels like a different thing
link |
00:22:59.820
and much more complicated.
link |
00:23:00.860
Like we're having like multiple abstractions
link |
00:23:04.340
of the birds and the bees conversation here,
link |
00:23:06.820
but with human, I'm sorry, with complex organisms,
link |
00:23:10.220
it feels like difficult to have reproduction to,
link |
00:23:15.940
that's gonna get clipped out.
link |
00:23:17.140
I'm gonna make fun of that.
link |
00:23:18.540
It's difficult to develop this idea
link |
00:23:23.860
of making copies of yourself or no.
link |
00:23:26.860
Because that seems like a magical idea for life to,
link |
00:23:30.260
but wow, that feels like very necessary
link |
00:23:35.500
for what selection is, for what evolution is.
link |
00:23:37.700
But then if selection precedes all of this,
link |
00:23:40.620
then maybe these are just like echoes
link |
00:23:43.420
of the selecting mechanism at different scales.
link |
00:23:47.340
Yeah, that's exactly it.
link |
00:23:48.420
So selection is the default in the universe if you want to.
link |
00:23:52.020
And what happens is that life,
link |
00:23:54.780
the solution that life has got on earth,
link |
00:23:57.660
life on earth, biology on earth is unique to earth.
link |
00:24:01.300
We can talk about that.
link |
00:24:03.220
And that was really hard fought for,
link |
00:24:05.740
but that is a solution that works on earth,
link |
00:24:08.660
the ribosome, the fundamental machine
link |
00:24:10.620
that is responsible for every cell on earth
link |
00:24:15.180
of whatever, wherever it is in the kingdom of life.
link |
00:24:18.500
That is an incredibly complex object,
link |
00:24:21.180
but it was evolved over time
link |
00:24:22.900
and it wasn't involved in a vacuum.
link |
00:24:24.620
And I think that once we understand that selection
link |
00:24:27.980
can occur without the ribosome,
link |
00:24:32.700
but what the ribosome does,
link |
00:24:34.180
it's a phase transition in replication.
link |
00:24:37.220
And I think that that, and also technology
link |
00:24:39.100
that is probably much easier to get to than we think.
link |
00:24:45.780
Why do you put the ribosome as a central part
link |
00:24:50.820
of living organisms on earth?
link |
00:24:52.380
It basically is a combination
link |
00:24:53.700
of two different polymer systems, so RNA and peptides.
link |
00:24:57.260
So the RNA world, if you like,
link |
00:24:59.500
gets transmitted and builds proteins
link |
00:25:02.420
and the proteins are responsible for all the catalysis.
link |
00:25:05.220
The majority of the catalysis goes on in the cell.
link |
00:25:07.300
No ribosome, no proteins, no decoding, no evolution.
link |
00:25:11.460
So ribosome is looking at the action.
link |
00:25:14.340
You don't put like the RNA itself as the critical thing,
link |
00:25:17.780
like information, you put action as the most important thing.
link |
00:25:20.780
I think the actual molecules
link |
00:25:22.420
that we have in biology right now are entirely contingent
link |
00:25:24.780
on the history of life on earth.
link |
00:25:27.340
There are so many possible solutions.
link |
00:25:29.020
And this is where chemistry got itself into,
link |
00:25:31.140
origin of life chemistry gets itself into a bit of a trap.
link |
00:25:33.460
Yeah, let me interrupt you there.
link |
00:25:35.260
You've tweeted, you're gonna get,
link |
00:25:36.580
I'm gonna cite your tweets like it's Shakespeare, okay?
link |
00:25:40.520
It's surprising you haven't gotten canceled on Twitter yet.
link |
00:25:43.740
Your brilliance once again saves you.
link |
00:25:46.660
I'm just kidding.
link |
00:25:49.020
You like to have a little bit of fun on Twitter.
link |
00:25:51.300
You've tweeted that quote,
link |
00:25:52.780
origin of life research is a scam.
link |
00:25:56.860
So if this is Shakespeare, can we analyze this word?
link |
00:26:00.180
Why is the origin of life research a scam?
link |
00:26:02.300
Aren't you kind of doing origin of life research?
link |
00:26:06.760
Okay, it was tongue in cheek, but yeah,
link |
00:26:08.180
I think, and I meant it as tongue in cheek.
link |
00:26:12.460
I'm not doing the origin of life research.
link |
00:26:14.460
I'm trying to make artificial life.
link |
00:26:16.820
And I also want to bound the likelihood
link |
00:26:19.700
of the origin of life on earth,
link |
00:26:21.340
but more importantly to find origin of life elsewhere.
link |
00:26:23.820
But let me directly address the tweet.
link |
00:26:26.020
There are many, many good chemists out there
link |
00:26:27.920
doing origin of life research, but I want to nudge them.
link |
00:26:31.500
And I think they're brilliant.
link |
00:26:32.340
Like there's no question the chemistry they are doing,
link |
00:26:36.620
the motivation is great.
link |
00:26:38.780
So what I meant by that tweet is saying
link |
00:26:40.580
that maybe they're making assumptions about saying,
link |
00:26:43.000
if only I could make this particular type of molecule,
link |
00:26:47.440
say this RNA molecule or this phosphodiester
link |
00:26:52.100
or this other molecule,
link |
00:26:54.140
it's gonna somehow unlock the origin of life.
link |
00:26:57.820
And I think that origin of life has been looking at this
link |
00:27:00.580
for a very long time.
link |
00:27:01.980
And whilst I think it's brilliant to work out
link |
00:27:05.700
how you can get to those molecules,
link |
00:27:08.220
I think that chemistry and chemists doing origin of life
link |
00:27:11.420
could be nudged into doing something even more profound.
link |
00:27:15.940
And so the argument I'm making,
link |
00:27:18.460
it's a bit like right now,
link |
00:27:20.260
let's say, I don't know, the first Tesla
link |
00:27:22.940
that makes its way to, I don't know,
link |
00:27:25.820
into a new country in the world.
link |
00:27:27.060
Let's say there's a country X
link |
00:27:29.660
that has never had a Tesla before
link |
00:27:31.180
and they get the Tesla.
link |
00:27:32.100
Russia.
link |
00:27:32.940
And they take the Tesla,
link |
00:27:34.260
and what they do is they take the Tesla apart
link |
00:27:35.660
and say, we want to find the origin of cars in the universe
link |
00:27:38.420
and say, okay, how did this form and how did this form?
link |
00:27:41.140
And they just randomly keep making
link |
00:27:42.620
till they make the door, they make the wheel,
link |
00:27:44.360
they make the steering column and all this stuff.
link |
00:27:46.220
And they say, well, that's the route.
link |
00:27:48.140
That's the way cars emerged on earth.
link |
00:27:50.440
But actually we know that there's a causal chain of cars
link |
00:27:53.340
going right back to Henry Ford and the horse and carriage.
link |
00:27:56.100
And before that, maybe, you know,
link |
00:27:58.820
where people were using wheels.
link |
00:28:00.340
And I think that obsession with the identities
link |
00:28:04.340
that we see in biology right now
link |
00:28:06.140
are giving us a false sense of security
link |
00:28:09.260
about what we're looking for.
link |
00:28:10.960
And I think that origin of life chemistry is in danger
link |
00:28:17.000
of not making the progress that it deserves
link |
00:28:20.740
because the chemists are doing this.
link |
00:28:22.780
The field is exploding right now.
link |
00:28:24.260
There's amazing people out there, young and old doing this.
link |
00:28:27.540
And there's deservedly so more money going in.
link |
00:28:30.340
You know, I used to complain
link |
00:28:31.860
there's more money being spent searching for the Higgs boson
link |
00:28:34.100
that we know exists than the origin of life.
link |
00:28:36.300
You know, why is that?
link |
00:28:37.460
The origin, we understand the origin of life.
link |
00:28:39.780
We're gonna actually work out what life is.
link |
00:28:42.000
And we're gonna be at a bound,
link |
00:28:43.180
the likelihood of finding life elsewhere in the universe.
link |
00:28:45.680
And most important for us,
link |
00:28:47.020
we are gonna know or have a good idea
link |
00:28:49.500
of what the future of humanity looks like.
link |
00:28:51.700
You know, we need to understand
link |
00:28:53.420
that although we're precious,
link |
00:28:54.960
we're not the only life forms in the universe.
link |
00:28:57.140
Or that's my very strong impression.
link |
00:28:58.700
I have no data for that.
link |
00:29:00.100
It's just right now a belief.
link |
00:29:02.180
And I want to turn that belief
link |
00:29:03.380
into a more than a belief by experimentation.
link |
00:29:07.180
But coming back to the scam,
link |
00:29:09.480
the scam is if we just make this RNA,
link |
00:29:11.660
we've got this fluke event, we know how that's simple.
link |
00:29:17.540
Let's make this phosphodiester,
link |
00:29:19.180
or let's make ATP or ADP.
link |
00:29:21.220
We've got that part nailed.
link |
00:29:22.420
Let's now make this other molecule, another molecule.
link |
00:29:24.420
And how many molecules are gonna be enough?
link |
00:29:26.460
And then the reason I say this
link |
00:29:28.380
is when you go back to Craig Venter,
link |
00:29:30.580
when he invented his life form, Cyndia,
link |
00:29:35.340
this micro, this minimal plasmid,
link |
00:29:38.180
it's a myoplasma, something, I don't know the name of it,
link |
00:29:43.180
but he made this wonderful cell
link |
00:29:45.580
and said, I've invented life.
link |
00:29:48.360
Not quite.
link |
00:29:49.220
He facsimileed the genome from this entity
link |
00:29:52.700
and made it in the lab, all the DNA,
link |
00:29:55.660
but he didn't make the cell.
link |
00:29:56.940
He had to take an existing cell
link |
00:30:00.000
that has a causal chain going all the way back to Luca.
link |
00:30:02.680
And he showed when he took out the gene,
link |
00:30:05.320
the genes and put in his genes, synthesized,
link |
00:30:08.260
the cell could boot up.
link |
00:30:09.840
But it's remarkable that he could not make a cell
link |
00:30:11.940
from scratch.
link |
00:30:12.900
And even now today, synthetic biologists
link |
00:30:15.120
cannot make a cell from scratch
link |
00:30:17.300
because there's some contingent information embodied
link |
00:30:20.920
outside the genome in the cell.
link |
00:30:23.780
And that is just incredible.
link |
00:30:26.140
So there's lots of layers to the scam.
link |
00:30:29.940
Well, let me then ask the question,
link |
00:30:32.940
how can we create life in the lab from scratch?
link |
00:30:37.200
What have been the most promising attempts
link |
00:30:39.420
at creating life in the lab from scratch?
link |
00:30:41.860
Has anyone actually been able to do it?
link |
00:30:44.220
Do you think anyone will be able to do it
link |
00:30:46.340
in the near future if they haven't already?
link |
00:30:50.420
Yeah, I think that nobody has made life
link |
00:30:53.660
in the lab from scratch.
link |
00:30:54.740
Lots of people would argue that they have made progress.
link |
00:30:57.380
So Craig Venter, I think the synthesis
link |
00:30:59.300
of a synthetic genome milestone in human achievement.
link |
00:31:03.580
Brilliant.
link |
00:31:04.420
Yeah, can we just walk back and say,
link |
00:31:06.340
what would you say from your perspective,
link |
00:31:09.740
one of the world experts in exactly this area,
link |
00:31:12.960
what does it mean to create life from scratch
link |
00:31:15.100
where if you sit back, whether you do it
link |
00:31:17.260
or somebody else does it, it's like,
link |
00:31:20.040
damn, this is, we just created life.
link |
00:31:24.580
Well, I can tell you what I would expect,
link |
00:31:27.580
I would like to be able to do,
link |
00:31:30.220
is to go from sand to cells in my lab and...
link |
00:31:37.540
Can you explain what sand is?
link |
00:31:39.060
Yeah, just inorganic stuff, like basically just,
link |
00:31:42.780
so sand is just silicon oxide with some other ions in it,
link |
00:31:47.220
maybe some inorganic carbon, some carbonates,
link |
00:31:50.980
just basically clearly dead stuff
link |
00:31:52.980
that you could just grind rocks into sand.
link |
00:31:55.580
And it would be what, in a kind of vacuum
link |
00:31:57.940
so they could remove anything else
link |
00:31:59.580
that could possibly be like a shadow of life
link |
00:32:05.220
that can assist in the chemical.
link |
00:32:06.340
You could do that, you could insist and say,
link |
00:32:07.940
look, I'm gonna take, and not just inorganic,
link |
00:32:09.940
I want some more, I wanna cheat and have some organic,
link |
00:32:12.580
but I want inorganic organic,
link |
00:32:13.900
and I'll explain the play on words in a moment.
link |
00:32:16.100
So I would like to basically put into a world,
link |
00:32:19.420
let's say a completely synthetic world, if you like,
link |
00:32:23.220
a closed world, put some inorganic materials
link |
00:32:26.700
and just literally add some energy in some form,
link |
00:32:30.020
be it lightning or heat, UV light,
link |
00:32:33.660
and run this thing in cycles over time
link |
00:32:37.180
and let it solve the search problem.
link |
00:32:38.620
So I see the origin of life as a search problem
link |
00:32:41.140
in chemical space.
link |
00:32:42.700
And then I would wait, literally wait for a life form
link |
00:32:45.580
to crawl out of the test tube.
link |
00:32:46.580
That's a joke I tell my group.
link |
00:32:48.100
Literally wait for a very, don't worry,
link |
00:32:51.620
it's gonna be very feeble,
link |
00:32:52.540
it's not gonna take over the world.
link |
00:32:54.700
There's ways of ethically containing it.
link |
00:32:56.020
Famous last words.
link |
00:32:58.220
Indeed, indeed, indeed, but I.
link |
00:33:01.380
You know this is being recorded, right?
link |
00:33:03.220
It'll make you, it will not make you look good
link |
00:33:05.660
once it crawls out of the lab
link |
00:33:07.620
and destroys all of human civilization, but yes.
link |
00:33:09.940
But there is very good,
link |
00:33:11.060
there is a very good things you can do to prevent that.
link |
00:33:13.460
For instance, if you put stuff in your world,
link |
00:33:15.580
which isn't earth abundant,
link |
00:33:17.460
so let's say we make life based on molybdenum
link |
00:33:20.420
and it escapes, it would die immediately
link |
00:33:21.940
because there's not enough molybdenum in the environment.
link |
00:33:23.460
So we can put in, we can do responsible life.
link |
00:33:26.700
Or as I fantasize with my research group on our away day
link |
00:33:29.900
that would go in, it's, you know,
link |
00:33:31.500
I think it's actually morally if we don't find,
link |
00:33:36.060
until humanity finds life in the universe,
link |
00:33:38.020
this is going on a tangent,
link |
00:33:39.260
it's our moral obligation to make origin of life bombs,
link |
00:33:42.020
identify dead planets and bomb them
link |
00:33:43.820
with our origin of life machines and make them alive.
link |
00:33:46.580
I think it is our moral obligation to do that.
link |
00:33:50.260
Some people might argue with me about that,
link |
00:33:51.780
but I think that we need more life in the universe.
link |
00:33:54.420
And then we kind of forget we did it
link |
00:33:58.140
and then come back and then.
link |
00:34:00.860
So where did you come from?
link |
00:34:02.260
But coming back to the, what I'd expect.
link |
00:34:04.020
So I just say. Father, are you back?
link |
00:34:06.820
I think this is once again, a Rick and Morty episode.
link |
00:34:09.220
It's definitely all Rick and Morty all the way down.
link |
00:34:11.940
So we, I imagine we have this pristine experiment
link |
00:34:15.540
and everything is, you know, sanitized
link |
00:34:18.100
and we put in inorganic materials
link |
00:34:20.060
and we have cycles with them,
link |
00:34:22.220
day, night cycles, up, down, whatever.
link |
00:34:24.500
And we look for evidence of replication
link |
00:34:27.260
and evolution over time.
link |
00:34:28.660
And that's what the experiment should be.
link |
00:34:30.580
Now, are there people doing this in the world right now?
link |
00:34:32.460
There are a couple of,
link |
00:34:33.780
there's some really good groups doing this.
link |
00:34:35.780
There's some really interesting scientists
link |
00:34:37.180
doing this around the world.
link |
00:34:38.740
They're kind of perhaps too much associated with the scam.
link |
00:34:44.540
So, and so they're using molecules
link |
00:34:48.500
that are already, were already invented by biology.
link |
00:34:50.860
So there's a bit of replication built in,
link |
00:34:54.100
but I still think the work that is doing,
link |
00:34:55.780
they're doing is amazing.
link |
00:34:57.660
But I would like people to be a bit freer and say,
link |
00:35:00.180
let's just basically shake a load of sand in a box
link |
00:35:03.500
and wait for life to come out
link |
00:35:04.580
because that's what happened on earth.
link |
00:35:06.300
And so that we have to understand that.
link |
00:35:08.020
Now, how would I know I've been successful?
link |
00:35:10.140
Well, because I'm not obsessing
link |
00:35:11.900
with what molecules are in life now,
link |
00:35:15.060
I would wager a vast quantity of money.
link |
00:35:19.820
I'm not very rich, so just be a few dollars,
link |
00:35:21.900
but for me, the solution space will be different.
link |
00:35:27.180
So the genetic material will be not RNA.
link |
00:35:31.020
The proteins will not be what we think.
link |
00:35:33.580
The solutions will be just completely different.
link |
00:35:36.140
And it might be, and it will be very feeble
link |
00:35:37.740
because that's the other thing we should be able to show
link |
00:35:40.860
fairly robustly that even if I did make
link |
00:35:43.780
or someone did make a new life form in the lab,
link |
00:35:46.060
it would be so poor that it's not gonna leap out.
link |
00:35:50.020
It is the fear about making a lethal life form
link |
00:35:56.020
in the lab from scratch is similar to us imagining
link |
00:36:00.620
that we're gonna make the terminator
link |
00:36:02.500
at Boston Dynamics tomorrow.
link |
00:36:04.460
Simply not, and the problem is
link |
00:36:07.140
we don't communicate that properly.
link |
00:36:08.420
I know you yourself very, you explain this very well.
link |
00:36:12.820
There is not the AI catastrophe coming.
link |
00:36:15.980
We're very far away from that.
link |
00:36:16.940
That doesn't mean we should ignore it.
link |
00:36:18.380
Same with the origin of life catastrophe.
link |
00:36:19.980
It's not coming anytime soon.
link |
00:36:21.860
We shouldn't ignore it, but we shouldn't let that fear
link |
00:36:24.820
stop us from doing those experiments.
link |
00:36:26.500
But this is a much, much longer discussion
link |
00:36:28.460
because there's a lot of details there.
link |
00:36:29.820
I would say there is potential for catastrophic events
link |
00:36:33.580
to happen in much dumber ways.
link |
00:36:36.980
In AI space, there's a lot of ways to create,
link |
00:36:40.020
like social networks are creating a kind
link |
00:36:43.140
of accelerated set of events
link |
00:36:46.300
that we might not be able to control.
link |
00:36:48.340
The social network virality in the digital space
link |
00:36:53.260
can create mass movements of ideas that can then,
link |
00:36:58.820
if times are tough, create military conflict
link |
00:37:01.980
and all those kinds of things.
link |
00:37:02.980
But that's not super intelligent AI.
link |
00:37:05.660
That's an interesting at scale application of AI.
link |
00:37:09.740
If you look at viruses, viruses are pretty dumb,
link |
00:37:13.300
but at scale, their application is pretty detrimental.
link |
00:37:16.780
And so origin of life, much like all the kind of virology,
link |
00:37:25.220
the very contentious word of gain of function research
link |
00:37:28.540
and virology, sort of like research on viruses,
link |
00:37:33.420
messing with them genetically,
link |
00:37:36.100
that can create a lot of problems if not done well.
link |
00:37:38.980
So we have to be very cautious.
link |
00:37:41.820
So there's a kind of,
link |
00:37:43.260
whenever you're ultra cautious about stuff in AI
link |
00:37:47.100
or in virology and biology,
link |
00:37:50.740
it borders on cynicism, I would say,
link |
00:37:53.420
where it's like everything we do is going to turn out
link |
00:37:56.740
to be destructive and terrible.
link |
00:37:58.660
So I'm just going to sit here and do nothing.
link |
00:38:00.980
Okay, that's a possible solution except for the fact
link |
00:38:04.660
that somebody is going to do it.
link |
00:38:06.380
It's science and technology progresses.
link |
00:38:10.500
So we have to do it in an ethical way, in a good way,
link |
00:38:14.780
considering in a transparent way, in an open way,
link |
00:38:18.980
considering all the possible positive trajectories
link |
00:38:23.780
that could be taken and making sure as much as possible
link |
00:38:26.380
that we walk those trajectories.
link |
00:38:28.260
So yeah, I don't think Terminator is coming,
link |
00:38:31.100
but a totally unexpected version of Terminator
link |
00:38:35.220
may be around the corner.
link |
00:38:36.500
Might be here already.
link |
00:38:37.340
Yeah, so I agree with that.
link |
00:38:38.980
And so going back to the origin of life discussion,
link |
00:38:41.460
I think that in synthetic biology right now,
link |
00:38:44.500
we have to be very careful about how we edit genomes
link |
00:38:49.060
and edit synthetic biology to do things.
link |
00:38:51.460
So that's kind of, that's where things might go wrong
link |
00:38:53.900
in the same way as Twitter turning ourselves
link |
00:38:56.300
into kind of strange scale effects.
link |
00:38:59.460
I would love origin of life research
link |
00:39:01.780
or artificial life research to get to the point
link |
00:39:04.580
where we have those worries,
link |
00:39:06.820
because that's why I think we're just so far away from that.
link |
00:39:08.820
We are just, you know, right now,
link |
00:39:10.700
I think there are two really important angles.
link |
00:39:13.100
There is the origin of life people,
link |
00:39:15.860
researchers who are faithfully working on this
link |
00:39:18.780
and trying to make those molecules,
link |
00:39:20.540
the scan molecules I talked about.
link |
00:39:22.740
And then there are people on the creationist side
link |
00:39:24.860
who are saying, look,
link |
00:39:25.700
the fact you can't make these molecules
link |
00:39:26.940
and you can't make a cell means that evolution isn't true
link |
00:39:29.940
and all this other stuff.
link |
00:39:30.780
Gotcha.
link |
00:39:31.620
Yeah, and so, and I find that really frustrating
link |
00:39:34.180
because actually the origin of life research
link |
00:39:35.900
is all working in good faith, right?
link |
00:39:37.820
Yes.
link |
00:39:38.660
And so what I'm trying to do
link |
00:39:40.100
is give origin of life research
link |
00:39:41.860
a little bit more of an open context.
link |
00:39:47.180
And one of the things I think is important,
link |
00:39:49.420
I really want to make a new life form in my lifetime.
link |
00:39:52.300
I really want to prove that life is a general phenomena,
link |
00:39:56.060
a bit like gravity in the universe,
link |
00:39:58.140
because I think that's gonna be really important
link |
00:39:59.940
for humanity's global psychological state,
link |
00:40:04.900
meaning going forward.
link |
00:40:06.300
That's beautifully put.
link |
00:40:09.100
So one, it will help us understand ourselves.
link |
00:40:12.500
So that's useful for science,
link |
00:40:14.220
but two, it gives us a kind of hope,
link |
00:40:17.660
if not an awe at all the huge amounts
link |
00:40:23.980
of alien civilizations that are out there.
link |
00:40:26.380
If you can build life and understand
link |
00:40:29.140
just how easy it is to build life,
link |
00:40:31.900
then that's just as good, if not much better,
link |
00:40:35.540
than discovering life on another planet.
link |
00:40:38.300
Yeah.
link |
00:40:39.140
It's, I mean, it's cheaper.
link |
00:40:41.620
It's much cheaper and much easier
link |
00:40:44.460
and probably much more conclusive
link |
00:40:47.460
because once you're able to create life,
link |
00:40:50.020
like you said, it's a search problem
link |
00:40:52.260
that there's probably a lot of different ways to do it.
link |
00:40:55.740
Once you create the, once you find the first solution,
link |
00:40:58.940
you probably have all the right methodology
link |
00:41:00.620
for finding all kinds of other solutions.
link |
00:41:02.660
Yeah, and wouldn't it be great
link |
00:41:03.740
if we could find a solution?
link |
00:41:04.860
I mean, it's probably a bit late for,
link |
00:41:07.580
I mean, I worry about climate change,
link |
00:41:09.060
but I'm not that worried about climate change,
link |
00:41:10.660
and I think one day you could think about,
link |
00:41:13.420
could we engineer a new type of life form
link |
00:41:15.140
that could basically, and I don't want to do this,
link |
00:41:17.900
and I don't think we should do this necessarily,
link |
00:41:19.460
but it's a good thought experiment
link |
00:41:21.180
that would perhaps take CO2 out of the atmosphere
link |
00:41:23.620
or an intermediate life form, so it's not quite alive.
link |
00:41:26.060
It's almost like an add on
link |
00:41:28.180
that we can, with a time dependent add on,
link |
00:41:32.180
you could give to say cyanobacteria in the ocean
link |
00:41:35.060
or to maybe to wheat and say, right,
link |
00:41:37.460
we're just gonna, we're gonna fix a bit more CO2,
link |
00:41:40.300
and we're gonna work out how much we need to fix
link |
00:41:42.020
to basically save the climate,
link |
00:41:44.580
and we're gonna use evolutionary principles
link |
00:41:47.620
to basically get there.
link |
00:41:49.500
What worries me is that biology has had a few billion years
link |
00:41:51.900
to find a solution for CO2 fixation,
link |
00:41:54.300
hasn't really done, it's not,
link |
00:41:57.060
the solution isn't brilliant for our needs,
link |
00:41:58.900
but biology wasn't thinking about our needs.
link |
00:42:00.780
Biology was thinking about biology's needs,
link |
00:42:03.180
but I think if we can do, as you say,
link |
00:42:05.180
make life in the lab, then suddenly we don't need
link |
00:42:08.460
to go to everywhere and conclusively prove it.
link |
00:42:10.940
I think we make life in the lab.
link |
00:42:12.420
We look at the extent of life in the solar system.
link |
00:42:14.300
How far did Earth life get?
link |
00:42:16.460
Probably we're all Martians.
link |
00:42:17.780
Probably life got going on Mars.
link |
00:42:19.260
The chemistry on Mars seeded Earth.
link |
00:42:21.220
That might have been a legitimate way
link |
00:42:22.940
to kind of truncate the surface.
link |
00:42:25.540
But in the outer solar system,
link |
00:42:26.580
we might have completely different life forms
link |
00:42:28.340
on Enceladus, on Europa, and Titan.
link |
00:42:32.060
And that would be a cool thing, because.
link |
00:42:33.380
Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
link |
00:42:36.380
Did you just say that you think, in terms of likelihood,
link |
00:42:40.340
life started on Mars, like statistically speaking,
link |
00:42:43.620
life started on Mars and seeded Earth?
link |
00:42:45.860
It could be possible, because life was,
link |
00:42:48.380
so Mars was habitable for the type of life
link |
00:42:50.980
that we have right now, type of chemistry before Earth.
link |
00:42:53.900
So it seems to me that Mars got searching,
link |
00:42:57.020
doing chemistry, like, and.
link |
00:42:59.580
It started way before.
link |
00:43:00.820
Yeah, and so they had a few more replicators
link |
00:43:03.060
and some other stuff.
link |
00:43:04.220
And if those replicators got ejected from Mars
link |
00:43:06.340
and landed on Earth, and Earth was like,
link |
00:43:09.220
I don't need to start again.
link |
00:43:10.340
Right.
link |
00:43:11.580
Thanks for that.
link |
00:43:12.420
And then it just carried on.
link |
00:43:13.300
So I'm not going, I think we will find evidence
link |
00:43:16.540
of life on Mars, either life we put there by mistake,
link |
00:43:20.060
contamination, or actually life,
link |
00:43:22.220
the earliest remnants of life.
link |
00:43:24.500
And that would be really exciting.
link |
00:43:26.020
It's a really good reason to go there.
link |
00:43:28.100
But I think it's more unlikely,
link |
00:43:29.580
because the gravitational situation in the solar system,
link |
00:43:31.620
if we find life in the outer solar system.
link |
00:43:33.660
Titan and all that, that would be its own thing.
link |
00:43:35.860
Exactly.
link |
00:43:36.700
Wow, that would be so cool.
link |
00:43:37.940
If we go to Mars and we find life that looks
link |
00:43:40.820
a hell of a lot similar to Earth life,
link |
00:43:43.020
and then we go to Titan and all those weird moons
link |
00:43:46.780
with the ices and the volcanoes and all that kind of stuff,
link |
00:43:49.060
and then we find there something that looks,
link |
00:43:52.500
I don't know, way weirder.
link |
00:43:54.860
Yeah.
link |
00:43:55.700
Some other, some non RNA type of situation.
link |
00:43:57.660
But we might find almost life,
link |
00:43:59.580
like in the prebiotic chemical space.
link |
00:44:01.900
And I think there are four types of exoplanets
link |
00:44:03.660
we need to look for, right?
link |
00:44:04.540
Because when JWST goes up and touch wood,
link |
00:44:07.220
it goes up and everything's fine.
link |
00:44:09.140
When we look at a star, well, we know statistically,
link |
00:44:12.020
most stars have planets around them.
link |
00:44:13.420
What type of planet are they?
link |
00:44:14.680
Are they going to be dead?
link |
00:44:16.380
Are they going to be just a prebiotic origin of life coming?
link |
00:44:20.620
So are they going to be technological?
link |
00:44:23.460
So with intelligence on them, and will they have died?
link |
00:44:27.260
So, you know, had life on them, but gone.
link |
00:44:30.580
Those are the four states of the boat.
link |
00:44:32.220
And suddenly, it's a bit like I want to classify planets
link |
00:44:34.940
the way we classify stars.
link |
00:44:36.980
Yeah.
link |
00:44:37.820
And I think that, in terms of their,
link |
00:44:39.660
rather than having this, oh, we've found methane,
link |
00:44:42.700
there's evidence of life.
link |
00:44:43.540
We found oxygen, that's the evidence of life.
link |
00:44:45.300
We found whatever molecule marker.
link |
00:44:47.900
And start to then frame things a little bit more.
link |
00:44:51.620
As those four states.
link |
00:44:52.980
Yeah.
link |
00:44:53.820
Which, by the way, you're just saying four,
link |
00:44:55.140
but there could be, before the dead,
link |
00:44:58.760
there could be other states
link |
00:45:00.100
that we humans can even conceive of.
link |
00:45:01.780
Yeah, yeah, just prebiotic, almost alive,
link |
00:45:04.580
got the possibility to come alive.
link |
00:45:06.300
I think.
link |
00:45:07.140
But there could be a post technological.
link |
00:45:08.780
Like, whatever we think of as technology,
link |
00:45:12.060
that could be a, like, pre conscious,
link |
00:45:17.860
like, where we all meld into one super intelligent conscious,
link |
00:45:20.980
or some weird thing that naturally happens over time.
link |
00:45:23.860
Yeah, yeah.
link |
00:45:24.700
I mean, I think that all bets are on that.
link |
00:45:26.740
The metaverse.
link |
00:45:28.100
Yeah, we are.
link |
00:45:29.740
We join into a virtual metaverse and start creating,
link |
00:45:33.940
which is kind of an interesting idea,
link |
00:45:35.380
almost arbitrary number of copies of each other,
link |
00:45:38.480
much more quickly, so we can mess with different ideas.
link |
00:45:41.940
Like, I can create a thousand copies of Lex,
link |
00:45:45.420
like, every possible version of Lex,
link |
00:45:48.060
and then just see, like,
link |
00:45:49.620
and then I just have them, like, argue with each other,
link |
00:45:52.300
and, like, until, like, in the space of ideas
link |
00:45:54.860
and see who wins out.
link |
00:45:56.340
How could that possibly go wrong?
link |
00:45:58.060
But anyway, there's, especially in this digital space
link |
00:46:01.620
where you could start exploring with AIs mixed in,
link |
00:46:04.520
you could start engineering arbitrary intelligences,
link |
00:46:07.460
you can start playing in the space of ideas,
link |
00:46:10.100
which might move us into a world that looks very different
link |
00:46:13.900
than a biological world.
link |
00:46:15.020
Like, our current world, the technology,
link |
00:46:17.600
is still very much tied to our biology.
link |
00:46:20.960
It's, we might move past that completely.
link |
00:46:23.540
Oh, definitely, we definitely will.
link |
00:46:25.260
We definitely, but that could be another phase then.
link |
00:46:27.340
Sure.
link |
00:46:28.180
Because then you, yeah.
link |
00:46:29.000
But I did say technological, so I think I agree with you.
link |
00:46:30.780
I think, so you can have, let's get this right.
link |
00:46:32.540
So, dead world, no prospect of alive.
link |
00:46:36.500
Prebiotic world, life emerging.
link |
00:46:38.920
Living and technological.
link |
00:46:40.900
And you probably, and the dead one,
link |
00:46:42.180
you probably won't be able to tell
link |
00:46:43.060
between the dead never being alive and the dead one,
link |
00:46:46.020
maybe you've got some artifacts and maybe there's five.
link |
00:46:48.000
There's probably not more than five.
link |
00:46:50.400
And I think the technological one could allow,
link |
00:46:53.060
could have life on it still,
link |
00:46:54.300
but it might just have exceeded.
link |
00:46:56.340
Because, you know, one way that life might survive on Earth
link |
00:46:58.820
is if we can work out how to deal with the coming,
link |
00:47:01.780
the real climate change that comes when the sun expands.
link |
00:47:05.480
It might be a way to survive that, you know, but yeah.
link |
00:47:10.420
I think that we need to start thinking statistically
link |
00:47:12.420
when it comes to looking for life in the universe.
link |
00:47:15.240
Let me ask you then, sort of statistically,
link |
00:47:20.660
how many alien civilizations are out there
link |
00:47:23.860
in those four phases that you're talking about?
link |
00:47:26.500
When you look up to the stars
link |
00:47:28.580
and you're sipping on some wine
link |
00:47:30.820
and talking to other people with British accents
link |
00:47:35.340
about something intelligent and intellectual, I'm sure.
link |
00:47:39.860
Do you think there's a lot of alien civilizations
link |
00:47:42.740
looking back at us and wondering the same?
link |
00:47:45.700
My romantic view of the universe
link |
00:47:48.540
is really taking loans from my logical self.
link |
00:47:52.240
So what I'm saying is I have no doubt, I have no idea.
link |
00:47:55.500
But having said that, there is no reason to suppose
link |
00:48:01.520
that life is as hard as we first thought it was.
link |
00:48:04.820
And so if we just take Earth as a marker,
link |
00:48:08.780
and if I think that life is a much more general phenomena
link |
00:48:12.220
than just our biology,
link |
00:48:13.300
then I think the universe is full of life.
link |
00:48:16.700
And the reason for the Fermi paradox
link |
00:48:18.860
is not that they're not out there,
link |
00:48:22.220
it's just that we can't interact with the other life forms
link |
00:48:24.960
because they're so different.
link |
00:48:27.020
And I'm not saying that they're necessarily like
link |
00:48:28.980
hasn't depicted in Arrival or other, you know,
link |
00:48:31.780
I'm just saying that perhaps
link |
00:48:36.760
there are very few universal facts in the universe
link |
00:48:40.120
and maybe our technologies are quite divergent.
link |
00:48:47.440
And so I think that it's very hard to know
link |
00:48:49.760
how we're gonna interact with alien life.
link |
00:48:51.640
You think there's a lot of kinds of life that's possible.
link |
00:48:54.120
I guess that was the intuition you provided
link |
00:48:57.360
that the way biology itself,
link |
00:49:02.400
but even this particular kinds of biology
link |
00:49:04.680
that we have on Earth is something that is just one sample
link |
00:49:11.560
of nearly infinite number of other possible,
link |
00:49:15.560
complex, autonomous, self replicating type of things
link |
00:49:19.320
that could be possible.
link |
00:49:20.680
And so we're almost unable to see
link |
00:49:24.320
the alternative versions of us, huh?
link |
00:49:28.480
I mean, we'll still be able to detect them,
link |
00:49:31.840
we'll still be able to interact with them,
link |
00:49:33.840
we'll still be able to like which,
link |
00:49:36.840
what's exactly is lost in translation?
link |
00:49:39.260
Why can't we see them?
link |
00:49:41.280
Why can't we talk to them?
link |
00:49:42.720
Because I too have a sense,
link |
00:49:47.840
you put it way more poetically,
link |
00:49:49.760
but it seems both statistically
link |
00:49:54.880
and sort of romantically,
link |
00:49:58.600
it feels like the universe should be teeming with life,
link |
00:50:02.040
like super intelligent life.
link |
00:50:04.460
And I just, I sit there and the Fermi paradox is very,
link |
00:50:10.840
it's felt very distinctly by me
link |
00:50:12.880
when I look up at the stars because it's like,
link |
00:50:15.720
it's the same way I feel when I'm driving
link |
00:50:18.480
through New Jersey and listening to Bruce Springsteen
link |
00:50:20.560
and feel quite sad.
link |
00:50:23.160
It's like Lucy Kay talks about pulling off
link |
00:50:25.040
to the side of the road and just weeping a little bit.
link |
00:50:27.700
I'm almost like wondering like,
link |
00:50:31.180
hey, why aren't you talking to us?
link |
00:50:33.800
It feels lonely, it feels lonely
link |
00:50:35.600
because it feels like they're out there.
link |
00:50:38.240
I think that there are a number of answers to that.
link |
00:50:40.120
I think the Fermi paradox is perhaps based
link |
00:50:42.520
on the assumption that if life did emerge in the universe,
link |
00:50:47.240
it would be similar to our life
link |
00:50:49.160
and there's only one solution.
link |
00:50:50.920
And I think that what we've got to start to do
link |
00:50:52.800
is go out and look for selection detection
link |
00:50:56.120
rather than an evolution detection,
link |
00:50:58.320
rather than life detection.
link |
00:51:01.380
And I think that once we start to do that,
link |
00:51:03.440
we might start to see really interesting things.
link |
00:51:07.000
And we haven't been doing this for very long
link |
00:51:10.200
and we are living in an expanding universe
link |
00:51:12.640
and that makes the problem a little bit harder.
link |
00:51:15.680
Everybody's always leaving distance wise.
link |
00:51:19.820
I'm very optimistic that we will,
link |
00:51:22.880
well, I don't know, there are two movies that came out
link |
00:51:25.800
within six months of one another,
link |
00:51:27.720
Ad Astra and Cosmos.
link |
00:51:30.200
Ad Astra, the very expensive blockbuster
link |
00:51:32.880
with Brad Pitt in it and saying there is no life
link |
00:51:35.880
and it's all, we've got to,
link |
00:51:37.220
life on Earth has more pressures than Cosmos,
link |
00:51:39.080
which is a UK production,
link |
00:51:40.360
which basically aliens came and visited Earth one day
link |
00:51:42.920
and they were discovered in the UK, right?
link |
00:51:45.120
It was quite, it's a fun film.
link |
00:51:48.440
But I really loved those two films.
link |
00:51:50.420
And at the same time, those films,
link |
00:51:53.560
at the time those films were coming out,
link |
00:51:54.760
I was working on a paper, a life detection paper,
link |
00:51:58.520
and I found it was so hard to publish this paper
link |
00:52:02.020
and it was almost as depressed,
link |
00:52:03.680
I got so depressed trying to get this science out there
link |
00:52:06.500
that I felt the depression of the film in Ad Astra,
link |
00:52:11.320
like life, there's no life elsewhere in the universe.
link |
00:52:14.720
And, but I'm incredibly optimistic
link |
00:52:17.400
that I think we will find life in the universe,
link |
00:52:19.320
firm evidence of life,
link |
00:52:21.040
and it will have to start on Earth,
link |
00:52:22.440
making life on Earth and surprising us.
link |
00:52:24.360
We have to surprise ourselves
link |
00:52:25.680
and make non biological life on Earth.
link |
00:52:28.440
And then people say, well, you made this life on Earth,
link |
00:52:31.400
therefore it's, you're part of the causal chain of that.
link |
00:52:34.380
And that might be true,
link |
00:52:35.600
but if I can show how I'm able to do it
link |
00:52:38.920
with very little cheating
link |
00:52:40.800
or very little information inputs,
link |
00:52:42.380
just creating like a model planet.
link |
00:52:44.660
Some description and watching it, watching life emerge,
link |
00:52:48.520
then I think that we will be even to persuade
link |
00:52:51.140
even the hardest critic that it's possible.
link |
00:52:55.080
Now, with regards to the Fermi paradox,
link |
00:52:57.660
I think that we might crush that with the JWST.
link |
00:53:01.400
It's basically, if I recall correctly,
link |
00:53:03.120
the mirror is about 10 times the size of the Hubble
link |
00:53:06.440
that we're gonna be able to do spectroscopy,
link |
00:53:09.020
look at colors of exoplanets, I think, not brilliantly,
link |
00:53:12.680
but we'll be able to start to classify them.
link |
00:53:15.280
And we'll start to get a real feel
link |
00:53:18.860
for what's going on in the universe on these exoplanets.
link |
00:53:21.400
Cause it's only in the last few decades, I think,
link |
00:53:25.200
maybe even last decade that we even
link |
00:53:30.320
came to recognize that exoplanets even are common.
link |
00:53:33.880
And I think that that gives us a lot of optimism
link |
00:53:36.160
that life is gonna be out there.
link |
00:53:38.660
But I think we have to start framing,
link |
00:53:40.560
we have to start preparing the fact
link |
00:53:44.040
that biology is only one solution.
link |
00:53:46.920
I can tell you with confidence that biology on Earth
link |
00:53:50.640
does not exist anywhere else in the universe.
link |
00:53:52.620
We are absolutely unique.
link |
00:53:54.680
Well, okay, I love the confidence,
link |
00:53:56.840
but where does that confidence come from?
link |
00:54:02.400
Chemistry, like how many options does chemistry really have?
link |
00:54:07.640
Many, that's the point.
link |
00:54:08.880
And the thing is, this is where the origin of life scam
link |
00:54:11.160
comes in, is that people don't quite count,
link |
00:54:15.140
they don't count the numbers.
link |
00:54:16.240
So if biology as you find on Earth is common everywhere,
link |
00:54:19.980
then there's something really weird going on
link |
00:54:21.600
that basically written in the quantum mechanics,
link |
00:54:23.940
there's some kind of these bonds must form over these bonds
link |
00:54:26.680
and this catalyst must form over this catalyst
link |
00:54:28.280
when they're all quite equal.
link |
00:54:30.160
Life is contingent.
link |
00:54:31.840
The origin of life on Earth was contingent
link |
00:54:34.560
upon the chemistry available at the origin of life on Earth.
link |
00:54:38.600
So that means if we want to find other Earth like worlds,
link |
00:54:43.360
we look for the same kind of rocky world.
link |
00:54:45.120
We might look in the same zone as Earth
link |
00:54:47.840
and we might expect reasonably
link |
00:54:50.320
to find biological like stuff going on.
link |
00:54:53.840
That would be a reasonable hypothesis,
link |
00:54:55.540
but it won't be the same, it can't be.
link |
00:54:57.360
It's like saying, I don't believe in magic.
link |
00:55:00.480
That's why I'm sure.
link |
00:55:02.520
I just don't believe in magic.
link |
00:55:03.680
I believe in statistics and I can do experiments.
link |
00:55:06.000
And so I won't get the same, exactly the same sequence
link |
00:55:09.680
of events, I'll get something different.
link |
00:55:11.440
And so there is TikTok elsewhere in the universe,
link |
00:55:14.400
but it's not the same as our TikTok, right?
link |
00:55:16.600
That's what I mean.
link |
00:55:17.840
Which aspect of it is not the same?
link |
00:55:20.160
Well, I just think, so what is TikTok?
link |
00:55:23.480
TikTok is a social media where people upload videos, right?
link |
00:55:27.040
Of silly videos.
link |
00:55:28.100
So I guess there might be.
link |
00:55:29.440
Well, there's humor, there's attention,
link |
00:55:31.000
there's the ability to process,
link |
00:55:33.080
there's ability for intelligent organisms
link |
00:55:35.480
to collaborate on ideas and find human ideas
link |
00:55:38.640
and play with those ideas, make them viral, memes.
link |
00:55:43.760
Humor seems to be kind of fundamental
link |
00:55:45.400
to the human experience.
link |
00:55:46.600
And I think that that's a really interesting question
link |
00:55:48.820
we can ask, is humor a fundamental thing in the universe?
link |
00:55:52.360
I think maybe it will be, right?
link |
00:55:53.640
In terms of, you think about in a game theoretic sense,
link |
00:55:56.800
humor, the emergence of humor serves a role
link |
00:56:00.440
in our game engine.
link |
00:56:01.640
And so if selection is fundamental in the universe,
link |
00:56:05.000
so is humor.
link |
00:56:06.920
Well, I actually don't know exactly
link |
00:56:10.280
what role humor serves.
link |
00:56:12.520
Maybe it's like, from a chemical perspective,
link |
00:56:15.320
it's like a catalyst for,
link |
00:56:20.320
I guess it's for several purposes.
link |
00:56:21.480
One is the catalyst for spreading ideas on the internet.
link |
00:56:23.720
That's modern humor.
link |
00:56:25.480
But humor is also a good way to deal
link |
00:56:28.220
with the difficulty of life.
link |
00:56:30.800
It's a kind of valve, release valve for suffering.
link |
00:56:35.560
Throughout human history, life has been really hard.
link |
00:56:39.080
And for the people that I've known in my life
link |
00:56:41.200
who've lived through some really difficult things,
link |
00:56:44.780
humor is part of how they deal with that.
link |
00:56:47.400
It's usually dark humor.
link |
00:56:49.320
But yeah, it's interesting.
link |
00:56:51.480
I don't know exactly what's the more mathematically
link |
00:56:56.040
general way to formulate what the hell is humor.
link |
00:56:58.840
What humor does it serve?
link |
00:57:01.040
But I still, we're kind of joking here,
link |
00:57:03.800
but it's a counterintuitive idea to me
link |
00:57:09.800
to think that life elsewhere in the universe
link |
00:57:14.640
is very different than life on Earth.
link |
00:57:17.440
And also, like all of each instantiation of life
link |
00:57:23.400
is likely very different from each other.
link |
00:57:26.000
Yeah, like maybe there's a few clusters of similar life,
link |
00:57:30.480
but it's much more likely is what you're saying.
link |
00:57:34.160
To me, it's a kind of novel thought.
link |
00:57:36.180
I'm not sure what to do with it.
link |
00:57:37.520
But you're saying that it's more common
link |
00:57:40.360
to be a weird outcast in the full spectrum of life
link |
00:57:44.860
than it is to be in some usual cluster.
link |
00:57:48.140
So every instantiation of a kind of chemistry
link |
00:57:51.520
that results in complexity that's autonomous
link |
00:57:53.440
and self replicating however the hell you define life,
link |
00:57:56.880
that is going to be very different every time.
link |
00:57:59.700
I don't know.
link |
00:58:01.400
It feels like a selection is a fundamental
link |
00:58:04.960
kind of directed force in the universe.
link |
00:58:07.940
Won't selection result in a few pockets
link |
00:58:11.520
of interesting complexities?
link |
00:58:13.440
I mean, yeah, if we ran Earth over again,
link |
00:58:19.960
over and over and over,
link |
00:58:20.880
you're saying it's going to come up with,
link |
00:58:23.080
there's not going to be elephants every time?
link |
00:58:26.000
Yeah, I don't think so.
link |
00:58:27.480
I think that there will be similarities.
link |
00:58:30.520
And I think we don't know enough
link |
00:58:32.260
about how selection globally works.
link |
00:58:37.880
But it might be that the emergence of elephants
link |
00:58:42.080
was wired into the history of Earth in some way,
link |
00:58:44.400
like the gravitational force, how evolution was going,
link |
00:58:47.920
Cambrian explosions, blah, blah, blah,
link |
00:58:49.360
the emergence of mammals.
link |
00:58:50.760
But I just don't know enough about the contingency,
link |
00:58:53.720
the variability.
link |
00:58:54.920
All I do know is you count the number of bits
link |
00:58:57.260
of information required to make an elephant
link |
00:59:00.600
and think about the causal chain
link |
00:59:03.600
that provide the lineage of elephants
link |
00:59:05.700
going all the way back to Luca,
link |
00:59:07.760
there's a huge scope for divergence.
link |
00:59:10.360
Yeah, but just like you said, with chemistry and selection,
link |
00:59:15.040
the things that result in self replicating chemistry
link |
00:59:22.840
and self replicating organisms,
link |
00:59:26.520
those are extremely unlikely, as you're saying.
link |
00:59:30.520
But once they're successful, they multiply.
link |
00:59:33.100
So it might be a tiny subset of all things
link |
00:59:37.640
that are possible in the universe, chemically speaking,
link |
00:59:40.080
it might be a very tiny subset
link |
00:59:41.800
is actually successful at creating elephants.
link |
00:59:44.600
Or elephant like or slash human like creatures.
link |
00:59:48.040
Well, there's two different questions here.
link |
00:59:48.880
The first one, if we were to reset Earth and to start again.
link |
00:59:52.920
The different phases, sorry to keep interrupting.
link |
00:59:54.920
Yeah, no, if we restart Earth and start again,
link |
00:59:56.880
say we could go back to the beginning
link |
00:59:58.600
and do the experiment or have a number of Earths,
link |
01:00:00.920
how similar would biology be?
link |
01:00:02.600
I would say that there would be broad similarities,
link |
01:00:06.420
but the emergence of mammals is not a given
link |
01:00:09.120
unless we're gonna throw an asteroid at each planet
link |
01:00:11.520
at each time and try and faithfully reproduce what happened.
link |
01:00:15.760
Then there's the other thing about
link |
01:00:17.960
when you go to another Earth like planet elsewhere,
link |
01:00:20.440
maybe there's a different ratio, particular elements,
link |
01:00:22.920
maybe the bombardment at the beginning of the planet
link |
01:00:27.240
was quicker or longer than Earth.
link |
01:00:30.440
And I just don't have enough information there.
link |
01:00:32.800
What I do know is that the complexity of the story of life
link |
01:00:37.800
on Earth gives us lots of scope for variation.
link |
01:00:42.280
And I just don't think it's a reasonable
link |
01:00:44.540
mathematical assumption to think that life on Earth
link |
01:00:48.960
that happened again would be same as what we have now.
link |
01:00:51.560
Okay, but you've also extended that to say
link |
01:00:54.520
that we might, as an explanation for the Fermi paradox,
link |
01:00:58.440
that that means we're not able to interact with them.
link |
01:01:02.680
Or that's an explanation for why we haven't at scale
link |
01:01:06.680
heard from aliens is they're different than us.
link |
01:01:10.520
We've only been looking for, say, 70, 80 years.
link |
01:01:13.480
So I think that the reason we have not found aliens yet
link |
01:01:17.440
is that we haven't worked out what life is.
link |
01:01:20.000
No, but the aliens have worked that out, surely.
link |
01:01:25.840
Statistically speaking, there must be a large number
link |
01:01:29.360
of aliens that are way ahead of us
link |
01:01:31.800
on this whole life question.
link |
01:01:33.520
Unless there's something about this stage
link |
01:01:37.320
of intellectual evolution that often quickly results
link |
01:01:40.900
in nuclear war and destroys itself.
link |
01:01:42.560
Like there's something in this process
link |
01:01:48.120
that eventually, I don't know, crystallizes the complexity
link |
01:01:52.440
and it stops, either dies or stops developing.
link |
01:01:55.800
But most likely, they already figured it out.
link |
01:01:58.140
And why aren't they contacting us?
link |
01:01:59.840
Is it some grad student somewhere?
link |
01:02:03.320
Wants to study a new green planet?
link |
01:02:06.520
Maybe they have.
link |
01:02:07.840
I mean, I don't have a coherent answer to your question,
link |
01:02:12.160
other than to say that if there are other aliens out there
link |
01:02:15.480
and they're far more advanced,
link |
01:02:17.600
they might be in contact with each other.
link |
01:02:19.920
And they might also, we might be at a point
link |
01:02:22.480
where what I'm saying quite critically
link |
01:02:24.640
is it takes two to talk, right?
link |
01:02:26.840
So the aliens might be there.
link |
01:02:28.080
But if we don't have the ability to recognize them
link |
01:02:31.220
and talk to them, then the aliens aren't going
link |
01:02:33.680
to want to talk to us.
link |
01:02:36.080
And I think that's a critical point
link |
01:02:37.560
that probably if that's a filter,
link |
01:02:42.180
there needs to be an ability for one
link |
01:02:44.440
to communicate with the other.
link |
01:02:45.760
And we need to know what life is before we do that.
link |
01:02:48.240
So we haven't qualified to even join the club
link |
01:02:50.880
to have a talk.
link |
01:02:51.840
Well, I think they still wanna teach us how to talk, right?
link |
01:02:54.840
But my worry is that, or I think they would wanna teach us
link |
01:02:59.840
how to talk like you do when you meet it.
link |
01:03:04.360
Like when you even meet, I was gonna say child,
link |
01:03:07.960
but that's a human species.
link |
01:03:09.720
I mean like ant.
link |
01:03:12.620
You want to try to communicate with them
link |
01:03:15.640
through whatever devices you can,
link |
01:03:17.400
given what an ant is like.
link |
01:03:19.360
I just, I worry mostly about that humans
link |
01:03:21.880
are just too close minded or don't have the right tools.
link |
01:03:25.020
No, I'm gonna push back on this quite significantly.
link |
01:03:27.200
I would say, because we don't understand what life is
link |
01:03:30.640
and because we don't understand
link |
01:03:32.400
how life emerged in the universe,
link |
01:03:34.200
we don't understand the physics
link |
01:03:36.080
that gave rise to life yet.
link |
01:03:38.040
That means our fundamental description,
link |
01:03:40.640
I'm way out of my pay grade, even further out.
link |
01:03:43.320
But I'll say it anyway,
link |
01:03:44.160
because I think it's a fun.
link |
01:03:44.980
You don't get paid much anyway, as you said earlier.
link |
01:03:47.320
So I would say that we,
link |
01:03:50.960
because we don't understand the universe yet,
link |
01:03:52.920
we do not understand how the universe spat out life.
link |
01:03:56.040
And we don't know what life is.
link |
01:03:57.640
And I think that until we understand that,
link |
01:03:59.760
it is gonna limit our ability to even,
link |
01:04:02.840
we don't qualify to talk to the aliens.
link |
01:04:05.880
So I'm gonna say that they might be there,
link |
01:04:08.440
but we just, I'm not gonna say that I believe
link |
01:04:10.560
in interdimensional aliens being present in this room.
link |
01:04:12.440
Yeah, but I think you're just being self critical,
link |
01:04:14.800
like we don't qualify.
link |
01:04:15.840
I think the fact that we don't qualify qualifies us.
link |
01:04:19.320
We're interesting in our innocence.
link |
01:04:22.040
No, I'm saying that because we don't understand
link |
01:04:25.720
causal chains and the way that information
link |
01:04:27.720
is propagated in the universe.
link |
01:04:29.320
And we don't understand what replication is yet.
link |
01:04:31.160
And we don't understand how life emerged.
link |
01:04:35.120
I think that we would not recognize aliens.
link |
01:04:38.720
And if someone doesn't recognize you,
link |
01:04:43.200
you wouldn't go and talk to it.
link |
01:04:44.320
You don't go and talk to ants.
link |
01:04:46.680
You don't go and talk to birds
link |
01:04:48.240
or maybe some birds you do, right?
link |
01:04:49.760
Cause you can, there's just enough cognition.
link |
01:04:52.160
So I'm saying because we don't have enough,
link |
01:04:55.080
our cognitive abilities are not yet where they need to be.
link |
01:04:58.720
We probably haven't been communicating with them.
link |
01:05:00.200
So you don't agree with the dating strategy
link |
01:05:02.880
of playing hard to get?
link |
01:05:04.640
Cause us humans, that seems to attract us.
link |
01:05:07.400
Within a species, that's fine.
link |
01:05:09.240
But I think we don't actually have abstraction.
link |
01:05:11.660
No, actually I think in this talk, in this conversation,
link |
01:05:15.600
you've helped me crystallize something
link |
01:05:16.920
that I think has been troubling me for a long time
link |
01:05:19.240
with the thermi paradox.
link |
01:05:20.160
I'm pretty sure that a reasonable avenue
link |
01:05:23.840
is to say that you would not go and talk to your cat
link |
01:05:28.480
about calculus, right?
link |
01:05:31.160
But I would still pet it.
link |
01:05:32.280
Sure, but I'm not talking about petting a cat.
link |
01:05:34.280
The analogy is that the aliens are not going to talk to us
link |
01:05:37.160
because we, and I'm using calculus as analogy
link |
01:05:40.020
for abstraction because we lack the layer,
link |
01:05:44.280
the fundamental layer of understanding what life is
link |
01:05:47.400
and what the universe is in our reality
link |
01:05:50.280
that it would be so counterproductive
link |
01:05:52.840
interacting with intelligent alien species
link |
01:05:55.280
that it would cause more angst for human race.
link |
01:05:59.720
They don't care.
link |
01:06:00.780
Okay, they gotta be self interested.
link |
01:06:03.060
So they'll probably, they more care about
link |
01:06:05.240
is it interesting for them?
link |
01:06:06.880
Maybe they, I mean, surely there's a way
link |
01:06:10.680
to pet the cat in this analogy
link |
01:06:16.920
because even if we lack complete understanding,
link |
01:06:20.840
it must be a very frustrating experience
link |
01:06:23.160
for other kinds of intelligence to communicate with us.
link |
01:06:26.760
Still, there must be a way to interact with us.
link |
01:06:29.640
Well.
link |
01:06:30.480
Like perturb the system in interesting ways
link |
01:06:34.280
to see what these creatures do.
link |
01:06:35.820
We might actually find the answer.
link |
01:06:37.440
I mean, again, out of my pay grade,
link |
01:06:39.280
in a simulation of the Earth,
link |
01:06:42.560
let's say a simulation where we allow
link |
01:06:44.900
an intelligent AI to emerge, right?
link |
01:06:47.160
And that AI, we then give it the objective
link |
01:06:52.440
is to be curious, interact with other intelligence
link |
01:06:54.980
in its universe.
link |
01:06:56.200
And then we might find the parameters required
link |
01:07:00.900
for that AI to walk with.
link |
01:07:02.420
And I think you'll find if the AI will not talk
link |
01:07:05.320
to other AIs that don't share the ability
link |
01:07:08.780
to abstract at the level of the AI
link |
01:07:10.400
because it's just a cat and are you gonna travel
link |
01:07:13.280
20 light years to go and pet a cat?
link |
01:07:15.320
So not because of the inability to do so,
link |
01:07:19.200
but because of like boredom.
link |
01:07:20.840
It's more interested, it will start talking to,
link |
01:07:23.920
it will spend most, it will spend a majority
link |
01:07:28.040
of its time talking to other AI systems
link |
01:07:30.280
that can at least somewhat understand
link |
01:07:32.360
and it's much more fun.
link |
01:07:33.200
It's a bit like, do we know that plants are conscious?
link |
01:07:34.960
Well, plants are unconscious in the way we typically think,
link |
01:07:36.960
but we don't talk to them.
link |
01:07:37.800
They could be, right?
link |
01:07:38.640
Yeah, but there's a lot of people on Earth
link |
01:07:40.080
who like gardening.
link |
01:07:41.120
There's always going to be a weird.
link |
01:07:42.800
They're not talking, they're just gardening.
link |
01:07:44.160
Okay, well, you're not romantic enough
link |
01:07:46.240
to see gardening as a way of communication
link |
01:07:48.120
between humans and plants.
link |
01:07:48.960
Oh, okay, you've got me there.
link |
01:07:50.320
But there's ways, there's always going to be
link |
01:07:53.120
the people who are curious.
link |
01:07:55.000
Jane Goodall who lives with the chimps, right?
link |
01:07:58.520
There's always going to be curious intelligent species
link |
01:08:00.900
that visit the weird Earth planet and try to interact.
link |
01:08:06.520
I mean, it's a, yeah, I think it's a super cool idea
link |
01:08:10.360
that you're expressing.
link |
01:08:11.180
I just kind of have a sense.
link |
01:08:13.000
Maybe it's a hope that there's always going to be
link |
01:08:16.120
a desire to interact even with those
link |
01:08:18.160
that can't possibly understand the depth
link |
01:08:21.360
of what you understand.
link |
01:08:22.960
So I'm with you, so I want to be as positive as you
link |
01:08:25.680
that aliens do exist and we will interact with them.
link |
01:08:29.340
What I'm trying to do is to give you
link |
01:08:30.800
a reasonable hypothesis why we haven't yet.
link |
01:08:35.000
Yeah.
link |
01:08:35.840
And also something to strive for to be able to do that.
link |
01:08:38.840
I mean, you know, there is the other view
link |
01:08:41.720
that the universe is just too big
link |
01:08:43.760
and life is just too rare.
link |
01:08:46.060
But I want to come up with an alternative explanation
link |
01:08:49.280
which I think is reasonable and not being philosophically
link |
01:08:53.200
and scientifically thought out, which is this,
link |
01:08:55.940
if you can't actually communicate with the object,
link |
01:08:59.220
the thing competently, you don't even know it's there,
link |
01:09:03.480
then there's no point yet.
link |
01:09:05.160
See, I disagree with that, but I'm totally aligned
link |
01:09:07.440
with your hopeful vision, which is like,
link |
01:09:09.040
we need to understand the origin of life.
link |
01:09:11.520
It will help us engineer life.
link |
01:09:13.440
It will help us engineer intelligent life through perhaps
link |
01:09:16.320
on the computer side through simulation
link |
01:09:18.560
and explore all the ways that life emerges.
link |
01:09:20.920
And that will allow us to, I think the fundamental reason
link |
01:09:24.120
we don't see overwhelming amounts of life
link |
01:09:27.160
is I actually believe aliens,
link |
01:09:31.160
of course, these are all just kind of open minded beliefs.
link |
01:09:35.760
It's difficult to know for sure about any of this,
link |
01:09:37.960
but I think there's a lot of alien civilizations
link |
01:09:40.920
which are actively communicating with us and we're too dumb.
link |
01:09:45.480
We don't have the right tools to see it.
link |
01:09:47.720
That's what I'm saying.
link |
01:09:48.560
No, but maybe I misinterpreted you,
link |
01:09:51.880
but I interpreted you to say they kind of tried a few times
link |
01:09:56.240
and they're like, oh God.
link |
01:09:57.520
No, no, no, what I'm saying is we, so this goes two ways.
link |
01:10:00.680
Yeah, I agree with you.
link |
01:10:01.780
There could be information out there,
link |
01:10:03.860
but just put in such a way
link |
01:10:05.000
that we just don't understand it yet.
link |
01:10:06.600
Right.
link |
01:10:07.440
So sorry if I didn't make that clear.
link |
01:10:09.260
I mean, it's not just, I don't think we,
link |
01:10:11.120
I think we qualify as soon as we can decode their signal.
link |
01:10:15.600
Right, so when you say qualify, got it, got it.
link |
01:10:17.880
So you mean, we're just not smart enough,
link |
01:10:19.680
the word qualify was throwing me off.
link |
01:10:21.320
So we're not smart enough to do,
link |
01:10:22.520
it's like we just need to get smarter.
link |
01:10:25.240
And there's a lot of people who believe,
link |
01:10:27.440
let me get your opinion on this, about UFO sightings.
link |
01:10:31.640
So sightings of weird phenomena
link |
01:10:36.640
that, you know, what does UFO mean?
link |
01:10:41.680
It means it's a flying object
link |
01:10:45.040
and it's not identified clearly at the time of sighting.
link |
01:10:50.440
That's what UFO means.
link |
01:10:51.800
So it could be a physics phenomena,
link |
01:10:53.760
it could be ball lightning,
link |
01:10:54.640
it could be all kinds of fascinating.
link |
01:10:56.440
I was always fascinated with ball lightning as a,
link |
01:11:00.420
like the fact that there could be physical phenomena
link |
01:11:03.160
in this world that are observable by the human eye.
link |
01:11:06.320
Of course, all physical phenomena generally are fascinating
link |
01:11:09.640
that really smart people can't explain.
link |
01:11:14.160
I love that.
link |
01:11:15.080
Cause it's like, wait a minute,
link |
01:11:16.560
especially if you can replicate it,
link |
01:11:18.560
it's like, wait a minute, how does this happen?
link |
01:11:20.160
That's like the precursor to giant discoveries
link |
01:11:23.600
in chemistry and biology and physics and so on.
link |
01:11:25.980
But it sucks when those events are super rare, right?
link |
01:11:29.560
Physically, like ball lightning.
link |
01:11:32.280
So that's out there.
link |
01:11:34.200
And then of course that phenomena
link |
01:11:36.440
could have other interpretations
link |
01:11:37.920
that don't have to do with the physics of chemistry,
link |
01:11:40.280
the biology of earth.
link |
01:11:42.200
It could have to do
link |
01:11:43.360
with more extraterrestrial explanations
link |
01:11:46.840
that in large part, thanks to Hollywood and movies
link |
01:11:50.480
and all those kinds of things,
link |
01:11:51.760
captivates the imaginations of millions of people.
link |
01:11:56.520
But just because it's science fiction
link |
01:11:58.640
that captivates the imagination of people,
link |
01:12:00.440
it doesn't mean that some of those sightings,
link |
01:12:03.520
all it takes is one.
link |
01:12:05.340
One of those sightings is actually a sign
link |
01:12:09.160
that it's extraterrestrial intelligence,
link |
01:12:11.960
that it's object that's not of this particular world.
link |
01:12:17.160
Do you think there's a chance that that's the case?
link |
01:12:18.960
What do you make, especially the pilot sightings,
link |
01:12:21.180
what do you make of those?
link |
01:12:23.920
So I agree with there's a chance.
link |
01:12:26.040
There's always a chance.
link |
01:12:26.860
Any good scientist would have to,
link |
01:12:29.400
or observationist would have to,
link |
01:12:31.200
I want to see if aliens exist come to earth.
link |
01:12:36.160
What I know about the universe
link |
01:12:37.880
is I think it's unlikely right now
link |
01:12:40.000
that there are aliens visiting us, but not impossible.
link |
01:12:44.520
I think the releases, the dramatization
link |
01:12:48.560
that's been happening politically
link |
01:12:49.880
saying we're gonna release all this information,
link |
01:12:51.640
this classified information.
link |
01:12:54.800
I was kind of disappointed
link |
01:12:55.880
because it was just very poor material.
link |
01:13:02.040
And right now, the ability to capture high resolution video,
link |
01:13:08.680
everybody is carrying around
link |
01:13:10.320
with them an incredible video device now.
link |
01:13:12.480
And we haven't got more compelling data.
link |
01:13:18.240
And so that we've just seeing grainy pictures,
link |
01:13:22.680
a lot of hearsay, instrument kind of malfunctions
link |
01:13:26.440
and whatnot.
link |
01:13:27.280
And so I think on balance, I think it's extremely unlikely,
link |
01:13:30.660
but I think something really interesting is happening.
link |
01:13:34.760
And then also during the pandemic, right?
link |
01:13:36.400
We've all been locked down.
link |
01:13:37.480
We all want to have,
link |
01:13:38.320
we want to, our imaginations are running riot.
link |
01:13:42.120
And I think that the,
link |
01:13:44.120
I don't think that the information out there
link |
01:13:46.280
has convinced me there are any,
link |
01:13:47.600
anything interesting on the UFO side.
link |
01:13:49.680
But what it has made me very interested about
link |
01:13:51.760
is how humanity is opening up its mind to ponder aliens
link |
01:13:57.520
and the mystery of our universe.
link |
01:14:00.480
And so I don't want to dissuade people
link |
01:14:02.720
from having those thoughts and say, you're stupid
link |
01:14:04.440
and look at that, it's clearly incorrect.
link |
01:14:06.140
That's not right.
link |
01:14:06.980
That's not fair.
link |
01:14:07.820
What I would say is that I lack sufficient data,
link |
01:14:10.880
replicated observations to make me go,
link |
01:14:14.080
oh, I'm gonna take this seriously,
link |
01:14:16.600
but I'm really interested by the fact
link |
01:14:18.260
that there is this great deal of interest.
link |
01:14:21.600
And I think that it drives me
link |
01:14:24.640
to maybe want to make an artificial life form even more
link |
01:14:28.600
and to help NASA and the Air Force
link |
01:14:31.520
and whoever go and look for things even more,
link |
01:14:33.280
because I think humanity wants to know what's out there.
link |
01:14:36.140
There's this yearning, isn't there?
link |
01:14:38.200
Yeah, but I see, I almost,
link |
01:14:43.800
depending on the day, I sometimes agree with you,
link |
01:14:45.440
but with the thing you just said,
link |
01:14:47.840
but one of the disappointing things to me
link |
01:14:52.680
about the sightings, I still hold the belief
link |
01:14:56.000
that a nonzero number of them
link |
01:15:02.520
is an indication of something very interesting.
link |
01:15:06.240
So I don't side with the people who say
link |
01:15:09.800
everything can be explained
link |
01:15:10.840
with sensor artifacts kind of thing.
link |
01:15:13.320
Yeah, I agree with you.
link |
01:15:14.280
I didn't say that either.
link |
01:15:15.160
I would say I just don't have enough data.
link |
01:15:17.360
But the thing I want to push back on is the statement
link |
01:15:20.840
that everybody has a high definition camera.
link |
01:15:23.420
One of the disappointing things to me
link |
01:15:24.960
about the report that the government released,
link |
01:15:27.000
but in general, just having worked with government,
link |
01:15:29.400
having worked with people all over
link |
01:15:32.840
is how incompetent we are.
link |
01:15:36.240
Like if you look at the response to the pandemic,
link |
01:15:38.800
how incompetent we are in the face of great challenges
link |
01:15:44.240
without great leadership.
link |
01:15:46.080
How incompetent we are in the face
link |
01:15:47.900
of the great mysteries before us without great leadership.
link |
01:15:51.680
And I just think it's actually,
link |
01:15:54.040
the fact that there's a lot of high definition cameras
link |
01:15:56.000
is not enough to capture the full richness of weird,
link |
01:16:01.640
of the mysterious phenomena out there
link |
01:16:03.880
of which extraterrestrial intelligence visiting Earth
link |
01:16:07.080
could be one.
link |
01:16:08.080
I don't think we have,
link |
01:16:09.400
I don't think everybody having a smartphone
link |
01:16:12.040
in their pocket is enough.
link |
01:16:14.880
I think that allows for TikTok videos.
link |
01:16:17.440
I don't think it allows for the capture
link |
01:16:19.920
of even interesting, relatively rare human events.
link |
01:16:23.800
That's not that common.
link |
01:16:25.400
It's rare to have been the right moment in the right time
link |
01:16:28.600
to be able to capture the thing.
link |
01:16:30.600
I agree, I agree.
link |
01:16:31.520
Let me rephrase what I think on this.
link |
01:16:33.960
I haven't seen enough information.
link |
01:16:35.760
I haven't really actively sorted out.
link |
01:16:37.400
I must admit, but I'm with you
link |
01:16:40.120
and I love the idea of anomaly detection
link |
01:16:42.560
in chemistry in particular, right?
link |
01:16:44.080
I want to make anomalies, sorry,
link |
01:16:45.800
or not necessarily make anomalies.
link |
01:16:47.720
I want to understand an anomaly.
link |
01:16:50.800
Let me give you two from chemistry,
link |
01:16:53.800
which are really quite interesting.
link |
01:16:56.680
Phlogiston, going way back,
link |
01:16:59.280
where people said there's this thing called phlogiston.
link |
01:17:02.080
And for ages, the alchemists got really this kind of,
link |
01:17:05.920
that fire is the thing.
link |
01:17:09.120
That's one.
link |
01:17:09.960
And then we determined that phlogiston
link |
01:17:11.200
wasn't what we thought it is.
link |
01:17:13.400
Let's go to physics, the ether.
link |
01:17:15.280
The ether's a hard one
link |
01:17:16.440
because I think actually the ether might exist.
link |
01:17:18.480
And I'll tell you what I think the ether is later.
link |
01:17:24.040
Can you explain the ether?
link |
01:17:25.080
So as the vacuum,
link |
01:17:26.160
so the light traveling through the ether in the vacuum,
link |
01:17:28.640
there is some thing that we call the ether
link |
01:17:30.720
that basically mediates the movement of light, say.
link |
01:17:34.400
And I think that...
link |
01:17:36.160
And then the other one is cold fusion,
link |
01:17:38.240
which is more of a...
link |
01:17:39.080
So a few years ago,
link |
01:17:40.340
people observed that when they did some electrochemistry,
link |
01:17:44.340
when they were splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen,
link |
01:17:48.260
that you got more energy out than you put in.
link |
01:17:50.660
And people got excited
link |
01:17:51.900
and they thought that this was a nuclear reaction.
link |
01:17:54.700
And in the end, it was kind of discredited
link |
01:17:57.980
because you didn't detect neutrons and all this stuff.
link |
01:17:59.900
But I'm pretty sure...
link |
01:18:02.980
I'm a chemist.
link |
01:18:03.820
I'm telling you this on your podcast, but why not?
link |
01:18:06.140
I'm pretty sure there's interesting
link |
01:18:07.380
electrochemical phenomena
link |
01:18:08.380
that's not completely bottomed out yet,
link |
01:18:09.900
that there is something there.
link |
01:18:11.460
However, we lack the technology and the experimental design.
link |
01:18:15.980
So all I'm saying in your response about aliens
link |
01:18:18.260
is we lack the experimental design
link |
01:18:20.420
to really capture these anomalies.
link |
01:18:22.500
And we are encircling the planet
link |
01:18:25.740
with many more detection systems.
link |
01:18:27.360
We've got satellites everywhere.
link |
01:18:28.980
So there is, I do hope
link |
01:18:30.660
that we are gonna discover more anomalies.
link |
01:18:32.300
And remember that the solar system
link |
01:18:35.540
isn't just static in space,
link |
01:18:37.020
it's moving through the universe.
link |
01:18:39.180
So there's just more and more chance.
link |
01:18:40.740
I'm not what with Avi Loeb.
link |
01:18:42.740
He's generating all sorts of kind of a cult,
link |
01:18:46.780
I would say, with this, but I'm not against him.
link |
01:18:50.500
I think there is a finite chance
link |
01:18:52.060
if there are aliens in the universe
link |
01:18:53.180
that we're gonna happen upon them
link |
01:18:54.780
because we're moving through the universe.
link |
01:18:56.260
What's the nature of the following that Avi Loeb has?
link |
01:18:59.780
He's doubling down more and more and more
link |
01:19:01.220
and say there are aliens,
link |
01:19:02.220
interdimensional aliens and everything else, right?
link |
01:19:04.460
He's gone from space junk accelerating out of
link |
01:19:06.860
to interdimensional stuff in a very short space of time.
link |
01:19:11.340
I see.
link |
01:19:12.180
He's obviously bored.
link |
01:19:15.020
Or he wants to tap into the psyche and understand.
link |
01:19:18.740
And he's playfully kind of trying to interact
link |
01:19:21.140
with society and his peers to say,
link |
01:19:22.880
stop saying it's not possible.
link |
01:19:26.540
Which I agree with, we shouldn't do that.
link |
01:19:28.540
But we should frame it statistically
link |
01:19:30.640
in the same way we should frame everything
link |
01:19:32.800
as good scientists, statistically.
link |
01:19:34.920
Yeah, good scientists.
link |
01:19:40.280
Recently, the idea of good scientists is,
link |
01:19:45.920
I take quite skeptically.
link |
01:19:47.760
I've been listening to a lot of scientists
link |
01:19:49.400
tell me about what is good science.
link |
01:19:52.680
That makes me sad.
link |
01:19:53.520
Because you've been interviewing
link |
01:19:54.440
what I would consider a lot of really good scientists.
link |
01:19:56.680
No, that's true.
link |
01:19:57.520
A lot of great thinkers.
link |
01:19:58.340
But that's exactly right.
link |
01:19:59.960
And most of the people I talk to
link |
01:20:01.360
are incredible human beings.
link |
01:20:03.520
But there's a humility that's required.
link |
01:20:05.840
Science is not, science cannot be dogmatism.
link |
01:20:10.000
Sure, I agree.
link |
01:20:11.000
I mean, authority, like a PhD does not give you authority.
link |
01:20:17.040
A lifelong pursuit of a particular task
link |
01:20:19.520
does not give you authority.
link |
01:20:21.000
You're just as lost in clues as everybody else.
link |
01:20:24.000
But you're more curious and more stubborn.
link |
01:20:27.280
So that's a nice quality to have.
link |
01:20:29.920
But overall, just using the word science and statistics
link |
01:20:37.280
can often, as you know, kind of become a catalyst
link |
01:20:43.440
for dismissing new ideas, out of the box ideas, wild ideas,
link |
01:20:49.700
all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:20:50.540
Well, yes and no.
link |
01:20:52.200
I think that, so I like to,
link |
01:20:57.520
some people find me extremely annoying in science
link |
01:20:59.720
because I'm basically, I'm quite rude and disruptive.
link |
01:21:04.100
Not in a rude, you know,
link |
01:21:05.600
some up to people and say they're ugly or stupid
link |
01:21:07.480
or anything like that.
link |
01:21:08.320
I just say, you know, you're wrong.
link |
01:21:12.240
Or why do you think this?
link |
01:21:13.320
And something, a gift I got given by society
link |
01:21:16.880
when I was very young,
link |
01:21:17.720
because I was in the learning difficulties class at school
link |
01:21:20.640
is I was told I was stupid.
link |
01:21:22.760
And so I know I'm stupid,
link |
01:21:24.880
but I always wanted to be smart, right?
link |
01:21:26.920
I remember going to school going,
link |
01:21:29.040
maybe today they're going to tell me
link |
01:21:30.560
I'm not as stupid as I was yesterday.
link |
01:21:32.360
And I was always disappointed, always.
link |
01:21:34.440
And so when I went into academia and everyone says,
link |
01:21:36.640
you're wrong, I was like, join the queue.
link |
01:21:39.140
Yeah.
link |
01:21:40.720
Because it allowed me to walk through the wall.
link |
01:21:43.460
So I think that people like to always imagine science
link |
01:21:46.200
as a bit like living in a Japanese house,
link |
01:21:48.120
the paper walls, and everyone sits in their room.
link |
01:21:52.000
And I annoy people because I walk straight through the wall.
link |
01:21:54.320
Not because, why should I be a chemist
link |
01:21:56.720
and not a mathematician?
link |
01:21:58.040
Why should I be a mathematician and not a computer scientist?
link |
01:22:00.440
Because if the problem requires us
link |
01:22:02.320
to walk through those walls,
link |
01:22:05.040
but I like walking through the walls.
link |
01:22:08.400
But as long, then I have to put up,
link |
01:22:11.160
you know, I have to do good science.
link |
01:22:12.440
I have to win the people in those rooms
link |
01:22:15.440
across by good science,
link |
01:22:17.240
by taking their criticisms and addressing them head on.
link |
01:22:21.000
And I think we must do that.
link |
01:22:22.440
And I think that I try and do that in my own way.
link |
01:22:25.240
And I kind of love walking through the walls.
link |
01:22:29.100
And it gives me, it's difficult for me personally.
link |
01:22:33.200
It's quite painful,
link |
01:22:35.100
but it always leads to a deeper understanding
link |
01:22:38.280
of the people I'm with.
link |
01:22:39.360
In particular, you know, the arguments I have
link |
01:22:41.040
with all sorts of interesting minds,
link |
01:22:43.400
because I want to solve the problem,
link |
01:22:45.840
or I want to understand more about why I exist.
link |
01:22:49.280
You know, that's it really.
link |
01:22:52.660
And I think we have to not dismiss science
link |
01:22:55.120
on that basis.
link |
01:22:55.960
I think we can work with science.
link |
01:22:58.240
No, science is beautiful,
link |
01:22:59.420
but humans with egos and all those kinds of things
link |
01:23:03.160
can sometimes misuse good things,
link |
01:23:08.720
like social justice,
link |
01:23:10.680
like all ideas we're all aspire to misuse
link |
01:23:14.200
these beautiful ideas to manipulate people,
link |
01:23:18.680
to all those kinds of things.
link |
01:23:20.080
Sure.
link |
01:23:20.920
And that's, there's assholes in every space
link |
01:23:24.600
and walk of life, including science.
link |
01:23:26.600
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
link |
01:23:27.440
And those are no good.
link |
01:23:28.800
But yes, you're right.
link |
01:23:29.800
The scientific method has proven to be quite useful.
link |
01:23:34.600
That said, for difficult questions,
link |
01:23:36.520
for difficult explanations for rare phenomena,
link |
01:23:42.960
you have to walk cautiously.
link |
01:23:47.320
Because the scientific method,
link |
01:23:50.200
when you totally don't understand something,
link |
01:23:53.200
and it's rare, and you can't replicate it,
link |
01:23:55.440
doesn't quite apply.
link |
01:23:57.080
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
link |
01:23:58.420
I agree with you.
link |
01:23:59.260
The challenge is to not dismiss the anomaly
link |
01:24:02.080
because you can't replicate it.
link |
01:24:03.520
I mean, we can talk about this.
link |
01:24:05.220
This is something I realized
link |
01:24:06.480
when we were developing assembly theory.
link |
01:24:10.720
People thinking that the track they're on
link |
01:24:13.920
is so dogmatic, but there is this thing that they see,
link |
01:24:18.000
but they don't see.
link |
01:24:19.040
And it takes a bit of time
link |
01:24:20.240
and you just have to keep reframing it.
link |
01:24:21.740
And my approach is to say, well, why can't this be right?
link |
01:24:25.040
Why must we accept that RNA is the only way into life?
link |
01:24:29.480
I mean, who said?
link |
01:24:30.480
Does RNA have a special class of information
link |
01:24:35.800
that's encoded in the universe?
link |
01:24:37.160
No, of course it doesn't, right?
link |
01:24:38.600
RNA is not a special molecule
link |
01:24:41.080
in the space of all the other molecules.
link |
01:24:42.840
But it's so elegant and simple
link |
01:24:44.520
and it works so well for the evolutionary process
link |
01:24:46.680
that we kind of use that as an intuition
link |
01:24:48.600
to explain that that must be the only way to have life.
link |
01:24:51.440
Sure.
link |
01:24:53.320
But you mentioned assembly theory.
link |
01:24:55.160
Well, first let me pause, bathroom break, needed?
link |
01:24:57.680
Yeah, let's take two minutes.
link |
01:24:59.880
We took a quick break and offline,
link |
01:25:02.480
you mentioned to me that you have a lab in your home.
link |
01:25:08.320
And then I said that you're basically Rick
link |
01:25:10.640
from Rick and Morty,
link |
01:25:11.560
which is something I've been thinking
link |
01:25:13.640
this whole conversation.
link |
01:25:15.200
And then you say that there's a glowing pickle
link |
01:25:19.080
that you used something involving cold plasma, I believe.
link |
01:25:23.540
I don't know, but can you explain
link |
01:25:24.860
the glowing pickle situation?
link |
01:25:31.420
And is there many, arbitrarily many versions of you
link |
01:25:34.380
in alternate dimensions that you're aware of?
link |
01:25:37.380
I tried to make an electrochemical memory at home
link |
01:25:41.500
using a pickle and the only way I could get
link |
01:25:45.580
any traction with it was actually by plugging it
link |
01:25:49.140
into a very high voltage alternating current
link |
01:25:51.620
and then putting in a couple of electrodes.
link |
01:25:53.840
But my kids weren't impressed.
link |
01:25:54.980
They're not impressed with anything I do,
link |
01:25:56.580
any experiments I do at home.
link |
01:25:57.880
I think it's quite funny.
link |
01:25:58.900
But you connected a pickle to some electrode.
link |
01:26:01.300
240 volts, yeah, AC.
link |
01:26:03.460
And then had a couple of electrodes on it.
link |
01:26:04.860
So what happens is a pickle,
link |
01:26:07.700
this is a classic thing you do.
link |
01:26:09.820
I mean, I shouldn't, pranks you do,
link |
01:26:11.500
you put a pickle into the mains
link |
01:26:13.180
and just leave it, run away and leave it.
link |
01:26:15.180
And what happens is it starts to decompose.
link |
01:26:17.620
It heats up and then explodes
link |
01:26:19.060
because the water turns to steam
link |
01:26:20.980
and it just violently explodes.
link |
01:26:22.740
But I wondered if I could cause the iron,
link |
01:26:25.300
sodium, potassium ions in the pickle to migrate.
link |
01:26:27.420
It'd been in a jar, right?
link |
01:26:28.740
So it'd been in a brine.
link |
01:26:31.120
That was, yeah, that was not my best experiment.
link |
01:26:34.340
So I've done far better experiments in my lab at home.
link |
01:26:36.940
At that time it was a failed experiment,
link |
01:26:38.500
but you never know, it could,
link |
01:26:41.580
every experiment is a successful experiment
link |
01:26:44.580
if you stick with it long enough.
link |
01:26:46.020
Well, I mean, I get, I got kicked out of my own lab
link |
01:26:48.260
by my research team many years ago and for good reason.
link |
01:26:50.840
I mean, my team is brilliant
link |
01:26:51.900
and I used to go and just break things.
link |
01:26:53.820
So what I do do at home
link |
01:26:55.420
is I have a kind of electronics workshop
link |
01:26:58.780
and I prototype experiments there.
link |
01:27:01.380
Then I try and then I try and suggest to my team sometimes,
link |
01:27:05.260
maybe we can try this thing.
link |
01:27:07.180
And they would just say, oh,
link |
01:27:08.460
wow, that's not gonna work because of this.
link |
01:27:10.140
And I'll say, aha, but actually I've tried
link |
01:27:12.020
and here's some code and here's some hardware.
link |
01:27:14.100
Can we have a go?
link |
01:27:15.220
So I'm doing that less and less now
link |
01:27:17.460
as I get even more busy, but that's quite fun
link |
01:27:20.740
because they feel that we're in the experiment together.
link |
01:27:24.180
You do, in fact, brilliantly, just like Rick
link |
01:27:28.540
from Rick and Morty, connect up chemistry with computation.
link |
01:27:38.860
And when we say chemistry,
link |
01:27:40.140
we don't mean the simulation of chemistry,
link |
01:27:45.420
a modeling of chemistry.
link |
01:27:46.940
We mean chemistry in the physical space
link |
01:27:49.260
as well as in the digital space, which is fascinating.
link |
01:27:52.180
We'll talk about that.
link |
01:27:54.260
But first you mentioned assembly theory.
link |
01:27:56.020
So we'll stick on theory in these big ideas.
link |
01:28:00.780
I would say revolutionary ideas,
link |
01:28:03.020
this intersection between mathematics and philosophy.
link |
01:28:07.280
What is assembly theory?
link |
01:28:09.140
And generally speaking, how would we recognize life
link |
01:28:13.660
if we saw it?
link |
01:28:15.300
So assembly theory is a theory,
link |
01:28:17.620
goes back a few years now in my struggle
link |
01:28:19.580
for maybe almost 10 years
link |
01:28:22.100
when I was going to origin of life conferences
link |
01:28:24.380
and artificial life conferences,
link |
01:28:25.780
where I thought that everybody was dancing
link |
01:28:28.260
around the problem of what life is and what it does.
link |
01:28:32.700
But I'll tell you about what assembly theory is
link |
01:28:34.420
because I think it's easier.
link |
01:28:35.820
So assembly theory literally says if you take an object,
link |
01:28:39.220
any given object,
link |
01:28:40.940
and you are able to break the object into parts very gently.
link |
01:28:43.860
So just maybe let's say take a piece
link |
01:28:46.380
of very intricate Chinese porcelain
link |
01:28:48.980
and you tap it just with a hammer or the nail at some point,
link |
01:28:52.220
and it will fragment into many parts.
link |
01:28:54.940
And if that object is able to fragment into many,
link |
01:28:57.860
and you count those parts, the different parts,
link |
01:29:00.500
so they're unsymmetrical,
link |
01:29:02.540
assembly theory says the larger the number of parts,
link |
01:29:07.180
unsymmetrical parts that object has,
link |
01:29:10.140
the more likely it is that object has been created
link |
01:29:12.500
by an evolutionary or information process,
link |
01:29:15.020
especially if that object is not one off,
link |
01:29:18.940
you've got an abundance of them.
link |
01:29:22.100
And that's really important.
link |
01:29:23.220
So because what I'm literally saying about the abundance,
link |
01:29:26.860
if you have a one off object and you break it into parts
link |
01:29:30.260
and it has lots of parts,
link |
01:29:32.180
you'd say, well, that could be incredibly intricate
link |
01:29:36.380
and complex, but it could be just random.
link |
01:29:39.940
And I was troubled with this for years
link |
01:29:41.740
because I saw in reality that assembly theory works.
link |
01:29:44.700
But when I talked to very good
link |
01:29:46.180
computational complexity computation lists,
link |
01:29:49.700
algorithmic complexity people,
link |
01:29:51.340
they said, you haven't really done this properly.
link |
01:29:53.820
You haven't thought about it.
link |
01:29:54.780
It's like, this is the random problem.
link |
01:29:57.660
And so I kept working this up
link |
01:29:59.980
because I invented an assembly theory in chemistry,
link |
01:30:03.100
first of all, with molecules.
link |
01:30:05.060
And so the thought experiment was,
link |
01:30:08.060
how complex does a molecule need to be when I find it
link |
01:30:11.460
that it couldn't possibly have risen by chance,
link |
01:30:13.460
probabilistically.
link |
01:30:15.180
And if I found this molecule,
link |
01:30:16.500
able to detect it enough quantities in the same object,
link |
01:30:18.940
like a machine, like a mass spectrometer.
link |
01:30:20.780
So typically in a mass spectrometer,
link |
01:30:22.100
you weigh the molecules in electric field.
link |
01:30:24.300
You probably have to have all the order of 10,000
link |
01:30:26.300
identical molecules to get a signal.
link |
01:30:28.460
So 10,000 identical molecules that are complex.
link |
01:30:32.820
What is the chance of them occurring by chance?
link |
01:30:36.660
Well, we can do the math.
link |
01:30:37.500
Let's take a molecule like strychnine
link |
01:30:39.220
or, yeah, so strychnine is a good molecule actually to take
link |
01:30:44.980
or Viagra is a good molecule.
link |
01:30:46.780
I made jokes about Viagra because it's a complex molecule.
link |
01:30:49.540
And one of my friends said, yeah,
link |
01:30:50.620
if we find Viagra on Mars in detectable quantities,
link |
01:30:53.300
we know something is up.
link |
01:30:54.620
And yeah, but anyway, it's a complex molecule.
link |
01:31:00.220
So what you do is you take this molecule
link |
01:31:01.660
in the mass spectrometer and you hit it with some electrons
link |
01:31:03.780
or in electric field and it breaks apart.
link |
01:31:06.220
And if the larger the number of different parts,
link |
01:31:09.940
you know when it starts to get refreshed,
link |
01:31:12.780
my idea was that that molecule could not be created
link |
01:31:15.020
by chance, probabilistically.
link |
01:31:17.180
So that was where assembly theory was born
link |
01:31:20.260
in an experiment, in a mass spec experiment.
link |
01:31:22.780
And I was thinking about this
link |
01:31:24.340
because NASA is sending mass spectrometers to Mars,
link |
01:31:26.940
to Titan, it's gonna send them to Europa.
link |
01:31:29.620
There's gonna be a nuclear powered mass spectrometer
link |
01:31:32.020
going to Titan.
link |
01:31:33.620
I mean, this is the coolest experiment ever.
link |
01:31:35.900
They're not only sending a drone
link |
01:31:37.260
that's gonna fly around Titan,
link |
01:31:38.460
it's gonna be powered by a nuclear slug, a nuclear battery,
link |
01:31:43.820
and it's gonna have a mass spectrometer on it.
link |
01:31:45.940
Is this already launched?
link |
01:31:47.180
No, it's Dragonfly
link |
01:31:49.300
and it's gonna be launched in a few years.
link |
01:31:50.900
I think it got pushed a year because of the pandemic.
link |
01:31:53.460
So I think it's three or four years.
link |
01:31:55.180
Dragonfly, nuclear Dragonfly is going to fly to Titan
link |
01:32:00.900
and collect data about the composition
link |
01:32:07.420
of the various chemicals on Titan.
link |
01:32:09.580
Yeah, I'm trying to convince NASA.
link |
01:32:11.340
I don't know if I'll be able to convince
link |
01:32:12.620
the Dragonfly team that they should apply this approach,
link |
01:32:16.980
but they will get data.
link |
01:32:18.020
And depending on how good their mass spectrometer is.
link |
01:32:20.820
But I had this thought experiment anyway,
link |
01:32:22.340
and I did this thought experiment.
link |
01:32:24.340
And for me, it seemed to work.
link |
01:32:26.620
I turned the thought experiment into an algorithm
link |
01:32:29.060
in assembly theory.
link |
01:32:30.060
And I basically, assembly theory, if I take,
link |
01:32:32.500
let's just make it generic.
link |
01:32:33.740
And so let's just take the word abracadabra.
link |
01:32:36.220
Say, can I, if you find the word,
link |
01:32:38.940
so if you have a book with lots of words in it
link |
01:32:41.140
and you find abracadabra one off,
link |
01:32:42.780
and it's a rap book that's been written by,
link |
01:32:45.500
in a random way, set of monkeys in a room.
link |
01:32:48.460
And you're on typewriters.
link |
01:32:50.500
And you find one off abracadabra,
link |
01:32:51.900
no big deal.
link |
01:32:52.740
But if you find lots of recurrences of abracadabra,
link |
01:32:55.900
well, that means something weird is going on.
link |
01:32:57.500
But let's think about the assembly number of abracadabra.
link |
01:33:00.460
So abracadabra has a number of letters in it.
link |
01:33:04.820
You can break it down.
link |
01:33:05.700
So you just cut the letters up.
link |
01:33:07.540
But when you actually reassemble abracadabra,
link |
01:33:09.660
the minimum number of ways of organizing those letters.
link |
01:33:12.460
So you'd have an A, a B, and keep going up.
link |
01:33:18.860
When you cut abracadabra up into parts,
link |
01:33:21.540
you can put it together again in seven steps.
link |
01:33:24.060
So what does that mean?
link |
01:33:24.900
That means if you basically don't,
link |
01:33:26.980
you're allowed to reuse things
link |
01:33:28.540
you make in a chain at the beginning.
link |
01:33:30.540
That's the memory of the universe,
link |
01:33:32.500
the process that makes abracadabra.
link |
01:33:35.020
And because of that causal chain,
link |
01:33:36.460
you can then get to abracadabra
link |
01:33:38.500
quicker than the number of letters
link |
01:33:40.460
for having to specify only in seven.
link |
01:33:43.180
So if you take that to a molecule
link |
01:33:44.620
and you cut the molecule up into parts,
link |
01:33:47.900
and you can, on the causal chain,
link |
01:33:49.820
and you basically start with the atoms
link |
01:33:51.460
and then bonds, and then you randomly add on those parts
link |
01:33:54.500
to make the A, make the B, and keep going all the way up,
link |
01:33:59.700
I found that literally, assembly theory
link |
01:34:01.580
allows me to say how compressed a molecule is.
link |
01:34:04.900
So when there's some information in there.
link |
01:34:07.820
And I realized assembly theory
link |
01:34:09.620
isn't just confined to molecular space.
link |
01:34:13.260
It can apply to anything.
link |
01:34:14.140
But let me finish the molecular argument.
link |
01:34:16.020
So what I did is I had this theory.
link |
01:34:18.660
I, with one of my students, we wrote an algorithm.
link |
01:34:22.660
We basically took the 20 million molecules from a database
link |
01:34:26.300
and we just calculate their assembly number.
link |
01:34:28.740
And that's the index.
link |
01:34:29.580
Like basically, if I take a molecule
link |
01:34:32.020
and I cut it up into bonds,
link |
01:34:33.900
what is the minimum number of steps I need to take
link |
01:34:36.620
to reform that molecule from atoms?
link |
01:34:39.700
So reusability of previously formed things
link |
01:34:42.580
is somehow a fundamental part of what it is.
link |
01:34:43.900
Exactly, it's like a memory in the universe, right?
link |
01:34:46.380
I'm making lots of leaps here.
link |
01:34:47.740
Like, it's kind of weird.
link |
01:34:48.820
I'm saying, right, there's a process
link |
01:34:50.060
that can form the A and the B and the C, let's say.
link |
01:34:53.380
And then because we've formed A and B before,
link |
01:34:56.300
we can use A and B again with no extra cost except one unit.
link |
01:35:00.060
So that's the kind of what the chain of events.
link |
01:35:02.540
And that's how you think about memory here
link |
01:35:04.260
when you say the universe,
link |
01:35:05.940
when you talk about the universe
link |
01:35:07.540
or life is the universe creating memory.
link |
01:35:11.860
Exactly.
link |
01:35:12.860
So we went through chemical space
link |
01:35:15.220
and we looked at the assembly numbers.
link |
01:35:16.940
We were able to classify it.
link |
01:35:18.620
So, okay, let's test it.
link |
01:35:20.500
Let's go.
link |
01:35:21.580
So we're able to take a whole bunch of molecules
link |
01:35:23.980
and assign an assembly index to them, okay?
link |
01:35:27.500
And it's just a function of the number of bonds
link |
01:35:30.740
in the molecule and how much symmetry.
link |
01:35:32.380
So literally assembly theory is a measure
link |
01:35:34.820
of how little symmetry a molecule has.
link |
01:35:37.940
And so the more asymmetry, the more information,
link |
01:35:40.580
the more weird it is,
link |
01:35:41.420
like a Jackson Pollock of some description.
link |
01:35:44.420
So I then went and did a load of experiments.
link |
01:35:47.740
And I basically took those molecules,
link |
01:35:49.980
I cut them up in the mass spec
link |
01:35:51.340
and measured the number of peaks
link |
01:35:52.660
without any knowledge of the molecule.
link |
01:35:55.180
And we found the assembly number,
link |
01:35:57.220
there was almost not quite a one to one correlation,
link |
01:36:00.620
but almost because not all bonds are equal.
link |
01:36:02.740
They have different energies.
link |
01:36:03.940
I then did this using two other spectroscopic techniques,
link |
01:36:07.020
NMR, nuclear magnetic resonance,
link |
01:36:08.700
which uses radio frequency to basically jangle the molecules
link |
01:36:11.700
and get a signature out.
link |
01:36:13.100
And I also used infrared.
link |
01:36:15.060
And infrared and NMR almost gave us a one to one correlation.
link |
01:36:18.180
So what am I saying?
link |
01:36:19.540
Saying by taking a molecule
link |
01:36:21.780
and doing either infrared or NMR or mass spec,
link |
01:36:26.020
I can work out how many parts there are in that molecule
link |
01:36:30.060
and then put it on a scale.
link |
01:36:32.300
And what we did in the next part of the work
link |
01:36:35.580
is we took molecules randomly from the environment,
link |
01:36:39.140
from outer space, from all around earth,
link |
01:36:41.380
from the sea, from Antarctica,
link |
01:36:45.660
and from fossils and so on.
link |
01:36:47.500
And even NASA, because they didn't believe us,
link |
01:36:49.700
blinded some samples.
link |
01:36:51.540
And we found that all these samples that came from biology
link |
01:36:57.380
produced molecules that had a very high assembly number
link |
01:37:00.500
above a threshold of about 15.
link |
01:37:02.820
So basically all the stuff that came
link |
01:37:05.820
from an ebiotic origin was low.
link |
01:37:08.620
There was no complexity there.
link |
01:37:10.180
So we suddenly realized that on earth at least,
link |
01:37:12.620
there is a cutoff that natural phenomena
link |
01:37:16.140
cannot produce molecules
link |
01:37:17.620
that need more than 15 steps to make them.
link |
01:37:21.140
So I realized that this is a way to make a scale of life,
link |
01:37:25.260
a scale of technology as well.
link |
01:37:27.380
And literally you could just go sniffing for molecules
link |
01:37:30.460
off earth, on Titan, on Mars.
link |
01:37:33.340
And when you find a molecule in the mass spectrometer
link |
01:37:35.660
that gives you more than 15 parts,
link |
01:37:37.740
you'll know pretty much for sure
link |
01:37:40.660
that it had to be produced by evolution.
link |
01:37:43.220
And this allowed me to come up with a general definition
link |
01:37:45.380
of life based on assembly theory,
link |
01:37:47.340
to say that if I find an object that has a large number
link |
01:37:51.380
of parts, say an iPhone or Boeing 747,
link |
01:37:54.700
or any complex object and I can find it in abundance
link |
01:37:58.740
and cut it up, I can tell you whether that has been produced
link |
01:38:03.060
by an informational process or not.
link |
01:38:04.980
And that's what assembly theory kind of does.
link |
01:38:07.700
But it goes a bit further.
link |
01:38:09.820
I then realized that this isn't just about life,
link |
01:38:12.260
it's about causation.
link |
01:38:14.300
So actually it tells you about
link |
01:38:15.860
whether it's a causal structure.
link |
01:38:17.380
So now I can look at objects in the universe,
link |
01:38:19.020
say that again, this cup and say, right,
link |
01:38:20.780
I'm gonna look at how many independent parts it has.
link |
01:38:23.740
So that's the assembly number.
link |
01:38:25.540
I'll then look at the abundance, how many cups?
link |
01:38:28.020
There are two on this table,
link |
01:38:28.940
maybe there's a few more you got stashed away.
link |
01:38:31.140
So assembly is a function of the complexity of the object
link |
01:38:37.220
times the number of copy numbers of that object
link |
01:38:39.380
or a function of the copy number normalized.
link |
01:38:41.900
So I realized there's a new quantity in the universe.
link |
01:38:45.100
You have energy, entropy, and assembly.
link |
01:38:49.140
So assembly, the way we should think about that
link |
01:38:51.220
is how much reusability there is.
link |
01:38:55.220
Because reusability is like,
link |
01:38:57.860
can you play devil's advocate to this?
link |
01:38:59.700
So could this just be a nice tertiary signal
link |
01:39:08.060
for living organisms?
link |
01:39:10.340
Like some kind of distant signal that's,
link |
01:39:13.420
yeah, this is a nice property,
link |
01:39:15.140
but it's not capturing something fundamental.
link |
01:39:17.740
Or do you think reusability is something fundamental
link |
01:39:20.260
to life and complex organisms?
link |
01:39:22.580
I think reusability is fundamental in the universe,
link |
01:39:25.620
not just for life and complex organisms.
link |
01:39:27.660
It's about causation.
link |
01:39:29.420
So I think assembly tells you if you find objects,
link |
01:39:32.860
cause you can do this with trajectories as well.
link |
01:39:35.300
You think about it,
link |
01:39:36.380
that the fact there are objects in the universe on earth
link |
01:39:41.820
is weird.
link |
01:39:43.820
You think about it,
link |
01:39:44.660
we should just have a combinatorial explosion of stuff.
link |
01:39:47.500
The fact that not everything exists is really weird.
link |
01:39:53.620
Now then.
link |
01:39:54.460
And then as I'm looking at two mugs and two water bottles
link |
01:39:59.100
and the things that exist kind of are similar
link |
01:40:04.660
and multiply in copies of each other.
link |
01:40:08.100
So I would say that assembly allows you to do something
link |
01:40:10.780
that statistical mechanics and people looking at entropy
link |
01:40:14.220
have got stuck with for a while.
link |
01:40:16.940
So I'm making, it's pretty bold.
link |
01:40:18.420
I mean, I'm writing a paper with Sarah Walker
link |
01:40:20.380
on this at the moment.
link |
01:40:21.940
And we're realizing,
link |
01:40:23.260
we don't want to get ahead of ourselves
link |
01:40:24.340
because I think that there's lots of ways where this is,
link |
01:40:27.580
you know, it's a really interesting idea.
link |
01:40:30.500
It works for molecules and it appears to work
link |
01:40:33.420
for any objects produced by causation.
link |
01:40:35.540
Cause you can take a motor car,
link |
01:40:36.420
you can look at the assembly of the motor car,
link |
01:40:37.620
look at a book, look at the assembly of the book.
link |
01:40:39.740
Assembly theory tells you
link |
01:40:41.100
there's a way of compressing and reusing.
link |
01:40:43.940
And so when people, I talk to information theorists,
link |
01:40:46.740
they say, oh, this is just logical depth.
link |
01:40:48.780
I say, it is like logical depth,
link |
01:40:51.300
but it's experimentally measurable.
link |
01:40:53.940
They say, oh, it's a bit like Komogolov complexity.
link |
01:40:55.700
And so, but it's computable.
link |
01:40:59.020
And now, okay, it's not infinitely computable,
link |
01:41:00.540
gets MP hard very quickly, right?
link |
01:41:02.300
It's very hard problem when you could get,
link |
01:41:04.140
but it's a computable enough,
link |
01:41:06.220
you could tractable enough to be able to tell
link |
01:41:08.180
the difference between a molecule
link |
01:41:09.220
that's been formed by the random background
link |
01:41:11.100
and by causation.
link |
01:41:13.580
And I think that that's really interesting
link |
01:41:16.540
because until now there's no way
link |
01:41:19.060
of measuring complexity objectively.
link |
01:41:21.020
Complexity has required algorithmic comparisons
link |
01:41:26.220
and programs and human beings to label things.
link |
01:41:30.500
Assembly is label free.
link |
01:41:32.620
Well, not entirely.
link |
01:41:34.180
We can talk about what that means in a minute.
link |
01:41:37.020
Okay, my brain has been broken a couple of times here.
link |
01:41:42.020
I'm sorry I explained it really badly.
link |
01:41:43.460
No, it was very well explained.
link |
01:41:45.020
It was just fascinating.
link |
01:41:45.940
And it's, my brain is broken into pieces
link |
01:41:50.380
and I'm trying to assemble it.
link |
01:41:53.180
So MP hard.
link |
01:41:55.500
So when you have a molecule,
link |
01:41:58.300
you're trying to figure out, okay,
link |
01:42:01.020
if we were to reuse parts of this molecule,
link |
01:42:03.780
which parts can we reuse as an optimization problem,
link |
01:42:10.140
and be hard to figure out the minimum amount
link |
01:42:13.500
of reused components that will create this molecule.
link |
01:42:18.140
And it becomes difficult when you start
link |
01:42:19.660
to look at a huge, huge molecules, arbitrarily large.
link |
01:42:23.700
Cause I'm also like mapping this.
link |
01:42:25.100
Can I think about this in complexity generally,
link |
01:42:28.740
like looking at a cellular automata system
link |
01:42:30.780
and saying like, what's the,
link |
01:42:33.020
can this be used as a measure of complexity
link |
01:42:35.580
for like a arbitrarily complicated system?
link |
01:42:38.740
Yeah, I think it can.
link |
01:42:40.380
It can.
link |
01:42:41.220
And I think that the question is, and what's the benefit?
link |
01:42:43.860
Cause there's plenty of, I mean,
link |
01:42:46.540
in computer science and mathematics and in physics,
link |
01:42:48.540
people have been really seriously studying complexity
link |
01:42:51.540
for a long time.
link |
01:42:53.180
And I think there's a really interesting problems
link |
01:42:55.100
of where we course grade and we lose information.
link |
01:42:58.540
And all assembly theory does really,
link |
01:43:00.100
assembly theory just explains weak emergence.
link |
01:43:03.180
And so what assembly theory says, look,
link |
01:43:05.980
going from the atoms that interact,
link |
01:43:08.900
those first replicators that build one another,
link |
01:43:12.020
assembly at the minimal level just tells you evidence
link |
01:43:14.900
that there's been replication and selection.
link |
01:43:17.860
And I think the more selected something is,
link |
01:43:20.380
the higher the assembly.
link |
01:43:22.460
And so we were able to start to know
link |
01:43:25.540
how to look for selection in the universe.
link |
01:43:27.100
If you go to the moon,
link |
01:43:28.380
there's nothing a very high assembly on the moon
link |
01:43:30.100
except the human artifacts we've left there.
link |
01:43:32.900
So again, let's go back to the sandbox.
link |
01:43:36.020
In assembly theory says,
link |
01:43:37.820
if all the sand grains could stick together,
link |
01:43:40.020
that's the infinite combinatorial explosion
link |
01:43:42.540
in the universe, that should be the default.
link |
01:43:44.740
We don't have that.
link |
01:43:45.900
Now let's assemble sand grains together
link |
01:43:48.580
and do them in every possible way.
link |
01:43:51.060
So we have a series of minimal operations
link |
01:43:54.700
that can move the sand together.
link |
01:43:56.180
But all that doesn't exist either.
link |
01:43:57.860
Now, because we have specific memory where we say,
link |
01:43:59.900
well, we're gonna put three sand grains in line
link |
01:44:01.780
or four and make a cross or a triangle
link |
01:44:03.900
or something unsymmetrical.
link |
01:44:05.420
And once we've made the triangle
link |
01:44:06.620
and the unsymmetrical thing, we remember that,
link |
01:44:08.380
we can use it again, cause on that causal chain.
link |
01:44:10.900
So what assembly theory allows you to do
link |
01:44:12.420
is go to the actual object that you exist,
link |
01:44:14.620
you find in space.
link |
01:44:16.060
And actually the way you get there is by disassembling.
link |
01:44:18.980
It's disassembly theory works by disassembling objects
link |
01:44:23.340
you have and understanding the steps to create them.
link |
01:44:27.660
And it works for molecules beautifully
link |
01:44:30.140
cause you just break bonds.
link |
01:44:31.740
But like you said, it's very difficult.
link |
01:44:33.860
It's a difficult problem to figure out
link |
01:44:35.580
how to break them apart.
link |
01:44:36.580
For molecules, it's easy.
link |
01:44:37.580
If you just keep low enough in molecular weight space,
link |
01:44:40.780
it's good enough.
link |
01:44:41.700
So it's a complete theory.
link |
01:44:43.820
When we start to think about objects,
link |
01:44:45.300
we can start to assign,
link |
01:44:46.940
we can start to think about things at different levels,
link |
01:44:49.020
different atoms, what you assign as your atom.
link |
01:44:51.540
So in a molecule, the atom, this is really confusing
link |
01:44:54.620
cause the word atom, I mean smallest breakable part.
link |
01:44:57.260
So in a molecule, the atom is the bond
link |
01:44:59.700
cause you break bonds, not atoms, right?
link |
01:45:02.420
So in a car, the atom might be, I don't know,
link |
01:45:06.100
a small amount of iron or the smallest reusable part,
link |
01:45:09.780
a rivet, a piece of plastic or something.
link |
01:45:13.460
So you gotta be really careful.
link |
01:45:14.740
In a microprocessor, the atoms might be transistors.
link |
01:45:18.460
And so the amount of assembly that something has
link |
01:45:23.580
is a function, you have to look at the atom level.
link |
01:45:26.620
What are your parts?
link |
01:45:28.180
What are you counting?
link |
01:45:29.020
That's one of the things you get to choose.
link |
01:45:30.780
What is, at what scale is the atom?
link |
01:45:32.740
What is the minimal thing?
link |
01:45:34.740
I mean, there's a huge amounts of trade offs
link |
01:45:36.740
in when you approach a system and try to analyze.
link |
01:45:39.700
Like if you approach Earth,
link |
01:45:41.340
you're an alien civilization trying to study Earth,
link |
01:45:43.820
what is the atom for trying to measure
link |
01:45:45.740
the complexity of life?
link |
01:45:48.380
Is it, are humans the atoms?
link |
01:45:50.540
I would say to start with, you just use molecules.
link |
01:45:53.500
I can say for sure, if there are molecules
link |
01:45:56.020
of sufficient complexity on Earth,
link |
01:45:58.220
then I know that life has made them.
link |
01:45:59.820
And then go further and show technology.
link |
01:46:01.380
There are molecules that exist on Earth
link |
01:46:03.860
that are not possible even by biology.
link |
01:46:06.020
You needed technology
link |
01:46:07.180
and you needed microprocessors to get there.
link |
01:46:09.700
So that's really cool.
link |
01:46:11.420
And that there's a correlation between that,
link |
01:46:14.620
between the coolness of that and assembly number,
link |
01:46:18.580
whatever the measure.
link |
01:46:19.700
What's the, what would you call the measure?
link |
01:46:21.580
Assembly index.
link |
01:46:22.500
Yeah, assembly index.
link |
01:46:23.340
So there are three kind of fundamental
link |
01:46:25.660
kind of labels we have.
link |
01:46:26.700
So there's the quantity of assembly
link |
01:46:28.900
and the assembly, so if you have a box,
link |
01:46:31.140
let's just have a box of molecules.
link |
01:46:32.540
So I'm gonna have my box.
link |
01:46:34.220
We count the number of identical molecules
link |
01:46:36.540
and then we chop each molecule up
link |
01:46:37.980
in an individual molecule class
link |
01:46:40.500
and calculate the assembly number.
link |
01:46:42.260
So basically you then have a function
link |
01:46:45.740
that sums over all the molecules for each assembly
link |
01:46:49.420
and then you divide through.
link |
01:46:50.620
So you make it divide through
link |
01:46:52.340
by the number of molecules.
link |
01:46:54.220
So that's the assembly index for the box?
link |
01:46:56.180
So that will tell you the amount of assembly in the box.
link |
01:46:58.620
So basically the assembly equation we come up with
link |
01:47:01.020
is like basically the sum of e to the power
link |
01:47:04.980
of the assembly index for molecule i
link |
01:47:07.420
times the number of copies of the molecule i
link |
01:47:10.540
and then you normalize.
link |
01:47:11.460
So you sum them all up and then normalize.
link |
01:47:13.380
So some boxes are gonna be more assembled than others.
link |
01:47:16.380
Yeah, that's what they tell me.
link |
01:47:17.700
So if you were to look at me as a box,
link |
01:47:19.900
so say I'm a box, am I assembling my parts?
link |
01:47:23.820
In terms of like, how do you know,
link |
01:47:25.620
what's my assembly index?
link |
01:47:27.020
So I've been gentle.
link |
01:47:28.740
So let's just, we'll talk about the molecules in you.
link |
01:47:30.940
So let's just take a pile of sand the same way as you
link |
01:47:34.540
and I would take you and just cut up all the molecules.
link |
01:47:40.140
I mean, and look at the number of copies
link |
01:47:42.580
and assembly number.
link |
01:47:43.900
So in sand, let's say there's probably gonna be
link |
01:47:46.020
nothing more than assembly number of two or three,
link |
01:47:48.340
but there might be trillions and trillions of sand grains.
link |
01:47:51.980
In your body, there might be,
link |
01:47:53.860
the assembly number is gonna be higher,
link |
01:47:56.180
but there might not be as quite as many copies
link |
01:47:58.340
because the molecular weight is higher.
link |
01:48:01.220
So you do wanna average it out.
link |
01:48:03.020
You can average, you do average it.
link |
01:48:04.340
I'm not defined by the most impressive molecules.
link |
01:48:07.140
No, no, you're an average in your volume.
link |
01:48:08.700
Well, I mean, we're just working this out,
link |
01:48:10.500
but what's really cool is you're gonna have
link |
01:48:13.500
a really high assembly.
link |
01:48:15.140
The sand will have a very low assembly.
link |
01:48:16.700
Your causal power is much higher.
link |
01:48:19.500
You get to make decisions, you're alive, you're aspiring.
link |
01:48:22.940
Assembly says something about causal power in the universe.
link |
01:48:26.580
And that's not supposed to exist
link |
01:48:28.860
because physicists don't accept
link |
01:48:30.580
that causation exists at the bottom.
link |
01:48:33.140
So I understand at the chemical level
link |
01:48:34.580
why the assembly causes causation.
link |
01:48:37.660
Why is it causation?
link |
01:48:38.580
Because it's capturing the memory.
link |
01:48:40.940
Exactly.
link |
01:48:41.780
Capturing memory, but there's not an action to it.
link |
01:48:45.660
So I'm trying to see how it leads to life.
link |
01:48:51.380
Well, it's what life does.
link |
01:48:52.980
So I think it's, we don't know.
link |
01:48:55.620
So. Yeah, that's a good question.
link |
01:48:57.300
What is life versus what does life do?
link |
01:49:00.100
Yeah, so that's, this is the definition of life.
link |
01:49:02.460
The only definition we need, right?
link |
01:49:04.460
The assembly index.
link |
01:49:05.300
It's basically that life is able to create objects
link |
01:49:09.900
in abundance that are so complex,
link |
01:49:14.020
the assembly number is so high,
link |
01:49:15.700
they can't possibly be formed in an environment
link |
01:49:18.700
where there's just random interactions.
link |
01:49:20.300
Yeah.
link |
01:49:21.140
So suddenly you can put life on a scale.
link |
01:49:24.860
And then life doesn't exist actually in that camp.
link |
01:49:27.860
It's just how evolved you are.
link |
01:49:30.300
And you as an object,
link |
01:49:33.100
because you have incredible causal power,
link |
01:49:35.660
you could go and, you can go and, you know,
link |
01:49:39.660
launch rockets or build cars or create drugs,
link |
01:49:43.660
or, you know, you can do so many things.
link |
01:49:46.340
You can build stuff, build more artifacts
link |
01:49:49.020
that show that you have had causal power.
link |
01:49:52.340
And that causal power was this kind of a lineage.
link |
01:49:55.340
And I think that over time,
link |
01:49:57.860
I've been realizing that physics as a discipline
link |
01:50:02.580
has a number of problems associated with it.
link |
01:50:04.900
Me as a chemist, it's kind of interesting
link |
01:50:07.300
that assembly theory, and I'm really, you know,
link |
01:50:10.340
I want to maintain some credibility in the physicists eyes,
link |
01:50:13.460
but I have to push them because they,
link |
01:50:15.260
physics is a really good discipline.
link |
01:50:17.980
It's reduced the number,
link |
01:50:20.060
physics is about reducing the belief system,
link |
01:50:22.260
but they're down to some things in their belief system,
link |
01:50:24.740
which is kind of really makes me kind of grumpy.
link |
01:50:27.780
Number one is requiring order
link |
01:50:29.620
at the beginning of the universe magically.
link |
01:50:31.020
We don't need that.
link |
01:50:32.220
The second is the second law.
link |
01:50:34.020
Well, we don't actually need that.
link |
01:50:36.740
And I...
link |
01:50:37.580
This is blasphemous.
link |
01:50:39.180
Well, in a minute, I'll recover my career in a second.
link |
01:50:42.260
Although I think the good,
link |
01:50:43.380
the only good thing about being the regis chair
link |
01:50:45.140
means I think there has to be an act of parliament to fire me.
link |
01:50:47.860
Yeah.
link |
01:50:48.700
Yeah.
link |
01:50:49.540
Yeah.
link |
01:50:50.380
Yeah.
link |
01:50:51.220
Yeah.
link |
01:50:52.060
But you can always go to Lee's Twitter and protest.
link |
01:50:56.700
And I think the third thing is that,
link |
01:50:58.620
so we've got, you know,
link |
01:50:59.460
we've got the order at the beginning.
link |
01:51:02.540
Second law.
link |
01:51:03.380
The second law and the fact that causation is emergent,
link |
01:51:06.780
right?
link |
01:51:07.620
And that time is emergent.
link |
01:51:09.060
John Carroll just turned off this program.
link |
01:51:12.180
I think he believes that it's emergent.
link |
01:51:13.860
So causation is not...
link |
01:51:15.700
That's clearly incorrect
link |
01:51:17.860
because we wouldn't exist otherwise.
link |
01:51:19.620
So physicists have kind of got confused about time.
link |
01:51:23.460
Time is a real thing.
link |
01:51:25.580
Well, I mean, so look,
link |
01:51:29.460
I'm very happy with the current description
link |
01:51:31.140
of the universe as physics give me,
link |
01:51:32.700
because I can do a lot of stuff, right?
link |
01:51:33.980
I can go to the moon with Newtonian physics, I think,
link |
01:51:36.540
and I can understand the orbit of Mercury with relativity.
link |
01:51:41.060
And so, and I can build transistors
link |
01:51:42.900
with quantum mechanics, right?
link |
01:51:43.940
And I can do all this stuff.
link |
01:51:45.740
So I'm not saying the physics is wrong.
link |
01:51:47.260
I'm just saying, if we say that time is fundamental,
link |
01:51:50.460
i.e. time is nonnegotiable, there's a global clock,
link |
01:51:52.940
I don't need to require
link |
01:51:56.620
that there's order been magically made in the past
link |
01:51:59.700
because that asymmetry is built into the way the universe is.
link |
01:52:05.460
So if time is fundamental,
link |
01:52:06.940
I mean, you've been referring to this kind of
link |
01:52:11.140
an interesting formulation of that is memory.
link |
01:52:13.900
Yeah.
link |
01:52:14.740
So time is hard to like put a finger on,
link |
01:52:18.940
like what the hell are we talking about?
link |
01:52:20.580
Well, it's just the direction,
link |
01:52:21.740
but memory is a construction,
link |
01:52:24.620
especially when you have like,
link |
01:52:26.660
think about these local pockets of complexity,
link |
01:52:28.980
these nonzero assembly index entities
link |
01:52:34.020
that's being constructed and they remember.
link |
01:52:37.260
Never forget molecules.
link |
01:52:39.140
But remember, the thing is I invented assembly theory.
link |
01:52:42.940
I'll tell you how I invented it.
link |
01:52:44.420
When I was a kid, I mean, the thing is,
link |
01:52:46.140
I keep making fun of myself to my research group.
link |
01:52:48.300
I've only ever had one idea.
link |
01:52:49.620
I keep exploring that idea over the 40 years or so
link |
01:52:52.500
since I had the idea.
link |
01:52:53.740
I used to be a...
link |
01:52:54.580
Well, aren't you the idea that the universe had?
link |
01:52:56.460
So it's very kind of hierarchical.
link |
01:52:58.500
Anyway, go ahead.
link |
01:52:59.340
I'm sorry.
link |
01:53:00.180
That's very poetic.
link |
01:53:02.100
Yeah.
link |
01:53:02.940
So I think I came up with assembly theory
link |
01:53:04.820
with the following idea.
link |
01:53:06.100
When I was a kid, I was obsessed about survival kits.
link |
01:53:09.540
What is the minimum stuff I would need
link |
01:53:12.460
to basically replicate my reality?
link |
01:53:14.020
And I love computers and I love technology
link |
01:53:17.060
or what technology is gonna become.
link |
01:53:18.340
So I imagined that I would have
link |
01:53:20.380
basically this really big truck full of stuff.
link |
01:53:22.860
And I thought, well, can I delete some of that stuff out?
link |
01:53:25.500
Can I have a blueprint?
link |
01:53:26.500
And then in the end, I kept making this smaller.
link |
01:53:29.500
I got to maybe a half a truck and then to a suitcase.
link |
01:53:32.220
And then I went, okay, well, screw it.
link |
01:53:33.980
I wanna carry my entire technology in my pocket.
link |
01:53:37.580
How do I do it?
link |
01:53:38.620
And I'm not gonna launch into Steve Jobs and iPlayer.
link |
01:53:43.180
I came up with a matchbox survival kit.
link |
01:53:45.940
In that matchbox survival kit,
link |
01:53:47.260
I would have the minimum stuff
link |
01:53:48.540
that would allow me to interact the environment,
link |
01:53:50.540
to build my shelter, to build a fishing rod,
link |
01:53:54.260
to build a water purification system.
link |
01:53:57.300
And it's kind of like, so what did I use in my box
link |
01:53:59.460
to assemble in the environment,
link |
01:54:01.620
to assemble, to assemble, to assemble?
link |
01:54:04.260
And I realized I could make a causal chain
link |
01:54:07.060
in my survival kit.
link |
01:54:08.180
So I guess that's probably why I've been obsessed
link |
01:54:10.220
with assembly theory for so long.
link |
01:54:11.980
And I was just pre configured to find it somewhere.
link |
01:54:17.580
And when I saw it in molecules,
link |
01:54:19.420
I realized that the causal structure that we say emerges
link |
01:54:24.340
and the physics kind of gets really stuck
link |
01:54:27.100
because they're saying that time,
link |
01:54:28.580
you can go backwards in time.
link |
01:54:29.740
I mean, how do we let physicists get away
link |
01:54:32.140
with the notion that we can go back in time
link |
01:54:34.340
and meet ourselves?
link |
01:54:35.180
I mean, that's clearly a very hard thing
link |
01:54:40.180
to allow, physicists would not let other sciences
link |
01:54:45.580
get away with that kind of heresy, right?
link |
01:54:49.100
So why are physicists allowed to get away with it?
link |
01:54:50.620
Let's, let's.
link |
01:54:51.460
So first of all, to push back, to play devil's advocate,
link |
01:54:54.260
you are clearly married to the idea of memory.
link |
01:54:58.300
You see in this, again, from Rick and Morty way,
link |
01:55:02.220
you see, you have these deep dreams of the universe
link |
01:55:06.380
that is writing the story through its memories,
link |
01:55:08.900
through its chemical compounds
link |
01:55:10.860
that are just building at top of each other.
link |
01:55:12.460
And then they find useful components they can reuse.
link |
01:55:16.020
And then the reused components create systems
link |
01:55:19.780
that themselves are then reused
link |
01:55:21.820
and all in this way, construct things.
link |
01:55:24.060
But when you think of that as memory,
link |
01:55:27.860
it seems like quite sad that you can walk that back.
link |
01:55:31.940
But at the same time, it feels like that memory,
link |
01:55:34.860
you can walk in both directions on that memory
link |
01:55:37.060
in terms of time.
link |
01:55:38.020
You could walk in both directions,
link |
01:55:39.580
but I don't think that that makes any sense
link |
01:55:42.060
because the problem that I have with time being reversible
link |
01:55:50.060
is that, I mean, I'm just a, you know,
link |
01:55:53.460
I'm a dumb experimental chemist, right?
link |
01:55:55.220
So I love burning stuff, burning stuff and building stuff.
link |
01:55:58.940
But when I think of reversible phenomena,
link |
01:56:01.220
I imagine in my head,
link |
01:56:02.260
I have to actually manufacture some time.
link |
01:56:05.260
I have to borrow time from the universe to do that.
link |
01:56:08.180
I can't, when anyone says,
link |
01:56:10.100
let's imagine that we can go back in time or reversibility,
link |
01:56:13.180
you can't do that.
link |
01:56:14.020
You can't step out of time.
link |
01:56:15.220
Time is nonnegotiable, it's happening.
link |
01:56:17.060
No, but see, you're assuming that time is fundamental,
link |
01:56:20.540
which most of us do when we go day to day,
link |
01:56:23.780
but it takes a leap of wild imagination
link |
01:56:27.300
to think that time is emergent.
link |
01:56:29.780
No, time is not emergent.
link |
01:56:30.980
Yeah, I mean, this is an argument we can have,
link |
01:56:32.940
but I believe I can come up with an experiment.
link |
01:56:35.940
An experiment that proves
link |
01:56:37.180
that time cannot possibly be emergent.
link |
01:56:38.780
An experiment that shows how assembly theory
link |
01:56:43.300
kind of is the way that the universe produces selection
link |
01:56:48.180
and that selection gives rise to life.
link |
01:56:50.700
And also to say, well, hang on,
link |
01:56:53.420
we could allow ourselves to have a theory
link |
01:56:55.340
that requires us to have these statements to be possible.
link |
01:56:59.220
Like we need to have order in the past,
link |
01:57:03.140
or we can use the past hypothesis,
link |
01:57:06.220
which is order in the past, but as well, okay.
link |
01:57:10.980
And we have to have an arrow of time.
link |
01:57:12.820
We have to require that entropy increases.
link |
01:57:16.500
And we have to say, and then we can say, look,
link |
01:57:17.980
the universe is completely closed and there's no novelty
link |
01:57:21.700
or that novelty is predetermined.
link |
01:57:23.940
What I'm saying is very, very important
link |
01:57:26.420
that time is fundamental, which means,
link |
01:57:28.660
if you think about it,
link |
01:57:30.060
the universe becomes more and more novel each step.
link |
01:57:32.660
It generates there's more states
link |
01:57:33.940
in the next step than it was before.
link |
01:57:35.860
So that means bigger search.
link |
01:57:37.580
So what I'm saying is that the universe
link |
01:57:39.460
wasn't capable of consciousness at day one,
link |
01:57:43.220
actually, because it didn't have enough states.
link |
01:57:45.780
But today the universe is, so it's like how?
link |
01:57:48.780
All right, all right, hold on a second.
link |
01:57:51.580
Now we've pissed off the panpsychist too, okay.
link |
01:57:55.700
No, this is brilliant, sorry.
link |
01:57:57.580
Part of me is just joking, having fun with this thing,
link |
01:58:00.220
but because you're saying a lot of brilliant stuff
link |
01:58:02.500
and I'm trying to slow it down before my brain explodes.
link |
01:58:05.660
So, because I want to break apart
link |
01:58:08.100
some of the fascinating things you're saying.
link |
01:58:10.340
So novelty, novelty is increasing in the universe
link |
01:58:14.700
because the number of states is increasing.
link |
01:58:16.980
What do you mean by states?
link |
01:58:18.460
So I think the physicists almost got everything right.
link |
01:58:20.780
I can't fault them at all.
link |
01:58:22.940
I just think there's a little bit of dogma.
link |
01:58:24.460
I'm just trying to play devil's advocate.
link |
01:58:25.820
I'm very happy to be entirely wrong on this, right?
link |
01:58:28.780
I'm not right on many things at all,
link |
01:58:31.060
but if I can make less assumptions
link |
01:58:34.060
about the universe with this,
link |
01:58:35.940
then potentially that's a more powerful way
link |
01:58:38.100
of looking at things.
link |
01:58:39.740
If you think of time as fundamental,
link |
01:58:41.820
you can make less assumptions overall.
link |
01:58:43.460
Exactly, if time is fundamental,
link |
01:58:45.740
I don't need to add on a magical second law
link |
01:58:48.020
because the second law comes out of the fact
link |
01:58:49.500
the universe is actually, there's more states available.
link |
01:58:52.700
I mean, we might even be able to do weird things
link |
01:58:54.580
like dark energy in the universe
link |
01:58:55.900
might actually just be time, right?
link |
01:58:58.660
Yeah, but then you have to still have to explain
link |
01:59:00.940
why time is fundamental,
link |
01:59:02.540
because I can give you one explanation
link |
01:59:04.460
that's simpler than time and say God.
link |
01:59:07.020
You know, like just because it's simple
link |
01:59:08.700
doesn't mean it's, okay, you still have to explain God
link |
01:59:12.620
and you still have to explain time.
link |
01:59:14.220
Like why is it fundamental?
link |
01:59:15.580
So let's just say existence is default,
link |
01:59:18.020
which means time is the default.
link |
01:59:19.580
So how did you go from the existence
link |
01:59:22.020
of the time to the default? Well, we exist, right?
link |
01:59:24.940
So let's just be very.
link |
01:59:26.980
We're yet to talk about what exist means.
link |
01:59:28.940
All right, let's go all the way back.
link |
01:59:30.340
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
link |
01:59:31.180
I think it's very poetic and beautiful
link |
01:59:32.540
what you're weaving into this.
link |
01:59:34.180
I don't think this conversation is even about the assembly,
link |
01:59:38.180
which is fascinating and we'll keep mentioning it
link |
01:59:41.100
in the index on this idea,
link |
01:59:42.980
that I don't think is necessarily connected to time.
link |
01:59:46.940
Oh, I think it is deeply connected.
link |
01:59:49.180
I can't explain it yet.
link |
01:59:50.260
So you don't think everything you've said
link |
01:59:52.580
about assembly theory and assembly index
link |
01:59:56.100
can still be correct even if time is emergent?
link |
01:59:58.620
So yeah, right now, assembly theory appears to work.
link |
02:00:01.660
I appear to be able to measure objects of high assembly
link |
02:00:04.860
in a mass spectrometer and look at their abundance
link |
02:00:06.660
and you know, all that's fine, right?
link |
02:00:08.180
It's a nice, if nothing else, it's a nice way
link |
02:00:10.540
of looking at how molecules can compress things.
link |
02:00:14.420
Now, am I saying that a time has to be fundamental,
link |
02:00:17.180
not emergent for assembly theory to work?
link |
02:00:18.740
No, I think I'm saying that the universe,
link |
02:00:23.300
it appears that the universe has many different ways
link |
02:00:25.700
of using time.
link |
02:00:26.540
You could have three different types of time.
link |
02:00:28.340
You could just have time that's,
link |
02:00:29.980
the way I would think of it,
link |
02:00:30.820
if you want to hold onto emergent time,
link |
02:00:33.300
I think that's fine, let's do that for a second.
link |
02:00:35.580
Hold onto emergent time
link |
02:00:37.460
and the universe is just doing its thing.
link |
02:00:39.580
Then assembly time only exists when the universe
link |
02:00:41.980
starts to write memories through bonds.
link |
02:00:43.780
So let's just say there's rocks running around,
link |
02:00:45.660
you know, when the bond happens and selection starts,
link |
02:00:49.340
suddenly there are, the universe is remembering cause
link |
02:00:54.580
in the past and those structures will have effects
link |
02:00:57.140
in the future.
link |
02:00:57.980
So suddenly a new type of time emerges at that point,
link |
02:01:00.740
which has a direction.
link |
02:01:02.340
And I think Sean Carroll at this point
link |
02:01:04.220
might even turn the podcast back on and go,
link |
02:01:06.540
okay, I can deal with that, that's fine.
link |
02:01:08.820
But I'm just basically trying to condense the conversation,
link |
02:01:10.940
say, hey, let's just have time fundamental
link |
02:01:13.060
and see how that screws with people's minds.
link |
02:01:14.940
Why?
link |
02:01:15.780
You're triggering people by saying fundamental.
link |
02:01:17.700
Why not?
link |
02:01:18.540
Well, you just say, like, let's say.
link |
02:01:19.860
Why am I, look, I'm walking through the wall.
link |
02:01:21.700
Why should I grow up in a world where time,
link |
02:01:26.980
I don't go back in time.
link |
02:01:28.060
I don't meet myself in the past.
link |
02:01:30.740
There are no one, there are no aliens coming
link |
02:01:32.780
from the future, right?
link |
02:01:34.580
You know, it's just like.
link |
02:01:35.420
No, no, no, but that's not, no, no, no, hold on a second.
link |
02:01:38.660
That's like saying we're talking about biology
link |
02:01:41.780
or like evolutionary psychology
link |
02:01:44.140
and you're saying, okay, let's just assume
link |
02:01:46.260
that clothing is fundamental.
link |
02:01:48.540
People wearing clothes is fundamental.
link |
02:01:50.380
It's like, no, no, no, wait a minute.
link |
02:01:52.340
You can't, like, I think you're gonna get in a lot of trouble
link |
02:01:55.700
if you assume time is fundamental.
link |
02:01:57.620
Why?
link |
02:01:58.460
Give me one reason why I'm getting into trouble
link |
02:02:00.060
with time being fundamental.
link |
02:02:01.340
Because you might not understand
link |
02:02:04.340
the origins of this memory that might be deeper.
link |
02:02:08.100
Like this memory, that could be a thing
link |
02:02:11.180
that's explaining the construction of these
link |
02:02:14.860
higher complexities better than just saying
link |
02:02:19.260
it's a search, it's chemicals doing a search
link |
02:02:23.740
for reusable structures that they can like
link |
02:02:30.060
then use as bricks to build a house.
link |
02:02:32.700
Okay, so I accept that.
link |
02:02:34.420
So let's go back a second because it's a kind of,
link |
02:02:37.900
I wanted to drop the time bomb at this part
link |
02:02:40.700
because I think we can carry on discussing it
link |
02:02:42.180
for many, many, many, many, many days, many months.
link |
02:02:46.700
But I'm happy to accept that it might be wrong.
link |
02:02:50.900
But what I would like to do is imagine a universe
link |
02:02:53.820
where time is fundamental and time is emergent
link |
02:02:56.580
and ask, let's just then talk about causation
link |
02:03:00.340
because physicists require that causation.
link |
02:03:02.900
So this is where I'm gonna go.
link |
02:03:04.420
Causation emerges and it doesn't exist at the micro scale.
link |
02:03:08.420
Well, that clearly is wrong
link |
02:03:09.900
because if causation has to emerge at the macro scale,
link |
02:03:12.220
life cannot emerge.
link |
02:03:13.660
So how does life emerge?
link |
02:03:15.180
Life requires molecules to bump into each other,
link |
02:03:17.940
produce replicators, those replicators
link |
02:03:20.580
need to produce polymers.
link |
02:03:21.860
There needs to be cause and effect at the molecular level.
link |
02:03:24.620
There needs to be an agardic, non agardic
link |
02:03:26.540
to an agardic transition at some point.
link |
02:03:29.620
And those replicators have consequence,
link |
02:03:35.260
material consequence in the universe.
link |
02:03:37.500
Physicists just say, oh, you know what?
link |
02:03:39.700
I'm gonna have a bunch of particles in a box.
link |
02:03:42.460
I'm gonna think about it in a Newtonian way
link |
02:03:44.820
and a quantum way and I'll add on an arrow of time
link |
02:03:48.020
so I can label things
link |
02:03:50.140
and causation will happen magically later.
link |
02:03:51.820
Well, how?
link |
02:03:52.660
Explain causation and they can't.
link |
02:03:55.780
The only way I can reconcile causation
link |
02:03:58.540
is having a fundamental time
link |
02:04:00.620
because this allows me to have a deterministic universe
link |
02:04:03.260
that creates novelty.
link |
02:04:05.500
And there's so many things to unpack here
link |
02:04:08.300
but let's go back to the point.
link |
02:04:09.780
You said, can assembly theory work with emergent time?
link |
02:04:12.580
Sure it can, but it doesn't give me a deep satisfaction
link |
02:04:16.540
about how causation and assembly gives rise
link |
02:04:21.060
to these objects that move through time and space.
link |
02:04:24.620
And again, what am I saying to bring it back?
link |
02:04:27.180
I can say without fear, take this water bottle
link |
02:04:31.260
and look at this water bottle
link |
02:04:32.100
and look at the features on it.
link |
02:04:32.940
There's writing, you've got a load of them.
link |
02:04:35.780
I know that causal structures gave rise to this.
link |
02:04:38.620
In fact, I'm not looking at just one water bottle here.
link |
02:04:40.860
I'm looking at every water bottle
link |
02:04:42.180
that's ever been conceived of by humanity.
link |
02:04:44.540
This here is a special object.
link |
02:04:46.980
In fact, Leibniz knew this.
link |
02:04:48.700
Leibniz who was at the same time of Newton,
link |
02:04:52.060
he kind of got stuck.
link |
02:04:53.220
I think Leibniz actually invented assembly theory.
link |
02:04:56.020
He gave soul, the soul that you see in objects
link |
02:04:58.660
wasn't the mystical soul, it is assembly.
link |
02:05:01.100
It is the fact there's been a history of objects related
link |
02:05:03.980
and without the object in the past,
link |
02:05:06.780
this object wouldn't exist.
link |
02:05:08.380
There is a lineage and there is conserved structures,
link |
02:05:12.660
causal structures have given rise to those.
link |
02:05:17.060
Fair enough.
link |
02:05:17.900
And you're saying it's just a simpler view
link |
02:05:20.340
if time is fundamental.
link |
02:05:23.300
And it shakes the physicist's cage a bit, right?
link |
02:05:25.700
Because I'm gonna say, but I think that.
link |
02:05:29.100
I just enjoy the fact that physicists are in cages.
link |
02:05:32.500
I think that, I mean, I would say that, you know,
link |
02:05:35.580
Lee Smolin, I don't want to speak for Lee.
link |
02:05:37.940
I mean, I'm talking to Lee about this.
link |
02:05:39.940
I think Lee also is an agreement
link |
02:05:41.820
that time has to be fundamental,
link |
02:05:43.740
but I think he goes further.
link |
02:05:45.180
You know, even in space,
link |
02:05:46.860
I don't think you can go back to the same place in space.
link |
02:05:49.940
I've been to Austin a few times now.
link |
02:05:51.340
This is my, I think third time I've been to Austin.
link |
02:05:54.100
Is Austin in the same place?
link |
02:05:55.420
No, the solar system is moving through space.
link |
02:05:59.740
I'm not back in the same space.
link |
02:06:01.900
Locally I am.
link |
02:06:03.860
Every event in the universe is unique.
link |
02:06:07.780
In space.
link |
02:06:08.780
And time.
link |
02:06:09.620
And time.
link |
02:06:10.580
Doesn't mean we can't go back though.
link |
02:06:13.220
I mean, you know, let's just, you know,
link |
02:06:17.220
rest this conversation, which was beautiful,
link |
02:06:20.860
with a quote from the Rolling Stones
link |
02:06:22.540
that you can't always get what you want,
link |
02:06:25.220
which is you want time to be fundamental,
link |
02:06:27.780
but if you try, you'll get what you need,
link |
02:06:30.060
which is assembly theory.
link |
02:06:32.120
Okay, let me ask you about,
link |
02:06:34.300
continue talking about complexity,
link |
02:06:36.700
and to clarify with this beautiful theory of yours
link |
02:06:42.140
that you're developing,
link |
02:06:43.660
and I'm sure we'll continue developing
link |
02:06:45.300
both in the lab and in theory.
link |
02:06:49.720
Yeah, it can't be said enough,
link |
02:06:52.220
just the ideas you're playing with in your head are just,
link |
02:06:56.020
and we've been talking about are just beautiful.
link |
02:06:58.100
So if we talk about complexity a little bit more generally,
link |
02:07:02.540
maybe in an admiring romantic way,
link |
02:07:05.700
how does complexity emerge from simple rules?
link |
02:07:09.180
The why, the how.
link |
02:07:11.260
Okay, the nice algorithm of assembly is there.
link |
02:07:14.980
I would say that the problem I have right now is,
link |
02:07:17.420
I mean, you're right, we can, about time as well.
link |
02:07:20.280
The problem is I have this hammer called assembly,
link |
02:07:22.580
and everything I see is a nail.
link |
02:07:24.500
So now let's just apply it to all sorts of things.
link |
02:07:27.460
We take the Bernard instability.
link |
02:07:28.900
The Bernard instability is you have oil,
link |
02:07:32.300
if you heat up oil, let's say on a frying pan,
link |
02:07:35.120
when you get convection, you get honeycomb patterns.
link |
02:07:37.480
Take the formation of snowflakes, right?
link |
02:07:40.580
Take the emergence of a tropical storm,
link |
02:07:45.760
or the storm on Jupiter.
link |
02:07:47.580
When people say, let's talk about complexity in general,
link |
02:07:50.100
what they're saying is,
link |
02:07:51.600
let's take this collection of objects
link |
02:07:54.400
that are correlated in some way,
link |
02:07:56.880
and try and work out how many moving parts there are,
link |
02:08:00.300
how this got, how this exists.
link |
02:08:02.940
So what people have been doing for a very long time
link |
02:08:04.820
is taking complexity and counting what they've lost,
link |
02:08:09.300
calculating the entropy.
link |
02:08:11.140
And the reason why I'm pushing very hard on assembly
link |
02:08:13.900
is entropy tells you how much you've lost.
link |
02:08:16.380
It doesn't tell you the microstates are gone.
link |
02:08:18.800
But if you embrace the bottom up with assembly,
link |
02:08:21.740
those states, and you then understand the causal chain
link |
02:08:26.340
that gives rise to the emergence.
link |
02:08:28.740
So what I think assembly will help us do
link |
02:08:31.500
is understand weak emergence at the very least,
link |
02:08:34.340
and maybe allow us to crack open complexity in a new way.
link |
02:08:39.720
And I've been fascinated with complexity theory
link |
02:08:42.780
for many years.
link |
02:08:43.580
I mean, as soon as I could,
link |
02:08:46.680
I learned of the Mandelbrot set,
link |
02:08:48.500
and I could just type it up in my computer and run it,
link |
02:08:52.660
and just show it and see it kind of unfold.
link |
02:08:55.800
It was just this kind of,
link |
02:08:58.820
this mathematical reality that existed in front of me,
link |
02:09:01.440
I just found incredible.
link |
02:09:03.980
But then I realized that actually we were cheating.
link |
02:09:07.100
We're putting in the boundary conditions all the time.
link |
02:09:09.500
We're putting in information.
link |
02:09:11.500
And so when people talk to me
link |
02:09:13.620
about the complexity of things,
link |
02:09:16.060
I say, but relative what, how do you measure them?
link |
02:09:18.700
So my attempt, my small attempt, naive attempt,
link |
02:09:23.540
because there's many greater minds than mine
link |
02:09:25.420
on the planet right now thinking about this properly.
link |
02:09:27.500
And you've had some of them on the podcast, right?
link |
02:09:29.860
Just absolutely fantastic.
link |
02:09:33.100
But I'm wondering if we might be able to reformat
link |
02:09:35.620
the way we would explore algorithmic complexity
link |
02:09:39.880
using assembly.
link |
02:09:41.100
What's the minimum number of constraints we need
link |
02:09:45.260
in our system for this to unfold?
link |
02:09:47.860
So whether it's like, if you take some particles
link |
02:09:50.860
and put them in a box,
link |
02:09:52.620
at a certain box size, you get quasi crystallinity
link |
02:09:55.420
coming out, right?
link |
02:09:57.100
But that quite, that emergence, it's not magic.
link |
02:10:00.540
It must come from the boundary conditions you put in.
link |
02:10:03.780
So all I'm saying is a lot of the complexity that we see
link |
02:10:07.100
is a direct read of the constraints we put in,
link |
02:10:10.240
but we just don't understand.
link |
02:10:11.980
So as I said earlier to the poor origin of life chemists,
link |
02:10:14.620
you know, origin of life is a scam.
link |
02:10:17.340
I would say lots of the complexity calculation theory
link |
02:10:20.220
is a bit of a scam
link |
02:10:21.660
because we put the constraints in,
link |
02:10:22.900
but we don't count them correctly.
link |
02:10:25.260
And I'm wondering if...
link |
02:10:26.140
Oh, you're thinking and starting to drop
link |
02:10:28.340
as assembly theory, assembly index
link |
02:10:31.780
is a way to count to the constraints.
link |
02:10:33.300
Yes, that's it.
link |
02:10:34.140
That's all it is.
link |
02:10:35.020
So assembly theory doesn't do,
link |
02:10:36.780
doesn't lower any of the importance of complexity theory,
link |
02:10:40.060
but it allows us to go across domains
link |
02:10:42.180
and start to compare things,
link |
02:10:44.460
compare the complexity of a molecule,
link |
02:10:46.220
of a microprocessor, of the text you've writing,
link |
02:10:49.700
of the music you may compose.
link |
02:10:53.460
You've tweeted, quote,
link |
02:10:55.220
"'Assembly theory explains why Nietzsche understood
link |
02:10:58.340
we had limited freedom rather than radical freedom.'
link |
02:11:01.900
So we've applied assembly theory
link |
02:11:03.460
to cellular automata in life and chemistry.
link |
02:11:07.380
What does Nietzsche have to do with assembly theory?
link |
02:11:09.580
Oh, that gets me into free will and everything.
link |
02:11:13.140
So let me say that again.
link |
02:11:14.540
Assembly theory explains why Nietzsche understood
link |
02:11:16.620
we had limited freedom rather than radical freedom.
link |
02:11:20.380
Limited freedom, I suppose, is referring to the fact
link |
02:11:23.460
that there's constraints or what is radical freedom?
link |
02:11:28.780
What is freedom?
link |
02:11:30.180
So Sartre was like believed in absolute freedom
link |
02:11:34.340
and that he could do whatever he wanted in his imagination.
link |
02:11:38.620
And Nietzsche understood that his freedom
link |
02:11:41.800
was somewhat more limited.
link |
02:11:44.100
And it kind of takes me back to this computer game
link |
02:11:46.180
that I played when I was 10.
link |
02:11:47.940
So I think it's called Dragon's Lair.
link |
02:11:49.980
Okay.
link |
02:11:51.780
Do you know Dragon's Lair?
link |
02:11:52.620
I think I know Dragon's Lair, yeah.
link |
02:11:54.140
Dragon's Lair, I knew I was being conned, right?
link |
02:11:56.440
Dragon's Lair, when you play the game,
link |
02:11:57.820
you're lucky that you grew up
link |
02:11:59.060
in a basically procedurally generated world.
link |
02:12:01.580
That was RPG a little bit.
link |
02:12:03.200
No, it's like, is it turn based play?
link |
02:12:05.660
Was it?
link |
02:12:06.500
No.
link |
02:12:07.320
It was a role playing game.
link |
02:12:08.160
Role playing.
link |
02:12:09.000
But really good graphics and one of the first laser disks.
link |
02:12:11.660
And when you actually flick the stick,
link |
02:12:13.580
you took, it's like it was like a graphical adventure game
link |
02:12:16.580
with animation.
link |
02:12:17.980
Yeah.
link |
02:12:18.820
And when I played this game, I really, you know,
link |
02:12:19.980
you could get through the game in 12 minutes
link |
02:12:22.060
if you knew what you were doing without making mistakes,
link |
02:12:23.900
just play the disk, play the disk, play a disk.
link |
02:12:25.700
So it was just about timing.
link |
02:12:27.460
And actually it was a complete fraud
link |
02:12:29.640
because all the animation has been prerecorded on the disk.
link |
02:12:33.660
It's like the Black Mirror, the first interactive
link |
02:12:36.100
where they had all the, you know,
link |
02:12:37.460
several million kind of permutations of the movie
link |
02:12:41.440
that you could select on Netflix.
link |
02:12:42.780
I've forgotten the name of it.
link |
02:12:44.700
So this was exactly that in the laser disk.
link |
02:12:47.660
So you basically go left, go right, fight the yoga,
link |
02:12:50.820
slay the dragon.
link |
02:12:52.060
And when you flick the joystick at the right time,
link |
02:12:53.860
it just goes to the next animation to play.
link |
02:12:55.860
Yeah.
link |
02:12:56.700
It's not really generating it.
link |
02:12:57.540
Yeah.
link |
02:12:58.380
And I played that game and I knew I was being had.
link |
02:13:01.460
So.
link |
02:13:02.300
Oh, okay.
link |
02:13:03.120
I see, I see.
link |
02:13:03.960
So to you, Dragon Lair is the first time you realized
link |
02:13:07.300
that free will is an illusion.
link |
02:13:09.380
Yeah.
link |
02:13:10.220
And why does assembly theory give you hints
link |
02:13:14.980
about free will, whether it's an illusion or not?
link |
02:13:17.140
Yeah, so no, so not tightly.
link |
02:13:18.840
If I do think I have some will and I think I am an agent
link |
02:13:22.700
and I think I can interact and I can play around
link |
02:13:24.860
with the model I have of the world
link |
02:13:27.100
and the cost functions, right?
link |
02:13:28.280
And I can hack my own cost functions,
link |
02:13:30.260
which means I have a little bit of free will.
link |
02:13:32.340
But as much as I want to do stuff in the universe,
link |
02:13:35.180
I don't think I could suddenly say,
link |
02:13:37.340
I mean, actually this is ridiculous.
link |
02:13:38.540
Cause now I say I could try and do it, right?
link |
02:13:39.900
Like I'm suddenly give up everything
link |
02:13:41.180
and become a rapper tomorrow, right?
link |
02:13:44.140
Maybe I could try that,
link |
02:13:45.860
but I don't have sufficient agency
link |
02:13:48.660
to make that necessarily happen.
link |
02:13:50.020
I'm on a trajectory.
link |
02:13:51.440
So when in Dragon's Lair,
link |
02:13:52.340
I know that I have some trajectories that I can play with
link |
02:13:56.500
where Sartre realized he thought
link |
02:13:58.900
that he had no assembly, no memory.
link |
02:14:00.740
He could just leap across and do everything.
link |
02:14:03.380
And Nietzsche said, okay, I realize I don't have
link |
02:14:06.820
full freedom, but I have some freedom.
link |
02:14:09.300
And the assembly theory basically says that,
link |
02:14:11.300
it says, if you have these constraints in your past,
link |
02:14:14.180
they limit what you were able to do in the future,
link |
02:14:16.420
but you can use them to do amazing things.
link |
02:14:19.300
Let's say I'm a poppy plant and I'm creating some opiates.
link |
02:14:23.860
Opiates are really interesting molecules.
link |
02:14:25.780
I mean, they're obviously great for medicine,
link |
02:14:27.900
cause great problems in society.
link |
02:14:29.740
But let's imagine we fast forward a billion years,
link |
02:14:33.420
what will the opioids look like in a billion years?
link |
02:14:37.780
Well, we can guess because we can see
link |
02:14:39.320
how those proteins will evolve
link |
02:14:41.300
and we can see how the secondary metabolites will change.
link |
02:14:44.900
But they can't go radical.
link |
02:14:46.460
They can't suddenly become, I don't know,
link |
02:14:48.580
like a molecule that you find in an OLED in a display.
link |
02:14:52.260
They will have some,
link |
02:14:53.300
they will be limited by the causal chain that produced them.
link |
02:14:56.940
And that's what I'm getting at,
link |
02:14:58.020
saying we are unpredictably predictable
link |
02:15:03.540
or predictably unpredictable within a constraint
link |
02:15:07.520
on the trajectory we're on.
link |
02:15:08.860
Yeah, so the predictably part