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Alien Debate: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin | Lex Fridman Podcast #279


small model | large model

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I don't know what it's like to be an alien.
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I would like to know.
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Two alien civilizations coexisting on a planet,
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what's that look like exactly?
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When you see them and they see you,
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you're assuming they have vision,
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they have the ability to construct in 3D and in time.
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That's a lot of assumptions they're making.
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What human level intelligence has done is quite different.
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It's not just that we remember states
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that the universe has existed in before,
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it's that we can imagine ones that have never existed
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and we can actually make them come into existence.
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So you can travel back in time sometimes.
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Yes.
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You travel forward in time to travel back.
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Yes.
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The following is a conversation
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with Sarah Walker and Lee Cronin.
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They have each been on this podcast once before
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individually and now for their second time,
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they're here together.
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Sarah is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist.
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Lee is a chemist and if I may say so,
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the real life manifestation of Rick from Rick and Morty.
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They both are interested in how life originates
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and develops both life here on earth and alien life,
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including intelligent alien civilizations
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out there in the cosmos.
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They are colleagues and friends
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who love to explore, disagree and debate
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nuanced points about alien life.
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And so we're calling this an alien debate.
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Very few questions to me are as fascinating
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as what do aliens look like?
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How do we recognize them?
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How do we talk to them?
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And how do we make sense of life here on earth
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in the context of all possible life forms
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that are out there?
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Treating these questions with the seriousness
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and rigor they deserve is what I hope to do
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with this conversation and future ones like it.
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Our world is shrouded in mystery.
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We must first be humble to acknowledge this
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and then be bold and diving in
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and trying to figure things out anyway.
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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 Sarah Walker and Lee Cronin.
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First of all, welcome back Sarah, welcome back Lee.
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You guys, I'm a huge fan of yours.
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You're incredible people.
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I should say thank you to Sarah
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for wearing really awesome boots.
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We'll probably overlay a picture later on,
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but why the hell didn't you dress up, Lee?
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No, I'm just kidding.
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This is me dressed up.
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You were saying that you're pink,
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that your thing is pink.
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My thing is black and white, the simplicity of it.
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Where's the pink?
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When did the pink, when did it hit you
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that pink is your color?
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I became pink about, I don't know, actually, maybe 2017.
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Did you know me when you first?
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I think I met you pre pink.
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Yeah, yeah, so about 2017, I think.
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I just decided I was boring
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and I needed to make a statement
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and red was too bright, so I went pink, salmon pink.
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Well, I think you were always pink.
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You just found yourself in 2017.
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There's an amazing photo of him
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where there's like everybody in their black gown
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and he's just wearing the pink pants.
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Oh, that was at the Waggonen University.
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It's totally nuts.
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100 year anniversary, they got me to give the plenary
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and they didn't find that outfit for me,
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so they were all wearing these silly hats and these gowns
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and there was me dressed up in pink
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looking like a complete idiot.
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We're definitely gonna have to find that picture
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and overlay it, big full screen, slow motion.
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All right, let's talk about aliens.
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We'll find places we disagree and places we agree,
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life, intelligence, consciousness, universe, all of that.
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Let's start with a tweet from Neil deGrasse Tyson
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stating his skepticism about aliens wanting to visit Earth.
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Quote, how egocentric of us to think that space aliens
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who have mastered interstellar travel across the galaxy
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would give, pardon the French,
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would give a shit about humans on Earth.
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So let me ask you, would aliens care about visiting Earth,
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observing, communicating with humans?
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Let's take a perspective of aliens, maybe Sarah first.
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Are we interesting in the whole spectrum
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of life in the universe?
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I'm completely biased, at least as far as I think right now
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we're the most interesting thing in the universe.
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So I would expect based on the intrinsic curiosity
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that we have and how much I think that's deeply related
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to the physics of what we are,
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that other intelligent aliens would want to seek out
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examples of the phenomena they are
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to understand themselves better.
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And I think that's kind of a natural thing to want to do.
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And I don't think there's any kind of judgment
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on it being a lesser being or not.
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It's like saying you have nothing to learn
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by talking to a baby.
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You have lots to learn, probably more than you do
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talking to somebody that's 90.
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So yeah, so I think they absolutely would.
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So whatever the phenomena is that is human,
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there will be an inkling of the same kind of phenomena
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within alien species and they will be seeking that same.
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I think there's gotta be some features of us
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that are universal.
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And I think the ones that are most interesting,
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and I hope I live in an interesting universe,
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are the ones that are driven by our curiosity
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and the fact that our intelligence allows us to do things
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that the universe wouldn't be able to do
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without things like us existing.
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We're gonna define a lot of terms.
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One of them is interesting.
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Yes.
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That's a very interesting term to try to define.
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Ali, what do you think?
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Are humans interesting for aliens?
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Well, let's take it from our perspective.
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We want to go find aliens as a species quite desperately.
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So if we put the shoe on the other foot,
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of course we're interesting.
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But I'm wondering and assuming
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that we're at the right technological capabilities
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to go searching for aliens, then that's interesting.
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So what I mean is,
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if there needs to be a massive leap in technology
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that we don't have,
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how will aliens prioritize coming to Earth and other places?
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But I do think that they would come and find us
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because they'd want to find out about our culture,
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what things are universal.
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I mean, I'm a chemist.
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I would say, well, is the chemistry universal, right?
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Are the creatures that we're going to find
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making all this commotion,
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are they made of the same stuff?
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What does their science look like?
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Are they off planet yet?
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I guess there's, so I think that Neil deGrasse Tyson
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is being slightly pessimistic
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and maybe trying to play the tune
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that the universe is vast
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and it's not worth them coming here.
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I don't think that,
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but I just worry that maybe we don't have
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the ability to talk to them.
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We don't have the universal translator.
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We don't have the right physics,
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but sure, they should come.
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We are interesting.
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I want to know if they exist.
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It would make it easier if they just came.
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So again, I'm going to use your tweets
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like it's Shakespeare and analyze it.
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So Sarah tweeted,
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thinking about aliens, thinking about aliens.
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So how much do you think aliens
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are thinking about other aliens, including humans?
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So you said, we humans want to visit.
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Like we're longing to connect with aliens.
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Why is that?
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Can you introspect that?
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Is that an obvious thing that we should be,
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like what are we hoping to understand
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by meeting aliens exactly?
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Asking as an introvert, it's like,
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I ask myself this all the time.
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Why go out on a Friday night to meet people?
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What are you hoping to find?
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I think the curiosity, so when I saw Sarah put that tweet,
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I think I answered it actually as well,
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which was we are thinking about trying to make contact.
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So they almost certainly are,
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but maybe there's a number of classes.
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There are those aliens that have not yet made contact
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with other aliens like us.
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Those aliens have made contact with just one other alien
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and maybe it's an anticlimax and slime, right?
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And aliens have made contact
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with not just one set of intelligent species, but several.
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That must be amazing actually.
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Literally there are some place in the universe,
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there must be one alien civilization.
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Let's not make contact with not one,
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but two other intelligent civilizations.
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So they must be thinking about it.
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There must be entire degree courses on aliens,
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thinking about aliens and universal cultural norms.
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Do you think they will survive the meeting?
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And by the way, Lee did respond saying,
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that's all the universe wants.
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So Sarah said, thinking about aliens, thinking about aliens.
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Lee said, that's all the universe wants.
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And then Sarah responded, cheeky universe we live in.
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So cheeky is a cheeky version of the word interesting,
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all of which we'll try to define mathematically.
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Cheeky might be harder than interesting.
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Because there's humor in that too.
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Yes.
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I think there's a mathematical definition of humor,
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but we'll talk about that in a bit.
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Oh interesting.
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Yeah, sure there is, yeah.
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So if you're a graduate student alien
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looking at multiple alien civilizations,
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do you think they survive the encounters?
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I think there's a tendency to anthropomorphize
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a lot of the discussions about alien life,
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which is a really big challenge.
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So usually when I'm trying to think about these problems,
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I don't try to think about us as humans,
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but us as an example of phenomenon
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that exists in the universe that we have yet to explain.
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And it doesn't seem to be the case
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that if I think about the features,
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I would argue are most universal about that phenomenon,
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that there's any reason to think
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that a first encounter with another lineage
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or example of life would be antagonistic.
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I think, yeah.
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And I think there's this kind of assumption,
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I mean, going back to Neil deGrasse Tyson's quote,
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I mean, it kind of bothers me because there's a,
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I mean, I'm a physicist,
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so I know we have a lot of egos
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about how much we can describe the world,
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but that there's this like,
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because we understand fundamental physics so well,
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we understand alien life and we can kind of extrapolate,
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and I just think that we don't.
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And the quest there is really, you know,
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really to understand something totally new
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about the universe, and that thing just happens to be us.
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I agree, I agree.
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There's something else more profound.
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I think Neil was just being, again,
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he's just trying to stir the pot.
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I would say from a contingency point of view,
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I want to know how many ways
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does the universe build structures, build memories, right?
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And then I want to know if those memories
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can interact with each other.
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And if you have two different origins of life
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and then origins of intelligence,
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and then these things become conscious,
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surely you want to go and talk to them
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and figure out what commonalities you share.
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And it might be that we're just unable to conceive
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of what they're going to look like.
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They're just going to be completely different,
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you know, infrastructure,
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but surely we'll want to go and find out a map.
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And surely curiosity is a property
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that evolution has made on earth.
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And I can't see any reason
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that it won't happen elsewhere
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because curiosity probably exists
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because we want to find innovations in the environment.
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We want to use that information to help our technology.
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And also curiosity is like planning for the future.
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Are they going to fight us?
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Are we going to be able to trade with them?
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So I think that Neil's just, I don't know,
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maybe, you know, I mean, give a shit.
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That's really, I think that's really down on earth, right?
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How would aliens categorize humans, do you think?
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How would we?
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So let's put it the other way around.
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Slime category.
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Maybe, no, no, no.
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Maybe we could, the thing is a bit odd, right?
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Look at Instagram, Twitter,
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all these people taking selfies.
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I mean, does the universe
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is the ultimate state of consciousness,
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thinking beings that take photographs themselves
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and upload them to an internet
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with other thinking beings looking at each other's photos.
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So I think that they will be.
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What's wrong with that?
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I did not say there was anything wrong with it.
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It's consciousness manifested at scale.
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Selfies, Instagram.
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It's like the mirror test at scale.
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Yeah, I do think that curiosity
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is really the driving force
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for why we have our technology, right?
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If we weren't curious, we wouldn't go out, left the cave.
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So I think that,
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so I think that Neil's got it completely wrong, in fact.
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Actually, of course they'd want to come here.
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It doesn't mean they are coming here.
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We've seen evidence for that.
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I guess we can argue about that, right?
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But I think that we want,
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I desperately, and I know that Sarah does too,
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but I won't speak for you, you're here.
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I desperately want to have missions
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to look for life in the solar system right now.
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I want to map life over the solar system.
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And then I want to understand how we can go
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and find life as quickly as possible at the nearest stars,
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and also at the same time do it in the lab,
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just to compensate, you know?
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So, sure.
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Yeah, just one more point on this.
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If you think about sort of what's driven
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the most features of our own evolution as a species,
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and try to map that to alien species,
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I always think like optimism is what's gonna get us furthest.
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And so I think a lot of people always think
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that it's like war and conflict is gonna be the way
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that alien species will expand out into the cosmos.
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But if you just look at how we're doing it
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and how we talk about it,
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so is our future in space is always, you know,
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built from narratives of optimism.
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And so it seems to me that if intelligence does get out
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in the universe, that it's gonna be more optimism
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and curiosity driving it than war and conflict,
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because those things end up crushing you.
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So there might be some selective filter.
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Of course, this is me being an optimist.
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I'm a half full kind of person, but.
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Is it obvious that curiosity, not obvious,
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but what do you think?
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00:13:36.340
Is curiosity a more powerful force in the universe
link |
00:13:38.860
than violence and the will to power?
link |
00:13:43.260
So, because you said you framed curiosity as a way
link |
00:13:47.300
to also plan on how to avoid violence,
link |
00:13:50.140
which is an interesting framing of curiosity.
link |
00:13:52.460
But I could also argue that violence
link |
00:13:55.820
is a pretty productive way to operate in the world,
link |
00:14:00.500
which is like, that's one way to protect yourself.
link |
00:14:02.620
The best defense is offense.
link |
00:14:05.860
I'm not qualified to answer this, but I'll have a go.
link |
00:14:07.900
I think violence, let's not talk about violence.
link |
00:14:10.580
That's the summary of this podcast.
link |
00:14:12.420
I would, yeah, maybe, I would, let's not call it violence,
link |
00:14:16.620
but I call it erasure.
link |
00:14:17.820
So if you think about the way evolution works,
link |
00:14:20.100
or the way, obviously talk about assembly theory,
link |
00:14:23.560
but I won't.
link |
00:14:24.400
So if you say you build,
link |
00:14:26.500
curiosity allows you to open up avenues, new graphs, right?
link |
00:14:29.140
So new features you can play.
link |
00:14:33.020
The ability to erase those things allows you to start again
link |
00:14:36.180
and do some pruning.
link |
00:14:37.500
So the universe, I think curiosity gets you furthest.
link |
00:14:39.820
Curiosity gets you rockets that land.
link |
00:14:41.740
It gets you robots that can make drugs.
link |
00:14:43.840
It gets you poetry and art and communication.
link |
00:14:48.540
And then, I often think wouldn't it be great in bureaucracy
link |
00:14:52.220
to have another world war, not literally a world war now,
link |
00:14:54.820
please no world war, but the equivalent
link |
00:14:57.260
so we get remove all the admin bureaucracy, right?
link |
00:14:59.740
All the admin violence, get rid of it and start again.
link |
00:15:02.080
Do you know what I mean?
link |
00:15:03.240
Because you get layers and you get redundant systems built.
link |
00:15:06.220
So actually a reset, let's not call it violence,
link |
00:15:09.280
a reset in some aspects of our culture
link |
00:15:13.980
and our technology allows us to then build
link |
00:15:18.260
more important things about the,
link |
00:15:19.820
because how many cookies do I have to click on?
link |
00:15:22.220
How many extra clicks do I have in the future of my life
link |
00:15:26.860
that I could remove and a bit of a reset
link |
00:15:29.500
would allow us to start again.
link |
00:15:33.140
And maybe that's how I suppose our encounter aliens will be.
link |
00:15:37.100
Maybe they will fight with us and say,
link |
00:15:38.380
oh, we're not as excited by you as we thought.
link |
00:15:41.180
We'll just get rid of you.
link |
00:15:42.580
So they might want to reset Earth.
link |
00:15:44.100
Yeah, why not?
link |
00:15:44.940
To be like, let's see how the evolution runs again.
link |
00:15:47.340
This seems like they've, there's nothing new happening here.
link |
00:15:51.700
They're observing for a while.
link |
00:15:52.980
This is just not, let's keep it more fun.
link |
00:15:55.900
Let's start with the fish again.
link |
00:15:59.180
I like how you equated violence to resetting your cookies.
link |
00:16:04.220
I suppose that's the kind of violence.
link |
00:16:06.340
In this modern world where words are violence,
link |
00:16:08.780
resetting cookies is the kind of violence.
link |
00:16:10.620
I don't know where that came from.
link |
00:16:11.460
I'm completely, yeah.
link |
00:16:12.280
That's poetic, really.
link |
00:16:14.260
Okay, so let's talk about life.
link |
00:16:17.460
What is life?
link |
00:16:19.300
What is non life?
link |
00:16:20.660
What is the line between life and non life?
link |
00:16:23.540
And maybe at any point,
link |
00:16:24.660
we can pull in ideas of assembly theory.
link |
00:16:27.900
Like how do we start to try to define life?
link |
00:16:29.980
And for people listening,
link |
00:16:32.100
so Sarah identifies as a physicist
link |
00:16:35.340
and Lee identifies as a chemist.
link |
00:16:37.820
Of course, they are very interdisciplinary in nature
link |
00:16:41.540
in general, but so what is life?
link |
00:16:46.860
Sarah.
link |
00:16:49.140
I love asking that question
link |
00:16:50.420
because it's so absurdly big.
link |
00:16:52.020
I know, I love it.
link |
00:16:53.980
It's my absolute favorite question in the whole universe.
link |
00:16:56.940
So I think I have three ways of describing it right now.
link |
00:17:00.540
And I like to say all three of them
link |
00:17:01.740
because people latch onto different facets of them.
link |
00:17:03.900
And so the whole idea of what Lee and I are trying to work on
link |
00:17:07.060
is not to try to define life,
link |
00:17:08.420
but to try to find a more fundamental theory
link |
00:17:10.140
that explains what the phenomenon we call life.
link |
00:17:12.220
And then it should explain certain attributes
link |
00:17:14.140
and you end up having a really different framing
link |
00:17:15.860
than the way people usually talk.
link |
00:17:17.300
So the way I talk about it three different ways.
link |
00:17:20.620
Life is how information structures matter
link |
00:17:22.860
across space and time.
link |
00:17:25.140
Life is, I don't know, this one's from you actually,
link |
00:17:29.820
simple machines constructing more complex machines.
link |
00:17:32.540
And the other one is the physics of existence,
link |
00:17:35.860
so to speak, which is life is the mechanism
link |
00:17:38.740
the universe has to explore the space of what's possible.
link |
00:17:42.500
That's my favorite.
link |
00:17:43.740
So can I, yeah, yeah, can I add on to that?
link |
00:17:46.700
Okay, can you say the physics one again?
link |
00:17:49.380
Physics of existence.
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00:17:50.980
Yeah, the physics of existence.
link |
00:17:52.140
I don't know what to call it.
link |
00:17:53.780
If you think of all the things that could exist,
link |
00:17:55.620
only certain things do exist.
link |
00:17:57.180
And I think life is basically the universe's mechanism
link |
00:18:01.260
of bringing things into physically existing
link |
00:18:03.460
in the moment now.
link |
00:18:05.500
Yeah.
link |
00:18:06.660
Yeah, and what's another one?
link |
00:18:08.500
So we were debating this the other day.
link |
00:18:09.740
So if you think about a universe that has nothing in it,
link |
00:18:14.420
that's kind of hard to conceive of, right?
link |
00:18:16.100
Because, and this is where physicists really go wrong.
link |
00:18:18.380
They think of a universe with nothing in it, they can't.
link |
00:18:20.900
And you think.
link |
00:18:21.740
But nonexistence is really hard to think.
link |
00:18:22.940
Nonexistence, yeah.
link |
00:18:23.780
And then you think of a universe with everything in it,
link |
00:18:26.940
that's really hard.
link |
00:18:28.020
And you just have this white blob, right?
link |
00:18:30.380
It's just everything.
link |
00:18:31.620
But the fact we have discrete stuff in the universe,
link |
00:18:34.380
Beyonce planets, so you've got stars, space, planet stuff,
link |
00:18:38.100
right, the boring stuff, but I would define life
link |
00:18:41.900
or say that life is where there are architectures,
link |
00:18:46.300
any architectures, and we should stop fixating
link |
00:18:48.380
on what is building the architectures to start with.
link |
00:18:52.340
And the fact that the universe has discrete things
link |
00:18:55.340
and it is completely mind blowing.
link |
00:18:57.860
If you think about it for one second,
link |
00:19:01.060
the fact there's any objects at all,
link |
00:19:03.780
and there's, because for me, the object is a proxy
link |
00:19:07.660
for a machine that built it,
link |
00:19:10.540
some information being moved around,
link |
00:19:14.860
actuation, sensing, getting resource,
link |
00:19:18.700
and building these objects.
link |
00:19:20.220
So for me, everyone's been obsessing about the machine,
link |
00:19:23.540
but I'm like, forget the machine, let's see the objects.
link |
00:19:27.420
And I think in a way that assembly theory,
link |
00:19:30.260
we realized maybe a few months ago
link |
00:19:31.900
that assembly theory actually does account for the soul
link |
00:19:35.620
and the objects, not mystically like say,
link |
00:19:37.860
Sheldrake's morphic resonance,
link |
00:19:39.500
or Leibniz's monadology, seeing souls in things.
link |
00:19:42.940
But when you see an object, and I've said this before,
link |
00:19:45.700
but this object is evidence of thought,
link |
00:19:49.260
and then there's a lineage of those objects.
link |
00:19:51.300
So I think what is fascinating is that,
link |
00:19:54.500
you put it much more elegantly,
link |
00:19:55.820
but the barrier between life and non life
link |
00:19:58.500
is accruing enough memories to then actuate.
link |
00:20:01.540
So what that means is there are contingency,
link |
00:20:04.860
there are things that happen in the universe get trapped,
link |
00:20:06.740
these memories then have a causal effect on the future.
link |
00:20:10.140
And then when you get those concentrated in a machine,
link |
00:20:12.540
and you're actually able in real time,
link |
00:20:14.260
able to integrate the past, the present with the future,
link |
00:20:19.260
and do stuff, that's when you are most alive.
link |
00:20:22.620
You being the machine.
link |
00:20:23.820
Yes.
link |
00:20:24.660
Wait a minute, why is the object,
link |
00:20:26.980
so one of the ways to define life,
link |
00:20:29.380
that Sarah said, is simple machines
link |
00:20:31.700
creating complex machines.
link |
00:20:34.180
So there's a million questions there.
link |
00:20:37.340
So how the hell does a simple machine
link |
00:20:39.540
create a complex machine?
link |
00:20:41.260
By mutation.
link |
00:20:42.860
So this is what we were talking about at the beginning,
link |
00:20:44.260
is you have the minimum replicator, so a molecule.
link |
00:20:46.180
So this is what I was trying to convince Sarah
link |
00:20:47.740
of the mechanism get there years ago, I think,
link |
00:20:49.780
but then you've been building on it and saying,
link |
00:20:52.580
you have a molecule that can copy itself,
link |
00:20:55.780
but then there has to be some variability,
link |
00:20:58.300
otherwise it's not gonna get more functional.
link |
00:21:00.340
So you need to add bits on.
link |
00:21:02.180
So you have a minimum molecule that can copy itself,
link |
00:21:04.700
but then it can add bits on,
link |
00:21:05.820
and that can be copied as well,
link |
00:21:07.140
and those add ons can give you additional function,
link |
00:21:12.500
to be able to acquire more stuff to exist.
link |
00:21:15.780
So existence is weird,
link |
00:21:18.260
but the fact that there is existence is why there is life,
link |
00:21:21.180
and that's why I realized a few days ago
link |
00:21:23.660
that there must be, that's why alien life
link |
00:21:25.420
must be everywhere, because there is existence.
link |
00:21:28.780
Is there a conservation of cheeky stuff happening?
link |
00:21:33.700
So how can you keep injecting more complex things?
link |
00:21:38.860
Doesn't the machine that creates the object
link |
00:21:41.300
need to be as or more powerful than the things it creates?
link |
00:21:48.420
So how can you get complexity from simplicity?
link |
00:21:51.740
So the way you get complexity from simplicity
link |
00:21:54.860
is that you, I'm just making this up,
link |
00:21:57.660
but this is kind of my notion,
link |
00:21:59.020
and you have a large volume of stuff,
link |
00:22:00.420
so you're able to get seeds, if you like,
link |
00:22:03.420
random cues from the environment.
link |
00:22:05.660
So you just use those objects
link |
00:22:07.460
to basically write on your tape, ones and zeros, whatever.
link |
00:22:11.740
And that is necessarily rich, complex, okay?
link |
00:22:17.700
But it has a low assembliness,
link |
00:22:19.660
but even though it has a high assembly number,
link |
00:22:21.380
we can talk about that.
link |
00:22:22.580
But then when you start to then integrate
link |
00:22:24.300
that all into a smaller volume, as over time,
link |
00:22:28.700
and you become more autonomous,
link |
00:22:31.220
you then make the transition.
link |
00:22:33.020
I don't know what you think about that.
link |
00:22:34.740
I think the easiest way to think about it is actually,
link |
00:22:38.900
which I know is a concept you hate, but I also hate,
link |
00:22:40.900
which is entropy, but people are more familiar with entropy
link |
00:22:43.220
than what we talk about in assembly theory.
link |
00:22:45.380
And also the idea that, like, say physics as we know it
link |
00:22:50.020
involves objects that don't exist across time,
link |
00:22:52.740
or as we would say, low memory objects.
link |
00:22:55.660
So one of the key distinctions that is...
link |
00:22:58.380
Low memory objects.
link |
00:22:59.700
Yeah, so physics is all...
link |
00:23:01.220
Physicists are low memory objects.
link |
00:23:02.660
Low memory objects.
link |
00:23:05.020
Physicists are creators of low memory objects
link |
00:23:08.060
or manipulators of low memory objects.
link |
00:23:10.220
Absolutely.
link |
00:23:11.060
It's a very nice way of putting it.
link |
00:23:13.180
Okay, sorry, go ahead.
link |
00:23:14.020
Yeah, no, it's okay.
link |
00:23:14.860
Sorry to keep interrupting.
link |
00:23:15.700
No, no, no, it's fine.
link |
00:23:16.780
I like it too, it's very funny.
link |
00:23:18.820
But I think it's a good way of phrasing it
link |
00:23:20.380
because I think this kind of idea we have
link |
00:23:22.260
in assembly theory is that, you know,
link |
00:23:25.420
physics as we know it has basically removed time
link |
00:23:27.580
as being a physical observable of an object.
link |
00:23:31.340
And the argument I would make is that
link |
00:23:33.580
when you look at things like water bottles or us,
link |
00:23:36.100
we're actually things that exist
link |
00:23:38.340
that have a large extent in time.
link |
00:23:40.940
So we actually have a physical size and time,
link |
00:23:44.380
and we measure that with something called
link |
00:23:46.540
the assembly index in molecules,
link |
00:23:49.460
but presumably everyone should have sort of a,
link |
00:23:53.220
do you want to explain what assembly?
link |
00:23:54.940
Yeah, let's, you know what?
link |
00:23:56.380
Let's step back and start at the beginning.
link |
00:23:59.500
What is assembly theory?
link |
00:24:01.020
Lee sent me some slides.
link |
00:24:02.140
There's a big sexy paper coming out probably.
link |
00:24:05.940
Maybe, I don't know.
link |
00:24:07.420
We've almost finished it.
link |
00:24:10.180
Almost, almost finished it.
link |
00:24:11.500
That's also a summary of science.
link |
00:24:13.540
We're almost done.
link |
00:24:14.740
Yes.
link |
00:24:15.580
Well, no, no, we're almost done.
link |
00:24:16.420
It's the history of science.
link |
00:24:17.580
We are ready to start an interesting discussion
link |
00:24:20.460
with our peers.
link |
00:24:21.820
Right.
link |
00:24:22.660
You're the machine that created the object,
link |
00:24:24.260
and we'll see what the object takes us.
link |
00:24:26.220
All right, so what is assembly theory?
link |
00:24:29.020
Yeah, well, I think the easiest way
link |
00:24:30.780
for people to understand it is to think about
link |
00:24:33.780
assembly and molecules,
link |
00:24:35.020
although the theory is very general.
link |
00:24:36.540
It doesn't just apply to molecules.
link |
00:24:38.140
And this was really Lee's insight,
link |
00:24:39.460
so it's kind of funny that I'm explaining it, but.
link |
00:24:42.260
I'll mark you.
link |
00:24:43.300
Okay, all right, I'm ready, I'm ready.
link |
00:24:45.620
You have to tell me where I get the check marks minus,
link |
00:24:47.460
but.
link |
00:24:48.300
It's your theory as well.
link |
00:24:49.140
Yeah, I know.
link |
00:24:49.980
But imagine a molecule,
link |
00:24:51.740
and then you can break the molecule apart
link |
00:24:54.380
into elementary building blocks.
link |
00:24:55.820
They happen to be bonds.
link |
00:24:57.100
And then you can think of all the ways,
link |
00:24:58.660
for molecular assembly theory,
link |
00:24:59.900
you can think of all the ways
link |
00:25:00.820
of building up the original molecule.
link |
00:25:02.380
So there's all these paths that you can assemble it.
link |
00:25:04.980
And the sort of rules of assembly is
link |
00:25:06.740
you can use pieces that have been generated already.
link |
00:25:09.460
So it has this kind of recursive property to it.
link |
00:25:11.900
And so that's where kind of memory
link |
00:25:13.580
comes into assembly theory.
link |
00:25:15.100
And then the assembly index is
link |
00:25:17.740
the shortest path in that space.
link |
00:25:19.460
So it's supposed to be the minimal amount of history
link |
00:25:21.820
that the universe has to undergo
link |
00:25:23.300
in order to assemble that particular object.
link |
00:25:25.580
And the reason that this is significant is
link |
00:25:27.900
we figured out how to measure that
link |
00:25:30.580
with a mass spec in the lab.
link |
00:25:33.300
And we had this conjecture
link |
00:25:35.340
that if that minimal number of steps
link |
00:25:36.940
was sufficiently large,
link |
00:25:38.540
it would indicate that you required a machine
link |
00:25:40.500
or a system that had information
link |
00:25:41.740
about how to assemble that specific object
link |
00:25:43.380
because the combinatorial space of possibilities
link |
00:25:45.180
is getting exponentially large
link |
00:25:47.340
as the assembly index is increasing.
link |
00:25:49.100
So it's just, sorry to interrupt,
link |
00:25:50.860
so that means there's a sufficiently high assembly index
link |
00:25:55.820
that if observed in an object
link |
00:25:59.660
is an indicator that something lifelike created it
link |
00:26:04.460
or is the object itself lifelike?
link |
00:26:07.500
Both.
link |
00:26:08.540
But you might want to make the distinction
link |
00:26:10.100
that a water bottle is not life,
link |
00:26:12.580
but it would still be a signature
link |
00:26:14.660
that you were in that domain of physics
link |
00:26:16.660
and that I might be alive.
link |
00:26:19.900
So there will be potentially a lot of arguments
link |
00:26:22.140
about where the line, at which assembly index
link |
00:26:26.820
does interesting stuff start to happen.
link |
00:26:28.860
The point is we can make all the arguments,
link |
00:26:30.620
but it should be experimentally observable
link |
00:26:32.260
and Lee can talk more about that part of it.
link |
00:26:34.220
But the point I want to make about it is
link |
00:26:36.620
there was always this intuition that I had
link |
00:26:39.180
that there should be some complexity threshold
link |
00:26:41.260
in the universe above which you would start to say
link |
00:26:44.060
whatever physics governs life actually becomes operative.
link |
00:26:46.900
And I think about it a little bit
link |
00:26:48.140
like we have Planck's constant,
link |
00:26:50.460
and we have the fine structure constant.
link |
00:26:52.420
And then this sort of assembly threshold
link |
00:26:54.700
is basically another sort of potentially constant of nature.
link |
00:26:59.940
It might depend on the specific features of the system,
link |
00:27:02.420
but which we debate about sometimes.
link |
00:27:04.580
But then when you're past that,
link |
00:27:07.780
you have to have some other explanation
link |
00:27:10.140
than the current explanations we have in physics,
link |
00:27:11.700
because now you're in high memory.
link |
00:27:15.140
The things actually require time for them to exist
link |
00:27:18.460
and time becomes a physical variable.
link |
00:27:20.260
The path to the creation of the object is the memory.
link |
00:27:23.780
So you need to consider that.
link |
00:27:25.780
Yeah, but the point is that's a feature of the object.
link |
00:27:29.540
So when I think of all the things in this room,
link |
00:27:34.580
we see the projection of them as a water bottle,
link |
00:27:37.580
but assembly theory would say that this is a causal graph
link |
00:27:39.940
of all the ways the universe can create this thing.
link |
00:27:41.820
That's what it is as an object.
link |
00:27:43.460
And we're all interacting, a causal graph.
link |
00:27:45.620
And most of the creativity in the biosphere
link |
00:27:47.460
is because a lot of the objects that exist now
link |
00:27:50.020
are huge in their structure across time.
link |
00:27:52.660
Four billion years of evolution to get to us.
link |
00:27:55.420
Is it possible to look at me
link |
00:27:57.580
and infer the history that led to me?
link |
00:28:01.500
If you, you as an individual might be hard.
link |
00:28:04.940
You as a representative of a population of objects
link |
00:28:09.180
that have high assembly
link |
00:28:10.220
with similar causal history and structure
link |
00:28:12.340
that you can communicate with, i.e. other humans,
link |
00:28:14.740
you can infer a lot probably.
link |
00:28:15.820
Yeah, also with them.
link |
00:28:17.020
Which we do genomically even.
link |
00:28:18.380
I mean, it's not like,
link |
00:28:19.580
we have a lot of information in us,
link |
00:28:21.060
we can reconstruct histories from.
link |
00:28:23.100
Assembly is saying something slightly deeper.
link |
00:28:24.660
Yeah, one thing to add.
link |
00:28:25.540
I mean, it's not just about the object,
link |
00:28:26.980
but the objects occur
link |
00:28:28.140
and not just objects with high assembly number,
link |
00:28:30.260
because you can have random things
link |
00:28:32.180
that have a high assembly number,
link |
00:28:33.020
but they must have,
link |
00:28:34.260
there must be a number of identical copies.
link |
00:28:36.500
So you know you're getting away from the random,
link |
00:28:38.940
because you could take a snapshot.
link |
00:28:40.180
This is why, it's not I hate entropy,
link |
00:28:42.140
I love entropy when used correctly,
link |
00:28:44.420
but it's about the problem of entropy,
link |
00:28:46.140
you have to have a labeler.
link |
00:28:47.740
And so you can label the beginning and the end,
link |
00:28:50.700
the start and the finish, you know,
link |
00:28:52.340
where what you can do in assembly is say,
link |
00:28:53.820
oh, I have a number of objects in abundance.
link |
00:28:56.460
They all have these features.
link |
00:28:58.100
And then you can infer.
link |
00:28:59.980
And one of the things that we debated a lot,
link |
00:29:01.860
particularly during lockdown,
link |
00:29:02.940
because I almost went insane trying to crush the,
link |
00:29:05.500
produce the assembly equation.
link |
00:29:06.860
So we came up with the assembly equation.
link |
00:29:08.460
I had, just imagine this.
link |
00:29:09.980
So you have a string where,
link |
00:29:13.860
actually it makes me sick trying to remember it.
link |
00:29:16.060
It was so, it did my head in for a long time.
link |
00:29:18.580
Yeah, because I couldn't,
link |
00:29:21.700
so if you just have a string of say words,
link |
00:29:23.900
say, you know, a series of words, series of letters.
link |
00:29:27.060
So you just have A, A, A, B, B, B, C, C, C, D, D, D.
link |
00:29:29.940
And you find that object and you just have four A's,
link |
00:29:32.500
four B's, four C's, four D's together, boom.
link |
00:29:35.340
Then, and that you measured that.
link |
00:29:38.060
So you physically measured that string of letters.
link |
00:29:40.700
Then what you could do is you can infer sub graphs
link |
00:29:44.260
of maybe the four A's, the four B's,
link |
00:29:46.740
the four C's and the four C's,
link |
00:29:47.780
but you don't see them in the real world.
link |
00:29:50.060
You just infer them.
link |
00:29:51.300
And I really got stuck with that
link |
00:29:53.860
because there's a problem to try and work out
link |
00:29:55.740
what's the difference between a long,
link |
00:29:57.700
you know, a physical object
link |
00:29:59.660
and this assembly space of the objects
link |
00:30:01.460
that we realized the best way to put that is infer in time.
link |
00:30:05.780
So although we can't infer your entire history,
link |
00:30:08.140
we know at some point the four A's were made,
link |
00:30:10.460
the four B's was made, the four C's were made,
link |
00:30:12.580
the four D's were made and they all got added together.
link |
00:30:15.500
And that's one really interesting thing
link |
00:30:17.620
that's come out of the theory,
link |
00:30:19.060
but the killer when we knew we were going beyond
link |
00:30:24.140
beyond standard complexity theories,
link |
00:30:26.380
but incredibly successful is that we realized
link |
00:30:29.940
we could start to measure these things
link |
00:30:31.460
for real across domains.
link |
00:30:33.420
So the assembly index is actually an intrinsic property
link |
00:30:36.660
of all stuff that you can break into components,
link |
00:30:41.700
particularly molecules are good
link |
00:30:42.980
because you can break them up
link |
00:30:44.300
into smaller molecules, into atoms.
link |
00:30:47.220
The challenge will be making that more general
link |
00:30:49.900
across all the domains,
link |
00:30:50.740
but we're working on it right now
link |
00:30:51.820
and I think the theory will do that.
link |
00:30:53.020
So components, domains,
link |
00:30:54.780
so you're talking about basically measuring
link |
00:30:58.140
the complexity of an object in what,
link |
00:31:00.940
biology, chemistry, physics,
link |
00:31:03.260
that's what you mean by domains.
link |
00:31:05.860
Complexity of tests.
link |
00:31:06.700
Sociology. Complexity of computers.
link |
00:31:08.140
Complexity of memes, you know.
link |
00:31:10.220
Memes? Yep.
link |
00:31:11.660
What is that, ideas?
link |
00:31:13.260
Yeah, I mean, so one of the.
link |
00:31:15.220
Ideas are objects in assembly theory.
link |
00:31:16.980
Yeah. They are.
link |
00:31:17.820
They're physical things.
link |
00:31:18.980
They're just features of the causal graph.
link |
00:31:20.340
I mean, the fact that I can talk to you right now
link |
00:31:22.140
is because we're exchanging structure
link |
00:31:23.780
of our assembly space.
link |
00:31:27.220
So conversation is the exchanging structures
link |
00:31:32.220
in assembly space.
link |
00:31:33.180
What is assembly space?
link |
00:31:34.940
When I started working on origins of life,
link |
00:31:36.620
I was writing about something called top down causation,
link |
00:31:39.580
which a lot of like philosophers are interested in
link |
00:31:42.140
and people that worry about the mind body problem.
link |
00:31:44.020
But the whole idea is, you know,
link |
00:31:45.900
if we have, you know, the microscopic world of physics
link |
00:31:49.700
is causally complete,
link |
00:31:50.900
it seems like there's no room for higher level causes
link |
00:31:53.300
like our thoughts to actually have any impact on the world.
link |
00:31:56.380
And that didn't, that seems problematic
link |
00:31:59.140
when you get to studying life and mind
link |
00:32:01.300
because it does seem that quote unquote,
link |
00:32:03.420
emergent properties do matter to matter.
link |
00:32:08.820
And then there's this other sort of paradoxical situation
link |
00:32:10.980
where information looks like it's disembodied.
link |
00:32:12.940
So we talk about information,
link |
00:32:14.260
like it can just move from any physical system
link |
00:32:16.180
to any other physical system.
link |
00:32:17.500
And it doesn't require,
link |
00:32:20.300
like you don't have to specify anything about the substrate
link |
00:32:22.580
to talk about information.
link |
00:32:24.180
And then there's also the way we talk about mathematics
link |
00:32:27.260
is also disembodied, right?
link |
00:32:28.660
Like the platonic world of forms
link |
00:32:31.020
and I think all of those things are hinging
link |
00:32:34.940
that we really don't know how to think about abstractions
link |
00:32:37.100
as physical things.
link |
00:32:39.580
And really, I think what assembly theory is pointing to
link |
00:32:43.900
is what we're missing there is the dimension of time.
link |
00:32:46.940
And if you actually look at an object
link |
00:32:48.900
being extended across time,
link |
00:32:51.100
what we call information and the things that look abstract
link |
00:32:54.220
are things that are entangled
link |
00:32:55.580
in the histories of those objects.
link |
00:32:57.340
They're features of the overlapping assembly space.
link |
00:32:59.900
So they look abstract because they're not
link |
00:33:02.540
part of the current structure,
link |
00:33:05.260
but they're part of the structure
link |
00:33:06.580
if you thought about it as like the philosophical concept
link |
00:33:09.060
of a hyperobject, an object that's too big in time
link |
00:33:11.620
for us to actually to resolve.
link |
00:33:13.740
And so I think information is physical.
link |
00:33:15.860
It's just physical in time, not in space.
link |
00:33:18.940
Too hyperobject, too difficult for us to resolve.
link |
00:33:22.140
So we're supposed to think about of life
link |
00:33:26.060
as this thing that stretches through time
link |
00:33:28.140
and there's a causation chain that led to that thing.
link |
00:33:32.220
And then you're trying to measure something
link |
00:33:34.380
with the assembly index about properties of that.
link |
00:33:36.900
The assembly index is the ordering,
link |
00:33:39.340
like you could think of it as like a partial ordering
link |
00:33:41.780
of all the things that can happen.
link |
00:33:43.740
So in thermodynamics, we coarse grain things
link |
00:33:46.780
by temperature and pressure.
link |
00:33:48.100
In assembly theory, we coarse grain
link |
00:33:50.460
by the number of copies of an object
link |
00:33:52.260
and the assembly index, which is basically,
link |
00:33:53.980
if you think of the space of all possible things,
link |
00:33:56.180
it's like a depth of how far you've gone into that space
link |
00:33:58.340
and how much time was required to get there.
link |
00:34:00.220
In the shortest possible version.
link |
00:34:02.140
The shortest possible version.
link |
00:34:03.780
Not average, because can't you just 3D?
link |
00:34:07.500
You're gonna kill me with that question.
link |
00:34:09.620
Not 3D, can't you always 3D print the thing?
link |
00:34:13.580
Let's like stab him in the heart.
link |
00:34:14.820
No, because I had such a fight.
link |
00:34:16.460
So Sarah's team and my team are writing this paper
link |
00:34:18.740
at the moment and.
link |
00:34:20.140
It's so funny.
link |
00:34:21.340
I think we kind of share the, at the beginning,
link |
00:34:23.020
you were like, no, that's not right.
link |
00:34:23.980
Oh yeah, that's right.
link |
00:34:24.820
And we're doing this for a bit.
link |
00:34:25.900
And then the problem is when you build a theory
link |
00:34:27.860
and build the intuition,
link |
00:34:29.340
there's some certain features, right,
link |
00:34:31.700
of the theory that almost felt like
link |
00:34:34.260
I was being religious about saying,
link |
00:34:35.500
right, you have to do this.
link |
00:34:37.020
A good assembly theorist does this, does this, does this.
link |
00:34:40.380
And Sarah's postdoc, Daniel, and my postdoc, Abhishek,
link |
00:34:44.460
and they were both.
link |
00:34:45.300
They're both brilliant.
link |
00:34:46.140
They're brilliant, but they were like,
link |
00:34:47.860
no, we don't buy that.
link |
00:34:49.500
And I was like, it is, they were like,
link |
00:34:52.380
well, Lee, actually, I thought you were the first
link |
00:34:55.180
to say that, you know, you can't,
link |
00:34:56.620
if you can't explain it, it doesn't,
link |
00:34:58.060
and you can't do an experiment that doesn't exist.
link |
00:35:00.140
And that saved me.
link |
00:35:00.980
And I said to Abhishek,
link |
00:35:01.980
Abhishek's my postdoc in Glasgow,
link |
00:35:03.420
Daniel is Sarah's postdoc in ASU.
link |
00:35:06.220
I was like, I have the experimental data.
link |
00:35:08.980
So when I basically take the molecules
link |
00:35:11.060
and chop them up in the mass spec,
link |
00:35:12.820
the assembly number is never the average.
link |
00:35:14.460
It's always the shortest.
link |
00:35:15.740
It's an intrinsic property.
link |
00:35:16.860
And then the penny drop for Abhishek said, okay.
link |
00:35:19.180
So I had these things that we had to believe
link |
00:35:22.180
to start with or to trust,
link |
00:35:23.340
and then we'd done the math and it comes out.
link |
00:35:24.780
And they now have the shortest path, actually.
link |
00:35:26.940
It's up, it explains why the shortest path.
link |
00:35:29.140
Here's why the shortest path is important, not the average.
link |
00:35:32.700
The shortest path needs you to identify
link |
00:35:34.740
when the universe has basically got a memory,
link |
00:35:37.100
not an average.
link |
00:35:38.060
So what you want to be able to do is to say,
link |
00:35:40.260
what is the minimum number of features
link |
00:35:43.780
that I want to be able to see in the universe?
link |
00:35:45.500
When I find those features,
link |
00:35:46.780
I know the universe has had a coherent memory
link |
00:35:50.820
and is basically alive.
link |
00:35:53.460
And so that gives you the lower bound.
link |
00:35:56.980
So that's like, of course there's going to be other paths.
link |
00:35:59.540
We can be more ridiculous, right?
link |
00:36:01.140
We can have other parts, but it's just the minimum.
link |
00:36:03.460
So probabilistically at the beginning,
link |
00:36:06.100
because assembly theory was built
link |
00:36:07.940
as a measure for biosignatures, I needed to go there.
link |
00:36:11.900
And then I realized it was intrinsic.
link |
00:36:13.780
And then Sarah realized it was intrinsic
link |
00:36:15.740
and these hyperobjects were coming.
link |
00:36:16.940
And we were kind of fusing that notions together.
link |
00:36:19.820
And then the team were like, yeah,
link |
00:36:21.340
but if I have enough energy and I have enough resources,
link |
00:36:25.780
I might not take the shortest path.
link |
00:36:27.060
I might go a bit longer.
link |
00:36:28.020
I might take a really long path
link |
00:36:30.020
because it allows me then to do something else.
link |
00:36:33.180
So what you can do is, let's say
link |
00:36:34.300
I've got two different objects, A and B,
link |
00:36:37.420
and they both have different shortest paths to get them.
link |
00:36:40.380
But then if you want to make A and B together,
link |
00:36:43.860
they will have a compromise.
link |
00:36:44.940
So in the joint assembly space, that might be an average,
link |
00:36:48.620
but actually it's the shortest way
link |
00:36:50.220
you can make both A and B
link |
00:36:52.300
with a minimum amount of resource in time.
link |
00:36:54.700
So suddenly you then layer these things up.
link |
00:36:56.860
And so the average becomes not important,
link |
00:36:59.780
but as you literally overlap those sets,
link |
00:37:03.740
you get a new shortest path.
link |
00:37:05.340
And so what we realized time and time again
link |
00:37:07.220
when we're doing the math,
link |
00:37:08.060
the shortest path is intrinsic, is fundamental,
link |
00:37:11.260
and is measurable, which is kind of mind blowing.
link |
00:37:14.300
So what we're talking about, some basic ingredients,
link |
00:37:17.380
maybe we'll talk about that, what those basic ingredients
link |
00:37:20.580
could be and how many steps, when you say shortest path,
link |
00:37:23.860
how many steps it takes to turn those basic ingredients
link |
00:37:28.340
into the final meal.
link |
00:37:32.180
So how to make a, what's the shortest way to make a pizza?
link |
00:37:35.660
Or a pie.
link |
00:37:36.500
Or a pie.
link |
00:37:37.340
An apple pie.
link |
00:37:38.180
That's right.
link |
00:37:39.020
And a pizza and a pie together.
link |
00:37:40.340
Or a scratch.
link |
00:37:41.780
So there's a lot of ways.
link |
00:37:44.980
There's the shortest way,
link |
00:37:46.180
and then you take the full spectrum of ways
link |
00:37:48.940
and there's probably an average duration
link |
00:37:53.300
for a noob to make an apple pie.
link |
00:37:56.380
Is the average interesting still?
link |
00:37:58.340
If you measure the average length of the path
link |
00:38:01.980
to assemble a thing, does that tell you something
link |
00:38:05.100
about the way nature usually does it?
link |
00:38:08.620
Versus something fundamental about the object,
link |
00:38:13.900
which I think is what you're aiming at
link |
00:38:15.460
with the assembly index.
link |
00:38:16.420
Yeah, I mean, look, we all have to quantify things.
link |
00:38:19.420
The minimum path gives you the lower bounds.
link |
00:38:21.140
You know you're detecting something.
link |
00:38:22.340
You know you're inferring something.
link |
00:38:24.060
The average tells you about really how the objects
link |
00:38:26.900
are existing in the ecosystem or the technology.
link |
00:38:30.980
And there has to be more paths explored
link |
00:38:34.780
because then you can happen upon other memories
link |
00:38:39.980
and then condense them down.
link |
00:38:41.500
I'm not making too much sense, but if you look and say,
link |
00:38:44.020
let's just say, I mean, maybe we're gonna get
link |
00:38:45.700
to alien civilizations later, right?
link |
00:38:47.260
But I would argue very strongly
link |
00:38:49.540
that alien civilization A and alien civilization B,
link |
00:38:54.180
they're different assembly spaces.
link |
00:38:55.660
So they're kind of gonna be a bit messed up
link |
00:38:57.140
if they happen to come one another,
link |
00:38:59.060
only when they find some joint overlap in their technology,
link |
00:39:02.340
because if aliens come to us and they don't share
link |
00:39:05.020
any of the causal graph we've showed,
link |
00:39:06.620
but hopefully they share the periodic table
link |
00:39:09.220
and bonds and things,
link |
00:39:11.460
that we're gonna have to really think about the language
link |
00:39:14.060
to talk to us aliens by inferring,
link |
00:39:16.860
by using assembly theory to infer their language,
link |
00:39:21.700
their technology, and other bits and bobs.
link |
00:39:23.780
And the shortest path will help you do that quickly.
link |
00:39:26.140
All right, so all aliens in this causality graphs
link |
00:39:29.540
have a common ancestor in the...
link |
00:39:32.220
If the building blocks are the same,
link |
00:39:33.980
which means they live in the same universe as us.
link |
00:39:35.700
So this is the assumption.
link |
00:39:36.540
It depends on how far back in time you go, though.
link |
00:39:38.580
But the universe has all the same building blocks.
link |
00:39:42.060
Yeah.
link |
00:39:42.900
And we have to assume that.
link |
00:39:45.740
So at least there's not different classes
link |
00:39:49.340
of causality graphs, right?
link |
00:39:53.060
No.
link |
00:39:53.900
The universe doesn't just say like,
link |
00:39:55.420
here you get the red causality graph,
link |
00:39:58.420
and you get the blue one.
link |
00:39:59.420
These basic ingredients,
link |
00:40:00.780
and they're geographically constrained,
link |
00:40:02.740
or constrained in space or time, or something like that.
link |
00:40:06.100
They're constrained in time
link |
00:40:07.300
because only by the virtue of the fact
link |
00:40:09.860
that you need enough time to have passed
link |
00:40:12.820
for some things to exist.
link |
00:40:14.580
So the universe has to be big enough in time
link |
00:40:16.260
for some things.
link |
00:40:17.180
So just one point on the shortest path
link |
00:40:18.780
versus the average path,
link |
00:40:19.780
which I think we'll get to this,
link |
00:40:20.780
is you had a nice way of saying it's like
link |
00:40:22.980
the minimal compression is the shortest path
link |
00:40:25.180
for the universe to produce that.
link |
00:40:26.620
But it's also like the first time
link |
00:40:28.100
in the ordering of events
link |
00:40:29.900
that you might expect to see that object.
link |
00:40:32.500
But the average path tells you something
link |
00:40:35.780
about the actual steps that were realized,
link |
00:40:39.100
and that becomes an emergent property
link |
00:40:40.940
of that object's interaction with other objects.
link |
00:40:43.740
So it's not an intrinsic feature of that object.
link |
00:40:45.500
It's a feature of the interactions with other things.
link |
00:40:47.780
And so one of the nice features of assembly
link |
00:40:49.900
is you've basically gotten rid of,
link |
00:40:51.260
you just look at the things that exist,
link |
00:40:52.700
and you've gotten rid of the mechanisms
link |
00:40:54.260
for constructing them in some sense.
link |
00:40:56.260
Like the machines are not as important
link |
00:41:00.780
in the current construction of the theory,
link |
00:41:02.580
although I would like to bridge it
link |
00:41:04.260
to some ideas about constructors.
link |
00:41:08.020
But then you can only communicate with things
link |
00:41:11.260
as Lee was saying,
link |
00:41:12.500
if you have some overlap in the past history.
link |
00:41:15.020
So if you had an alien species
link |
00:41:16.900
that had absolutely no overlap,
link |
00:41:18.780
then there would be no means of communication.
link |
00:41:21.260
But as we progress further and further in time
link |
00:41:25.260
and more things become possible
link |
00:41:26.740
because the assembly spaces are larger,
link |
00:41:29.500
because you can have a larger assembly space
link |
00:41:31.740
in terms of index and also just the size of the space,
link |
00:41:34.180
because it's exponentially growing,
link |
00:41:36.300
then more things can happen in the future.
link |
00:41:38.100
And the example I like to give is actually
link |
00:41:40.580
when we made first contact with gravitational waves,
link |
00:41:43.700
because that's an alien phenomenon
link |
00:41:46.060
that's been permeating our planet,
link |
00:41:47.180
not alien in life phenomenon,
link |
00:41:48.740
but alien like something we had never knew existed.
link |
00:41:51.900
It's been like there's gravitational waves
link |
00:41:55.140
rippling through this room right now,
link |
00:41:57.340
but we had to advance to the level of Einstein
link |
00:42:00.180
writing down his theory of relativity
link |
00:42:03.100
and then 100 years of technological development
link |
00:42:05.820
to even quote unquote see that phenomena.
link |
00:42:08.540
So the, okay, to see that phenomena,
link |
00:42:12.060
our causal graph have to start intersecting.
link |
00:42:16.020
Yeah, we needed the idea to emerge first,
link |
00:42:17.940
the abstraction, right?
link |
00:42:18.940
And then we had to build the technology
link |
00:42:20.580
that could actually observe features of that abstraction.
link |
00:42:23.740
So the nice promising thing is over time,
link |
00:42:26.500
the graph can grow so we can start overlapping eventually.
link |
00:42:29.460
Yeah, so the interesting feature of that graph
link |
00:42:31.380
is there was an event 1.4 billion years away
link |
00:42:34.460
of a black hole merger that we detected on our detector.
link |
00:42:38.460
And now suddenly we're connected
link |
00:42:41.540
through this communication channel
link |
00:42:42.980
with this distant event in our universe
link |
00:42:45.020
that if you think about 1.4 billion years ago,
link |
00:42:48.020
what was happening on this planet
link |
00:42:49.260
or even further back in time,
link |
00:42:51.900
that there's common physics underlying all of those events,
link |
00:42:55.020
but even for those two events to communicate.
link |
00:42:56.900
Now I understand what you were going on about
link |
00:42:58.300
the other week.
link |
00:42:59.140
Yeah, I'm sorry, this is a really abstract example,
link |
00:43:01.180
but it's sort of.
link |
00:43:03.140
Your causal graphs are now overlapping.
link |
00:43:05.700
Well, let's just say now our causal graphs
link |
00:43:07.940
are overlapping in the deep past.
link |
00:43:10.100
Yeah, sorry.
link |
00:43:10.940
No, I like it, so you made it.
link |
00:43:11.780
I totally missed it.
link |
00:43:12.600
Oh, the 1.6 billion.
link |
00:43:13.440
Yeah.
link |
00:43:14.280
You made a connection with it.
link |
00:43:15.100
No, I do like that.
link |
00:43:15.940
No, no, you can tell me what your epiphany is now.
link |
00:43:17.540
That's good.
link |
00:43:18.420
Because I was.
link |
00:43:19.260
And I should get the jokes before 30 seconds after, so.
link |
00:43:22.860
Oh, I get it now.
link |
00:43:25.100
No, it's all right.
link |
00:43:25.940
I was slow.
link |
00:43:26.780
The joke from two minutes ago.
link |
00:43:27.620
I'm slow on the uptake here.
link |
00:43:28.660
I wasn't able to comprehend
link |
00:43:29.900
what you were talking about when saying
link |
00:43:31.300
the channel communicating to the past.
link |
00:43:32.900
But what you're saying is we were able to infer
link |
00:43:36.460
what happened 1.4 billion years ago.
link |
00:43:40.340
We detected the gravity wave.
link |
00:43:41.700
I mean, I think it's amazing that at that time,
link |
00:43:43.700
we weren't even, we were just becoming multicellular,
link |
00:43:46.100
right?
link |
00:43:46.940
It's like insane.
link |
00:43:48.460
And then we progressed from multicellularity
link |
00:43:51.780
through to technology and built the detector
link |
00:43:55.380
and then we just extrapolate backwards.
link |
00:43:58.020
So, although we didn't do anything back to the graph
link |
00:44:01.580
back in time, we understood this existence
link |
00:44:03.420
then overlapped going forward.
link |
00:44:04.500
And that.
link |
00:44:05.340
Well, that's because our graphs are larger.
link |
00:44:06.620
Yeah, but that means that has a consequence.
link |
00:44:09.180
One of the things I was trying to say is I think,
link |
00:44:13.780
I don't know, Sarah might be, she can correct me,
link |
00:44:15.860
information first and I'm a object first kind of guy.
link |
00:44:19.660
So, I mean, there's things that get constructed.
link |
00:44:21.820
There has to be this transition in random constructions.
link |
00:44:25.340
So when the object that's being constructed by the process
link |
00:44:30.780
bakes in that memory and those memories then add on
link |
00:44:33.580
and add on and add on.
link |
00:44:35.500
So as it becomes more competent and life is about
link |
00:44:39.060
taking those memories and compressing them,
link |
00:44:41.020
increasing their autonomy.
link |
00:44:42.900
And so I think that, like the cell that we have
link |
00:44:46.300
in biology on earth is our way of doing that,
link |
00:44:48.180
that really the maximum ability to take memories
link |
00:44:51.260
and to act on the future.
link |
00:44:53.060
Oh, I think that's mathematics.
link |
00:44:55.620
No, mathematics doesn't exist.
link |
00:44:58.460
No, but that's the point.
link |
00:44:59.500
The point is that abstractions do exist.
link |
00:45:01.940
They're real physical things.
link |
00:45:03.100
We call them abstractions.
link |
00:45:05.740
But the point about mathematics that I think is,
link |
00:45:08.780
so I don't disagree that I think you're object first
link |
00:45:11.780
and I'm information first, but I think I'm only
link |
00:45:14.060
information first in the sense that I think the thing
link |
00:45:16.460
that we need to explain is what abstractions are
link |
00:45:20.500
and what they are as physical things
link |
00:45:22.060
because of all of human history,
link |
00:45:23.780
we've thought that there were these properties
link |
00:45:25.660
that are disembodied, exist outside of the universe
link |
00:45:29.500
and really they do exist in the universe
link |
00:45:32.460
and we just don't understand what their physics is.
link |
00:45:34.900
So I think mathematics is a really good example.
link |
00:45:36.780
We do theoretical physics with math,
link |
00:45:39.340
but imagine doing physics of math
link |
00:45:42.580
and then thinking about math as a physical object.
link |
00:45:44.860
And math is super interesting.
link |
00:45:46.380
I think this is why we think it describes reality so well
link |
00:45:48.780
because it's the most copyable kind of information.
link |
00:45:50.940
It retains its properties
link |
00:45:52.380
when you move it between physical media,
link |
00:45:54.220
which means that it's very deep.
link |
00:45:56.180
And so it seems to describe the universe really well,
link |
00:45:59.180
but it probably is because it's information
link |
00:46:00.500
that's very deep in our past.
link |
00:46:02.020
And it's just, we invented a way of communicating it
link |
00:46:06.460
very effectively between us.
link |
00:46:08.980
Isn't math more fundamental?
link |
00:46:11.180
Isn't the assembly of the graph,
link |
00:46:13.380
isn't basically, I sound completely boring.
link |
00:46:16.260
It's like math, assembly theory invented math, but it did.
link |
00:46:20.020
It has to be.
link |
00:46:20.860
Okay.
link |
00:46:23.860
So what is math exactly?
link |
00:46:28.940
It's a nice simplification,
link |
00:46:34.780
a simple description of what?
link |
00:46:38.060
So we have a computer scientist,
link |
00:46:39.340
a physicist, and a chemist here.
link |
00:46:41.300
Walking to a bar.
link |
00:46:42.140
I think the chemist is gonna define math
link |
00:46:43.860
and you guys can correct me.
link |
00:46:45.620
Go for it.
link |
00:46:46.500
I would say.
link |
00:46:47.340
Lay in on us, Lee.
link |
00:46:48.460
We're ready.
link |
00:46:50.900
I think the ability to label objects
link |
00:46:54.980
and place them into classes
link |
00:46:57.420
and then do operations on the objects is what math is.
link |
00:47:01.020
So on that point,
link |
00:47:02.380
what does it mean to be object first
link |
00:47:04.660
versus information first?
link |
00:47:07.020
So what's the difference between object and information
link |
00:47:09.620
when you get to that low fundamental level?
link |
00:47:11.980
Well, I might change my view.
link |
00:47:14.020
So I'm stuff first, the stuff.
link |
00:47:16.460
And then when stuff becomes objects,
link |
00:47:18.780
it has to invent information.
link |
00:47:21.460
And then the information acts on more stuff
link |
00:47:23.820
and becomes more objects.
link |
00:47:24.860
So I think there is a transition to information
link |
00:47:27.700
that occurs when you go from stuff to objects.
link |
00:47:29.780
You mean time though, I think.
link |
00:47:30.620
Yeah.
link |
00:47:31.460
Information is emergent.
link |
00:47:33.460
Not emergent.
link |
00:47:34.380
Information is actionable memories from the universe.
link |
00:47:40.420
So when memories become actionable, that's information.
link |
00:47:44.820
But there's always memory, but it's not actionable.
link |
00:47:48.300
Yeah.
link |
00:47:49.140
And then it's not information.
link |
00:47:49.980
Great.
link |
00:47:50.820
And actionable is what you can create.
link |
00:47:52.340
You can use it.
link |
00:47:53.660
If you can't use it, then it's not information.
link |
00:47:55.820
If you can't transmit it,
link |
00:47:56.900
if it doesn't have any causal consequence.
link |
00:47:59.460
Falls in the forest.
link |
00:48:00.460
I don't understand.
link |
00:48:01.660
Why is that not information?
link |
00:48:03.500
It's not information.
link |
00:48:04.460
It's stuff.
link |
00:48:07.340
It's stuff happening, but it's not causal.
link |
00:48:10.260
Yeah, yeah, we can.
link |
00:48:11.700
This is cool.
link |
00:48:12.540
But it's happening.
link |
00:48:13.380
Happening requires information.
link |
00:48:15.180
No, no, no, no, no.
link |
00:48:16.860
Stuff is always happening.
link |
00:48:18.260
No, this is where the physicists
link |
00:48:19.980
and the math petitions get themselves in a loop
link |
00:48:21.740
because I think the universe, I mean,
link |
00:48:24.620
I think say Max Tegmark is very playful
link |
00:48:28.020
and say like the universe is just math.
link |
00:48:30.220
Well, the universe is just math.
link |
00:48:31.340
Then we might as well not bother having any conversation
link |
00:48:34.140
because the conversation already written,
link |
00:48:35.140
we just might as well go to the future and say,
link |
00:48:36.220
can you just give us the conversations happened already?
link |
00:48:38.740
So I think the problem is that math petitions
link |
00:48:41.420
are so successful at labeling stuff
link |
00:48:43.460
and so successful understanding the stuff
link |
00:48:45.220
through those labels,
link |
00:48:46.300
they forget that actually those labels had to emerge
link |
00:48:49.540
and that information had to be built on those memories.
link |
00:48:52.980
So memory in the universe, so constraints, graph,
link |
00:48:56.740
when they become actionable
link |
00:48:57.580
and the graph can loop back on itself
link |
00:48:59.780
or interact with other graphs and they can intersect,
link |
00:49:02.820
those memories become actionable
link |
00:49:04.420
and therefore they're information.
link |
00:49:05.940
And I think you just changed my mind
link |
00:49:09.180
on something pretty big, but I don't have a pen.
link |
00:49:11.060
So I can't write, I'm gonna write it down later,
link |
00:49:12.460
but roughly the idea is like you've got these two graphs
link |
00:49:17.100
of objects of stuff that you have memories
link |
00:49:20.540
and then when they intersect
link |
00:49:22.460
and then they can act on each other,
link |
00:49:24.460
that's maybe the mechanism by which information is then,
link |
00:49:27.540
so then you can then abstract.
link |
00:49:29.300
So when one graph can then build another graph and say,
link |
00:49:32.300
hey, you don't have to go through the nonsense
link |
00:49:33.860
we had to go through.
link |
00:49:34.700
Here's literally the way to do it.
link |
00:49:36.100
Stuff always comes first,
link |
00:49:37.860
but then when stuff builds the abstraction,
link |
00:49:39.500
the abstractions can be then teleported
link |
00:49:41.260
onto other stuff.
link |
00:49:42.100
And the abstractions is the looping back power.
link |
00:49:45.020
Okay.
link |
00:49:45.860
Am I making, I don't know, I got stuck.
link |
00:49:47.620
Yeah, so first, God made stuff.
link |
00:49:52.300
Then after that, when you start to be able
link |
00:49:54.740
to form abstractions, that's when the information.
link |
00:49:56.980
God is the memory the universe can remember.
link |
00:50:00.500
God is the memory the universe can remember.
link |
00:50:02.980
Otherwise, there's no, wait, did you?
link |
00:50:03.820
Someone's gonna be deciphering that statement
link |
00:50:05.460
hundreds of years from now, what the hell does that mean?
link |
00:50:07.900
What does the humans mean by this?
link |
00:50:09.660
Look, don't diss my one liners.
link |
00:50:12.660
I took me 15 seconds to come up with that.
link |
00:50:16.660
I don't know what it means.
link |
00:50:17.700
What does it mean?
link |
00:50:19.700
Okay, wait, we need to, how do we get onto this?
link |
00:50:24.380
We were time, causality, mathematics.
link |
00:50:30.580
So what is mathematics in this picture of stuff,
link |
00:50:34.540
objects, memory, and information?
link |
00:50:43.180
What exactly is mathematics?
link |
00:50:44.980
It's the most efficient labeling scheme
link |
00:50:47.020
that you can apply to lots of different graphs.
link |
00:50:49.540
Labeling scheme doesn't make it sound useful.
link |
00:50:52.420
Can I try?
link |
00:50:53.380
Yep, sure, please.
link |
00:50:54.700
Have you rejected my definition of mathematics?
link |
00:50:56.780
I'm shocked.
link |
00:50:57.820
Yeah, no, it's all right.
link |
00:50:59.260
But it's correct.
link |
00:51:01.300
Go on, sorry.
link |
00:51:02.140
Excellent.
link |
00:51:03.420
No, I mean, I think we have a problem, right?
link |
00:51:06.420
Cause we can't not be us,
link |
00:51:08.540
like we're stuck in the shells we are
link |
00:51:10.340
and we're trying to observe the world.
link |
00:51:11.460
And so mathematics looks like it has certain properties.
link |
00:51:13.820
And I guess the thought experiment I find is useful
link |
00:51:16.180
is to try to imagine if you were outside of us
link |
00:51:19.060
looking at us as physical systems using mathematics,
link |
00:51:22.300
what would be the specific features you associate
link |
00:51:24.900
to the property of understanding mathematics
link |
00:51:28.820
and being able to implement it in the universe, right?
link |
00:51:32.020
And when you do that,
link |
00:51:34.300
mathematics seems to have some really interesting properties
link |
00:51:36.860
relative to other kinds of abstraction
link |
00:51:39.180
we might talk about like language or artistic expression.
link |
00:51:42.820
One of those properties is the one I mentioned already
link |
00:51:45.140
that is really easy to copy between physical media.
link |
00:51:48.060
So if I give you a mathematical statement,
link |
00:51:50.340
you almost immediately know what I mean.
link |
00:51:51.900
If I tell you the sky is blue,
link |
00:51:53.100
you might say, is it gold ball blue?
link |
00:51:54.860
Is it azure blue?
link |
00:51:55.700
What color blue do you mean?
link |
00:51:56.740
And you have a harder time visualizing what I actually mean.
link |
00:52:00.260
So mathematics carries a lot of meaning with it
link |
00:52:01.940
when it's copied between physical systems.
link |
00:52:03.420
It's also the reason we use it to communicate with computers.
link |
00:52:06.900
And then the second one is it retains its property
link |
00:52:10.100
of actually what it can do in the universe when it's copied.
link |
00:52:13.780
So the example I like to give there
link |
00:52:16.060
is think about like Newton's law of gravitation.
link |
00:52:19.500
It's actually, it's a compressed regularity
link |
00:52:22.100
of a bunch of phenomena that we observe in the universe,
link |
00:52:25.460
but then that information actually is causal in a sense
link |
00:52:28.700
that it allows us to do things we wouldn't be able to do
link |
00:52:30.500
without that particular knowledge
link |
00:52:31.940
and that particular abstraction.
link |
00:52:33.420
And in this case, like launch satellites to space
link |
00:52:35.180
or send people to Mars or whatever it is.
link |
00:52:38.180
So if you look at us from the outside and you say,
link |
00:52:41.340
what is it for physical systems
link |
00:52:42.820
to invent a thing called mathematics
link |
00:52:44.860
and then to use and then it to become a physical observable,
link |
00:52:51.300
mathematics is kind of like
link |
00:52:52.900
the universally copyable information
link |
00:52:55.580
that allows new possibility spaces
link |
00:52:58.500
to be open in the future
link |
00:52:59.380
because it allows this kind of ability
link |
00:53:01.380
to map one physical system to another
link |
00:53:03.100
and actually understand that the general principles.
link |
00:53:05.700
So is it helping the overlap of causal graphs then
link |
00:53:10.660
by mapping?
link |
00:53:11.620
Oh, I think that's the explanation for what it is
link |
00:53:14.140
in terms of the physical theory of assembly
link |
00:53:16.020
would be some feature of the structure
link |
00:53:18.220
of the assembly spaces of causal graphs
link |
00:53:20.660
and their relationship to each other.
link |
00:53:22.140
So for example, and I mean, this is things
link |
00:53:25.420
that we're gonna have to work out over the next few years.
link |
00:53:27.220
I mean, we're in totally uncharted conceptual territory
link |
00:53:29.540
here, but as is usual, diving off the deep end,
link |
00:53:35.380
but I would expect that we would be able to come up
link |
00:53:38.060
with a theory of like, why is it that some physical systems
link |
00:53:40.740
can communicate with each other?
link |
00:53:43.100
Like language, language is basically
link |
00:53:45.420
because we're objects extended over time
link |
00:53:47.220
and some of the history of that assembly space
link |
00:53:49.820
actually overlaps.
link |
00:53:51.060
And when we communicate,
link |
00:53:52.220
it's because we actually have shared structure
link |
00:53:53.780
in our causal history.
link |
00:53:55.020
Let me have another quick go at this, right?
link |
00:53:56.500
So I think we all agree.
link |
00:53:57.420
So I think we take mathematics for granted
link |
00:54:01.460
because we've gone through this chain, right?
link |
00:54:02.940
Of, you know, we all share a language now, okay?
link |
00:54:06.460
And we can, well, we share language,
link |
00:54:07.660
so we have languages that we can make interoperable.
link |
00:54:11.460
And so whether you're speaking, I don't know,
link |
00:54:14.940
all the different dialects of Chinese,
link |
00:54:17.500
all the different dialects of English, French, German,
link |
00:54:20.740
whatever, you can interconvert them.
link |
00:54:22.780
The interesting thing about mathematics now
link |
00:54:24.300
is that everybody on planet Earth, every human being
link |
00:54:26.540
and computers share that common language.
link |
00:54:29.740
That language was constructed by a process in time.
link |
00:54:33.380
So what I'm trying to say is assembly invented math
link |
00:54:35.380
is those, right from the, you know,
link |
00:54:37.940
mathematics didn't occur, it didn't exist before life.
link |
00:54:41.420
Abstraction was invented by life, right?
link |
00:54:44.100
That doesn't mean that the universe wasn't capable
link |
00:54:46.060
of mathematical things.
link |
00:54:47.300
Wait a minute, can we just ask that old famous question,
link |
00:54:50.740
is math invented or discovered?
link |
00:54:52.820
So when you say assembly invented, or whatever.
link |
00:54:58.020
It means it's just.
link |
00:54:58.860
Well, someone might just say assembly
link |
00:54:59.700
is a mathematical theory, but sorry.
link |
00:55:01.500
Right.
link |
00:55:02.340
Are we arguing? Exactly.
link |
00:55:03.160
Are we arguing now?
link |
00:55:04.000
That's what it sounds like.
link |
00:55:05.020
Are we discovering mathematics?
link |
00:55:06.940
No, well, yes and no.
link |
00:55:08.500
I would say.
link |
00:55:09.340
And you call mathematics a language
link |
00:55:11.940
that we're developing. I would say that,
link |
00:55:13.020
look, I'm pretty sure that there are some very common
link |
00:55:17.060
seeds of mathematics in the universe, right?
link |
00:55:19.820
But actually not the mathematics that we are finding now
link |
00:55:23.860
is not discovered, it's invented.
link |
00:55:27.220
And, but even though I think those two terms
link |
00:55:29.100
are very triggering, and I don't think
link |
00:55:30.460
they're necessarily useful,
link |
00:55:31.940
because I think that what people do,
link |
00:55:33.860
the mathematicians that say, oh, mathematics was discovered
link |
00:55:38.100
because they live in a universe where there is no time
link |
00:55:40.620
and it just all exists.
link |
00:55:42.500
But what I'm saying is, and I think in the same way
link |
00:55:45.300
you can create, let's say I'm gonna go and create
link |
00:55:47.380
and make a piece of art, did I make that piece of art
link |
00:55:53.740
or did I discover it?
link |
00:55:56.060
Like inventing the aeroplane.
link |
00:55:57.460
Did I invent the aeroplane?
link |
00:55:58.780
Let's stick with the aeroplane.
link |
00:55:59.620
The aeroplane is a good one.
link |
00:56:00.780
Let's say, did I discover the aeroplane?
link |
00:56:03.180
Well, in a way, the universe discovered the aeroplane
link |
00:56:04.860
because it's just chucked a load of atoms together
link |
00:56:06.300
and a load of random human beings want to do stuff
link |
00:56:08.260
and then we discover the aeroplane
link |
00:56:10.660
in the space of all the possibilities.
link |
00:56:12.180
But here's the thing, when the space of possibilities
link |
00:56:14.980
is so vast, infinite almost, and you're able to actualize
link |
00:56:21.700
one of those in an object, then you are inventing it.
link |
00:56:24.620
So in mathematics, because there are infinite number
link |
00:56:27.140
of theorems, the fact you're actually pulling,
link |
00:56:29.420
there's no difference between inventing
link |
00:56:31.540
a mathematical structure and inventing the aeroplane.
link |
00:56:34.300
They're the same thing, but that doesn't mean
link |
00:56:36.340
that now the aeroplane exists in the universe,
link |
00:56:38.500
it's something weird about the universe.
link |
00:56:40.340
So I think that the more, this is the thing
link |
00:56:43.620
that you probably, the more memory required
link |
00:56:47.080
for the object, the more invented it is.
link |
00:56:50.300
So when a mathematical theorem needs more bytes
link |
00:56:54.340
to store it, the more invented it is,
link |
00:56:56.780
and the less bytes, the more discovered it is.
link |
00:57:00.020
But everything then is invented.
link |
00:57:02.060
It's just more or less invented.
link |
00:57:03.820
Absolutely.
link |
00:57:04.940
Okay.
link |
00:57:05.780
The universe has to generate everything as it goes.
link |
00:57:07.860
Yeah.
link |
00:57:09.620
And it wasn't there in the beginning.
link |
00:57:11.060
And the way we're thinking it,
link |
00:57:12.780
when you're thinking about the difference
link |
00:57:14.220
between invented and discovered,
link |
00:57:15.500
is because we're throwing away all the memory.
link |
00:57:17.820
Yeah.
link |
00:57:18.660
So if you start to think in terms of causality and time,
link |
00:57:22.260
then those things become the same.
link |
00:57:23.700
Everything is invented.
link |
00:57:25.980
And the idea is to make everything intrinsic
link |
00:57:27.600
to the universe.
link |
00:57:28.440
So I think one of the features of assembly theory
link |
00:57:30.580
is we don't wanna have external observers.
link |
00:57:32.520
There's been this long tradition in physics
link |
00:57:33.980
of trying to describe the universe from the outside
link |
00:57:35.660
and not the inside.
link |
00:57:37.500
And the universe has to generate everything itself
link |
00:57:40.100
if you do it from the inside.
link |
00:57:41.060
Assembly theory describes how the universe builds itself.
link |
00:57:46.540
Did it take you 15 seconds to say that?
link |
00:57:48.540
Yeah.
link |
00:57:49.380
And to come up with that also?
link |
00:57:50.220
No, I've thought of that before.
link |
00:57:51.300
Okay.
link |
00:57:52.140
That's a good line.
link |
00:57:52.980
It's a, it's like.
link |
00:57:53.800
Oh, you're making fun of me.
link |
00:57:54.860
No, I'm not making fun, I'm having fun.
link |
00:57:56.540
There's a difference.
link |
00:57:57.380
Oh, that's good.
link |
00:57:58.200
All right.
link |
00:57:59.040
She's inventing fun.
link |
00:57:59.880
I'm not all intimidated.
link |
00:58:01.020
Yes.
link |
00:58:01.860
And there's a causal history to that fun.
link |
00:58:06.240
You mentioned that there's no way to communicate
link |
00:58:08.880
with aliens until there's overlap in the causal graph.
link |
00:58:14.160
Communication includes being able to see them.
link |
00:58:18.660
And like, what are we, this is the question is,
link |
00:58:23.760
is communication any kind of detection?
link |
00:58:26.380
And if so, what do aliens look like
link |
00:58:29.740
as you get more and more overlap on the causal graph?
link |
00:58:33.100
You're assuming, let's assume that aliens,
link |
00:58:35.880
so when you see them and they see you,
link |
00:58:39.100
you're assuming they have vision,
link |
00:58:40.820
they have the ability to construct in 3D and in time.
link |
00:58:43.900
That's a lot of assumptions they're making.
link |
00:58:45.780
What detection?
link |
00:58:46.620
All right, let's step back.
link |
00:58:47.540
So yes, okay, you're right.
link |
00:58:49.140
So when, in the English language,
link |
00:58:50.740
when we say the word see, we mean visually,
link |
00:58:53.260
they show up to a party and it's like,
link |
00:58:54.820
oh, wow, that's an alien.
link |
00:58:56.260
That's visual, that's 3D, that's, okay.
link |
00:58:59.520
And that's also assuming scale,
link |
00:59:03.120
spatial scale of something that's visible to you.
link |
00:59:05.620
So it can't be microscopic or it can't be so big
link |
00:59:08.420
that you don't even realize that's an entity.
link |
00:59:10.740
Okay, but other kinds of detection too.
link |
00:59:14.120
I would make it more abstract and go down.
link |
00:59:15.660
I was thinking this morning about how to rewrite
link |
00:59:18.520
the Arecibo message in assembly theory
link |
00:59:21.180
and also to abandon binary.
link |
00:59:23.140
Because I don't think aliens necessarily,
link |
00:59:25.140
why should they have binary?
link |
00:59:27.240
Well, they have some basic elements
link |
00:59:29.860
with which to do information exchange.
link |
00:59:32.820
Let's make it more fundamental, more universal.
link |
00:59:37.180
So we need to think about what is the universal way
link |
00:59:38.940
of making a memory and then we should
link |
00:59:40.860
reencode Arecibo in that way.
link |
00:59:43.380
What's more basic than zeros and ones?
link |
00:59:45.660
Well, it's really difficult to get out
link |
00:59:47.460
that causal chain because we're so,
link |
00:59:48.860
so let's erase the idea of zero for a moment.
link |
00:59:51.780
It took human beings a long time
link |
00:59:53.260
to come up with the idea of zero.
link |
00:59:54.360
Now you got the idea of zero, you can't throw it away.
link |
00:59:56.780
It's so useful.
link |
00:59:57.620
To discover the idea of zero.
link |
00:59:59.100
To discover or invent.
link |
01:00:00.740
I don't know, but it took a long time
link |
01:00:02.620
so it was invented, that's right.
link |
01:00:04.940
Yeah, I think zero was invented, exactly.
link |
01:00:07.820
So it's not a given that aliens know what zero is.
link |
01:00:10.860
That's a massive assumption.
link |
01:00:13.540
It's a useful discovery.
link |
01:00:16.020
You're saying if you break the causal chain
link |
01:00:18.100
there might be some other more efficient way of representing.
link |
01:00:20.580
That's why I wanna meet him and ask him.
link |
01:00:23.100
For a shortcut.
link |
01:00:24.340
But you won't be able to ask him until.
link |
01:00:27.620
So I interrupted you and I think you're making good point.
link |
01:00:29.940
I was just gonna say, well look.
link |
01:00:31.100
Thank you.
link |
01:00:32.100
Sorry.
link |
01:00:34.220
Rather than saying.
link |
01:00:35.060
Please internet, tweet at him for the rude interruptions.
link |
01:00:37.820
Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.
link |
01:00:38.860
No, it's okay.
link |
01:00:40.020
Maybe it's change.
link |
01:00:41.220
How do we, so, oh, I don't know what it's like
link |
01:00:44.980
to be an alien.
link |
01:00:46.000
I would like to know.
link |
01:00:47.360
What is the full spectrum of what aliens
link |
01:00:50.380
might look like to us?
link |
01:00:53.260
Now that we've laid this all on the table of like,
link |
01:00:57.300
all right, so there has to be some overlap
link |
01:00:59.620
in this causal chain that led to them.
link |
01:01:03.740
What are we looking for?
link |
01:01:05.740
What do you think we should be looking for?
link |
01:01:06.980
So you mentioned mass spec.
link |
01:01:09.180
Measuring certain objects that aliens could create
link |
01:01:11.900
or are aliens themselves.
link |
01:01:15.140
We show up to a planet or maybe not a planet.
link |
01:01:17.620
Or maybe, what the hell is the basic object
link |
01:01:20.420
we're trying to measure the assembly index of?
link |
01:01:23.020
Let's cut ourselves a break.
link |
01:01:23.980
Let's assume that they are metabolized.
link |
01:01:27.580
They've got an energy source.
link |
01:01:29.140
And they're a size that we can recognize.
link |
01:01:32.980
Let's give ourselves a break.
link |
01:01:34.140
Because there could be aliens that are so big
link |
01:01:36.340
we won't recognize we're seeing them.
link |
01:01:38.060
There might be aliens that are so small
link |
01:01:39.360
we don't yet have the ability to,
link |
01:01:40.980
we don't have microscopes that can see far enough away
link |
01:01:44.060
that just wouldn't be able to see them.
link |
01:01:45.380
So what's a good range?
link |
01:01:46.500
So let's just make a range.
link |
01:01:47.900
Let's just be very anthropocentric and say,
link |
01:01:50.540
we're gonna look for aliens roughly our size
link |
01:01:52.460
and technology our size.
link |
01:01:53.860
Because we know it's possible on Earth, right?
link |
01:01:56.460
I mean, a reasonable thing to do would be
link |
01:01:57.660
to find exoplanets that are in the same zone as Earth
link |
01:02:01.060
in terms of heat and stuff.
link |
01:02:03.180
And then say, hey, if there's that same kind of gravity,
link |
01:02:06.300
same kind of stuff, we could reasonably assume
link |
01:02:09.820
that alien life there might use a similar kind
link |
01:02:13.740
of physical infrastructure.
link |
01:02:15.980
And then we're good.
link |
01:02:16.820
So then your question becomes really relevant.
link |
01:02:19.540
Say, right, let's use vision, sound, touch.
link |
01:02:23.260
And then.
link |
01:02:24.100
So okay, that's really nice.
link |
01:02:24.940
So that if there's a lot of aliens out there,
link |
01:02:27.820
there's a good likelihood if you match to the planet
link |
01:02:32.500
that they're going to be in the same spatial
link |
01:02:35.460
and temporal, operating in the same spatial
link |
01:02:38.340
and temporal domain as humans.
link |
01:02:40.460
Okay, within that, what do they look like visually?
link |
01:02:47.980
What do they sound like?
link |
01:02:49.660
What do they, oh god, this sounds creepy.
link |
01:02:52.020
Tastes like, what do they, oh, smell like, smell like.
link |
01:02:56.460
That sounds like our clubhouse.
link |
01:02:57.540
We was like, can we have sex with aliens?
link |
01:02:59.300
Which was basically me saying.
link |
01:03:01.020
Passionate, passionate love.
link |
01:03:01.860
But it wasn't actually about sex.
link |
01:03:02.780
It was about, is our chemistry compatible, right?
link |
01:03:04.900
Is there some?
link |
01:03:05.780
Yeah.
link |
01:03:06.620
Yeah, can we, yeah.
link |
01:03:09.580
Are they edible too?
link |
01:03:10.820
They could be very edible.
link |
01:03:12.180
They could be delicious.
link |
01:03:13.020
That's why I want to see some aliens, right?
link |
01:03:14.740
Because I think, are there, I think evolution,
link |
01:03:19.660
I mean, evolution exploits symmetry, right?
link |
01:03:21.540
Because why generate memory?
link |
01:03:23.380
Why generate storage, the need for storage space
link |
01:03:26.020
when you can use symmetry?
link |
01:03:27.660
So, and symmetry is quite, may be quite effective
link |
01:03:30.580
in allowing you to mechanically design stuff, right?
link |
01:03:33.020
So maybe alien, you could be reasonable to assume
link |
01:03:36.180
that aliens could have, they could be bipedal.
link |
01:03:39.900
They could be symmetric in the same way.
link |
01:03:42.420
Might have a couple of eyes or a couple of senses.
link |
01:03:44.860
We can make them, perhaps there's this whole zoo
link |
01:03:47.980
of different aliens out there.
link |
01:03:49.100
And we'll never get to be able to classify
link |
01:03:50.740
some of the weird aliens we can't interact with
link |
01:03:52.620
because they have made such weird stuff.
link |
01:03:55.660
But we are just going to look at,
link |
01:03:57.220
we're going to find aliens that look most like us.
link |
01:03:59.140
Why not?
link |
01:04:00.380
Because those are the first ones we're likely to see.
link |
01:04:02.260
Yeah.
link |
01:04:03.100
Yeah.
link |
01:04:03.940
But I think it's really hard to imagine
link |
01:04:06.060
what the space of aliens is because the space is huge.
link |
01:04:09.420
Because, you know, like one of the arguments
link |
01:04:11.180
that you can make about why life emerges in chemistry
link |
01:04:13.260
is because chemistry is the first scale
link |
01:04:16.540
in terms of like, you know,
link |
01:04:17.900
building up objects from elementary objects.
link |
01:04:21.380
That the number of possible things that could exist
link |
01:04:23.380
is larger than the universe can possibly make all at once.
link |
01:04:25.740
Right?
link |
01:04:26.580
So imagine you have two planets
link |
01:04:29.380
and they're cooking some geochemistry.
link |
01:04:31.700
You know, our planet invented one kind of biochemistry.
link |
01:04:34.860
And presumably as you start building up
link |
01:04:37.140
the complexity of the molecules,
link |
01:04:38.860
the chances of the overlap in those trajectories,
link |
01:04:41.300
those causal chains being built up is probably very low.
link |
01:04:44.900
And it gets lower and lower as it gets further advanced
link |
01:04:47.700
along its evolutionary path.
link |
01:04:49.140
So I think it's very difficult to imagine
link |
01:04:51.500
predicting the technologies that aliens are gonna have.
link |
01:04:54.560
I mean, it's so, you're looking at basically
link |
01:04:57.420
planets have kind of convergent chemistry,
link |
01:04:59.680
but there's some variability.
link |
01:05:00.840
And then you're looking basically at the outgrowth
link |
01:05:02.720
into the possibility space for chemistry.
link |
01:05:04.540
So do you think we would detect the technology,
link |
01:05:07.460
the objects created by aliens before we detect the aliens?
link |
01:05:11.540
Possibly.
link |
01:05:12.380
So when you're talking about measuring assembly index,
link |
01:05:15.820
don't you think we would detect the garbage first?
link |
01:05:19.260
Like at the outskirts of alien civilizations,
link |
01:05:21.780
isn't this just gonna be trash?
link |
01:05:26.140
I think I would come back to Arecibo.
link |
01:05:28.040
The Arecibo message sent from the Arecibo telescope
link |
01:05:30.380
built by Drake, I think, and Sagan.
link |
01:05:33.500
How's Arecibo spelled?
link |
01:05:35.560
A R E C I B O.
link |
01:05:37.100
Yes, thank you.
link |
01:05:37.940
And there we go, they've got that up there.
link |
01:05:40.020
That's the telescope that sent the message
link |
01:05:41.900
that you're talking about.
link |
01:05:42.740
So that message was sent where?
link |
01:05:45.540
It was beamed at a star, a specific star,
link |
01:05:48.540
and it was sent out many years ago.
link |
01:05:52.300
And what they did, so this is why I was pushing on binary,
link |
01:05:55.160
it's a binary message.
link |
01:05:56.960
I think it's a semi prime length number of characters.
link |
01:05:59.980
So I think 73 by 23, I think.
link |
01:06:03.820
And it basically represents human bit proton,
link |
01:06:07.100
binary, human beings, DNA, male and female.
link |
01:06:10.500
And it's really cool.
link |
01:06:12.660
But I'm just wondering if it could be done
link |
01:06:18.520
not making any,
link |
01:06:19.860
cause it made assumptions that aliens speak binary.
link |
01:06:22.880
Why make that assumption?
link |
01:06:24.180
Why not just assume that if the difference between physics,
link |
01:06:27.660
chemistry and biology is the amount of memory
link |
01:06:29.860
that's instead that's recordable by the substrates,
link |
01:06:33.860
then surely the universal thing,
link |
01:06:36.860
I'm gonna make some sacrilegious statement,
link |
01:06:38.780
which I think is pretty awesome for people to argue with.
link |
01:06:42.420
So this is, we're looking at an image
link |
01:06:44.740
where it's the entirety of the message encoded in binary.
link |
01:06:49.660
And then there's a probably interpretation
link |
01:06:52.220
of different parts of that image.
link |
01:06:53.820
There's a person, there's green parts.
link |
01:06:57.900
It looks like for people just listening,
link |
01:06:59.600
like a game of Tetris.
link |
01:07:01.620
So it's encoding in minimal ways,
link |
01:07:03.620
a bunch of cool information, probably.
link |
01:07:05.700
Representing all of us.
link |
01:07:06.780
So the topic's kind of teaching us how to count
link |
01:07:08.940
and then it all goes all the way down
link |
01:07:10.040
teaching you chemistry and then just says,
link |
01:07:12.340
but it makes so many assumptions.
link |
01:07:14.020
And I think if we can actually,
link |
01:07:16.080
so look, I think, I mean, Sarah's much more eloquent
link |
01:07:19.220
in expressing this, but I'll have a go
link |
01:07:20.500
and you can correct it if you want,
link |
01:07:21.900
which is like one of the things that Sarah has had
link |
01:07:25.380
a profound effect on the way I look at the origin of life.
link |
01:07:29.500
And this is one of the reasons why we're working together
link |
01:07:31.580
because we don't really care about the origin of life.
link |
01:07:34.180
We wanna make life, make aliens and find aliens.
link |
01:07:37.580
Make aliens, find aliens.
link |
01:07:38.840
I think we might have to make aliens in the lab
link |
01:07:40.740
before we find aliens in the universe, right?
link |
01:07:42.860
I think that would be a cool way to do it.
link |
01:07:45.460
So what is it about the universe that creates aliens?
link |
01:07:48.340
Well, it's selection through assembly theory,
link |
01:07:51.620
creating memories, because when you create memories,
link |
01:07:53.620
you can then command your domain.
link |
01:07:57.100
You can basically do stuff.
link |
01:07:58.380
You can command matter.
link |
01:08:00.800
So we need to find a way by understanding what life is
link |
01:08:03.600
of how the minimal way to command matter,
link |
01:08:05.980
how that would emerge in the universe.
link |
01:08:08.220
And if we want to communicate,
link |
01:08:10.000
I mean, maybe we don't want
link |
01:08:11.020
to necessarily uniformly communicate.
link |
01:08:13.660
What I would do perhaps if I had,
link |
01:08:15.340
is I would send out lots of probes away from Earth
link |
01:08:18.140
that have this magic way of communicating with aliens,
link |
01:08:20.060
get them quite a far away from Earth, plausibly deniable,
link |
01:08:23.540
and then send out the message
link |
01:08:25.700
that would then attract all the aliens,
link |
01:08:27.220
and then basically work out if they were friend or foe
link |
01:08:29.620
and how they wanna hang out.
link |
01:08:30.660
The messages being something has to do with the memories.
link |
01:08:33.020
Yes, like the assembly version of Arecibo,
link |
01:08:36.820
so that everyone in the universe
link |
01:08:38.420
that has been understands what life is.
link |
01:08:40.980
So aliens need to work out what they are.
link |
01:08:43.300
Once they've worked out what they are,
link |
01:08:44.900
they then can work out how to encode what they are,
link |
01:08:47.220
and then they can go out and send messages.
link |
01:08:48.660
It's like the universal, the Rosetta Stone
link |
01:08:52.820
for life in the universe is working out
link |
01:08:55.940
how the memories are built.
link |
01:08:56.940
I don't know, Sarah, you have any, well,
link |
01:09:01.180
whether you would agree with that.
link |
01:09:02.880
No, I wanted to raise a different point,
link |
01:09:06.140
which is about the fact that we can't see the aliens yet
link |
01:09:09.500
because we haven't gotten the technology.
link |
01:09:11.660
And presumably we think assembly theory
link |
01:09:14.060
is the right way of doing it,
link |
01:09:15.140
but I don't think that we know how to go
link |
01:09:16.500
from the kind of data you're describing, Lex,
link |
01:09:18.900
like visual data or smell
link |
01:09:21.280
to construct the assembly spaces yet.
link |
01:09:23.500
And in some ways, I think that the problem
link |
01:09:25.660
of life detection really is the same problem
link |
01:09:28.460
at the foundations of AI that we don't understand
link |
01:09:31.660
how to get machines to see causal graphs,
link |
01:09:35.100
to see reality in terms of causation.
link |
01:09:37.860
And so I think assembly and AI
link |
01:09:40.340
are gonna intersect in interesting ways, hopefully,
link |
01:09:43.660
but the sort of key point,
link |
01:09:46.100
and I've been trying to make this argument more recently,
link |
01:09:49.660
I might write an essay on it,
link |
01:09:50.820
is people talk about the great filter, right?
link |
01:09:53.460
And which is, again, this doomsday thing
link |
01:09:55.540
that people wanna say there's no aliens out there
link |
01:09:57.820
because something terrible happened to them.
link |
01:10:00.140
And it matters whether that's in our past or our future
link |
01:10:03.820
as to the longevity of our species, presumably,
link |
01:10:06.460
which is why people find it interesting.
link |
01:10:07.980
But I think it's not a physical filter.
link |
01:10:10.780
It's not like things go extinct.
link |
01:10:11.980
I think it's literally,
link |
01:10:12.800
we don't have the technology to see them.
link |
01:10:15.700
And you could see that with microscopes.
link |
01:10:17.020
I mean, we didn't know there were microbes on this table
link |
01:10:18.660
or tables for thousands of years or telescopes.
link |
01:10:21.760
Like there's so much of the universe we can't see.
link |
01:10:23.460
And then basically what we have done as a species
link |
01:10:25.700
is outsource our physical perceptions to technology,
link |
01:10:29.280
building microscopes based on our eyes,
link |
01:10:31.180
and building seismometers based on our sense of feelings,
link |
01:10:34.920
like feel earthquakes and things.
link |
01:10:36.240
And AI is basically we're trying to outsource
link |
01:10:38.120
what's actually happening in our thinking apparatus
link |
01:10:40.560
into machines now and to technological devices.
link |
01:10:43.120
And maybe that's the key technology
link |
01:10:45.100
that's gonna allow us to see things like us
link |
01:10:47.220
and see the universe in a totally different way.
link |
01:10:48.800
But you kind of mentioned the great filter.
link |
01:10:50.240
Do you think there's a way through technology
link |
01:10:52.280
to stop being able to see stuff?
link |
01:10:54.000
So can you take a step backwards?
link |
01:10:55.760
I think so, yeah.
link |
01:10:56.600
Did you imply that with the great, so like?
link |
01:10:58.640
Well, no, I mean, I think there's a great perceptual filter
link |
01:11:01.080
in the sense that a example of life evolving on a planet
link |
01:11:06.280
over billions of years has to acquire
link |
01:11:08.800
a certain amount of knowledge and technology
link |
01:11:11.000
to actually recognize the phenomena that it is.
link |
01:11:14.640
Well, that's the sense I have is,
link |
01:11:17.880
I mean, you talk with physicists, engineers in general,
link |
01:11:20.640
there's this kind of idea that we have
link |
01:11:23.760
most of the tools already to hear the signal.
link |
01:11:27.960
But to me, it feels like we don't have any of the tools
link |
01:11:31.800
to see the signal.
link |
01:11:32.640
No, we don't know what we're doing, yeah, I agree.
link |
01:11:33.680
That's the biggest, like to hear.
link |
01:11:35.840
We don't have the tools to really hear, to see.
link |
01:11:37.840
Yeah.
link |
01:11:39.200
Aliens are everywhere.
link |
01:11:40.160
We just don't have the, yeah, well, oh, that's.
link |
01:11:44.960
I mean, I got this in part, actually,
link |
01:11:46.320
because you were like, you know,
link |
01:11:47.460
last time I was here, he was like, look at the carpet.
link |
01:11:49.480
You know, if you had an alien detector
link |
01:11:51.160
where the carpet be aliens.
link |
01:11:52.600
I mean, I think we really don't.
link |
01:11:54.560
I think it would be.
link |
01:11:56.080
But the aliens would nevertheless have a high assembly index
link |
01:11:58.960
or produce things of high assembly index.
link |
01:12:01.240
And those things of high assembly index,
link |
01:12:04.720
you have to have a detector that can recognize
link |
01:12:07.120
high assembly index in all its forms.
link |
01:12:09.160
Yeah. Yes.
link |
01:12:10.080
That's it, that's it.
link |
01:12:10.920
Take data, construct assembly space.
link |
01:12:13.760
Yeah. Those patterns, basically.
link |
01:12:15.240
So one way to think about high assembly index
link |
01:12:17.480
is interesting patterns of basic ingredients.
link |
01:12:21.560
I can give you an example,
link |
01:12:23.240
because I mean, in molecules,
link |
01:12:24.360
we've been talking about in objects,
link |
01:12:25.480
but we're also trying to do it in spatial trajectories.
link |
01:12:29.080
Like, imagine you're just,
link |
01:12:30.980
like, I always get bothered by the fact that, like,
link |
01:12:33.660
when you look at birds flocking,
link |
01:12:35.400
you can describe that with like a simple Boyd's model,
link |
01:12:37.460
or like, you know, people use spin glass
link |
01:12:38.960
to describe animal behavior.
link |
01:12:40.120
And those are like really simple physics models.
link |
01:12:42.100
Yet you're looking at a system that you know has agency
link |
01:12:46.740
and there's intelligence in those birds.
link |
01:12:48.840
And basically, like, you can't help but think
link |
01:12:52.000
there must be some statistical signatures
link |
01:12:53.920
of the fact that they're,
link |
01:12:55.720
that's a group of agents versus, you know, like,
link |
01:12:58.120
I don't know, you know, the physics example,
link |
01:13:00.200
maybe like, I don't know, Brownian motion or something.
link |
01:13:03.720
And so what we're trying to do
link |
01:13:04.640
is actually apply assembly to trajectory data
link |
01:13:06.640
to try to say there's a minimal amount of causal history
link |
01:13:09.920
to build up certain trajectories for observed agents
link |
01:13:12.880
that's like an agency detector for behavior.
link |
01:13:15.160
Do you think it's possible to do some like Boyd's
link |
01:13:17.880
or those kinds of things, like artificial,
link |
01:13:21.740
like cellular automata, play with those ideas
link |
01:13:25.000
with assembly, with assembly theory?
link |
01:13:28.300
Have you found any useful, really simple mathematical,
link |
01:13:34.080
like, simulation tools that allow you
link |
01:13:36.040
to play with these concepts?
link |
01:13:38.040
So like one, of course, you're doing mass spec
link |
01:13:40.840
in this physical space with chemistry,
link |
01:13:44.280
but it just seems, well, I mean,
link |
01:13:45.760
computer science person, maybe,
link |
01:13:47.360
it seems easier to just.
link |
01:13:48.760
I agree with you.
link |
01:13:49.600
It seems even sexier in terms of tweeting visual information
link |
01:13:53.320
on Twitter or Instagram, more importantly,
link |
01:13:57.720
to play like, here's an organism of a low assembly index
link |
01:14:01.120
and here's an organism of a high assembly index
link |
01:14:03.560
and let's watch them create more and more memories
link |
01:14:07.320
and more and more complex objects.
link |
01:14:09.300
And so like, in mathematics,
link |
01:14:11.040
you get to observe what that looks like
link |
01:14:12.920
to build up an intuition what assembly index is like.
link |
01:14:15.760
We are building a toolkit right now.
link |
01:14:17.840
So I think it's a really good idea,
link |
01:14:19.680
but what we've got to do is I'm kind of still obsessed
link |
01:14:22.080
with the infrastructure required.
link |
01:14:24.220
And one of the reasons why I was pushing on information
link |
01:14:27.040
and mathematics when human beings,
link |
01:14:29.500
when human beings, we take a lot of the infrastructure
link |
01:14:31.800
for granted.
link |
01:14:33.000
And I think we have to strip that back a bit
link |
01:14:35.120
for going forward, but you're absolutely right.
link |
01:14:36.840
I would agree that I think the fact that we exist
link |
01:14:40.520
in the universe, this is like,
link |
01:14:42.480
I can see that lots of people would disagree
link |
01:14:44.480
with the statement, but I don't think Sarah will,
link |
01:14:47.080
but I don't know.
link |
01:14:48.440
The fact that objects exist,
link |
01:14:50.480
I don't think anyone on earth will disagree
link |
01:14:53.500
that objects can exist elsewhere, right?
link |
01:14:55.860
But they will disagree that life can exist elsewhere.
link |
01:14:58.880
But what perhaps I'm trying to say is that
link |
01:15:01.200
the acquisition, the universe's ability to acquire memory
link |
01:15:06.680
is the very first step for building life.
link |
01:15:10.120
And that must be, that's so easy to happen.
link |
01:15:14.120
So therefore alien life is everywhere
link |
01:15:16.640
because all alien life is,
link |
01:15:18.800
is those memories being compressed and minimalized
link |
01:15:22.120
and the alien equivalent of the cell working.
link |
01:15:24.800
So I think that we will build new technologies
link |
01:15:27.800
to find aliens, but we need to understand what we are first
link |
01:15:32.280
and how we go from physics to chemistry to biology.
link |
01:15:36.560
The most interesting thing,
link |
01:15:38.640
as you're saying to these two organisms,
link |
01:15:40.960
different assemblies, there's one you get into biology.
link |
01:15:43.640
Biology gets more and more weird,
link |
01:15:45.000
more and more contingent.
link |
01:15:46.520
Physics is, chemistry is less weird
link |
01:15:48.840
cause the rules of chemistry are smaller
link |
01:15:50.200
than the rules of biology.
link |
01:15:51.040
And then going away to physics where you have a very
link |
01:15:56.040
nicely tangible number of ways of arranging things.
link |
01:16:00.280
And I think assembly theory just helps you appreciate that.
link |
01:16:03.880
And so once we get there,
link |
01:16:04.800
my dream is that we are just gonna be able to suddenly,
link |
01:16:08.280
I mean, I'm maybe just being really arrogant here.
link |
01:16:10.600
I don't mean to be arrogant.
link |
01:16:11.600
It's just, I've got this hammer called assembly
link |
01:16:14.080
and everything's a nail.
link |
01:16:15.400
But I think that once we crack it,
link |
01:16:17.400
we'll be able to use assembly theory plus telescopes
link |
01:16:20.120
to find aliens.
link |
01:16:22.360
Do you have, Sarah, do you have disagreements with Lee
link |
01:16:25.680
on the number of aliens that are out there?
link |
01:16:28.920
I do actually, yeah, well.
link |
01:16:30.440
And what they look like.
link |
01:16:31.640
So any of the things we've been talking about,
link |
01:16:33.240
is there nuanced, it's always nice to discover wisdom
link |
01:16:40.920
through nuanced disagreement.
link |
01:16:43.520
Yeah, I don't wholly disagree, but I think,
link |
01:16:47.360
but I do think I disagree.
link |
01:16:48.640
It's kind of, there's nuance there.
link |
01:16:51.360
But Lee made it.
link |
01:16:52.200
You can disagree.
link |
01:16:53.040
No, it's fine.
link |
01:16:54.640
It is nuanced, right?
link |
01:16:55.720
So you made the point earlier that you think,
link |
01:16:59.360
once we discover what life is,
link |
01:17:02.000
we'll see alien life everywhere.
link |
01:17:04.400
And I think I agree on some levels in the sense
link |
01:17:06.440
that I think the physics that governs us is universal.
link |
01:17:09.160
But I don't know how far I would go to say,
link |
01:17:11.360
to say that we're a likely phenomenon
link |
01:17:12.960
because we don't understand all of the features
link |
01:17:15.920
of the transition at the origin of life,
link |
01:17:17.680
which we would just say in assembly,
link |
01:17:19.720
as you go from the no memory physics
link |
01:17:22.680
to there's like a critical transition
link |
01:17:26.120
around the assembly index
link |
01:17:27.160
where assembliness starts to increase.
link |
01:17:28.760
And that's what we call the evolution of the biosphere
link |
01:17:30.280
and complexification of the biosphere.
link |
01:17:32.920
So there's a principle of increasing assembliness
link |
01:17:34.760
where that goes back to what I was saying
link |
01:17:35.840
at the very beginning about the physics of the possible,
link |
01:17:38.040
that the universe basically gets in this mode
link |
01:17:40.760
of trying to make as much possibilities as possible.
link |
01:17:44.960
Now, how often that transition happens
link |
01:17:48.960
that you get the kind of cascading effect
link |
01:17:50.600
that we get in our biosphere, I think we don't know.
link |
01:17:53.080
If we did, we would know the likelihood of life
link |
01:17:54.680
in the universe.
link |
01:17:55.520
And a lot of people wanna say life is common,
link |
01:17:57.120
but I don't think that we can say that yet
link |
01:17:58.400
till we have the empirical data,
link |
01:17:59.880
which I think you would agree with.
link |
01:18:01.360
But then there's this other kind of thought experiment I have
link |
01:18:04.480
which I don't like, but I did have it,
link |
01:18:07.960
which is if life emerges on one planet
link |
01:18:11.800
and you get this real high density of things
link |
01:18:13.440
that can exist on that planet,
link |
01:18:14.680
is it sort of dominating the density of creation
link |
01:18:17.880
that the universe can actually generate?
link |
01:18:19.360
So like if you're thinking about counting entropy, right?
link |
01:18:21.480
Like the universe has a certain amount of stuff in it.
link |
01:18:23.840
And then assembly is kind of like an entropic principle.
link |
01:18:27.920
It's not entropy.
link |
01:18:29.080
But the idea is that now transformations among stuff
link |
01:18:33.000
or the actual physical histories of things
link |
01:18:36.200
now become things that you have to count
link |
01:18:37.680
as far as saying that these things exist
link |
01:18:40.160
and we're increasing the number of things that exist.
link |
01:18:42.880
And if you think about that cosmologically,
link |
01:18:45.520
maybe Earth is sucking up all the life potential
link |
01:18:47.720
of the whole universe, I don't know.
link |
01:18:49.440
But I haven't.
link |
01:18:50.280
How's that, can you expand that a little bit?
link |
01:18:51.960
Why can any one geographical region
link |
01:18:54.400
suck up the creative capacity of the universe?
link |
01:18:57.640
Just like, I know it's a ridiculous thought.
link |
01:19:00.280
I don't actually agree with it,
link |
01:19:01.600
but it was just a thought experiment.
link |
01:19:02.440
I love that you can have thoughts
link |
01:19:04.640
that you don't like and don't agree with,
link |
01:19:07.000
but you have to think through them anyway.
link |
01:19:09.040
The human mind is fascinating.
link |
01:19:11.960
Yeah, I think these sort of counterfactual
link |
01:19:15.400
thought experiments are really good
link |
01:19:16.440
when you're trying to build new theories
link |
01:19:17.640
because you have to think through all the consequences.
link |
01:19:19.960
And there are people that want to try to account for,
link |
01:19:23.480
say, the degrees of freedom on our planet
link |
01:19:25.240
in cosmological inventories of talking about
link |
01:19:28.560
the entropy of the universe.
link |
01:19:29.680
And when we're thinking about cosmological
link |
01:19:32.200
arrow of time and things like that.
link |
01:19:33.600
Now, I think those are pretty superficial proposals
link |
01:19:35.480
as they stand now, but assembly would give you
link |
01:19:37.120
a way of counting it.
link |
01:19:38.320
And then the question is if there's a certain
link |
01:19:40.200
maximal capacity of the universe's speed
link |
01:19:43.160
of generating stuff, which Lee always has this argument
link |
01:19:45.480
that assembly is about time.
link |
01:19:47.600
The universe is generating more states.
link |
01:19:49.280
Really what it's generating is more assembly possibilities.
link |
01:19:52.920
And then dark energy might be one manifestation of that,
link |
01:19:56.120
that the universe is accelerating its expansion
link |
01:19:58.280
because that makes more physical space.
link |
01:20:00.080
And what's happening on our planet is it's accelerating
link |
01:20:02.440
in the expansion of possible things that exist.
link |
01:20:05.200
And maybe the universe just has a maximal rate
link |
01:20:07.120
of what it can do to generate things.
link |
01:20:09.360
And then if there is a maximal rate,
link |
01:20:11.080
maybe only a certain number of planets
link |
01:20:12.400
can actually do that.
link |
01:20:13.600
Or there's a trade off about the pace of growth
link |
01:20:16.160
on certain planets versus others.
link |
01:20:18.080
I have a million questions there,
link |
01:20:19.240
but do you have thoughts on?
link |
01:20:20.840
Just a quick, yeah, I'll just say something very quick.
link |
01:20:22.560
It's a thought experiment.
link |
01:20:23.400
No, it's good, I think I get it.
link |
01:20:24.320
I think I get it.
link |
01:20:25.160
So what I want to say is when I mean aliens are everywhere,
link |
01:20:29.000
I mean memories are the prerequisite
link |
01:20:34.000
for aliens via selection
link |
01:20:36.960
and then concentration of selection
link |
01:20:39.000
when selection becomes autonomous.
link |
01:20:40.320
So what I would love to do is to build,
link |
01:20:42.440
say a magical telescope that was a memory,
link |
01:20:45.440
a magical one, or a real one,
link |
01:20:48.040
that would be a memory detector to see selection.
link |
01:20:51.320
So you could get to exoplanets and say that exoplanet
link |
01:20:54.080
looks like there's lots of selection going on there.
link |
01:20:56.160
Maybe there's evolution and maybe there's going to be life.
link |
01:20:58.720
So what I'm trying to say is narrow down
link |
01:21:00.120
the regions of space where you say
link |
01:21:01.640
there's definitely evidence of memory as high assembly there
link |
01:21:05.320
or not high assembly, because that would be life,
link |
01:21:07.000
but where it's capable of happening.
link |
01:21:11.120
And then that would also help us frame the search for aliens.
link |
01:21:14.400
I don't know how likely it is to make the transition
link |
01:21:16.920
to cells and all the other things.
link |
01:21:18.840
I think you're right.
link |
01:21:20.200
But I think that we just need to get more data.
link |
01:21:23.360
Well, I didn't like the thought experiment
link |
01:21:24.800
because I don't like the idea
link |
01:21:25.960
that if the universe has a maximal limit
link |
01:21:27.560
on the amount it can generate per unit time
link |
01:21:29.640
that our existence is actually precluding the existence
link |
01:21:31.800
of other things.
link |
01:21:32.640
Well, I'll just say one thing.
link |
01:21:33.480
But I think that's probably true anyway
link |
01:21:34.320
because of the resource limitations.
link |
01:21:35.520
So I don't like your thought experiment
link |
01:21:37.320
because I think it's wrong.
link |
01:21:39.280
Well, no, no, I do like the thought experiment.
link |
01:21:41.400
So what you're trying to say is like,
link |
01:21:42.320
there is a chain of events that goes back
link |
01:21:44.040
that's manifestly culminated with life on Earth.
link |
01:21:48.120
And you're not saying that life isn't possible elsewhere.
link |
01:21:50.120
You say that there has been these number of things,
link |
01:21:52.320
contingent things that have happened
link |
01:21:53.560
that have allowed life to merge here.
link |
01:21:56.640
That doesn't mean that life can't emerge elsewhere,
link |
01:21:58.200
but you're saying that the intersection of events
link |
01:22:00.400
may be concentrated here, right?
link |
01:22:04.160
And I think there's...
link |
01:22:05.000
Not exactly.
link |
01:22:06.240
It's more like if you look at,
link |
01:22:10.720
say the causal graphs are fundamental,
link |
01:22:12.200
maybe space is an emergent property,
link |
01:22:14.080
which is consistent with some proposals on quantum gravity,
link |
01:22:16.680
but also how we talk about things in assembly theory.
link |
01:22:18.960
Then the universe is causal graphs generating
link |
01:22:22.200
more structure in causal graphs, right?
link |
01:22:24.200
So this is how the universe is unfolding.
link |
01:22:26.160
And maybe there's a cap on the rate of generation.
link |
01:22:30.040
Like there's only so much stuff
link |
01:22:31.640
that gets made per update of the universe.
link |
01:22:34.600
And then if there's a lot of stuff being made
link |
01:22:36.360
in a particular region that happens
link |
01:22:38.480
to look the same locally, spatially,
link |
01:22:40.920
that's an after effect of the fact
link |
01:22:43.280
that the whole causal graph is updating.
link |
01:22:45.360
Like it's...
link |
01:22:47.600
Yeah, I don't know that.
link |
01:22:49.240
I think that that doesn't work.
link |
01:22:51.000
I don't think it works either,
link |
01:22:51.920
but I don't have a good argument in my mind about.
link |
01:22:53.720
But I do like the idea of the capacity that universe,
link |
01:22:55.960
cause you've got the number of states.
link |
01:22:57.600
Yeah, we can come back to it.
link |
01:22:59.320
Let me ask real quick.
link |
01:23:00.360
Like why does different like local pockets
link |
01:23:04.680
of the universe start remembering stuff?
link |
01:23:07.400
How does memory emerge exactly?
link |
01:23:10.480
So at the origin of the universe, it was very forgetful.
link |
01:23:16.080
That's when the physicists were happiest.
link |
01:23:17.680
It was low memory objects,
link |
01:23:20.880
which is like ultra low memory objects,
link |
01:23:23.880
which is what the definition of stuff.
link |
01:23:26.520
Okay, so how does memory emerge?
link |
01:23:29.080
How does the temporal stickiness of objects emerge?
link |
01:23:38.240
I'm gonna take a very chemocentric point of view
link |
01:23:42.000
because I can't imagine any other way of doing it.
link |
01:23:44.000
You could think of other ways maybe.
link |
01:23:47.440
But I would say heterogeneity in matter
link |
01:23:52.120
is where the memory...
link |
01:23:53.400
So you must have enough different ways
link |
01:23:55.560
of rearranging matter for there to be a memory.
link |
01:23:58.560
So what that means,
link |
01:23:59.400
if you've got particles colliding in a box,
link |
01:24:01.080
let's just take some elements in a box.
link |
01:24:06.920
Those elements can combine in a combinatorial set of ways.
link |
01:24:10.320
So there's a combinatorial explosion
link |
01:24:11.840
of the number of molecules or minerals or solid objects,
link |
01:24:15.320
bonds being made.
link |
01:24:17.000
Because there's such a large number,
link |
01:24:19.360
the population of different objects that are possible,
link |
01:24:22.280
this goes back to assembly theory
link |
01:24:23.800
where assembly theory, there's four types of universes.
link |
01:24:27.480
So you've got basically, and this is what one was up earlier
link |
01:24:30.840
where one universe where you've just got
link |
01:24:33.520
everything is possible.
link |
01:24:34.480
So you can take all the atoms
link |
01:24:35.600
and combine them and make everything.
link |
01:24:37.480
Then you've got basically what is the assembly combinatorial
link |
01:24:42.360
where you basically have to accrue information in steps.
link |
01:24:46.000
Then you've got assembly observed,
link |
01:24:49.240
and then you've got the object assembly going back.
link |
01:24:51.520
So what I'm trying to say is like,
link |
01:24:53.640
if you can take atoms and make bonds,
link |
01:24:55.400
let's say you take a nitrogen atom and add it
link |
01:24:57.440
to a carbon atom, you find an amino acid,
link |
01:24:59.600
then you add another carbon atom on
link |
01:25:01.000
in a particular configuration,
link |
01:25:02.160
then another one, all different molecules.
link |
01:25:04.280
They all represent different histories.
link |
01:25:07.720
So I would say for me right now,
link |
01:25:10.200
the most simple route into life seems to be
link |
01:25:13.160
through recording memories and chemistry.
link |
01:25:16.080
But that doesn't mean there can't be other ways
link |
01:25:18.200
and can't be other emergent effects.
link |
01:25:20.680
But I think if you can make bonds
link |
01:25:22.520
and lots of different bonds,
link |
01:25:24.240
and those molecules can have a causal effect on the future.
link |
01:25:29.440
So imagine a box of atoms,
link |
01:25:32.520
and then you combine those atoms in some way.
link |
01:25:35.000
So you make molecule A from load of atoms,
link |
01:25:40.200
and then molecule A can go back to the box
link |
01:25:43.160
and influence the box.
link |
01:25:45.920
Then you make A prime or AB or ABC.
link |
01:25:49.720
And that process keeps going,
link |
01:25:51.160
and that's where the memories come from,
link |
01:25:53.240
is that heterogeneity in the universe from bonding.
link |
01:25:57.160
I don't know if that makes any sense.
link |
01:25:58.000
And it's beginning to flourish at the chemistry level.
link |
01:26:04.280
Yeah.
link |
01:26:05.120
So the physicists have no, like not enough.
link |
01:26:09.160
Yeah, I mean.
link |
01:26:11.000
They're like desperately begging
link |
01:26:13.040
for more freedom and heterogeneous components to play with.
link |
01:26:20.720
Yeah, that's exactly it.
link |
01:26:23.120
What do you think about that, Sarah?
link |
01:26:24.760
I mentioned already, I think it's significant
link |
01:26:26.800
that whatever physics governs life
link |
01:26:28.560
emerges actually in chemistry.
link |
01:26:30.120
It's not relevant at the subatomic scale
link |
01:26:32.880
or even at the atomic scale.
link |
01:26:34.920
It's in, well, atomic scale because chemistry.
link |
01:26:37.960
But like when you get into this combinatorial diversity
link |
01:26:40.880
that you get from combining things on the periodic table,
link |
01:26:44.400
that's when selection actually matters
link |
01:26:47.600
or the fact that some things can exist
link |
01:26:49.000
and others can't exist actually starts to matter.
link |
01:26:52.080
So I think of it like you don't study gravity
link |
01:26:55.840
inside the atomic nucleus.
link |
01:26:57.120
You study it in terms of large scale structure
link |
01:26:59.000
of the universe or black holes or things like that.
link |
01:27:01.320
And whatever we're talking about as physics of information
link |
01:27:04.320
or physics of assembly becomes relevant
link |
01:27:06.160
at a certain scale of reality.
link |
01:27:08.040
And the transition that you're talking about,
link |
01:27:11.080
I would think of as just when you get a sufficient density
link |
01:27:15.120
in terms of the assembly space
link |
01:27:16.840
of like the relationship of the overlap
link |
01:27:18.560
and the assembly space,
link |
01:27:20.680
which is like a feature of common memory,
link |
01:27:23.200
there is this transition to assembly dominated physics,
link |
01:27:27.560
whatever that is.
link |
01:27:29.000
Oh, like when we're talking about,
link |
01:27:30.480
and we're trying to map out exactly
link |
01:27:31.920
what that transition looks like.
link |
01:27:33.120
We're pretty sure of some of its features,
link |
01:27:36.240
but we haven't done all of the...
link |
01:27:37.720
Do you think if you were there in the early universe,
link |
01:27:39.560
you would have been able to predict
link |
01:27:41.080
the emergence of chemistry and biology?
link |
01:27:43.200
And I ask that because at this stage as humans,
link |
01:27:46.880
do you think we can possibly predict the length of memory
link |
01:27:51.280
that might be able to be formed later on
link |
01:27:55.640
in this pocket of the universe?
link |
01:27:56.920
Like how complex is, what is the ceiling of assembly?
link |
01:28:02.880
I think as much time as you have in the past
link |
01:28:04.920
is how much you can predict in the future.
link |
01:28:06.800
Because it's actually physical in the system
link |
01:28:09.400
and you have to have enough time
link |
01:28:10.840
for features of that structure to exist.
link |
01:28:15.840
Wait, let me push back on that.
link |
01:28:17.360
Isn't there somewhere in the universe
link |
01:28:19.920
that's like a shortest path that's been,
link |
01:28:21.900
that stretches all the way to the beginning?
link |
01:28:23.920
Yeah.
link |
01:28:24.760
That's building some giant monster?
link |
01:28:26.720
Maybe, yeah.
link |
01:28:27.720
Yeah.
link |
01:28:28.560
So you can't predict.
link |
01:28:29.400
The universe has as much memory
link |
01:28:30.560
as the largest assembly object in the universe.
link |
01:28:32.520
Yeah. Right.
link |
01:28:33.360
But so you can't predict.
link |
01:28:35.320
You can't predict any deeper than that, no.
link |
01:28:37.480
Right.
link |
01:28:38.320
So like that, I guess what I'm saying is,
link |
01:28:40.800
like what intuition do you have about complexity
link |
01:28:43.560
living in the world that you'd have today?
link |
01:28:46.280
Right, because you just, you can,
link |
01:28:49.040
I mean I guess how long does it get more fun?
link |
01:28:54.040
Like isn't there gonna be at some point,
link |
01:28:55.880
because there's a heat death in the universe,
link |
01:28:57.960
isn't there going to be a point of the most,
link |
01:29:01.760
of the highest assembly of object,
link |
01:29:04.320
with the highest probability being generated?
link |
01:29:07.080
When is the universe gonna be the most fun,
link |
01:29:08.560
and can we freeze ourselves and then live then?
link |
01:29:10.160
Exactly.
link |
01:29:11.000
And will you know when you're having the most fun
link |
01:29:14.280
that this is the best time, you're in your prime?
link |
01:29:16.800
Are you going to do what everyone does,
link |
01:29:18.080
which is deny that you're in your prime,
link |
01:29:19.920
and the best years are still ahead of you?
link |
01:29:21.840
I don't know.
link |
01:29:23.160
What option do you have?
link |
01:29:26.520
I don't, I mean the problem is there's lots of,
link |
01:29:29.760
lots of really interesting features here.
link |
01:29:31.360
I just wanna mention one thing that might be,
link |
01:29:33.600
is I do think assembly theory applies all the way back
link |
01:29:36.160
to subatomic particles.
link |
01:29:37.800
And I also think that cosmological selection
link |
01:29:40.360
might've been actually, there might've been,
link |
01:29:42.720
I would say it's a really boring bit,
link |
01:29:43.840
but it's really important for a cosmologist
link |
01:29:45.960
that universes have gone through.
link |
01:29:47.600
Was it Lee Smolin who proposed this?
link |
01:29:49.400
Maybe that there is this,
link |
01:29:50.760
that basically a universe evolves,
link |
01:29:52.200
you've got the wrong constants, we'll start again.
link |
01:29:54.920
And the most productive constants
link |
01:29:56.280
where you can allow particles to form in a certain way,
link |
01:29:59.120
propagate to the next universe, and we go again.
link |
01:30:01.160
So actually selection goes all the way back,
link |
01:30:03.200
and there's this cycle of universes.
link |
01:30:04.720
And now this universe has been selected
link |
01:30:06.560
because life can occur, and it carries on.
link |
01:30:10.400
But I've really butchered that.
link |
01:30:12.480
There is a much more.
link |
01:30:13.320
So this is some aspect where through the selection process
link |
01:30:17.480
there's parameters that are being fine tuned,
link |
01:30:19.320
and we happen to be living in one
link |
01:30:20.680
where there's some level of fine tuning.
link |
01:30:22.840
Is there, given that, can you steel man the case
link |
01:30:27.560
that we humans are alone in the universe?
link |
01:30:31.280
We are the highest assembly index object in the universe.
link |
01:30:34.960
Yeah, I can, I guess.
link |
01:30:36.160
Sad though.
link |
01:30:37.280
I mean, so from a.
link |
01:30:38.120
Is it possible?
link |
01:30:39.200
Yes, it's possible.
link |
01:30:41.440
Let's assume.
link |
01:30:43.320
Well, we know.
link |
01:30:45.240
I mean, it's possible.
link |
01:30:47.360
So let me, so okay, so there is a particular
link |
01:30:50.880
set of elements on Earth in a particular ratio,
link |
01:30:54.920
and the right gravitational constant,
link |
01:30:57.360
and the right viscosity, you know,
link |
01:30:59.720
of stuff being able to move around,
link |
01:31:01.800
the right distance from our sun,
link |
01:31:04.280
right number of events where we have a moon,
link |
01:31:07.720
the Earth is rotating.
link |
01:31:10.720
The late heavy bombardment produced a lot of,
link |
01:31:14.080
brought in the right stuff.
link |
01:31:16.040
And Mars was cooking up, you know,
link |
01:31:19.920
the right molecules first.
link |
01:31:21.360
So it was habitable before Earth.
link |
01:31:23.280
It was actually doing the combinatorial search.
link |
01:31:25.920
And before Mars kind of became uninhabitable,
link |
01:31:29.600
it seeded Earth with the right molecular replicators.
link |
01:31:34.720
And there was just the right stuff on Earth,
link |
01:31:36.360
and that's how the miracle of life occurred.
link |
01:31:40.680
Although I find I'm very uncomfortable with that
link |
01:31:43.440
because actually, because life came so quickly
link |
01:31:48.240
in the Earth's past.
link |
01:31:50.680
But that doesn't mean that life is easy elsewhere.
link |
01:31:55.560
It just might mean that,
link |
01:31:57.880
because chemistry is actually not a long term thing.
link |
01:32:00.160
Chemistry can happen quickly.
link |
01:32:01.280
So maybe going on with the steel manning of the argument
link |
01:32:04.200
to say actually, the fact that life emerged quickly
link |
01:32:06.960
doesn't mean that life is easy.
link |
01:32:08.360
It just means that the chemistry was right on Earth,
link |
01:32:11.720
and Earth is very special.
link |
01:32:13.760
And that's why there's no life
link |
01:32:15.160
anywhere else in the universe.
link |
01:32:17.000
Yeah, so Sarah mentioned this kind of cascading thing.
link |
01:32:21.640
So what if that's the reason we're lucky,
link |
01:32:24.920
is that we got to have a rare cascading of,
link |
01:32:29.600
like an accelerating cascading effect
link |
01:32:31.920
in terms of the complexity of things.
link |
01:32:34.480
So like, maybe most of the universe
link |
01:32:36.600
is trying to get sticky with the memory,
link |
01:32:39.720
and it's not able to really form it.
link |
01:32:41.360
And then we got really lucky in that.
link |
01:32:43.040
And it has nothing,
link |
01:32:44.560
like there's a lot of Earth like conditions, let's say,
link |
01:32:47.400
but it's just you really, really have to get lucky on this.
link |
01:32:51.640
But I'm doing experiments right now.
link |
01:32:54.160
In fact, experiments that Sarah and I are working on,
link |
01:32:56.560
because we have some joint funding for this,
link |
01:32:58.360
where we're seeing that the universe
link |
01:33:00.040
can get sticky really quickly.
link |
01:33:01.440
Now, of course, we're being very anthropocentric,
link |
01:33:04.440
we're using laboratory tools, we're using theory,
link |
01:33:06.480
but actually, the phenomena of selection,
link |
01:33:10.400
the process of developing heterogeneity,
link |
01:33:14.120
we can do in the lab.
link |
01:33:15.080
We're just seeing the very first hints of it.
link |
01:33:17.640
And wouldn't it be great if we can start to pin down
link |
01:33:22.520
a bit more precisely becoming good Bayesianists for this,
link |
01:33:27.680
for the origin of life and the emergence of life,
link |
01:33:30.200
to finding out what kind of chemistries
link |
01:33:31.960
we really need to look for.
link |
01:33:34.560
And I'm becoming increasingly confident
link |
01:33:36.080
we'll be able to do that in the next few years.
link |
01:33:37.840
Make life in the lab or make some selection in the lab
link |
01:33:41.400
from inorganic stuff, from sand, from rocks,
link |
01:33:44.160
from dead stuff, from moon.
link |
01:33:45.760
Wouldn't it be great to get stuff from the moon,
link |
01:33:48.040
put it in our origin of life experiment,
link |
01:33:51.160
and make moon life?
link |
01:33:53.080
And restrict ourselves to interesting self replicating
link |
01:33:56.000
stuff that we find on the moon.
link |
01:33:58.480
Sarah, what do you think about this approach
link |
01:34:00.680
of engineering life in order to understand life?
link |
01:34:03.680
So building life in the machine.
link |
01:34:05.800
Yeah, so, I mean, Lee and I are trying right now
link |
01:34:09.160
to build a vision for a large institute
link |
01:34:14.800
or experimental program, basically, to do this problem.
link |
01:34:17.640
But I think of it as like, we need to simulate a planet.
link |
01:34:21.000
So like the Large Hadron Collider was supposed
link |
01:34:23.400
to be simulating conditions just after the Big Bang.
link |
01:34:26.280
Lee's built a lot of technology in his lab
link |
01:34:27.960
to do these kind of selection engines.
link |
01:34:30.000
But the question you're asking is,
link |
01:34:33.000
how many experiments do you need to run?
link |
01:34:34.920
What volume of chemical space do you need to explore
link |
01:34:37.640
before you actually see an event?
link |
01:34:40.640
And I like to make an analogy
link |
01:34:41.880
to one of my favorite particle physics experiments,
link |
01:34:43.680
which is Super Kamiakande that's looking
link |
01:34:45.280
for the decay of the proton.
link |
01:34:46.640
So this is something that we predicted theoretically,
link |
01:34:49.080
but we've never observed in our universe.
link |
01:34:51.200
And basically what they're doing is every time
link |
01:34:53.320
they don't see a proton decay event,
link |
01:34:55.360
they have a longer bound on the lifetime of a proton.
link |
01:34:57.760
So imagine we built an experiment with the idea in mind
link |
01:35:00.720
of trying to simulate planetary conditions,
link |
01:35:03.600
physically simulate.
link |
01:35:04.480
You can't simulate origin life in a computer.
link |
01:35:06.320
You have to do it in an experiment.
link |
01:35:08.400
Simulate enough planetary conditions
link |
01:35:10.880
to explore the space of what's possible
link |
01:35:12.800
and bound the probability for an origin life event.
link |
01:35:15.040
Even if you're not observing it,
link |
01:35:16.200
you can talk about the probability.
link |
01:35:17.520
But we, hopefully, life is not exponentially rare
link |
01:35:23.280
and we would then be able to evolve
link |
01:35:27.200
in an automated system alien life in the lab.
link |
01:35:31.760
And if we can do that, then we understand the physics
link |
01:35:34.240
as well as we understand what we can do
link |
01:35:35.880
in particle accelerators.
link |
01:35:37.480
So keep expanding physically the simulation,
link |
01:35:40.640
the physical simulation, until something happens.
link |
01:35:44.560
Yeah, or just build a big enough volume
link |
01:35:46.540
of chemical experiments and evolve them.
link |
01:35:48.600
So if you say volume, you mean like literally volume?
link |
01:35:50.840
I mean physical volume in terms of space,
link |
01:35:53.280
but I actually mean volume in terms
link |
01:35:54.720
of the combinatorial space of chemistry.
link |
01:35:57.480
So like.
link |
01:35:58.300
How do you nicely control the combinatorial exploration,
link |
01:36:01.640
the search space, such that it's always like
link |
01:36:05.520
you keep grabbing the low hanging fruit?
link |
01:36:08.040
Yeah, how do you build a search engine for chemistry?
link |
01:36:10.520
It's like for aliens. I think you explained it really well.
link |
01:36:11.620
We should carry on doing this.
link |
01:36:12.460
I should pretend the physics, be the physicist,
link |
01:36:14.400
you be the chemist.
link |
01:36:15.240
So the way to do it is I will always play a joke.
link |
01:36:18.800
Cause I like writing grants to ask for money
link |
01:36:23.800
to do cool stuff.
link |
01:36:24.760
But years ago I started wanting to build.
link |
01:36:29.080
So I actually wanted the weather.
link |
01:36:30.740
So I built this robot in my lab called the computer,
link |
01:36:32.880
which is this robot you can program to do chemistry.
link |
01:36:36.660
Now it's a pro.
link |
01:36:37.520
I made a programming language for the computer
link |
01:36:39.640
and made it operate chemical equipment.
link |
01:36:43.620
Originally I wrote grants to say,
link |
01:36:46.060
Hey, I want to make an origin of life system.
link |
01:36:48.980
And no one would give me any money for this.
link |
01:36:51.740
They said, what this is ridiculous.
link |
01:36:53.540
Why are you wanting to make, oh, it's really hard.
link |
01:36:55.220
It takes forever.
link |
01:36:56.140
You're not a very good origin of life chemist anyway.
link |
01:36:58.380
Why would we give you any money?
link |
01:37:00.140
And so I turned it around and said, can you,
link |
01:37:02.340
can instead, can you give me money to make robots,
link |
01:37:05.580
to make molecules are interesting.
link |
01:37:07.400
And everyone went, yeah, okay, you can do that.
link |
01:37:09.540
And that's, so actually the funny thing is the computer
link |
01:37:13.540
project, which I have in my lab, which is very briefly,
link |
01:37:18.260
it's just basically, it's like literally an automated
link |
01:37:20.300
test tube.
link |
01:37:21.140
And we've made a programming language for the test tube,
link |
01:37:22.960
which is cool, has come as literally came from this.
link |
01:37:28.700
I went to my lab one day.
link |
01:37:29.720
So I want to make a search engine to get origin of life
link |
01:37:32.140
because they don't have a planet.
link |
01:37:33.580
And I thought about doing in a microfluidic format.
link |
01:37:36.220
So microfluidic is very nano, very small channels
link |
01:37:39.580
in device where you can basically have all the pipes
link |
01:37:41.660
lit dump produced by lithography.
link |
01:37:43.940
And you can have a chamber, maybe say between say 10
link |
01:37:46.700
and a hundred microns in volume.
link |
01:37:48.420
And we slot them all together like Lego,
link |
01:37:50.580
and we can make an origin of life system.
link |
01:37:52.860
And I could never get it to work.
link |
01:37:55.380
And I realized I had to make, do chemistry at the kind of
link |
01:37:59.340
test tube level and what you want to be able to do.
link |
01:38:03.140
Yeah, it goes back to that tweet in 1981.
link |
01:38:06.420
1981, the computer, we're looking at a tweet from Lee.
link |
01:38:10.220
In 1981, the computer was a distant dream in,
link |
01:38:13.700
oh wow, this is the scientist looking back.
link |
01:38:15.980
It is the young boy who dreamed.
link |
01:38:19.260
In 2018, it was realized, spelled in a British way,
link |
01:38:23.500
realized, which is the wrong way.
link |
01:38:25.660
Yeah, I'm starting with Z, but not.
link |
01:38:27.900
So now there's a system that does the physical
link |
01:38:30.480
manifestation or whatever the programming language,
link |
01:38:34.460
the spec tells you to do.
link |
01:38:37.140
Yeah, well in 1981, I got my first computer, ZX81.
link |
01:38:40.580
What was the computer?
link |
01:38:41.700
ZX81.
link |
01:38:42.540
ZX81.
link |
01:38:44.180
Sinclair ZX81.
link |
01:38:46.060
It was, and I got a chemistry set.
link |
01:38:49.220
And I liked the chemistry set and I liked the computer
link |
01:38:53.420
and I just wanted to put them together.
link |
01:38:54.980
I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could just use
link |
01:38:56.580
the computer to control the chemistry set.
link |
01:38:58.860
And obviously that was insane.
link |
01:39:00.780
And I was like, you know, eight years old, right?
link |
01:39:04.340
Nine years old, going on nine years old.
link |
01:39:06.100
And then I invented the computer
link |
01:39:12.500
just because I wanted to build this origin of life grid.
link |
01:39:15.780
Which is like literally a billion test tubes
link |
01:39:17.940
connected together in real time and real space,
link |
01:39:20.880
basically throwing a chemical dice.
link |
01:39:23.380
Throw dice, throw dice, throw dice.
link |
01:39:24.860
You're gonna get lucky.
link |
01:39:26.120
And that's what we, I think Sarah and I
link |
01:39:28.300
have been thinking very deeply about.
link |
01:39:30.580
Because, you know, there's more money being spent
link |
01:39:32.940
on the origin of the gravity
link |
01:39:37.060
or looking at the Higgs boson than the origin of life, right?
link |
01:39:39.580
And the origin of life is the, I think the biggest question
link |
01:39:43.740
or not the biggest question, it is a big question.
link |
01:39:46.260
Let's put it that way.
link |
01:39:47.100
It is the biggest question.
link |
01:39:48.100
You're okay saying that.
link |
01:39:49.100
Okay, all right.
link |
01:39:50.740
Isn't it possible once you figure out the origin of life
link |
01:39:52.940
that that's not going to solve,
link |
01:39:55.940
that's not actually gonna solve
link |
01:39:58.020
the question of what is life?
link |
01:39:59.700
Because you're kind of putting a lot of.
link |
01:40:02.780
Yeah, I think they're the same problem.
link |
01:40:04.600
But you're putting, is it possible
link |
01:40:06.660
that you're putting too many,
link |
01:40:09.940
too much bets into this origin part?
link |
01:40:12.020
Maybe the origin thing isn't,
link |
01:40:14.060
isn't there always a turtle underneath the turtle?
link |
01:40:16.460
Isn't there a stack of turtles?
link |
01:40:17.740
Because then if you create it in the lab,
link |
01:40:19.600
maybe you need some other stuff.
link |
01:40:21.740
Well, let's not think about the origin.
link |
01:40:23.180
Like in the lab, there's still memory.
link |
01:40:27.100
Yeah, yes.
link |
01:40:28.180
Right?
link |
01:40:29.020
So the experiment is already the product of evolution.
link |
01:40:31.660
Right, in some maybe really deep way,
link |
01:40:33.900
not an obvious way, in some very deep way.
link |
01:40:36.060
So maybe the haters are always going to be like,
link |
01:40:39.560
well, you have to reconstruct the fold.
link |
01:40:42.140
You have to build a new script.
link |
01:40:42.980
Fortunately for us, the haters are not aware
link |
01:40:44.620
of that argument.
link |
01:40:46.860
Well, no, I know, I just.
link |
01:40:48.260
We're the one making that argument usually, but yeah.
link |
01:40:51.100
I just think that if we create life in the lab,
link |
01:40:54.420
it's not obvious that you'll get
link |
01:40:56.540
to the deep, deep understanding of necessarily,
link |
01:41:00.700
what is the line between life and non life?
link |
01:41:03.100
No, I think, so there's so much here.
link |
01:41:05.020
I'm just like playing devil.
link |
01:41:06.340
So much here, but let me play devil's advocate
link |
01:41:08.580
back in a previous conversation, right?
link |
01:41:10.460
And say, yeah, I will.
link |
01:41:14.400
Why not?
link |
01:41:15.240
Why not?
link |
01:41:16.060
We've got time.
link |
01:41:16.900
Yeah, let's go.
link |
01:41:17.740
Cellular automata.
link |
01:41:18.560
Cellular automata, these very, very simple things
link |
01:41:21.980
where you color squares black or white
link |
01:41:24.740
and implement rules and play them in time.
link |
01:41:26.620
And you can get these very, very complex patterns coming out.
link |
01:41:30.580
You know, there's nice rules.
link |
01:41:31.780
There are Turing complete rules and I would argue
link |
01:41:36.860
that cellular automata don't really exist on their own.
link |
01:41:41.580
They have to exist in a computing device.
link |
01:41:45.040
If that, well, that's computing devices,
link |
01:41:46.380
a piece of paper and abstraction,
link |
01:41:47.540
a mathematician drawing a grid or a framework.
link |
01:41:52.540
Now, so I would argue CAs are beautiful things,
link |
01:41:56.960
simple, going complex, but the complexity is all borrowed
link |
01:41:59.960
from the lithography, the numbers.
link |
01:42:03.480
Right, now let's take that same argument
link |
01:42:05.160
with the chemistry experiment origin of life.
link |
01:42:11.040
What you need to be able to do is go,
link |
01:42:12.480
and I'm inspired to do this,
link |
01:42:13.720
to go out and look for CAs occur in nature.
link |
01:42:17.700
You know, let's kind of, let's find some CAs
link |
01:42:21.840
that just emerge in our universe and.
link |
01:42:24.800
For people just, sorry to interrupt,
link |
01:42:26.080
for people just listening and in general,
link |
01:42:29.280
I think what we're looking at is a cellular automata
link |
01:42:33.480
where again, as Lee described,
link |
01:42:35.080
there is just binary black or white squares
link |
01:42:38.360
and they only have local information
link |
01:42:40.200
and they're born and they die.
link |
01:42:42.640
And you would think nothing interesting would emerge,
link |
01:42:45.340
but actually what we're looking at is something
link |
01:42:47.360
that I believe is called glider guns
link |
01:42:49.360
or a glider gun, which is moving objects
link |
01:42:54.580
in this multi cell space that look like they're organisms
link |
01:42:58.660
that have much more information,
link |
01:43:01.200
that have much more complexity
link |
01:43:03.780
than the individual building components.
link |
01:43:05.940
In fact, look like they have a long term memory
link |
01:43:09.860
while the individual components don't seem like
link |
01:43:12.300
they have any memory at all, which is fascinating.
link |
01:43:15.100
The argument here is that has to exist
link |
01:43:17.940
on all this layer of infrastructure, right?
link |
01:43:20.140
And though it looks simple.
link |
01:43:21.620
And then what I would make, the argument I would make
link |
01:43:23.260
if I were you, say, well, I think CAs are really simple
link |
01:43:26.220
and everywhere, is say, show me how they emerge
link |
01:43:28.700
in a substrate.
link |
01:43:29.580
Now this goes to the origin of life, machine.
link |
01:43:32.620
I don't think we want to do the origin of life,
link |
01:43:34.980
just any origin is good.
link |
01:43:36.540
So we do, so we literally have our sand shaker,
link |
01:43:39.260
shake the sand like massive grid of chemistry experiments,
link |
01:43:42.220
shaking sand, shaking whatever.
link |
01:43:45.260
And then because we know what we've put in,
link |
01:43:47.360
so we know how we've cheated and the same way with CA,
link |
01:43:49.380
we know how we've cheated,
link |
01:43:50.220
we know the number of operations needed,
link |
01:43:52.300
we know how big a grid we want to get this.
link |
01:43:54.580
If we could then say, okay,
link |
01:43:56.900
how can we generate this recipe in the lab
link |
01:44:01.460
and make a life form?
link |
01:44:03.240
What contingency did we need to put in?
link |
01:44:06.180
And we're upfront about how we cheated, okay?
link |
01:44:09.380
Say, oh, you had to shake it, it was a periodic,
link |
01:44:12.180
planet rotates, it's tried, comes in and out.
link |
01:44:15.780
So, and then we can start to basically say,
link |
01:44:17.700
okay, how difficult is it for these features to be found?
link |
01:44:23.180
And then we can look for extra planets and other features.
link |
01:44:25.300
So I think Sarah is absolutely right.
link |
01:44:27.460
We want to explain to people we're cheating.
link |
01:44:29.340
In fact, we have to cheat.
link |
01:44:30.660
No one has given, I'm good at writing grants,
link |
01:44:32.660
well, I used to be, I'm not very good right now,
link |
01:44:34.060
I keep getting rejected,
link |
01:44:35.260
but writing a grant for a planet in 100 million years,
link |
01:44:38.020
no grant fund there is going to give me that,
link |
01:44:39.860
but maybe money to make a kind of a grid,
link |
01:44:42.740
a computer grid, origin of life computer grid.
link |
01:44:45.940
In physical space.
link |
01:44:46.860
In physical space, and just do it.
link |
01:44:49.180
So Sarah said something which is,
link |
01:44:51.180
you can't simulate the origin of life in a computer,
link |
01:44:56.320
so like in simulation, why not?
link |
01:44:59.580
What are your, you said it very confidently,
link |
01:45:02.380
so is it possible and why would it be very difficult?
link |
01:45:07.060
Like what's your intuition there?
link |
01:45:08.880
I think it's very difficult right now
link |
01:45:12.120
because we don't know the physics,
link |
01:45:13.140
but if you go based on principles of assembly theory
link |
01:45:15.220
and you think every molecule is actually
link |
01:45:17.340
a very large causal graph, not just the molecule,
link |
01:45:20.100
then you have to simulate all the features
link |
01:45:21.560
of those causal graphs,
link |
01:45:22.580
and I think it becomes computationally intractable.
link |
01:45:24.820
You might as well just build the experiment.
link |
01:45:26.900
Because you have, in the physical space,
link |
01:45:28.660
you have all the objects with all the memories.
link |
01:45:31.660
Yes.
link |
01:45:32.500
In the computer, you would have to copy them
link |
01:45:35.400
or reconstruct them.
link |
01:45:36.240
Yes.
link |
01:45:37.060
Yeah, that's a beautifully put,
link |
01:45:38.620
and I would say that lots of people,
link |
01:45:41.700
you just don't have enough resources.
link |
01:45:44.980
It's easier to actually do the physical experiment
link |
01:45:47.940
because we are literally,
link |
01:45:49.820
I would view the physical experiment
link |
01:45:51.380
almost like a computational experiment.
link |
01:45:53.540
We're just outsourcing, it's just basically,
link |
01:45:55.060
we're just outsourcing all the matrix algebra.
link |
01:45:57.700
And on your point about the experiment
link |
01:46:00.180
being also an example of life,
link |
01:46:03.940
it's almost like you want to design,
link |
01:46:05.340
it's like all of us are lineages
link |
01:46:08.420
of propagating information across time,
link |
01:46:10.300
and so everything we do becomes part of life
link |
01:46:12.300
because it's part of that causal chain.
link |
01:46:14.180
So it's like you want to try to pinch off
link |
01:46:15.900
as much as you can of the information
link |
01:46:17.740
from your causal chain that goes into the experiment,
link |
01:46:20.220
but you can't pinch off all of it
link |
01:46:21.980
to move it to a different timeline.
link |
01:46:23.700
It's always going to be part of your timeline.
link |
01:46:25.300
But at least if you can control
link |
01:46:26.360
how much information you put in,
link |
01:46:27.460
you can try to see how much does that particular trajectory
link |
01:46:30.540
you've set up start generating its own assembly.
link |
01:46:33.940
So you know where it starts,
link |
01:46:36.100
and then you want to try to see it take off on its own
link |
01:46:38.700
when you try to pinch it off as much as possible.
link |
01:46:42.140
Got it.
link |
01:46:43.700
Quick pause, bathroom break.
link |
01:46:45.260
Yes.
link |
01:46:46.100
All right, cool.
link |
01:46:47.580
And now we're back.
link |
01:46:49.540
All right.
link |
01:46:50.940
We talked about the early days of the universe
link |
01:46:53.580
when there was just stuff and no memory,
link |
01:46:55.940
not even causality.
link |
01:46:57.260
I think Lee at least implied
link |
01:46:58.580
that causality is immersion somehow.
link |
01:47:00.580
We could discuss this.
link |
01:47:01.940
What happened before this all originated?
link |
01:47:06.940
What's outside the universe?
link |
01:47:10.660
Divided by zero.
link |
01:47:12.140
Okay, so it's not relevant, not understandable.
link |
01:47:16.380
Is it useful to even ask the question?
link |
01:47:18.580
No.
link |
01:47:19.420
Just because it's so hard?
link |
01:47:22.220
No, it's not hard.
link |
01:47:23.380
It's just not a question.
link |
01:47:24.860
If I can't do an experiment or even think of an experiment,
link |
01:47:27.300
the question doesn't exist.
link |
01:47:29.620
Well, no, you can't think of a lot of experiments,
link |
01:47:32.360
no offense.
link |
01:47:33.200
What I mean is I can't.
link |
01:47:35.060
Your causality graph is like,
link |
01:47:36.860
this is what we're talking about.
link |
01:47:38.980
It's like there is limits to your ability
link |
01:47:43.980
to construct experiments.
link |
01:47:45.700
I agree, but I was trying to be facetious
link |
01:47:48.300
and I'm trying to make a point
link |
01:47:49.300
because I think that if there is a causal bottleneck
link |
01:47:56.660
through which information can't propagate in principle,
link |
01:48:00.140
then it's very hard to think of an experiment,
link |
01:48:03.940
even in principle, even one that's beyond
link |
01:48:05.460
my mediocre intellect, right?
link |
01:48:08.620
Which is fine.
link |
01:48:09.460
I'm happy to accept that.
link |
01:48:10.900
But this is one of the things I actually do think
link |
01:48:12.860
there was something before the Big Bang
link |
01:48:14.860
because I would say that I think the Big Bang
link |
01:48:17.580
just couldn't occur and create time.
link |
01:48:19.540
Time created the Big Bang.
link |
01:48:21.240
So there was time before the Big Bang.
link |
01:48:23.420
Yeah.
link |
01:48:24.260
There was no space, but there was time.
link |
01:48:25.420
Yeah.
link |
01:48:26.740
Yeah.
link |
01:48:27.700
But I mean, I'm just making that stuff up
link |
01:48:29.620
just to make all the physicists happy,
link |
01:48:31.020
but I think it's...
link |
01:48:32.580
Do you think that would make them happy
link |
01:48:33.860
because they would be quite upset, actually.
link |
01:48:35.780
And why would they be upset?
link |
01:48:37.100
Because they would say that time can't exist
link |
01:48:40.780
before the Big Bang.
link |
01:48:41.620
Yeah, I mean, this goes back to an argument
link |
01:48:43.540
that you might not want to have the argument here.
link |
01:48:46.220
I was talking to Sarah earlier today
link |
01:48:48.500
about an argument we had about time a long time ago.
link |
01:48:51.380
Yeah.
link |
01:48:52.220
A long time in time.
link |
01:48:53.040
And what I would, it's like, I think there is this thing
link |
01:48:55.680
called time or state creation.
link |
01:48:57.260
The universe is creating states and it's outside of space,
link |
01:49:00.980
but they create space.
link |
01:49:02.180
So what I mean is you can imagine there are states
link |
01:49:04.180
being created all the time.
link |
01:49:05.860
And there is this thing called time.
link |
01:49:08.380
Time is a clock, which you can use to measure
link |
01:49:11.100
when things happen, but that doesn't mean,
link |
01:49:13.980
because you can't measure something,
link |
01:49:15.200
that states aren't being created.
link |
01:49:17.220
And so you might locally refer to the Big Bang
link |
01:49:22.240
and the Big Bang occurred at some point
link |
01:49:25.780
when those states were there.
link |
01:49:27.480
Probably there had to be enough states
link |
01:49:28.880
for the Big Bang to occur.
link |
01:49:30.740
And then, but I think that there is something wrong
link |
01:49:34.580
with our conception of how the universe was created
link |
01:49:37.020
and the Big Bang because we don't really get time.
link |
01:49:40.820
Because again, I don't want to become boring
link |
01:49:44.140
and sound like a broken record, but time is a real thing.
link |
01:49:48.980
And until I can really explain that more elegantly,
link |
01:49:52.740
I'm just gonna get into more trouble.
link |
01:49:54.260
Well, we're gonna talk about time
link |
01:49:55.860
because time is a useful measuring device for experiments,
link |
01:49:59.420
but also time is an ideal, okay.
link |
01:50:02.180
But let me first ask Sarah, what do you think?
link |
01:50:05.460
Is it a useful question to ask what happened
link |
01:50:07.860
before the Big Bang?
link |
01:50:08.860
Is it a useful question to ask what's outside the universe?
link |
01:50:14.940
So I would think about it as the Big Bang
link |
01:50:17.660
is an event that we reconstructed
link |
01:50:19.620
as probably happening in the past of our universe
link |
01:50:21.900
based on current observational data.
link |
01:50:24.220
And so the way I like to think about it
link |
01:50:25.940
is we exist locally in something called the universe.
link |
01:50:33.020
So, and going back to like the physics of existence,
link |
01:50:35.880
we exist locally in the space of all things that could exist
link |
01:50:39.140
and we can infer certain properties of the structure
link |
01:50:42.300
of where we exist locally.
link |
01:50:43.560
And one of the properties that we've inferred in the past
link |
01:50:46.020
is that there is a thing we call the Big Bang.
link |
01:50:50.820
There's some signatures of our local environment
link |
01:50:52.940
that indicate that there was a very low information event
link |
01:50:58.740
that started our universe.
link |
01:50:59.920
I think that's actually just an artifact
link |
01:51:02.040
of the structure of the assembly space
link |
01:51:05.120
that when you start losing all the memory in the objects,
link |
01:51:10.220
it looks like what we call a Big Bang.
link |
01:51:13.320
So I think it makes sense to talk about
link |
01:51:14.880
where you are locally.
link |
01:51:16.300
I think it makes sense to talk about
link |
01:51:18.220
counterfactual possibilities,
link |
01:51:20.260
what could exist outside the universe
link |
01:51:22.100
in the sense that they become part of our reasoning
link |
01:51:24.780
and therefore part of our causal chain
link |
01:51:26.380
of things that we can do.
link |
01:51:28.500
So like the multiverse in my mind exists,
link |
01:51:31.700
but it doesn't exist as a multiverse
link |
01:51:33.360
of possible universes.
link |
01:51:34.540
It exists as an idea in our minds
link |
01:51:36.260
that allows us to reason about how physics works
link |
01:51:38.380
and then to do physics differently
link |
01:51:39.560
because we reason about it that way.
link |
01:51:42.100
So I always like to recenter it on things exist,
link |
01:51:47.220
but they don't always exist like we think they exist.
link |
01:51:50.460
So when we're thinking about things outside the universe,
link |
01:51:53.100
they absolutely exist because we're thinking about them,
link |
01:51:55.380
but they don't look like the projections in our minds.
link |
01:51:59.780
They're something else.
link |
01:52:00.620
And something you said just gave an idea
link |
01:52:02.100
to go back to your question.
link |
01:52:04.620
If there was, I mean, if something caused the Big Bang,
link |
01:52:09.740
if there was some memory or some artifact of that,
link |
01:52:12.180
then of course, to answer your question,
link |
01:52:13.780
it's worth going back to that
link |
01:52:15.260
because that would imply there is something
link |
01:52:17.460
beyond that barrier, that filter.
link |
01:52:19.660
And that's what you were saying, I guess, right?
link |
01:52:21.780
I'm agnostic to what exists outside the universe.
link |
01:52:23.820
I just don't think that.
link |
01:52:24.860
I think the most interesting things for us to be doing
link |
01:52:26.900
are finding explanations that allow us to do more,
link |
01:52:31.020
like that optimism.
link |
01:52:32.620
So I tend to draw the boundary on questions I ask
link |
01:52:35.540
as being scientific ones because I find
link |
01:52:38.100
that that's where the most creative potential is
link |
01:52:40.660
to impact the future trajectory
link |
01:52:42.660
of what we're doing on this planet.
link |
01:52:43.940
It's an interesting thing about the Big Bang
link |
01:52:45.540
is basically from our current perspective
link |
01:52:48.700
of what we're able to detect,
link |
01:52:50.820
it's the time when things were forgotten.
link |
01:52:52.980
Yes.
link |
01:52:54.220
It's the time to reset from our limited perspective.
link |
01:52:58.500
And so the question is, is it useful to ever study
link |
01:53:01.860
the thing that was forgotten?
link |
01:53:05.100
Or should we focus just on the memories
link |
01:53:07.500
that are still there?
link |
01:53:08.340
Well, the point I was trying to make about the experiment
link |
01:53:10.140
is I was trying to say both things.
link |
01:53:11.780
And I think perhaps yes, from the portfolio point of view,
link |
01:53:14.180
if you could then imagine what was forgotten
link |
01:53:17.580
and then work forwards,
link |
01:53:19.180
you will have different consequences.
link |
01:53:20.900
So then it becomes testable.
link |
01:53:22.660
So as long as we can find tests,
link |
01:53:24.700
then it's definitely worth thinking about.
link |
01:53:26.420
What I don't like is when physicists say
link |
01:53:28.380
what happened before the Big Bang
link |
01:53:29.740
and before, before, before,
link |
01:53:31.220
without giving me any credible conjecture
link |
01:53:34.620
about how would we know the difference?
link |
01:53:38.260
But the way you framed it is quite nice.
link |
01:53:39.700
I like that.
link |
01:53:40.540
It's like, what have we forgotten?
link |
01:53:43.540
Is there room for God in assembly theory?
link |
01:53:47.700
Who's God?
link |
01:53:49.620
I like arguments for a necessary being better than God.
link |
01:53:52.740
Well, I think I said it earlier.
link |
01:53:53.580
What's a necessary being?
link |
01:53:54.420
What's a necessary?
link |
01:53:55.260
Like something that has to exist.
link |
01:53:58.340
Oh, so you like, I mean, you like the shortest path.
link |
01:54:01.140
Like does God need?
link |
01:54:02.220
No, no, no.
link |
01:54:03.060
I mean, well, you can go back to like Thomas Aquinas
link |
01:54:05.540
and arguments for the existence of God.
link |
01:54:08.740
But I think most of the interesting theological arguments
link |
01:54:11.860
are always about whether something has to exist
link |
01:54:14.900
or there was a first thing that had to exist.
link |
01:54:17.140
But I think there's a lot of logical loopholes
link |
01:54:19.020
in those kind of arguments.
link |
01:54:19.940
Well, so God here, meaning the machine
link |
01:54:24.140
that creates, that generates the stuff.
link |
01:54:29.340
But God, so what I was trying to say earlier is that.
link |
01:54:31.500
Isn't that just the universe though?
link |
01:54:32.660
Yeah, yeah.
link |
01:54:33.500
Well, yeah, well, but there's a difference between,
link |
01:54:36.580
I sort of imagine like a black box, like a machine.
link |
01:54:40.420
Yeah.
link |
01:54:41.260
I mean, I would be more comfortable calling that God
link |
01:54:44.420
because it's a machine.
link |
01:54:45.260
You go into a room and there's a thing with a button.
link |
01:54:47.660
Yeah, I don't like the great programmer in the sky version.
link |
01:54:50.460
Yeah, but if it's more kind of like,
link |
01:54:54.420
I don't like to think of, if you look at a cellular automata,
link |
01:54:59.820
if it's the cells and the rules,
link |
01:55:03.020
that doesn't feel like God
link |
01:55:04.440
that generates a bunch of stuff.
link |
01:55:06.220
But if there's a machine like that does,
link |
01:55:10.400
that runs the cellular automata and set the rules,
link |
01:55:13.680
then that feels like God.
link |
01:55:15.860
That sort of, in terms of terminology.
link |
01:55:19.220
So I wonder if there's like a machine
link |
01:55:21.060
that's required to generate this universe.
link |
01:55:23.260
That's very sort of important for running this in the lab.
link |
01:55:26.820
So as I said earlier, I think I said this earlier,
link |
01:55:29.420
that I can't remember the phrase, but something like,
link |
01:55:32.060
I mean, does God exist in our universe?
link |
01:55:34.060
Yes.
link |
01:55:35.220
Where does God exist?
link |
01:55:36.980
God at least exists in abstraction in our minds,
link |
01:55:40.980
particularly of people who have religious faith
link |
01:55:44.100
they believe in.
link |
01:55:45.140
But let's then take, but you're talking a little bit more
link |
01:55:47.500
about generics, say, well,
link |
01:55:49.140
is there a mechanism beyond the universe you're calling God?
link |
01:55:51.900
I would say God did not exist at the beginning,
link |
01:55:55.920
but he or she does now.
link |
01:55:59.780
Because I'm saying the mechanism.
link |
01:56:00.620
Well, you don't know that he didn't exist in the beginning.
link |
01:56:03.460
So like this could be us in our minds trying to,
link |
01:56:07.900
like just listening to gravitational waves,
link |
01:56:10.960
detecting gravitational waves.
link |
01:56:12.260
It's the same thing.
link |
01:56:13.100
It's us trying to go back further and further
link |
01:56:16.900
into our memories to try to understand the machines
link |
01:56:19.900
that make up, that make up us.
link |
01:56:23.260
And so it's possible that we're trying to grasp
link |
01:56:27.100
at possible kind of what kind of machines could create.
link |
01:56:32.100
There's always a tweet.
link |
01:56:33.980
There's always a tweet.
link |
01:56:36.540
If the universe is a computer, then God must have built it
link |
01:56:39.180
because computers need creators.
link |
01:56:41.140
There you go.
link |
01:56:43.180
And then Joshe Bach replied,
link |
01:56:46.380
since there's something rather than nothing,
link |
01:56:48.620
perhaps existence is the default.
link |
01:56:52.340
If existence is the default, then many computers exist.
link |
01:56:56.340
Creator gods are necessary computers,
link |
01:56:59.020
unnecessarily computers too.
link |
01:57:00.740
I'm very confused by that, but that's an interesting idea
link |
01:57:03.180
that existence is the default versus nonexistence.
link |
01:57:05.780
I agree with that, but the rest is not.
link |
01:57:07.620
And then Lee responds,
link |
01:57:08.620
perhaps this reasoning is incomplete.
link |
01:57:11.820
That's how scientists talk trash each other
link |
01:57:14.580
on Twitter apparently.
link |
01:57:16.060
Which part don't you agree with?
link |
01:57:18.700
When he said if existence is default,
link |
01:57:20.620
then many computers exist,
link |
01:57:22.100
this comes back to the inventor and discovery argument.
link |
01:57:26.300
I would say the universe at the beginning wasn't capable
link |
01:57:29.740
of computation because there wasn't enough technology,
link |
01:57:33.340
enough states.
link |
01:57:34.820
So what you're saying is if God is a mechanism,
link |
01:57:38.520
so I might actually agree,
link |
01:57:40.620
but then the thing is lots of people see God
link |
01:57:43.500
as more than a mechanism.
link |
01:57:44.540
For me, God could be the causal graph in assembly theory
link |
01:57:47.760
that creates all the stuff that the memories we know.
link |
01:57:50.020
And the fact that we can even relate to each other
link |
01:57:52.740
is because we have the same, we share that heritage.
link |
01:57:54.840
And why we love each other
link |
01:57:56.820
or we like to see God in each other
link |
01:57:58.700
is it's just we know we have a shared existence.
link |
01:58:04.740
So if the God is the mechanism
link |
01:58:06.540
that created this whole thing,
link |
01:58:08.500
I think a lot of people see God in a religious sense
link |
01:58:12.140
as that mechanism also being able to communicate
link |
01:58:15.980
with the objects it creates.
link |
01:58:18.020
And if it's just the mechanism,
link |
01:58:19.620
we won't be able to communicate with the objects it creates.
link |
01:58:23.540
It can only create.
link |
01:58:24.580
You can't interact with the...
link |
01:58:29.060
Well, there's versions of God that create the universe
link |
01:58:30.780
and then left.
link |
01:58:33.620
Yeah, like spark.
link |
01:58:35.340
For some religions.
link |
01:58:36.180
The first spark, yeah.
link |
01:58:37.820
But I think I liked your analogy
link |
01:58:40.060
of the machine and the rules, right?
link |
01:58:42.300
But I think part of the problem is,
link |
01:58:47.420
I mean, we have this conception
link |
01:58:48.620
that we can disentangle the rules
link |
01:58:50.500
from the physical substrate, right?
link |
01:58:51.860
And that's the whole thing about software and hardware
link |
01:58:53.920
being separate or the way Newton wrote his laws
link |
01:58:56.140
that there was some,
link |
01:58:57.220
like they exist outside the universe.
link |
01:58:58.620
They're not actually a feature of the universe.
link |
01:59:00.060
They don't have to emerge out of the universe itself.
link |
01:59:03.100
So I think if you merge your two views,
link |
01:59:06.500
then it gets back to the God is the universe.
link |
01:59:08.620
And then I think the deeper question
link |
01:59:10.220
is why does it seem like there's meaning and purpose?
link |
01:59:12.900
And if I think about the features of the universe
link |
01:59:16.320
that give it the most meaning and purpose,
link |
01:59:17.880
those are what we would call
link |
01:59:19.380
the living components of the universe.
link |
01:59:21.100
So if you wanted to say God is a physically real thing,
link |
01:59:24.180
which you were saying
link |
01:59:25.220
is like an emergent property of our minds,
link |
01:59:26.740
but I would just say the way the universe
link |
01:59:30.020
creates meaning and purpose,
link |
01:59:31.420
there is really a physics there.
link |
01:59:32.860
It's not like a illusory thing.
link |
01:59:35.020
And that is just what the physics of life is.
link |
01:59:39.140
Is it possible that we've forgotten
link |
01:59:41.780
much of the mechanisms that created the universe?
link |
01:59:45.660
So like, so basically, you know,
link |
01:59:48.580
whatever, if God is that mechanism,
link |
01:59:50.740
we just leave parts of that behind.
link |
01:59:52.340
Well, but the universe is constantly generating itself.
link |
01:59:54.700
So if God is that mechanism,
link |
01:59:56.000
it would be that that would still be active today.
link |
01:59:58.340
I don't, like, I'm agnostic,
link |
02:00:00.260
but if I recall the things I believe in God
link |
02:00:05.100
in the way that some people talk about God,
link |
02:00:07.620
I would say that God is, you know,
link |
02:00:09.940
like in the universe now, it's not an absent thing.
link |
02:00:16.260
So I think there's a mislabeling here
link |
02:00:18.020
because you're, I mean, I mean, I'm a professional idiot,
link |
02:00:25.060
actually, but, but, um.
link |
02:00:27.660
You should put that on your CV.
link |
02:00:29.220
Yeah.
link |
02:00:30.060
Professionally, not recreationally or amateur,
link |
02:00:33.820
but professionally, you're paid for it.
link |
02:00:36.300
I would say if you were talking about God,
link |
02:00:38.300
I mean, again, I'm way out, way out of my depth here,
link |
02:00:40.260
and I almost feel uncomfortable.
link |
02:00:41.620
Yeah, but I feel quite uncomfortable articulating,
link |
02:00:43.820
but I'll try.
link |
02:00:45.020
For me, a lot of people that think of God as a consciousness
link |
02:00:47.700
and a reasoning entity that actually has causal power,
link |
02:00:52.540
and you're, and so you're, it's like,
link |
02:00:56.220
then you're saying like gravity could be God
link |
02:00:57.860
or time could be God.
link |
02:00:58.820
I mean, I think for me, for my conception of time
link |
02:01:02.820
is probably as fundamental as God
link |
02:01:04.620
because it gave rise to human intelligence and consciousness
link |
02:01:07.700
in which we can have this abstract notion of God.
link |
02:01:12.060
So I think that you're maybe talking about God
link |
02:01:15.420
in a very mechanistic, kind of unsophisticated sense,
link |
02:01:19.580
whereas other people say that God is more sophisticated
link |
02:01:21.740
and got all this, you know, feelings and love
link |
02:01:23.620
and, you know, and this abstracting ability.
link |
02:01:27.060
So is that what, or do you mean that?
link |
02:01:29.660
Do you mean God as in this conscious entity
link |
02:01:32.420
that decided to flick the universe into existence?
link |
02:01:36.100
Well, one of the features that God would have
link |
02:01:40.540
is the ability to flick the universe into existence.
link |
02:01:46.740
I, you know, like Windows 95,
link |
02:01:49.180
I don't know if God is Windows 95 or Windows XP
link |
02:01:52.140
or Windows 10, I don't know the full feature set.
link |
02:01:55.620
So at the very least, you have to flick the universe
link |
02:01:58.580
into existence, and then other features might include
link |
02:02:03.220
ability to interact with that universe in interesting ways,
link |
02:02:07.640
and then how do you interact with the universe
link |
02:02:11.020
in interesting ways?
link |
02:02:11.860
You have to be able to speak the language
link |
02:02:13.300
of its different components.
link |
02:02:15.140
So in order to interact with humans,
link |
02:02:17.620
you have to know how to act humanlike.
link |
02:02:24.260
So I don't know, but it seems like
link |
02:02:31.420
whatever mechanism created the universe
link |
02:02:33.660
might want to also generate local pockets of mechanisms
link |
02:02:40.780
that can interact with that.
link |
02:02:42.500
Like inject.
link |
02:02:44.380
Like God was lonely?
link |
02:02:46.660
Yeah, I mean, it could be just a teenager
link |
02:02:49.180
and another just playing a video game.
link |
02:02:51.740
Yeah, maybe.
link |
02:02:52.580
Well, I was gonna say, I mean, I don't,
link |
02:02:54.460
so this is referring to our origin of life engine.
link |
02:02:57.700
It's like, I don't believe in God,
link |
02:02:59.160
but that doesn't mean I don't wanna be one.
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02:03:01.580
Right.
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02:03:02.420
I don't wanna make a universe and make a life form,
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02:03:04.420
but that may be rude to people who have
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02:03:07.420
dear religious beliefs.
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02:03:08.580
What I mean by that is if we are able to create
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02:03:13.500
an entirely new life form, different chemistry,
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02:03:16.460
different culture, what does it make us?
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02:03:20.980
By that definition, it makes us gods, right?
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02:03:23.260
Well, there is.
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02:03:24.100
I mean, like when you have children,
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02:03:24.940
you're like one of the magical things of that
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02:03:28.140
is you're kind of mini gods.
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02:03:29.620
I mean, first of all, from a child's perspective,
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02:03:32.940
parents are gods for quite a while.
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02:03:34.900
And then, I mean, in the positive sense,
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02:03:38.720
there's a magic to that.
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02:03:39.560
That's why I love robotics,
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02:03:41.220
is you instill life into something,
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02:03:43.380
and that makes you feel godlike in a sort of positive way.
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02:03:50.340
Being a creator is a positive feeling.
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02:03:51.620
Creator, yeah, exactly, on a small scale.
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02:03:54.280
And then God would be a creator
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02:03:57.060
at the largest possible scale, I suppose.
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02:03:59.700
Okay, you mentioned offline the Assembletron.
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02:04:05.260
Assembletron.
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02:04:06.100
Assembletron.
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02:04:07.140
Yep.
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02:04:08.220
What's an Assembletron?
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02:04:09.460
This is an early idea of something you're thinking about.
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02:04:12.900
So Sarah's team, well, I think Sarah's team
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02:04:15.580
are interested in using AI to understand life.
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02:04:19.420
My team is, and I'm wondering if we could apply
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02:04:23.560
the principles of assembly theory,
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02:04:25.420
that is the causal structure that you get
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02:04:28.420
with assembly theory, and hybridize it,
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02:04:30.940
and make a new type of neuron, if you like.
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02:04:34.740
I mean, there are causal neural networks out there,
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02:04:37.940
but they are not quite the architecture
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02:04:40.580
of what I would like.
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02:04:41.940
I would like to associate memory bits with,
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02:04:45.820
basically, I'd like to make a,
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02:04:47.580
rather than having an ASIC for neural networks,
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02:04:50.380
I wanna make an ASIC for assembly networks, right?
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02:04:54.720
And.
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02:04:56.100
So can you say that again?
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02:04:57.100
Assembly networks.
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02:05:00.660
So what is a thing with an input and an output,
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02:05:05.460
and it's like a neural network type of thing,
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02:05:07.500
what does it do exactly?
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02:05:08.340
What's the input, what's the output?
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02:05:09.720
So in this case, so if you're talking about
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02:05:11.980
a general neural network, I mean,
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02:05:13.540
in general neural network, you can train it
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02:05:15.700
on any sort of data, right, depending on the framework,
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02:05:20.260
whether it's like text, or image data, or whatnot.
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02:05:25.940
And that's fine, but there's no causal structure
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02:05:30.100
associated with that data.
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