Assembly Theory: Lee Cronin on Lex Fridman Podcast

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techstepgenr8tion
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10 Dec 2023, 2:21 am

Really interesting discussion of assembly theory. I hadn't heard it before but if he's right - we'd have a tool to measure the presence of life by complexity of chemistry under a mass spectrometer. What this would especially help with is issues where life is hidden in plain sight but it looks so foreign that we wouldn't normally think to consider it as that. He's also suggesting that 'selection' happens for objects as much as living organisms and accordingly everything is in the process of evolution and furthermore he seems to be suggesting that the kinds of novelty evolution creates pushes for intelligence as an outcome.

Apparently he's put this to the test with, in at least one instance, NASA samples and it seems to be holding up (at least per the conversation - can't say I've researched it deeply enough as I'm just hearing about it now).

It's a long discussion, 3:19:21, but a lot of really cool stuff in it. It's easily as interesting as some of what Karl Friston is working on.


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