Kind: captions
Language: en
every star in the sky probably has
planets Y and life is probably emerging
on these planets but I think the
commentarial space Associated to these
planets is so different our causal cones
are never going to overlap or not easily
and this is a thing that makes me sad
about alien life why why we have to
create alien life in the lab as quickly
as possible because I don't know if we
are going to be able to be able to
build um
architectures that will intersect with
alien intelligence architectures
intersect you you know mean in time or
space time and the ability to
communicate the ability to communicate
yeah my biggest fear in a way is that
life is everywhere but we become
infinitely more lonely because of our
Scaffolding in that commentarial
space the following is a conversation
with Lee Cronin his third time in this
podcast he is a chemist from University
of Glasgow who is one of the most Most
Fascinating brilliant and fun to talk to
scientists I've ever had the pleasure of
getting to know this is Alex freeden
podcast to support it please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
dear friends here's Lee
Cronin so your big assembly Theory paper
was published in nature congratulations
thanks it created uh I think it's fair
to say a lot of controversy but also a
lot of interesting discussion so maybe I
can try try to summarize assembly Theory
and you tell me if I'm wrong okay for it
so assembly Theory says that if we look
at any object in the universe any object
that we can quantify how complex it is
by trying to find the number of steps it
took to create it and also we can
determine if it was built by a process
akin to evolution by looking at how many
copies of the object there are yep
that's spot on y spot on spot on I was
not expecting that okay so let's go
through
definitions so there's a central
equation I'd love to uh talk about but
definition wise what is an
object um yeah an object so from so if
I'm going to try to be as meticulous as
possible objects need to be
finite um and they need to be
decomposable into
subunits all human-made artifacts
objects um is a Planet an object
probably yes in the if you scale out so
an object is finite and countable and
decomposable um I suppose mathematically
but yeah I still I still wake up some
days and go to think to myself what is
an object because it's it's it's a
non-trivial um question persists over
time I'm quoting from the paper here an
object that's finite is distinguishable
sure that's a weird adjective
distinguishable we've had so many people
help offering to rewrite the paper after
it came out you wouldn't believe it's so
funny persists over time and is
breakable such that the set of
constraints to construct it from
elementary building blocks is
quantifiable such that the set of
constraints to construct it from
elementary building blocks is
quantifiable the history is in the
object it's kind of cool right so okay
so we finds the object is it's history
or memory whichever is the sexier word
I'm happy with both depending on the day
okay so the set of steps it took to
create the object so there's a
sense in which every object in the
universe has a history Y and that is
part of the thing that is used to
describe its complexity how complicated
it is okay what is an assembly index so
the assembly index if you to take the
object apart and be super lazy about it
or minimal say what it because you know
it's like you've got a really short-term
memory so what you do is you lay all the
parts on the path and you find the
minimum um number of steps you take on
the path to add the parts together to to
to reproduce the object and that minimum
number is the assembly index is a
minimum bound and it was always my
intuition the minimum bound an assembly
theory was really important and I only
worked out why a few weeks ago which is
kind of funny because I was just like no
this is Sacra sank I don't know why it
will come to me one day and then when I
was pushed by a bunch of
mathematicians um we we we came up with
the the correct physical explanation
which I can get to but it's the minimum
and it's really important it's the
minimum and the reason I knew the
minimum was right is because we could
measure it so almost before this paper
came out with with published papers
explain how you can measure the assembly
in effect of molecules okay so that's
not so trivial to figure out so when you
look at an object we can say a molecule
we can say object more generally mhm to
figure out the minimum number of steps
it takes to create that
object that doesn't seem like a trivial
thing to do so with molecules is it's
not trivial but it is possible because
what you can do and because I'm I'm a
chemist so I'm kind of like I see the
lens of the world for just chemistry um
um I break the molecule apart break
bonds and if you break up if you take a
molecule and you break it all apart you
have a bunch of atoms and then you say
okay I'm going to then Form B take the
atoms and form bonds and go up the the
chain of events to make the molecule and
that's what made me realize take a toy
example literally toy example take a
Lego object which is broken up of Lego
blocks so you could do exactly the same
thing in this case the Lego blocks are
naturally the smallest they're the at
in the actual composite Lego
architecture but then if you maybe take
you know um a couple of blocks and put
them together in a certain way maybe
they have a they offset in some way that
offset is on the memory you can use that
offset again with only a penalty of one
and you can then make a square triangle
and keep going and you remember those
motifs on the Chain so you can then leap
from the the start with all the Lego
blocks or atoms just laid out in front
of you say right I'll take you you you
connect and do the least amount of work
so it's really like uh the the smallest
um um steps you can take on the graph to
make the object and so for molecules it
came relatively intuitively and then we
started to apply it to language we've
even started to apply it to mathematical
theorems but I'm so well out of my depth
but it looks like you can take minimum
set of axioms and then start to build up
kind of uh mathematical architectures in
the same way and then the shortest path
to get there is something interesting
that I don't yet understand so what's
the computational complexity of figuring
out the shortest path in um with
molecules with language with
mathematical theorems it seems like once
you have the fully constructed Lego
Castle or whatever your favorite Lego
world is figuring out how to get there
from the building basic building blocks
isn't like a is that an empty hard
problem it's a hard problem it's a hard
problem but but actually if you look at
it so the best way to look at it for
let's take a molecule so if the molecule
has um 13 bonds first of all take 13
copies of the molecule and just cut all
the bonds so take cut 12 bonds and then
you just put them in order yeah and then
that's how it works so and you keep
looking for Symmetry and re or or copies
so you can then shorten it as you go
down and that becomes comor quite hard
um for some natural product
molecules um it's comes very hard it's
not impossible but we're looking at the
bounds on that at the moment but as the
object gets bigger it becomes really
hard and but there that's the bad news
but the good news is there are shortcuts
and we might even be able to physically
measure the complexity without
computationally calculating it which is
kind of insane wait wait how would you
do that well in the case of molecule um
so if you shine light on a molecule
let's take it infrared the the molecule
has each of the bonds absorbs the
infrared differently in what we call the
fingerprint region and so it's a bit
like a um and because it's quantized as
well you have all these discrete kind of
absorbances and my intuition after we
realized we could cut molecules up in
Mass Spec that was the first go at this
we did it with using infrared and the
infrared gave us an even better
correlation assembly index and we used
another technique as well in addition to
infrared called NMR nuclear magnetic
resonance which tells you about the
number of different magnetic
environments in a molecule and that also
worked out so we have three techniques
which each of them independently gives
us the same or tending towards the same
assembly index for molecule that we can
calculate mathematically okay so these
are all methods of mass spectrometry
mass spec you scan a molecule it gives
you data in the form of a Mass Spectrum
and you're saying that uh the data
correlates to the assembly index yeah so
how generalizable is that shortcut first
of all to chemistry
and think of all beyond that cuz that
seems like a nice hack and you're
extremely knowledgeable about various
aspects of chemistry so you can say okay
it kind of
correlates but you know the whole idea
behind a su Theory paper and perhaps why
it's so
controversial is that it
reaches
bigger it reaches for the bigger general
theory of objects in the universe yeah
I'd say so I'd agree
so I've started assembly theory of
emoticons with my lab believe it or not
so we take emojis yeah pixelate them
yeah and work out the assembly index for
emoji yeah and then work out how many
emojis you can make on the path of emoji
so there's the Uber emoji from which all
other emo em emojis emerge yeah and then
you can so you can then take a
photograph and by looking at the
shortest path on or by reproducing the
pixels to make the image you want you
can measure that so then you start to be
able to take um spatial data now there's
some problems there what is then the
definition of the object how many pixels
um how do you break it down and so we're
just learning all this right now so how
do you compute the how do you begin to
compute the assembly index of a
graphical like a set of pixels on a 2G
plane that form a thing so you would
first of all determine the resolution so
then how how what is your XY what the
number on the X and Y plane and then
look at the surface area and then you
take all your emojis and make sure
they're all looked at the same
resolution yes and then we will
basically then um do the exactly the
same thing we would do for cutting the
bonds you'd cut bits out of the Emoji on
and look at the the you'd have a bag of
pixels so um and you would then add
those pixels together to make the
overall emoji wait wait a minute but
like first of all not every pixel
I mean this is at the core sort of
machine learning computer vision not
every pixel is that important and
there's like macro features there's
micro features and all that kind of
stuff exactly what like uh you know the
eyes appear in A lot of them the smile
appears in a lot of them so in the same
way in chemistry we assume the bond is
fundamental what we do in there here is
we assume the resolution at the scale
which we do it is fundamental and we're
just working that out and that you're
right that will change right because as
you take your lens out a bit you it will
change dramatically but it but it's just
a new way of looking at not just
compression what we do right now in
computer science and data one big kind
of um uh um kind of misunderstanding is
assembly theory is telling you about how
compressed the object is that's not
right it's a how much information is
required on a chain of events because
the nice thing is if when you do
compression in computer science we're
wandering a bit here but it's kind of
worth wandering I think in you you um
assume you have instantaneous access to
all the information in the memory yeah
in assembly Theory you say no you don't
get access to that memory until you've
done the work and then you've done
access to that memory you can have
access but not to the next one and this
is how in assembly Theory we talk about
the four universes the assembly Universe
the assembly possible and the assembly
contingent and then the assembly
observed and they're all all scales in
this combinatorial universe yeah can you
explain each one of them yep so the
assembly universe is like anything goes
just it's just combinatorial kind of
explosion in everything so that's the
biggest one that's the biggest one it's
massive assembly Universe assembly
possible assembly contingent assembly
observed and uh on the y- axis is
assembly steps in time yeah and you know
in the xais as as the thing expands
Through Time more and more unique
objects appear so yeah so assembly
universe everything goes yeah um
assembly possible laws of physics come
in in this case in chemistry bonds m in
assembly so that means those are
actually constraints I guess yes and
they're the only constraints they're the
constraints at the base so the way to
look at is you got all your atoms
they're quantied you can just bung them
together so then you can become a kind
of so in the way in computer science
speak I suppose the assembly universe is
just like no laws of physics things can
fly through mountains beyond the speed
of light in in the assembly possible you
have to apply the laws of physics but
you can get access to all the motifs
instantaneously with no effort that
means you could make anything then the
assembly contingent says no you can't
have access to the highly assembled
object in the future until you've done
the work in the past on the causal chain
and that's really the really interesting
shift where you go from assembly um
possible to assembly contingent that is
really the key thing in a theory that
says you cannot just have instantaneous
access to all those memories you have to
have done the work somehow the universe
has to have somehow built a um a system
that allows you to select that path um
rather than other paths and then the
final thing the assembly observed is
basically saying oh these are the things
we actually see we can go backwards now
and understand that they have been
created by this this causal process wa
wait a minute so when you say the
universe has to construct the system
that does the work is that like the
environment that'll that that allows for
like selection yeah yeah yeah that's the
thing that does The Selection you could
think about in terms of a Von noyman
Constructor first selection a ribosome
uh Tesla plant assembling Teslas you
know the the difference between the
assembly Universe in Tesla land and the
Tesla Factory is everyone says no Teslas
are just easy they just spring out you
know how to make them all Tesla Factory
you have to put things in sequence and
out comes a Tesla so you're talking
about the factory yes this is this is
really nice super important point is
that when I talk about the universe
having a memory or there's some magic
it's not that it's that tells you that
there must be a process encoded
somewhere in physical reality be it a
cell a Tesla Factory or something else
that is making that object I'm not
saying there's some kind of woo woo
memory in the universe you know morphic
resonance or something I'm saying that
there is an actual causal process that
is being directed constrained in some
way um so it's not kind of uh just
making everything yeah but Le what's the
factory they made the
factory so what what is the so first of
all you assume the laws of physics is uh
just sprung to the existence at the
beginning those are constraints but what
what makes the factory is the
environment that does the selection this
is the question of well it's the first
interesting question that I want to
answer out of four I think the factory
emerges in the envir the interplay
between the environment and the objects
that are being built MH and and here let
me I'll have a go explain to you the the
shortest path so why is the shortest
path important imagine you've got um I'm
going to have to go chemistry for a
moment then abstract it um so imagine
you've got an envir A given environment
that um that you have a budget of atoms
you're just flinging together Y and the
the objective of those atoms that being
flung together in say molecule a um have
to make they have they decompose so
molecules decompose over time so the
molecules um in this environment in this
magic environment have to not die but
they do die there's a there's they have
a halflife so the only way the molecules
can get through that environment out the
other side that's to pretend the
environment is a box and go in out
without dying and there's a there's just
an infinite supply of atoms coming or
well a large
Supply the the molecule gets built but
the molecule that is able to template
itself being built um and survives in
the environment will will basically re
Supreme now let's say that molecule
takes 10
steps now and it and it's using finite
set of atoms right or now let's say
another MO molecule smart ass molecule
we'll call it comes in and can survive
in that
environment and can copy itself but it
only needs five
steps the molecule that only needs five
steps because it's Contin both molecules
are being destroyed but they're creating
themselves faster they can be destroyed
you can see that the shortest path
Reigns Supreme so the shortest path
tells us something super interesting
about the minimal amount of uh
information required to propagate that
Motif into time and space um and it's
just like a kind of it seems to be like
some kind of conservation law so one of
the intuitions you have is the
propagation of motifs in time will be
done by the things that can construct
themselves in the
shortest path yeah so like you can
assume that most the objects in the
universe are built in the shortest in
the most efficient way that the so big
leap I just took there yeah no yeah yes
and no because there are other things so
in the limit yes because you want to
tell the difference between things that
have required a factory to build them
and just random
processes um but you can find instances
where the shortest path isn't taken for
an individual object an individual
function MH um and people go ah that
means the shortest path isn't right and
then I say well I don't know I think
it's right still because so of course
because there are other driving forces
it's not just one molecule now when you
start to now you start to consider two
objects you have a joint assembly space
and it's not now it's a compromise
between not just making a and b in the
shortest path you want to make a and b
in the shortest path which might mean
that a is slightly longer you have
compromise so when you see slightly more
nesting in the construction when you
take a given object that can look longer
but that's because the overall function
is the object is still trying to be
efficient yeah and this is still very
handwavy um and maybe no leg to stand on
but we think we're getting somewhere
with that and there's probably some
parallelization yeah right so this is
all this is not sequential the building
is yeah I guess when you're when you're
talking about complex objects you you
don't have to work sequentially you can
work in parallel you can get your
friends together and they can yeah these
and the the thing we're working on right
now is how to understand these parallel
processes now there's an in a new thing
we've introduced called assembly depth
and assem assembly depth can be lower
than the assembly index for a molecule
when they're cooperating together
because exactly this parallel processing
is going on and my team have been
working this out in the last few weeks
because we're looking at what
compromises does nature need to make
when it's making molecules in the cell
and I I wonder if you know I I maybe
like well I'm always leaping out of um
my competence but in economics I'm just
wondering if you could apply this in
economic process it seems like
capitalism is very good at finding
shortest path you know every time and
there are ludicrous things that happen
because actually the cost functions been
minimized and so I keep seeing parallels
everywhere where there are complex
nested systems where if you give it
enough time and you introduce a bit of
heterogeneity the system readjusts and
finds a new shortest path but the
shortest path isn't fixed on just one
molecule now it's in the actual
existence of the object over time and
that object could be a city it could be
a cell it could be a factory but I think
we're going Way Beyond molecules and and
my competence probably should go back to
molecules but hey all right before we
get too far let's talk about the
assembly
equation okay how should we do this all
let me just even read that part of the
paper we Define assembly as the total
amount of selection necessary to produce
an ensemble of observed objects
Quantified using equation
one the equation basically has a on one
side which is the Assembly of The
Ensemble MH and then a
sum from one to n where n is the total
number of unique
objects and then there is a few
variables in there that include the
assembly
index the copy number which we'll talk
about that's an interesting I don't
remember you talking about that that's
an interesting addition and I think a
powerful one has to do with what that
you can create pretty complex objects
randomly mhm and in order to know that
they're not random that there's a
factory involved you need to see a bunch
of them that's that's the intuition
there it's an interesting intuition and
then uh some
normalization what else is it n n minus
one just to make sure that more than one
object one object could be a oneof and r
yep and then you have more than one
identical object that's interesting when
when there's when there's two of a thing
two of a thing is super important
especially if the IND index assembly
index is high so uh we could say several
questions here one let's talk about
selection what is this term selection
what is this term evolution that we're
referring to which which aspect of
darwinian evolution are we referring to
that's interesting here so yeah so this
is probably what you know the paper we
should talk about the paper for a second
the paper did what it did is it kind of
annoyed um we didn't know I mean it got
intention and obviously angry people the
angry people were annoyed there's angry
people in the world that's good so what
happened is the evolutionary biologist
got angry we were not expecting that
because we thought evolutionary bodies
would be cool I knew that some not many
computational complexity people will get
angry because I'd kind of been poking
them and maybe I deserved it but I was
trying to poke them in a productive way
mhm and then the physicist kind of got
grumpy because the initial conditions
tell everything the Prebiotic chemist
got slightly grumpy because there's not
enough chemistry in there then finally
when the creationist said it wasn't
creationist enough I was like right I've
done my job the phys well you say in the
physics they
say because you're basically saying that
physics is not enough to tell the story
of how biology emerges I think so and
then they said a few physics is the
beginning and the end of the story
yeah so what happened is the reason why
people put the phone down on the call of
the paper if you if you view reading the
paper like a phone call they got to the
abstract Y and in the abstract it's
first sentence is pretty the first two
sentences caused everybody scientists
have grappled with reconciling
biological evolution with the immutable
laws of the universe defined by physics
true right there's nothing wrong with
that statement totally
true yeah these laws underpin life's SW
Evolution and the development of human
culture and Technology yet they do not
predict the emergence of these
phenomena Wow first of all we should say
the title of the paper this is paper was
accepted and published in nature the
title is assembly Theory explains and
quantifies selection and evolution very
humble title and and the the the
entirety of the paper I think uh
presents interesting ideas but reaches
High I am not
I would do it all again this paper was
actually on the pre-print server for
over a year you regret nothing yeah I I
I think yeah I don't regret anything you
and Frank Sinatra did it your way what I
love about being a scientist is kind of
sometimes I'm because I'm a bit dim I'm
like and I don't understand what people
telling me I want to get to the point
this paper says Hey laws of physics are
really cool the universe is
great but they don't really it's not
intuitive that you just run the standard
model and get life out I think most
physicists might go yeah there's this
you know it's not just we can't just go
back and say that's what happened
because physics can't explain the origin
of life yet do doesn't mean it won't or
can't okay just to be clear sorry
intelligent designers we are going to
get there second point we say that
Evolution works but we don't know how
Evolution got going so biological
evolution and biological selection so
for me this seems like a simple
continuum so when I mentioned selection
and evolution in the title I think and
in the abstract we should have maybe
prefaced that and said non-biological
selection and non-biological evolutions
and then that might have made it even
more crystal clear but I didn't think
that biology evolutionary biology should
be so bold to claim own ownership of
selection and evolution and secondly a
lot of evolutionary biologists seem to
dismiss the origin of Life questions to
say it's obvious and and that causes a
real problem scientifically because when
two different when the physicists are
like we own the universe universe is
good we explain all of it look at us and
the biologist say we can explain biology
and the poor chemistry in the in in the
middle ground but hang
on and this paper kind of says hey there
is an
interesting
um disconnect between physics and
biology and that's at the point which
memories get made in chemistry through
bonds and hey let's look at this close
and see if we can quantify it so yeah I
mean I never expected the paper to to to
kind of get that much interest and still
I mean it's only been published just
over a month ago now so just to Ling on
the selection what is
the broader sense of what selection
means yeah that's really good for
selection selection so I think for
selection you need so this is where for
me the concept of an object is something
that can persist in time and and not die
but basically can be broken up mhm so so
if I was going to kind of bolster the
definition of an object so so if if
something can
form and persist for a a a long period
of time um
under an existing environment that could
destroy other and I'm going to use
anthropomorphic terms I apologize that
weaker objects um or less
robust um then the environment could
have selected that so good chemistry
examples if you took some carbon and you
made a chain of carbon atoms whereas if
you took some I don't know some carbon
nitrogen and oxygen and made chains from
those you'd start to get different
reactions and rearrangements so a carb a
chain of carbon atoms might be more
resistant to falling apart uh under
acidic or basic conditions um versus
another set of molecules so surviv in
that environment so the acid Pond the
molecule the the molecu the resistant
molecule can get through and and then
then that molecule goes into another
environment so that environment now
maybe being an acid Bond it's a basic
Pond or maybe it's an oxidizing Pond and
so if you've got carbon and it goes an
oxidizing pond maybe the carbon starts
to oxidize and break apart so you go
through all these kind of obstacle
courses if you like given by reality so
selection is the ability happens when an
object survives in an environment for
some time but and this is a thing that's
super subtle the object has to be
continually being destroyed and made by
process so it's not just about the proc
the object now it's about the process
and time that makes it because a rock
could just stand on the mountain side
for four billion years and nothing
happened to it and that's not
necessarily really Advanced selection so
for selection to get really interesting
you need to have a turnover in time you
need to be continually creating objects
producing them what we call Discovery
Time so there's a discovery time for an
object when that object is discovered if
it's say a molecule that can then act on
itself or the chain of events that
caused itself to bolster its formation
then you go from Discovery time to
production time and suddenly you have
more of it in the universe so it could
be a self-replicating molecule and the
interaction of the molecule in the
environment in the warm little part or
in the sea or wherever in the bubble
could then start to build a Proto
Factory the environment so really to
answer your question what the factory is
the factory is the environment but it's
not very autonomous it's not very
redundant there's lots of things that
could go wrong so once you get high
enough up the the the hierarchy of
networks of
interactions something needs to happen
that needs to be compressed into a
smaller volume and made resistant robust
because in biology
selection and evolution is robust that
you have error correction built in you
have really you know there's good ways
of basically making sure propagation
goes on so really the difference between
inorganic abiotic selection and
evolution and evolution and stuff in
biology is
robustness um the ability to to kind of
propagate over over in the the ability
survive in lots of different
environments whereas our poor little an
organic salt molecule whatever just dies
in lots of different environments so
there's something super special that
happens from the inorganic envir
molecule in the environment that kills
it to where you've got Evolution and
cells can survive
everywhere how special is that how do
you know those kinds of uh Evolution
factories aren't everywhere in the
universe I I don't and I'm excited cuz I
think selection isn't special at all I
think what is special is the history of
the environments on Earth that gave rise
to the first cell that now has you know
has taken all those
environments and is now more autonomous
and I would like to think that you know
this
paper could be very
wrong but I don't think it's very wrong
it mean certainly wrong but it's less
wrong than some other ideas I hope right
and if this allow Ires us to go and look
for selection in the universe because we
now have an equation where we can say we
can look for selection going on and say
oh that's interesting we seem to have a
pro process that's giving that's giving
us High copy number objects that also
are highly complex but that doesn't look
like Life as We Know It And we use that
and say oh there's a hydrothermal vent
oh there's a process going on there's
molecular networks because the assembly
equation is not only meant to identify
at the higher end advanced
selection what you get I would call in
biology super Advanced selection and
even I you could use the assembly
equation to look for technology and um
God forbid we could talk about
Consciousness and abstraction but let's
keep it primitive molecules and biology
so I think the real power of the
assembly equation is to is to say how
much selection is going on in this space
and there there's a really simple
thought experiment I could do is you you
know have a little petri dish and on
that petri dish you put some simple food
so the assembly index of all the sugars
and everything is quite low so then and
you put a single e cell of e eoli cell
yeah and then you say I'm going to I'm
going to measure the assembly in the
amount of assembly in the box so it's
quite low but the rate of change of
assembly da DT will go vom sigmoidal as
it eats all the food and the number of
coli cells will re will replicate
because they take all the food they copy
themselves the assembly index of all the
molecules goes up up up and up up until
the food is exhausted in the box so now
the now the eoli stop I mean d is
probably a strong way they stop
respiring because all the food is gone
but suddenly the amount of assembly in
the box has gone up gigantically because
of that one eoli Factory has just eaten
through M lots of other eoli Factory has
run out of food and stopped and so that
looking at that so in the initial box
although the amount of assembly was
really small it was able to make
replicate and use all the food and go up
and that's what we're trying to do in
the lab actually is kind of make those
kind of experiments and see if we can
spot the emergence of molecular networks
that are producing complexity as we feed
in raw materials and we feed a challenge
an environment you know we try and kill
the molecules and and and really that's
the main kind of idea for the entire
paper yeah and see if you can measure
the changes in the assembly index
throughout the whole system yeah okay
what what about if if I show up to new
planet we go to Mars or some other
planet from a different solar system and
how do we use assembly index there to
discover alien life um in very simply
actually if we let's say we'll go to
Mars with a mass spectrometer with a
sufficiently high resolution so what you
have to be able to do so good thing
about Mass speec um is that you can um
select a molecule from the mass and then
if it's high enough resolution you can
be more and more sure that you're just
seeing um identical copies you can count
them and then you fragment them and you
count the number of fragments and look
at the molecular weight and the higher
the molecular weight and the higher the
number of the fragments the higher the
assembly index so if you go to Ms and
you take a mass spec or high enough
resolution and you can find molecules
I'll give gu guide on Earth if you could
find molecules say greater than 350
molecular weight with more than 15
fragments you have found artifacts that
can only be produced at least on Earth
by life now you would say oh well maybe
the geological process I would argue
very vly that that is not the case but
we can say look if you don't like the
cut off on
Earth go up higher 30 100 right because
there's going to be a point where you
can find a molecule with so many
different parts the chances of you
getting a molecule that has a 100
different parts um and finding a million
identical copies you know that's that's
just impossible that could never happen
in an infinite set of universes can you
just Linger on this copy number
thing uh a million different
copies what do you mean by copies and
why is the number of copies
important yeah that was so interesting
and the um
I always understood the copy number was
really important but I never explained
it properly
for ages um and it be I kept having this
it goes back to this if I give you a um
I don't know a really complicated
molecule and I say it's complicated you
could say hey that's really complicated
but is it just really random and so so I
realized that ultimate Randomness and
ultimate complexity are
indistinguishable
until you can um you can see a structure
in the randomness so you can see copies
so copies imply
structure
yeah the fact I mean there's a deep
profound thing in there cuz like if you
just have a
random random process you're going to
get a lot of complex beautiful
sophisticated things mhm what makes
them complex in the way we think life is
complex or um yeah something like a a
factory that's operating under selection
processes there should be copies is
there like some looseness about copies
like what does it mean for two objects
to be equal it it's it's all to do with
the the telescope or the microscope
you're using and so at the the maximum
resolution so in the nice thing about
the nice thing about chemists is they
have this concept of the molecule and
they're all familiar with a molecule and
molecules you can hold you know on your
hand lots of them identical copies a
molecues actually a super important
thing chemistry to say look you can have
a mole of a molecule and avagadro's
number of molecules and they're
identical what does that mean that means
that the molecular composition the
bonding and so on the configuration is
all is is indistinguishable you can hold
them together you can overlay them so
the way of do it is if I say here's a
bag um of 10 identical molecules let's
prove they're identical you pick one out
of the the out of the bag and you
basically observe it using some
technique and then you put it you take
it away and then you take another one
out If You observe it using technique
you see no differences they're identical
it's really interesting to get right
because if you take say two molecules
molecules can be in different
vibrational rotational States they're
moving all the time so for this respect
identical molecules have identical
bonding in this case we don't even um
talk about chirality because we don't
have a chirality detector so two
identical molecules in one conception
sembly Theory basically um considers
both hands as being the same um but of
but of course they're not they're
different as soon as you have a chyro
distinguisher detect to detect the left
and the right hand they become different
and so it's to do with the detection
system that you have and the resolution
so I wonder if there's an art and
science to the which detection system is
used when you show up to a new planet
yeah yeah yeah so like you're talking
about chemistry a lot today we have kind
of standardized detection systems right
of how to compare
molecules so you know when you start to
talk about emojis and language and uh
mathematical theorems
and uh I don't know more sophisticated
things at different scale at a smaller
scale than molecules at a larger scale
the
molecules like what
detection like if if we look at the
difference between you and me Lex andly
are we the same are we different sure I
mean of course we're different close up
but if you zoom out a little bit will
morphologically look the
same you know height and characteristics
hair length stuff like that also like
the species and yeah yeah yeah and and
also there's a sense why we're both from
Earth yeah I I agree I mean this is the
power of assembly theory in that regard
that you if if you so if everything so
the way to look at it if you have a box
of objects if they're all if they're all
indistinguishable um then using your
Technique you then you what you then do
is you then look at the assembly index
now if the assembly index of them is
really low right and they all they're
all indistinguishable then You' then
it's telling you that you have to go to
another resolution so that would be you
know it's kind of a sighting scale it's
kind of nice so got it so those two kind
of are attentional with each other the
co the number of copies and the assembly
index
yeah that's really really interesting so
okay so you show up to a new planet you
doing what I would do Mass Spec I would
bring on a sample of what like First of
all like how big of a scoop do you take
do you just take a scoop like what like
uh so we're looking for primitive life I
would I would look yeah so if you're
just going to Mars or Titan or Enceladus
or somewhere so a number of ways of
doing it so you could take a large scoop
or you go for the atmosphere and detect
stuff so and you can make a li um a life
meter right so um one of uh uh Sarah's
colleagues at ASU Paul Davis keeps
calling it a life me a life meter which
is quite a nice idea because you think
about it if you've got um a living
system that's producing these uh highly
complex molecules and they drift away
and they're in a highly um kind of
um demanding environment they could be
burnt right so they could just be
falling apart so you want to sniff a
little bit of complexity and say warmer
warmer warmer oh we' found life found
the alien we found we found the alien
Elon Musk smoking a joint in the bottom
of the cave on mars or Elon himself
whatever right you say okay found it so
what you can do is the mass spectrometer
um you could just look for things in the
gas phase or you go on the surface drill
down because you want to find molecules
that are well you you've either got to
find the source living system because
the problem with just looking for
complexity is it gets burnt away so in a
harsh environment on on on say on the M
surface of Mars there's a very low
probability that you're going to find
really complex molecules because of all
the radiation and so on if you drill
down a little bit you could drill down a
bit into into a soil that's billions of
years old then I would put in some
solvent water alcohol or something or
take a a scoop put it in put VI make it
volatile put it into the mass
spectrometer and just try and detect
High complexity High abundant molecules
and if you get them hey Presto you can
have evidence of Life mhm wouldn't that
then be great if you could say okay
we've found evidence of life now we want
to keep keep the life meter keep
searching for more and more complexity
until you actually find living cells and
you get those new living cells and then
and then you could bring them back to
Earth or you could try and sequence them
you could see that they have different
DNA and proteins go along the gradient
of the life meter how would you build a
life meter let's say we're together
starting new company launching a life
meter spectrometer would be the first
way of doing it just take no no no but
that's that's um that's one of the major
components of it but I'm talking about
like what if it's a device we got to and
branding logo we got to talk that that's
later but what's the input what's the
like how do you get to the um a metered
output so I would I would take a life so
my my life meter our life meter there
you go thank you yeah you're
welcome um uh would have both infrared
and mpect so it would have two ports so
it could shine a light um and so what it
would do is you would have a a vacuum
chamber and you would have an
electrostatic analyzer and you'd have a
monochromator to producing infrared um
you'd add the sum so You' take a scoop
of the sample put it in the Life meter
it would then add a solvent or heat up
the sample so some volatiles come off
the volatiles would then be put into the
into the mass spectromet into
electrostatic trap and you'd weigh them
all molecules and fragment them M
alternatively you'd shine infrared light
on them you count the number of bands
but you'd have to in that case do some
separation because you want to separate
in and so in Mass Spec it's really nice
and convenient because you can separate
electrostatically but um you need to
have that can you do it in real time
yeah pretty much pretty much yeah so
let's go all the way back so this okay
we're really going get this the the
lexa's life meat Lex and
Lees it's a good it's a good good uh
good ring to it all right so um you have
a
you have a vacuum chamber you have a
little nose the nose would have um
some a a packing material so you would
take your your sample add it onto the
nose add a solvent or a gas it would
then be sucked up the nose and that
would be separated using Chrome what we
call chromatography and then as each
band comes off the nose we would then do
mass backc and infrared and in the count
in the case of infrared count the number
of bands in the case of mass count the
number of fragments and weigh it and the
further up in molecular weight range for
the mass spec and the number of bands
you go up and up and up from the you
know dead interesting interesting over
the threshold oh my gosh Earth life and
then right up to bat crazy this is
definitely um you know alien
intelligence that's made this life right
you could almost go all the way there
same in the infrared and it's pretty
simple the thing that is really
problematical is that for many years
decades what people have done and and I
can't blame them is they've rather
they've been obsessing about small
biomarkers on that we find on Earth
amino acids like single amino acids or
evidence of small molecules and these
things and looking for those run looking
for complexity the well the be beautiful
thing about this is you can look for um
complexity without Earth chemistry bias
or Earth biology bias so assembly theory
is just a way of saying hey complexity
and abundance is evidence of selection
that's how universal life meter will
work complexity in abundance is evidence
of
selection okay so let's apply our life
meter to
Earth
so what you know if we were just to
apply assembly index measurements to
Earth what do what what kind of stuff
are going to be get uh are going to get
what's
impressive about some of the complexity
on Earth so we did this a few years ago
in that um when I was trying to convince
NASA and colleagues that this technique
could work and honestly it's so funny
because everyone's like no ain't going
to
work and I was just like because the
chemist was saying of course there are
complicated molecules out there you can
detect that just form randomly I was
like re really that's like that was like
you know as a bit like
a um I don't know someone saying of
course Darwin textbook was just written
randomly by some monkeys a typew just
for me it was like really and and and I
pushed a lot on the chemist now and I
think most of them are on board but not
totally I re really had some big
arguments but the copy number caught
there cuz I think I confused the chemist
by saying one off and then when I made
clear about the copy number I think that
made it a little bit easier just to
clarify chemist might say that of course
out there outside of Earth there's
complex molecules yes okay and then
you're saying wait a minute that's like
saying of course there's aliens out
there like you yeah exactly that okay
exactly but you're you're saying you
clarify
that that's actually a very interesting
question and we should be looking for
complex molecules of which the copy
number is two or greater yeah exactly so
on Earth so coming back to Earth what we
did is we took a whole bunch of samples
we and we were running Prebiotic
chemistry experiments in the lab um we
took various inorganic minerals and
extracted them look at the volatile
because there's a special way of
treating minerals and polymers and
assembly Theory where what in this in
our life machine we're looking at
molecules we don't care about polymers
because they don't they're not volatile
you can't hold them they're not how how
can you make if you can't assern that
they're identical then it's very
difficult for you to to to work out if
there undergone selection or they're
just a random mess same with some
minerals but we can come back to that so
basically what you do we got whole loads
of samples inorganic ones we got a load
of we got Scotch whiskey and also got
took arbag which is one of my favorite
whiskies which is very pey and another
whis what do py mean is like um so the
way that on on um in Scotland in Isa
which is Little Island the the the the
the scotch the SC the whiskey is led to
mature and barrels and um the
the it said that the peak you know the
the the complex molecules in the Pete
might find their way through into the
whiskey and that's what gives it this
intense brown color and really complex
flavor it's literally molecular
complexity that does that and so you
know vulka is the complete opposite it's
just pure right the better the whiskey
the higher the assembly index the the
higher the assembly index the better the
whiskey that's I mean I really love deep
PT Scottish whiskies near my house there
is a a low one of the the lowland
distilleries called gleny it's still
beautiful whiskey but not as complex so
for fun I C took some Glen coin whiskey
andard B and put them into the mass
backck and measure the assembly index I
also got eoli so the way we do it take
the eoli break the cell apart take it
all apart um and also got some beer and
and people were ridiculing us saying oh
beer is evidence of complexity one of
the one of the computational uh
complexity people was just
throwing yeah we kind of kind of his
very vigorous in his disagreement of
assembly theory was just saying you know
you don't know what you're doing even
beer is more complicated than human what
we didn't realize is that it's not beer
per se is taking the yeast extract
taking the extract breaking the cells
extracting the molecules and just
looking at the profile of the molecues
see if there's anything over the freshh
hold and we also put in a really complex
molecule taxo so we took all of these
but also gave us I think five samples
and they wouldn't tell us what they are
they said no we don't believe you're can
get this to work and they really you
know they gave us some super complex
samples and they gave us two fossils one
that was a million years old and one was
a 10,000 years old um SE something from
Antarctica seabed they gave us IM meras
and mea right and a few others put them
through the system so I we we took all
the samples treated them all identically
put them into Mass Spec fragmented them
counted in this case implicit in the
measurement was we um you in Mass backc
you only
detect um Peaks when you've got more
than say let's say 10,000 identical
molecules so the copy numberers already
baked in but wasn't Quantified which is
super important there this was in the
first paper cuz I was like it's abundant
of
course um and when you then took it all
out we found that the biological
samples um gave you um molecules that
had an assembly index greater than 15
and all the abiotic samples were less
than 15 and then we took the NASA
samples and we looked at the ones that
were more than 15 or less than 15 and we
gave them back to NASA and they're like
oh gosh yep dead Living Dead living you
got it and um and that's what we found
on Earth um that's a success yeah oh
yeah resounding success um well can can
you uh just go back to the beer and the
eoli so what's the assembly index on
those so what you were able to do is
like the assembly index um of we found
High assembly index molecules orig
originating from the beer sample and the
eoli sample so the yeast and the beer I
mean there there were I didn't know
which one was higher we wouldn't really
do any detail there because now we are
doing that because one of the things
we've done um it's a secret but I can
tell
you I think no nobody's listening well
is that we've just m
the Tree of Life using assembly Theory
because everyone said oh you can't do
INF biology and what we're able to do is
so you I think there's three way well
two ways of doing Tree of Life traff uh
well three ways actually yeah what's the
tree of life so the tree of life is
basically um tracing back the history of
life on Earth all the different species
going back what who evolved from what
and it all goes all the way back to the
first kind of life forms and they Branch
off and like you have plant kingdom the
animal kingdom the fungi system the
kingdom you know and different and
different branches all the way up um and
the way this was classically done and
I'm no evolutionary biologist Evolution
biologists are very tell me every day at
least 10 times um I want to be one
though I kind of like biology it's kind
of cool but yeah it's very cool um but
basically what uh what Darwin and Mel
and all these people do is just they
draw pictures right and they they taxer
they just con they were able to draw
pictures and and say and say oh these
look like common classes yeah
then they're artists really they're just
you know but they but they they were
able to find out a lot right and looking
at verbit inance caman explosion all
this stuff and then um then came the
genomic Revolution and suddenly everyone
used Gene sequencing and Craig vent is a
good example I think he's gone around
the world and his yacht just taking up
samples looking for new species where
he's just found new species of life just
from sequencing it's amazing so you have
taxonomy you have sequencing and then
you can also do a little bit of kind of
molecular um uh kind of archaeology like
you know measure the samples and and
kind of form some inference what we did
um is we were able to
fingerprint we took a load of random
samples from all of biology and we use
mass spectrometry and what we did now is
not just look for individual molecules
but we looked for coexisting molecules
where they had to look at their joint
assembly space
and where we we able to cut them apart
and and undergo recursion in the M spec
and infer some relationships and we're
able to recapitulate the Tree of Life
using mass
spectroscopy no sequencing and no
drawing all right can you uh try to say
that again with a little more detail so
recreating what does it take to recreate
the Tree of Life what is the reverse
engineering process look like here so
what you do is you take an unknown
sample you P it into the mass backc
you get a because this comes from what
you asking like what do you see in ecoli
and so in eoli you don't just see it's
not a it's not it's not the the most
sophisticated um cells on on Earth make
the most sophisticated molecules it is
the coexistence of lots of complex
molecules above a threshold and so what
we realize is you could fingerprint
different life forms so fungi make
really complicated molecules why cuz
they can't move they have to make
everything on site um whereas you know
some animals are like lazy they can just
go eat the fungi they don't need to make
very much and I um and so what you do is
you look at the so you take I don't know
the fingerprint maybe the top number of
high molecular weight molecules you find
in the sample you fragment them to get
their assembly indices and then what you
can do is you can infer common origins
of molecules you can do a kind of
molecular um um when the reverse
engineering of the assembly space you
can infer common roots and look at
what's called The Joint assembly space
um but what let's translate that into
the experiment take a sample bung it in
the M spec take the top say 10 molecules
fragment them and then and that gives
you one fingerprint then you do it for
another sample you get another
fingerprint now the question is you say
hey are these samples the same or
different and that's what we've been
able to do and um by basically looking
at the assembly space of these molec
create without any knowledge of assembly
Theory you are unable to do it with a
knowledge of assembly Theory you can con
reconstruct the tree how does how does
knowing if they're the same or different
give you the tree let's go to two leaves
on different branches on the tree right
what you can do by counting the number
of differences you can estimate how far
away their origin was got it and that's
all we do and it just works but when we
realize you could even use assembly
Theory to recapitulate the Tree of Life
with no Gene sequencing we're like huh
so this this is looking at samples that
exist today in the world what about like
things that are no longer exist I mean
the tree contains information about the
past I would some of it is gone yeah
yeah absolutely I would love to get old
fossil samples and apply assembly Theory
MPC and see if we can find new forms of
life that have that are no longer amable
to Gene sequencing because the DNA is
all gone cuz DNA DNA and RNA is quite
unstable but some of the more complex
molecules might be there might give you
a hint of something new or wouldn't it
be great if you if you find a sample
that's worth really persevering and
doing um you know doing uh the proper
extraction to re to you know PCR and so
on and then sequence it and then put it
together so when the thing dies you can
still get some information about it's
complexity yeah and we can and it
appears that you can um do some dating
now there are really good techniques
there's radiocarbon dating there is um
longer dating going looking at
radioactive minerals and so on and you
can also in bone you can look at the
what happens in after something dies is
the IM the you get what's called ramiz
where the the the chirality in the
polymers basically changes and you just
get you get decomposition and the rate
of the deviation from the pure po um uh
U en antima to the mixture you can have
a it gives you a time time scale on it
halflife so you can date when it died I
want to use assembly Theory to see if I
can date use it date death and things
and and Trace the tree of life and also
decomposition of molecules you think
it's possible oh yeah without a doubt it
may not be better than what cuz like the
I was just at a conference where some
brilliant people looking at isotope AR
wrenchmen and and looking at how life
enriches Isotopes and they're really
sophisticated stuff that they're doing
but I think there's some fun to be had
there because it gives you another
dimension of dating how old is this
molecule um in terms of in or more
importantly how long ago was this
molecule produced by life the more
complex a molecule the more Prospect for
decomposition oxidation reorganization
loss of chirality and all that jazz but
what life also does is it enriches as
you get older the the amount of carbon
13 in you goes
up because of the because of the way the
metabol because of the way the the
bonding is in in carbon 13 so it has a
slightly different strength bond
strength from you is called a kinetic
isotope effect so you can literally date
how old you are you know uh or when you
stop metabolizing so you could date
someone's debt how old they are I think
I'm making this up this might be right
but I think it's roughly right the
amount of carbon 13 you have in you you
can kind of estimate how how old you are
how
old living or humans are or living or
yeah like you could say oh this person
is 10 years old and this person 30 years
old because they' be metabolizing more
carbon and they've accumulated it that's
the basic idea it's probably completely
wrong time scale signatures of of
chemistry are fasing so you've been
seeing a lot of
chemistry examples for assembly Theory
what if we zoom out and look at a bigger
scale of an object
mhm you know like really complex objects
like
humans or living
organisms that are made up of you know
millions or billions of other organisms
how how do
you try to apply assembly Theory to that
at the moment um we're we're we should
be able to do this to morphology in
cells so we're looking at cell surfaces
and really trying to extend further it's
just that you know we work so hard to
get this paper out and people to start
discussing the ideas and I was and but
but it's kind of funny because I think
the P the the penny is falling on this
so yeah so this that even what what
what's it mean for a penny to be I mean
the the Penny's dropped right because a
lot of people were like it's rubbish
it's rubbish you've insulted me it's
wrong and I'm and then you know I mean
the paper got published on the 4th of
October it had 2.3 million engagements
on Twitter right and has been downloaded
over few hundred thousand times and
someone actually said to me wrote to me
and said this is an example really bad
writing and what not to do and I was
like if all of my papers got read this
much cuz that's the objective if I have
a publishing a paper on people to read
it I want to write that badly again yeah
I don't know what's the Deep Insight
here about the negativity in the space I
think it's probably the immune system of
the scientific Community making sure
that there's no that gets
published that's and and it can overfire
it can do a lot of damage you can shut
down conversations in a way that's not
productive we and I go back I mean I'll
answer your question about hierarch in
assembly but let's go back to the
perception people saying the paper was
badly written I mean of course we could
improve it we could always improve a
Clarity let's go there before we go to
the hierarchy um you know it has been
criticized quite a bit the paper uh what
has been some criticism that you found
most powerful like that you can
understand and can you explain it the
yes the most exciting ISM came from The
evolutionary biologist telling me that
they thought that that U it origin of
life was a solved problem and I was like
whoa we're really on to something
because it's CLE not and when you poke
them on that they just said no you don't
understand Evolution and I said no no I
don't think you understand that
Evolution had to occur before biology
and we need there's a gap that was
really for me that misunder
understanding and that that did cause an
immune response which was really
interesting um
the second thing was the fact that
physicists the physicists were actually
really polite right really nice about it
but they just said huh we're not really
sure about the initial conditions thing
but this is a really big debate that we
should certainly get into because you
know the the the the emergence of life
was not encoded in the initial
conditions of the
Universe um and it can't and I think
asem Theory shows why it can't
be I'll say say that sure you you could
say that again I the the the origin of
the the emergence of life was not and
cannot in principle be encoded in the
initial conditions of the universe just
to clarify what you mean by life is like
what high assembly index objects yeah
and this goes back to your favorite
subject what's that
time right so why so why what what does
time have to do with it we I mean
probably we can come back to it later
but I I think it might be if we have
time
but um I think that I've I think I Now
understand how to explain how um you
know lots of people got angry with the
assembly paper but also the the
ramification of this is how time is
fundamental in the universe and and this
notion of commentarial spaces and there
are so many layers on this but um you
have to become an INT I think you have
to become an intuitionist mathematician
and you have to abandon platonic
mathematics and also platonic
mathematics has left physics astray but
there's a lot to un back there so we can
go to the atonic mathematic okay there's
there's a it's okay The evolutionary
biologist criticized
because the origin of life is
understood and not it doesn't require an
explanation than W's physics yeah B
that's their statement well I mean it
was I they said lots of confusing
statements basically I realized the
evolutionary biology community that were
vocal and some of them were really rude
really spiteful and needlessly so right
because look you know um it I I I didn't
people misunderstand publication as well
some of the people have said how dare
this be published in nature this is you
know how what a terrible journal and and
I and it really and I what said to
people look this is aand new idea that's
not only potentially going to change the
way we look at um biology it's going to
change the way we look at the universe
and everyone's like saying how dare you
how dare you be so grandiose I'm like no
no no this is not hype we're not we're
not like saying we've invented some um I
don't know we've discovered a alien in a
closet somewhere just for hype we
genuinely mean this to genuinely have
the impact or ask the question
and the way people jumped on that was a
really bad precedent for young people
who want to actually do something new
because this makes a bold claim and the
chances
are that it's not correct but what I
wanted to do is a couple of things is I
wanted to make a bold claim that was
precise and testable and correctable not
a wooly another wooly information in
biology argument information touring
machine blah blah blah blah blah a
concrete series of statement ments that
can be falsified and explored and either
the theory could be destroyed or built
upon well what about the
criticism of you're just putting a bunch
of sexy names on something that's
already
obvious um yeah that's really good so so
um the assembly index of a molecule is
not obvious no one to measure it before
and no one has thought to quantify
selection um complexity and copy number
number before in such a primitive
um um quantifiable way I think the nice
thing about this paper this paper is is
a tribute to all well not to all the
people that understand that that biology
does something very interesting some
people call it neg entropy some people
call it think about you know
organizational principles that lots of
people were not shocked by the paper
because they' done it before a lot of
the lot of the arguments we got some
people said oh it's rubbish oh by the
way I had this idea 20 years before I
was
like which one if is it your R the
rubbish part or the really revolutionary
part so this kind of plucked two strings
at once it plucked the there is
something interesting the biologies as
we can see around this but we haven't
Quantified yet and what this is a first
stab at quantifying that so the the the
the fact that people said um this is
obvious but it's also um so so if it's
obvious why have you not done it sure
but the uh there's there's a few things
to say there one
is you know this is um in part of Phil
philosophical framework because you know
it's not like you can apply this
generally to any object in the universe
it's very chemistry focused yeah well I
think you will be able to we just
haven't got there robustly so we can say
how can we let's go up a level so if we
go up from Level we go up let's go up
from molecules to cells cuz you jump to
people and I jump to motorc cons and
both are good and and they will be
assembly cells yeah we go if we go from
so if we go from um molecules to
assemblies and let's take a Cellar
assembly a nice thing about a cell is
you can tell the difference between a UK
carot and a pro carot right the organal
are specialized differently when then
look at the cell surface and the cell
surface has different G illation
patterns and these cells will stick
together now let's go up a level in
multicellular creatures you have
cellular differentiation now if you
think about how embryos develop you go
all the way back those cells undergo a
differentiation on a causal way that's
biomechanically a feedback between the
genetics biomechanics I think we can use
assembly Theory to apply tissue types we
can even apply it to different cell
disease types so that's what we're doing
next but we're trying to walk you know
the thing is I'm trying to LEAP ahead I
want a leap ahead to go who we apply it
to culture clearly you can apply it to
me and culture and we've also applied
assembly
Theory to um CA mhm and not as you think
celom but yeah yeah to C not just as you
think different CA rules were invented
by different people at different times
MH and one of my uh one of my co-workers
very talented chap basically was like oh
I can realize that different people had
different ideas or different rules and
they copied each other and made slightly
different bit different Celler autometer
um rules and they and and looked at them
online and so he was able to refer an
assembly index and copy number of rule
whatever doing this thing but I digress
but it does show you can apply it at
higher scale so what do we need to do to
apply assembly Theory two things we need
to agree there's a common set of
building blocks so in a Cell well in a
in a multicellular creature you need to
look back in time so there is the
initial um cell which the creature is
fertilized and then starts grow and then
there is cell differentiation and you
have to then make that causal chain both
on those so it
requires um development of the organism
in time um or if you look at the cell
surfaces and the cell types they've got
different um um uh features on the cell
what walls and inside the cell so we're
building up but obviously I want to LEAP
to things like emoticons language
mathematical theorem but that's a very
large number of steps to get from a
molecule to uh the human brain yeah um
and I think they are related but in
hierarchies of emergence right so you
shouldn't compare them I mean the
assembly index of a human brain what
does that even mean well maybe we can
look at the morphology of the human
brain say all human brains have these
number of features in common MH if they
have those number of and then let's look
at a brain in in a whale or a dolphin or
a chimpanzee or a bird okay let's look
at the assembly indices number of
features in these and now the copy
number is just the number of how many
birds are there how many chimpanzees are
there how many humans are there but then
you have to discover for that the
features that you would be looking for
yeah and that means you need to have you
need to have some idea of the anatomy
but is there an automated way to
discover features um I I guess so I mean
and I think this is a good way to apply
machine learning and image recognition
just to basically characterize things
apply compression to it to see what
emerges and then use the
thing the features used as part of the
compression as the measurement of uh as
the thing that is searched for when
you're measuring assembly index and copy
number and and the compression has to be
remember the assembly Universe which is
you have to go from assembly possible to
assembly contingent and that jump from
because assembly possible all possible
brains all possible features all the
time but we know that on the tree of of
life and also on the lineage of life
going back to Luca the human brain just
didn't spring into existence yesterday
it is a long lineage of brains going all
the way back and so if we could do
assembly Theory to understand the
development not just in evolutionary
history but in biological development as
you you grow we are going to learn
something more what uh would be amazing
is if you can use assembly Theory this
framework to show the increase in the
assembly index
uh associated with I don't know uh
cultures or pieces of text like language
or images and so on and
illustrate without knowing the data
ahead of time just kind of like you did
with NASA that you're able to
demonstrate that it applies in those
other contexts I mean and that you know
probably wouldn't at first and you have
to evolve the theory somehow you have to
change it you have to expand it you know
um I think so but like that uh I guess
is as a paper of first step in saying
okay can we create a general framework
for measuring
complexity of objects for measuring life
the complexity of living organisms yeah
that's that's what this is reaching for
that is the first step and also to say
look we have a way of quantifying
selection and evolution in a in a fairly
in a fairly not mundane but a fairly
mechanical way because before now is you
know this it wasn't very the ground
Truth for it was very subjective whereas
here we're talking about clean
observables and there's going to be
layers on that I mean with with
collaborators right now we already think
we can do assembly theory on language
and not only that wouldn't it be great
if we
can so the if we can figure out how
Under Pressure language is going to
evolve and be more efficient because
you're going to want to transmit things
and again it's not just about
compression it is about um understanding
how you can make the most of the in the
architecture you've already built and I
think this is something beautiful that
Evolution does we're re reusing those
architectures we can't just abandon our
evolutionary history and if you don't
want to abandon your evolutionary
history and you and you know that
Evolution has been happening then
assembly Theory works and I think that's
that's a key comment I want to make is
that assembly theory is great for
understanding when Evolution has been
used the next jump is when we go to
technology because of course if you take
the M3 processor um I want to buy I
haven't bought one yet I can't justify
it but I want it at some point the M3
processor arguably is there's quite a
lot of features a quite a large number
the M2 came before it then the M1 all
the way back you can apply assembly
Theory to microprocessor architecture it
doesn't take a huge leap to see that I'm
a Linux guy by the way so your examples
go way over my yeah well whatever is
that is that like a is that a fruit
company of some sort I don't even know
yeah there's a lot of interesting stuff
to ask about language like you could
look
at how would that work you could look at
gpt1 gpt2 gpt3
354 and try to analyze the kind of
language it produces I mean that's
almost trying to look at assembly index
of in intelligent systems yeah I mean I
think um the thing about large language
models um and this is a whole hobby
horse I have at the moment um is that
obviously they're they're all
about the the the in the evidence of
evolution in the in the in the large
language model comes from all the people
that produced all the language and
that's really interesting and all the
corrections in the in the in the
Mechanical Turk right sure um and and so
that's part of the History part of the
memory of the system exactly so you can
you so so it would be really interesting
to basically use an assembly based
approach to to making language in a
hierarchy right I think my guess is that
you could we might be a build a new type
of large language model that uses
assembly theory that it has
more understanding of the past and how
things were created well basically the
thing with llms is are like everything
everywhere all at once Splat and make
the user happy so there's not much
intelligence in the model the model is
how the human interacts with the model
but wouldn't it be great if we could
understand how to embed more
intelligence in the in the system what
do you mean by intelligence there like
you seem to uh associate intelligence
with history yeah wellory I think
selection produces
intelligence well you're almost implying
that selection
is intelligence no yeah kind of I would
go that I would go out and Limb and say
that but I think it's a little bit more
human beings have the ability to
abstract and they can break Beyond
selection and this is what why darwinian
selection um because a human being
doesn't have to basically do trial and
error like they can think about say oh
that's a bad idea we do that and then
Technologies and so on so we escaped
Daran Evolution and now we're on to some
other kind of evolution I guess higher
higher level Evolution and and we'll
we'll assembly Theory will measure that
as well right because it's all a lineage
okay another piece of criticism or by
way of question
is how's assembly Theory or maybe
assembly index different from kog
complexity so for people who don't know
comra complexity of an object is the
length of a shortest computer program
that produces the object as
output yeah I'm I I seem to there seems
to be a disconnect between the
computational approach there so yeah so
Comm goar off measure requires a touring
machine requires a comp
computer um and that's one thing and the
other thing
is um assembly theory is supposed to
trace the process by which life
Evolution emerged right there a main
thing there there are lots of other
layers so so Kolarov complexity you can
you can approximate Comm grov complexity
but it's not really telling you very
much about the actual um
um it it's really telling you about like
your dat your data set compression of
your data set sure and so that doesn't
really help you identify the the turtle
in this case as the computer MH and so
what assembly Theory does is I I'm going
to say a trigger warning for anyone
listening is who loves complexity Theory
I think that we're going to show that
AIT is a very important subset of
assembly Theory because here's what
happens that um I think that assembly
Theory allows us to build um go
understand when with selections
occurring selection produces um
factories and things factories in the
End Produce computers and you can go
then algorithmic information Theory
comes out of that the frustration I've
had with with looking at life through
this kind of information theory is it
doesn't take into account causation so
the main difference between assembly
Theory and these complexity measures is
there's no caal chain yeah and I think
that's the main as the caal chain is at
the at the at the core of uh assembly
Theory exactly and if you're if you've
got all your data in a computer memory
all the data is the same you can access
it in the same way there's you don't
care you just compress it and and uh you
either look at the program runtime or
the shortest program and that for
me it can it is absolutely
not capturing What It Is What It
selection does but assembly Theory looks
at objects it doesn't have information
about the object history it's going to
try to infer that
history by uh looking for the shortest
history right the object the object
doesn't like uh have a a Wikipedia page
that goes with it history I would say it
does in a way and it is fascinating to
look at so you've just got the object
mhm and you have no other information
about the object what assembly Theory
allows you to do with just with the
object is to and and the the word infer
is correct I agree infer you like say
well that's not the that's not the
history but but something really
interesting comes from this the shortest
path is inferred from the object that is
the worst case scenario if you have no
machine to make it so that tells you
about the depth of that object in time
mhm and so what assembly Theory allows
you to do is without considering any
other circumstances to say from this
object how deep is this object in time
if um we just treat the object as itself
without any other any other constraints
and that's super powerful because the
shortest path then says allows you to
say oh this object wasn't just created
randomly there was a process and so
assembly theory is not meant to you know
one up AIT or to ignore the factory it's
just to say it's just to say hey there
was a factory mhm that and how big was
that factory and how deep in time is it
m but it's still
computationally very difficult to
compute uh that history right for
complex
objects it is and becomes harder one of
the thing that's super nice is that um
it constrains your initial conditions
right it constrains where you're going
to be so if you take say imagine so one
of the things we're doing right now is
apply
assembly Theory to drug Discovery M now
what everyone's doing right now is
taking all the proteins and looking at
the proteins and and looking at
molecules do with proteins why not
instead take the mo look at the
molecules that are involved interacting
with the receptors over time rather
thinking about and use the molecules
evolve over time as a proxy for how the
proteins evolved over time and then use
that to constrain your drug Discovery
process you flip the problem 180 and
focus on the molec
Evolution rather than the protein and so
you can guess in the future what might
happen so that so that so you rather
than having to consider all possible
molecules you know where to focus and
that's the same thing if you're looking
at in assembly spaces for a object where
you don't know the entire history but
you know that um you know in the history
of this object is not going to have some
other Motif that there that um it
doesn't apply doesn't appear in the past
but just even for the drug Discovery
Point you mean made isn't don't you have
to simulate all of chemistry
for uh to figure out how to come up with
con constraints no the molecules and the
no I mean I don't I don't know enough
about protein well this is another thing
that I think causes because this paper
goes across so many boundaries so
chemists have looked at this and said um
this is not a this is not a Rea this is
not correct reaction it's like no it's a
graph sure there's there's a assembly
index and shortest path examples here on
chemistry yeah and so and what you do is
you look at the minimal constraints on
that graph of course it has some mapping
to the synthesis but actually you don't
have to know all of chemistry you just
have to you can build up the constraint
space rather nicely mhm um but this is
just at the beginning right there are so
many directions this could go in and as
I said it it could all be wrong but
hopefully it's less wrong what about the
little criticism I saw of do you
uh by way of question do you consider
the different probabilities of each
reaction in the chain so like that there
could be
different when you look at a chain of
events that led up to the creation of an
object doesn't it matter that some parts
in the chain are less likely than others
no it doesn't matter no no well let's go
back so no not less likly but react so
so so no so let's go back to what we're
talk looking at here so the assembly
index is the minimal path that could
have created that object
probabilistically so imagine you have
all your atoms in a plasma you got
enough energy you got enough um there's
collisions what is the quickest way you
could zip out that molecule with no
reaction constraints how do you define
quickest there then it's just basically
walk on a random graph so you so we make
an assumption that basically the time
scale for forming the bonds so no I
don't want to say that because it's
going to have people getting obsessing
about this point and your criticism is a
really good one what we're trying to say
is like this is this puts a lower bound
on something of course um some reactions
are less possible than others but
actually I don't think chemical
reactions exist oh boy what does that
mean why don't chemical reactions exist
I'm writing a paper right now that that
um I keep being told I have to finish
and it's called the origin of chemical
reactions and it merely says that
reactivity exist is controlled by the
laws of quantum mechanics and reactions
we put names chemist put names on
reactions like so you could have like I
don't know the vitic reaction which is
by you know vitic um you could have the
Suzuki reaction which is by Suzuki now
what are these reactions so these
reactions are constrained by the
following they're constrained by the
fact they're on planet Earth
1G 298 Kelvin one bar so these are
constraints mhm um they're also
constrained by the chemical comp
position of Earth oxygen availability
all this stuff and that then allows us
to focus in our chemistry so when a
chemist does a reaction that's a really
nice compressed shorthand for constraint
application glass flask pure reagent
temperature pressure bom bom bom bom bom
control control control control control
so of course we have Bond
energies this so the bond energies are
kind of intrinsic in a vacuum if you say
that so a bond energy you have to have a
bond and so for assembly Theory to work
you have to have a bond which means that
bond has to give the molecule serting
half life so you're probably going to
find later on that some bonds are weaker
and that you are going to miss in Mass
spect when you count look at the
Assembly of some molecules you're going
to miscount the assembly of the molecule
because it falls apart too quickly
because the bonds just form but you can
solve that with looking infrared so so
when people think about the probability
they kind of
misunderstanding assembly Theory says
nothing about the chemistry because
chemistry is chemistry and the
constraints are put in by biology there
was no chemist of the origin of Life
unless you believe in the chemist in the
sky and they were you know like Santa
Claus they had a lot of work to do but
but chemical reactions do not exist in
the constraints that allow chemical
transformations to occur do exist okay
okay so it's constraint applic so it's
there's no chemical reactions it's all
constraint application Y which enables
the
emergence of
Rea of what's a different word for
chemical reaction uh transformation
transformation yeah like a function it's
a function but no but I love chemical
reactions in the shorthand and and and
so the chemists don't all go mad I mean
of course chemical reactions exist on
Earth short hand it's a short hand for
these constraints for for right so
assuming all these constraints that
we've been using for so long that we
just assume that that's what was the
case in natural language conversation
exactly the grammar of chemistry of
course emerges in reactions and we can
use them reliably but I do not think the
vitic reaction is accessible on Venus
right and this is useful to remember you
know to to to frame it as constraint
application is useful for when you zoom
out to the bigger picture of the
universe and looking at the chemistry of
the universe and then starting to apply
assembly Theory yeah that's interesting
that's really
interesting but we've also pissed off
the chemist now oh they they're pretty
happy but well most of them
no everybody everybody deep down is
happy I think they're just sometimes
feisty that's how they show that's how
they have fun everyone is grumpy on some
days when when you challenge the problem
with this paper is you what it's like
it's almost like I went to a part it's
like you I do used to do this
occasionally when I was young go to a
meeting MH and and just find a way to F
offend everyone at the meeting
simultaneously even the even the
factions that don't like each other
they're all unified in their hatred of
you just offending them this paper it
feels like the the person that went to
the party and offended everyone
simultaneously say stop fighting with
themselves and just focused on this
paper maybe just a little Insider
interesting information what were the
editors of nature like what the reviews
and so on how difficult was that process
CU this is a pretty like big paper yeah
I mean
the so um we when we originally sent the
paper um we sent the paper and the
editor
said um that you know this was like this
was a quite a long process we sent the
paper and the editor gave us some
feedback and said you know I don't think
is that interesting it's not you know or
it's hard it's it's a it's hard concept
and we asked and the editor gave us some
feedback um and we and and Sarah and I
took a year to rewrite the paper was the
nature of the feedback very specific on
like this part this part or was it like
like what what are you guys smoking what
kind of yeah it was kind of the latter
what are you smoking okay and and you
know but polite and there's promise yeah
well the thing is there was the edit was
really critical but in a but in a really
professional way yeah and I mean for me
this was the way science should happen
so when it came back you know we had too
many equations in the paper if you look
at the preprint they're just equations
everywhere like 23 equations and when I
said to abishek who's the first author
we got to remove all the equations but
my assembly equation staying AB was like
you know no we can't I said well look if
we want to explain this to people
there's a real challenge M and so SAR
and I went through the I think it was
actually 160 versions of the paper but
we basically we got to version 40 or
something we said right zero it start
again so we wrote the whole paper again
we knew the entire amazing and we just
went bit by bit by bit and said what is
it we want to say and then we sent the
paper in um and to us we expected it to
be rejected and not even go to review
and then the we got notification back it
had gone to review and we were like oh
my God it's so going to get rejected
how's it going to get rejected because
the First Assembly paper that on the
mass spec we sent to Nature got went
through six rounds of review and
rejected MH right and there by by a by a
chemist just said I don't believe you
you must be committing fraud mhm um a
long story probably a boring story but
in this case it went out to review the
comments came back and the comments were
incredibly
um uh no they were very there were very
deep comments from all the reviewers
there were um and but the but the none
of the but the nice thing was the
reviewers were kind
of very critical but not dismissive they
were like oh really explain this explain
this explain this explain this are you
sure it's not Comm goer off are you sure
it's not this and we went through I
think three rounds review pretty quick
um and um and the editor went yeah it's
in mhm but maybe you could just comment
on the whole process uh you've published
some pretty huge papers on all kinds of
topics within chemistry and Beyond some
of them have some little Spice in them a
little spice of crazy like Tom way says
I like my Tom with Little Drop of Poison
so you know it's not um a mundane paper
so where what's it like psychologically
to go through all this process to keep
getting rejected to uh to get reviews
from people that don't get the paper or
um all that kind of stuff just from a a
question of a scientist like what what
what is that like um it's uh I think
it's a um I mean this paper for me kind
of cuz this wasn't the the first time we
tried to publish assembly Theory at the
highest level the nature Communications
paper we on the Mass backc on the on the
idea went through went to Nature and got
rejected went through six rounds of
review and got rejected and and it and
it's and I I just was so confused when
the when the chemist said this can't be
possible I do not believe you can
measure complexity using MPC and also by
the way molecules Mo molecules
um that complex molecules can randomly
form and we're like but look at the data
the data says and they said no no we
don't believe you and and we went and
and I just wouldn't give up um the
editor and the editor in the end um was
just like different editors actually but
right what's behind that never giving up
is like when you're sitting there 10:00
in the evening there's a Melancholy
feeling that comes over you you're like
okay this is rejection number
five or not it's not a rejection but
maybe it feels like a rejection because
the you know the the the comments are
that you totally don't get it like what
gives you strength to keep going
there H I don't
know I don't normally get emotional
about papers but um
it's not about giving up because we want
to get it published because we want the
glory or anything it's just like why
don't you understand and so
um so what I did so what I would just is
try to be as as as um as rational as
possible and say yeah you didn't like it
um tell me why and then
um
sorry silly never get emotional about
papers normally but but you but I think
what we do you just compressed like five
years of ANS from this so it's been it's
been rough it's not just rough it's like
it happened you know I came up with the
assembly equation you know remote from
Sarah in Arizona and the people
SFI I felt like I was a mad person like
you know the
depicted in in a in a beautiful mind who
was just like not not the actual genius
part but just
the yeah because I kept writing expanded
and I have no mathematical ability at
all and I was expand I was making these
mathematical expansions where I kept
seeing the same Motif again I was like I
think this is a copy number the same
string is coming again again again I
kept I couldn't do the math and then I
realized the copy number fell out of the
equation and everything collapsed down I
was like oh that works kind of so we
submitted the paper and then when it was
almost accepted right the mass Beck one
and it was astrobiologist gray um you
know a mass spectroscopist said great
and the chemist went nonsense like
biggest pile of nonsense ever fraud you
know and I was like but why fraud and
they just said just because and I was
like well so so and and I could not
convince the editor in this case the
editor was just so pissed off CU they
see it as like a kind of a you know a
you're wasting my time and I would not
give up I wrote I went and did dissected
you know all the parts and I think
although I mean I got upset about it you
know which kind of embarrassing actually
but but I guess
beautiful um but it was just trying to
understand why they didn't like it so
they were part of me was like really
devastated and a part of me was super
excited cuz I'm like huh they can't tell
me why I'm wrong and this kind of goes
back to you know um when I was at school
I was in a kind of learning difficulties
class and I kept going to the teacher
and say you know you know how what do I
do today to prove I'm smart and they
were like nothing you can't I was like
give me a job you know give me something
to do give me a job to do something to
to do is we um and I kind of felt like
that a bit when I was arguing with the
and not arguing there's no ad hom I
wasn't telling the editor they were
idiots or anything like this or the the
reviewers I kept it strictly like
factual and all I did is I just kept
knocking it down Bit by Bit by Bit by
Bit by Bit it was ultimately rejected
and it got published elsewhere and then
um the actual experimental data so this
is kind of in this paper the
experimental justification was already
published so when we did this one and we
went through the versions and and then
we sent it in and in the end it just got
accepted we were like well that's kind
of cool right this is kind of like you
know some days you had you know the the
the student sorry the the the first
author was like I can't believe it God
accepted like nor am I but it's great
it's like it's good and then when the
paper was published I was not expecting
the backlash I was expecting
computational well no actually I was
just expecting one person to been
trolling me for a while about it just to
carry on trolling but I didn't expect
the backlash and then I I wrote wrote to
the editor and apologized and the editor
was like what are you apologizing for
it's a great paper MH of course it's
going to get backlash you said some
controversial stuff but it's awesome and
so well it's I think it's a beautiful
story of perseverance and the backlash
is just a negative word
for discourse which I think is beautiful
I think you as I said to you know when
it got accepted and people were saying
were kind of like hacking on it and I
was like papers are not gold medals the
reason I wanted to publish that paper in
nature is because it says hey there's
something before biological evolution
you have to have that if you're not a
creationist by the way this is an
approach first time someone has put a
concrete mechanism or sorry a concrete
quantification and what comes next
you're pushing on is a mechanism and
that's what we need to get to is autoc
candic set self-replicating molecules
some other features that come in um and
the fact that this paper has been so
disgust for me is a dream come true like
you it doesn't get better than that if
you can't accept a few people hating it
and the nice thing is the thing that I
really makes me happy is that no one has
attacked the actual physical content
like you you can measure the assembly
index you can measure selection now so
either that's right or it's well either
that's helpful or unhelpful if it's
unhelpful this paper will sink down and
no one will use it again if it's helpful
it will help people build scaffold on it
and we'll start to converge to a new
paradigm so I think that that's the the
thing that I wanted to see you know my
colleagues authors collaborators and
people were like you've just published
this paper you're a chemist why have you
done this like who are you to be doing
evolutionary theory like well I don't
know I mean sorry did I need to who
anyone to do anything well I'm glad you
did let me just before coming back to
origin of life and these kinds of
questions uh you mentioned learning
difficulties I didn't know about this so
what what was it like I I wasn't very
good at school right um this is uh when
you were very young yeah yeah well but
in primary school I U my handwriting was
really poor and apparently I couldn't
read and um and I and my mathematics was
very poor so I just said this is a
problem they identified it my parents
kind of at the time were confused
because I was busy taking things apart
buying electronic junk from the shop
trying to build computers and things um
and then once I got out of when I was I
think about the major transition in my
stupidity like you know everyone thought
I wasn't that stupid when I basically
everyone thought I was faking I like
stuff and I was faking wanting to be it
so I always want to be a scientist so
five six seven years old be a scientist
take things apart and everyone's like
yeah this guy wants to be a scientist
but he's an idiot M and so and so so
everyone was really confused I think at
first that I wasn't smarter than I you
know was claiming to be and then I just
basically didn't do well in the test I
went down and down and down and down and
then um and I was kind of like huh this
is really embarrassing I really like
maths and everyone says I can't do it I
really like kind of you know physics and
chemistry and all that science and
people say you're not you can't you
can't read and write and so I found
myself in a learning difficulties class
at the end of primary school and the
beginning of secondary school in the UK
secondary school is like 11 12 years old
M and I remember being put in the in the
remedial class and the remedial class
was basically full of um well two typ
three types of people there were um
people that had quite violent right you
know and there were people can speak
English MH and there were people that
really had learning
difficulties so um
the one thing I can objectively
remember um was I mean I could read um I
like reading I read a lot um but
something in me I I'm a bit of a rebel I
refused to read what I was told to read
um and I found it difficulty to read
indiv ual words in the way they were
told but anyway I got caught one day
teaching someone else to
read um uh and they said
okay they we don't understand this I I
always knew want to be a scientist but
didn't really know what that meant and I
realized you had to go to university and
I thought I can just go to university
take curious people like no no no you
need to have these you have to be able
to enter these exams to get this grade
point average and the fact is the exams
you've been entered into you're not you
you you're just going to get C D or E
you can't even get a b or c right these
are the UK GDC I was like oh and I
said can you just put me into the the
high exams I said no no you're going to
fail there's no chance so my my father
kind of intervened and said you know
just let him go in the exams just and
they said he's definitely going to fail
it's a waste of time waste of money and
he said well what if we
paid so they said well okay so you
didn't actually have to pay you have to
pay if I failed mhm so I took the exams
and passed them fortunately I didn't get
the top grades but I you know I got into
a levels but then that also kind of
limited what I could do at a levels I
wasn't allowed to do a level
maths what do you mean you weren't
allowed to because I I had such a bad
math grade from My GCSE I only had a c
MH but I they wouldn't let me go into
the ABC for Mass because of some kind of
coursework requirement back then so the
top grade I could have got was a c so CD
or E so I got a C and they let me do um
a kind of as level which is this half
intermediate but and get to go
University but in the liked chemistry I
had a good chemistry teacher so in the
end I got to University do do chemistry
so through that kind of process I think
for kids in that situation it's it's
easy to start believing that you're
not uh well how do I put it that you're
stupid and basically give up that you're
just not good at math you're not good at
school so this is by way of advice for
people for interesting people people for
interesting young kids right now
experiencing the same thing where was
the place what was the source of you not
giving up
there I have no idea other than um I I
was really I really like not
understanding stuff for me when I not
understand something um I didn't
understand feel like don't understand
anything but but now but back then I was
so I remember when I was like know I I
trilled I tried to build a laser when I
was like eight mhm and I thought how
hard could it be
like and I basically I was going to
built a CO I was going to build a CO2
laser and I was like right I think I
need some
partially um coated mirrors I need some
carbon
dioxide and I need a high high high
voltage MH so I kind of when I was like
I didn't have a and I was so stupid
right I was kind of so embarrassed I to
make off CO2 I actually set a fire and
triy to filter the flame oh nice to CP
it off CO2 and I was like completely
completely failed and I bent burn half
the the garage down so my parents were
not very happy about that but so that
was one thing I was like I really like
first principal thinking and so you know
um so I'm I remember being super curious
and being determined to find answers and
so the kind of when people do a give
advice about this well I ask for advice
about this I don't really have that much
advice other than don't give up and one
of the things I try to do um as a as a
chemistry professor in my group is I I
don't I hire
people that I think that you know I'm
kind of who am I if they're persistent
enough um who am I to deny them the
chance because some you know people gave
me a chance and I was able to do stuff
do you believe in yourself essentially
I'm I like so I love being around smart
people and I love confusing smart people
and when I'm confusing smart people you
know not by stealing their wallets and
hiding it somewhere but if I can confuse
smart people that is the one piece of
hope that I might be doing something
interesting oh that's quite brilliant
like as a gradient to
optimize yeah hang out with smart people
and confuse them and the more confusing
it is the more there's something there
and as long as they're not telling you
just a complete idiot and and they give
you different reasons yeah and I mean
I'm you know if everyone CU like with
assembly Theory and people said oh it's
wrong and I was like why and they're
like and no one could give me a
consistent reason they said oh because
it's been done before or it's just Comm
AOL off or it's just there that and the
other so I think the the the thing that
I like to do is and in Academia it's
hard right because people are critical
but I mean you know the criticism I mean
although I got kind of upset about it
earlier which is kind of silly but not
silly because obviously it's hard work
being on your own or with a team
spacially separated like during lockdown
and and try to keep everyone on board
and and and and be you know have some
faith
that I've always wanted to have a new
idea and so you know I like a new idea
and I want to I don't want I want to
nurture it as long as possible and if
someone can give me actionable criticism
that's why I think I was trying to say
earlier when I was kind of like stuck
for Words give me actionable criticism
you know it's wrong okay why is it wrong
say oh it doesn't your equation is
incorrect for this or your method is
wrong and then so if and so what I try
and do is get enough criticism um from
people to then triangulate and go back
and I've been very fortunate in my life
that I've got great colleagues great
collaborators funders mentors and people
that will take the time to say you're
wrong
because and then what I have to do is
integrate the wrongness and go oh cool
maybe I can fix that and I think
criticism is really good people have a
go at me because I'm really critical I'm
like but I'm not criticizing you know
you as a person I'm just criticizing the
idea and trying to make it better and
say well what about this and you know
and sometimes I'm kind of you know my
filters are kind of uh you know trunca
in some ways I'm just like that's wrong
that's wrong that's wrong what do this
and people like oh my God you just told
me you destroyed my life's work I'm like
relax no I'm just like let's make it
better and I think that we don't do that
enough cuz we're we're you know we we're
we're we're either personally critical
which isn't helpful or we don't give any
criticism at all because we're too
scared yeah I yeah the I've seen you be
pretty aggressively critical but it's
every time I've seen it it's the idea
not the person um I I'm sure I make
mistakes on that I mean I I you know I
argue I argue Lots with with lots I mean
I argue Lots with Sarah and she's like
kind of shocked I've argued with yasher
in the past and he's like you're just
making Yash and you're like you're just
making that up I'm like no not not
quite but kind of yeah um you know I had
a big argument with Sarah about time
she's like no time time doesn't exist
I'm like no no time does exist and now
and as as she realized the her
conception of assembly Theory and my
conception assembly Theory with the same
thing necessitated us to abandon the
fact that time is eternal
to actually really fundamentally
question how the universe produces
commentarial novelty so so time is
fundamental for assembly Theory um I'm
just trying to figure out where you and
Sarah converged so I I think assembly
theory is fine in this time right now
but I think it helps us understand that
something interesting is going on so
there's and I'm been really inspired by
a a guy called Nick gizen I'm going to
butcher his argument but I love his
argument a lot so I hope he forgives me
if he hears about it but
basically um if you want free will time
has to be
fundamental and we can go a and um if
you want time to be
fundamental
um you have to give up on platonic
mathematics and you have to use
intuitionist mathematics by the by the
way um and again I'm going to butcher
this but basically
Hilbert said that you know
infinite numbers are allowed and I think
it was Brower said no you can't all
numbers are finite so they're kind of
like we so let's go back a step because
I was like people going to say assembly
Theory seems to explain that commentor
large commentarial
space um allows you to produce things
like life and technology and that large
commentarial space is so big it's not
even accessible to a Shan Carol David
deut
Multiverse the physicist saying that um
that all of all of universe already
exists in
time is
probably
provably strong
word not
correct that we are going to know that
the universe as it stands the present
the way the present builds the future so
big the universe can't ever contain the
future and this is a really interesting
thing I think Max techmark has this
mathematical Universe he says you know
the universe is kind of like a block
universe and I apologize to Max if I'm
getting it wrong but people think you
can just move you have the stat you have
the initial
conditions and you can run the Universe
um right to the end and go backwards and
forwards in that universe that is not
correct yeah let me load that in the
universe is not big enough to contain
the future yeah that's why that's it
that that's another that's a beautiful
way of saying that time is fundamental
yes and and that you can have and that's
what this is why um the ex the law of
the excluded middle something is true or
False only works in the
past is it going to snow in New York
next week or in Austin you might in
Austin say probably not in New York you
might say yeah if you go forward to next
week and say did it snow in New York
last week true or false you can answer
that question the fact that the law of
the excluded middle cannot apply to the
Future explains why time is
fundamental well I mean that that that's
a good example intuitive example but
it's possible that we might be able to
predict you know whether it's going to
snow if we had the perfect information I
I think we you're saying not
impossible impossible so here's why yeah
I'll make a really quick argument and
this argument isn't mine it's it's
Nick's and and a few other people can
you can you explain his view on
fundamental on time being fundamental
yeah so I'll give my view which kind of
resonates with his but basically um it's
very simple actually it would say that
free will that your ability to design
and do an experiment uh is exercising
Free Will so he used that thought
process and I never really thought about
it that way um and that you actively
make
decisions I do think that I used to
think that Free Will was a kind of kind
of consequence of just selection but I'm
kind of understanding that human Free
Will is something really
interesting um and he very much inspired
me but a thing that what Sarah Walker
said that inspired me as well that that
um these will converge is that I think
that the Universe in the universe is
very big huge MH but
actually the own the place is largest in
the universe right now the largest place
in the universe is Earth yeah I've I've
seen you say that and boy does
that that's a that's an interesting one
of process what do you mean by that
Earth is the biggest place in the
universe because we have this coment
toal scaffolding going all the way back
from Luca so you've have you've got
cells that can self-replicate and then
you go all the way to terraforming the
Earth you got all these architectures
the amount of selection that's going on
biological selection just to be clear
biological evolution and then you have
multicellularity then animals and
abstraction and when abstraction there
was another kick because you can then
build architectures and computers and
cultures and language and these things
are the biggest things exist in the
universe because we can just Build
architectures That Could naturally arise
anywhere and the further that distance
goes in time and this kind of is is just
it's gigantic MH and from a complexity
perspective yeah okay wait a minute but
I mean I know you're being poetic but
how do you know there's not other earth
like uh like how do you know you're
you're basically saying Earth is really
special it's awesome stuff as far as we
look out there's nothing like it going
on but how do you know there's not
nearly infinite number of places where
cool stuff like this is going on I agree
and I would say I I'll say again that
Earth is the most gigantic thing we know
in the universe commentor we know we
know now now I guess this is just purely
a guess I have no data but other than
hope well maybe not hope maybe no I have
some data um that every star in the sky
probably has planets Y and life is
probably emerging on these planets but
this the amount of contingency that is
associated with life is I think the
commentarial space associated with these
planets is so different we are never
going to our causal cones are never
going to overlap or not easily
and this is a thing that makes me sad
about alien life why it's why we have to
create alien life in the lab as quickly
as possible because I don't know if we
are going to be able to be able to
build um architectures that will
intersect with alien Co intelligence C
and architectures intersect you you know
what mean in time or space time and the
ability to communicate the ability to
communicate yeah my biggest fear in a
way is that life is everywhere but we
become infinitely more lonely because of
our Scaffolding in that commentor space
because it's so big and so you're saying
the the constraints created by the
environment that led to the factory of
darwinian
evolution are just like l a little tiny
cone in a nearly Infinite combinatory
Space so there's other cones like it and
and why why can't we communicate with
other like just because we can't create
it doesn't mean we can't appreciate the
creation right like that sorry detect
the creation I I I truly don't know but
I it's an excuse for me to ask for
people to give me money to make a planet
simulator yeah right if I can make with
a different different like another
Shameless say it's like give me money I
need money this was all long plug for a
planet simulator it's like you know hey
I will be the first in lie to my my my
my Rick my Rick garage has run out of
room you know yeah no um and this is a
planet simulator you mean like a
different kind of planet or different
sets of environments and pressures
exactly if we could basically recreate
the selection before biology as we know
it that gives rise to a different
biology we should be a to put the
constraints on where to look in the
universe so here's a thing here's my
here's my dream my dream is that by
creating life in the lab based upon
constraints we understand like like go
for Venus typee life or earth type life
or something again do earth 2.0 screw it
let's do earth 2.0 and Earth 2.0 has a
different genetic alphabet fine that's
fine different um protein alphabet fine
have cells and evolution all that stuff
we will then be able to say okay life is
a more General phenomena selection is
more General than than what we think is
Con the chemical constraints on life and
we can point the James web and other
telescopes at other planets that we are
in that zone we are most likely to con
combinatorially overlap with right so
because you know we B so there chemistry
looking for some overlap and then we can
then basically um shine light on them
literally and white look at light coming
back and apply Advanced assembly Theory
to Lang general theory of language that
we will get and say hauh we in that
signal it looks random but there's a
copy number oh this this random set of
things that shouldn't be that looks like
a a true random number generator has
structure as a not com not Kolarov AIT
type structure but evolutionary
structure given by assembly Theory and
we start to um but I would say that cuz
I'm a Shameless assembly theorist yeah I
it just feels like the the cone I might
be misusing the word cone here but the
width of the cone is growing
faster um is grow really fast to where
eventually all the cones
overlap even in a very very very large
comori
space I I it
just but then again if you're saying the
universe is uh also growing very quickly
in terms of possibilities that's really
I hope that as we
build as we build
abstractions the main I mean one one
idea is that as we go to
intelligence intelligence allows us to
look at the regularities around us in
the
universe and that gives us some common
grounding to to discuss with aliens and
and you might be right that there we
will overlap there even though we have
completely different chemistry literally
completely different chemistry um um
that we will be pass information from
one another but it's not a given and um
um you know I have to kind of try and
divorce hope and emotion you know away
from what I and I can logically justify
but it's just hard to Intuit it a world
a universe where
there's nearly infinite complexity
objects and they somehow can't detect
each other but universe is expanding but
the nice thing is I would say I would
look you see I think Carl Sean did the
wrong well not the wrong thing he he
flicked the Voyager program pale blue
dot said look how big universe is I
would have done it the other way around
said look at the voyage of per that came
from the planet Earth that came from
Luca look at how big Earth is
MHM then it produced that It produced
that yeah and that I think is like
completely amazing and then that should
allow people on Earth to think about
well probably we should try and get um
causal chains off Earth onto Mars onto
the moon wherever whe it's human life or
Martian life that we create it doesn't
matter um but but I think um this
commentarial space tells us something
very important about the Universe um and
and that I realized in assembly theory
that the universe is too big to contain
itself and and I think this is and I'll
coming back and I want to I want to kind
of change your mind about time because
I'm I'm guessing that your uh time is
just um coordinate yeah so I'm I'm going
to change your guessing you're one of
those I'm going to change your one of
those I'm going change your mind in real
time at least attempt oh in real time
there you go um I already got the tattoo
so this is going to be embarrassing if
you change my mind but you can just add
you can just add Arrow time onto it
right true or erase it a bit so um and
the argument that I think that is really
most interesting is like people say the
initial
conditions um specify the future of the
universe okay fine let's say that's the
case for a moment now let's go back to
newtonium
mechanics now the uncertain
principle in newtonium mechanics is this
if I give you the coordinates of your of
an object moving in
space and the coordinates of another
object and they Collide in space and you
know those initial conditions you should
know exactly what's going to happen MH
however you cannot specify these
coordinates to infinite Precision now
everyone said you know oh this is kind
of like you know um the chaos Siri
argument no no it's deeper than that
here's a problem with numbers this how
this is where Hilbert and Brower fell
out
um to have the coordinates of this
object are given all as are colliding
you have to have them to infinite
Precision that's what Hilbert says it
says no problem infinite Precision is
fine let's just take that for granted
but when the
object is finite and it can't store its
own coordinates what do you do
mhm so in principle if a finite object
cannot be SP specified to infinite
Precision in principle the initial
conditions don't apply well how do you
know it can't store it um well how do
you store an infinitely long number in a
finite size
well we're using Infinity very Loosely
here no no we're using infinite
Precision I mean not Loosely but very
precisely you think infinite Precision
is required well let's let's take the
object let's say the object is a a golf
ball mhm golf ball is a few centim in
diameter we can work out how many atoms
there are in the golf ball and let's say
we can store numbers down to Atomic
dislocations MH so we can work out how
many atoms there are in the golf ball
and we can store the coordinates in that
golf ball down to that number but beyond
that we can't MH let's make the golf
ball
smaller and and the this is where I
think that we think that we get
Randomness in quantum mechanics and some
people say you can't get Randomness
quantum mechanics deterministic but aha
this is where this is where we realize
that classical mechanics and quantum
mechanics suffer from the same
uncertainty principle and that is the
inability to specify the the initial
conditions to a precise enough degree to
give you determinism the universe is
intrinsically too big and that's why
time exists it's non-deterministic
looking back into the past you can look
at the you can use logical um arguments
because you can say was it true or false
you already
know but this is the fact we are unable
to predict the future with the Precision
is not evidence of lack of knowledge
it's evidence the universe is generating
new
things okay so to you first of all
quantum mechanics you can just say
statistically what's going to happen
when two golf balls hit each other
statistically but that but but sure I
can say statistic what's going to happen
but then what they do happen yeah and
and and you keep nesting it together you
can't I mean it goes almost back to look
at look at look at um let's think about
entropy in the universe so how do you
what how do we how do we understand um
entropy change well we could do the look
at or process we can use the agic
hypothesis um we can also have um um um
we can also have the uh counterfactuals
where we have all the different states
and we could even put that in the
Multiverse mhm right
but both those are kind of they they're
they're
non-physical uh the Multiverse kind of
collapses back to the same problem about
the Precision so all that the what you
if you accept you don't have to have
true and false going forward into the
future um the real numbers are real
they're just they're just they're
observables we're trying to see exactly
where time being fundamental sneaks in
and this difference between that the the
the golf ball can't
contain its own
position perfectly
precisely if how that leads to time
needing to be fundamental let me I have
what do you believe do you believe or do
you accept you have free
will yeah I think at this moment in time
I believe that I have free will so then
you are then you have to believe that
time is fundamental
I understand that's a stat you've made
well no that we can logically follow
because if you don't have free will so
like if you're in a if you're in a
universe that has no time the universe
is deterministic if it's deterministic
then you have no free will I I think the
space of how much we don't know is so
vast that saying the universe is
deterministic and from that jumping
there's no free will is just too
difficult of a leap no I logically
follows no no I I don't disagree it's
not I'm not saying any I mean it's deep
and it's important all I'm all I'm
saying and it's the difference of it's
actually different to what I've said
before is that if you don't require
platonistic
mathematics and accepts that the
non-determinism is how the universe
looks and that gives us our creativity
and the way the universe is getting
novelty it's kind of really deeply
important in assembly Theory because
assembly Theory starts to actually give
you a mechanism why you go from Bor ing
time which is basically initial
conditions specify everything to a
mismatch in Creative time and I hope
we'll do experiments I think it's really
important to I would love to do an
experiment that prove that time is
fundamental and the universe is
generating
novelty um I don't know all the features
of that experiment yet but by you know
having these conversations openly and
getting people to think about the
problems in a new way better people
more intelligent people with good
mathematical backgrounds can say oh hey
I've got an idea i' would love to do an
experiment that that shows that the
Universe I mean universe is too too big
for itself going forward in time and and
I really you know this is why I I really
hate the idea of the boltzman brain the
boltzman brain makes me super kind of
like you know everyone's having a free
lunch it's like saying it's like let's
break all the laws of physics so a
boltzman brain is this idea that in a
long enough universeal brain will just
emerge in the universe as conscious
without and that neglects the causal
chain of evolution that required to
produce that brain and this is where the
computational argument really falls down
because the computation is can say I can
calculate the probability of a boltson
brain and I can and they'll give you
probability but I can calculate
probability of bolman brain zero just
because the the the space of
possibilities is so large yeah it's like
when we start falling ourselves with
numbers that we can't actually measure
and we can't ever conceive of I think it
I think it it it it it doesn't give us a
good explanation and I've become I want
to explain why life is in the universe I
think life is actually novelty minor no
I mean life basically mines novelty
almost from the future and makes it
actualizes in the
present okay life is a novelty
minor uh from the future that is
actualized in the present yep
I think so novelty minor first of all
novelty what's the origin of novelty
when you go from boring time to creative
time where is that is it as simple as as
Randomness like you're referring to um I
I am really struggling with Randomness
because I had a really good argument
with yashab about Randomness and he say
said Randomness doesn't give you free
will that's insane because You' just be
random but I think and I think his right
at that level yeah but I don't think we
I don't think he is right on another
level and it's not about Randomness it's
about it's about
constrained I'm going to sound like
constrained opport I'm making this up as
I go along so making this up constrained
opportunity so what I mean is like so
you have to have so that the novelty
what is novelty you know this is why I
think is a funny thing you ever want to
discuss AI why I think everyone's kind
of gone AI mad is that they're
misunderstanding um novelty but let's
think about novelty ask what is novelty
so I think novelty is a genuinely new
configuration that is not predicted by
the P past right and that you discover
in the present right and um that is
truly different right now everyone says
that some people say that novelty
doesn't exist it's always with precedent
I want to do experiments that show that
that is not the case
and it goes back to a question you asked
me a a few moments ago which is where is
the factory yeah right CU I think the
same mechanism that gives us a factory
gives us novelty and I think that that
is that is why I'm so deeply hung up on
time I mean like of course I'm wrong but
how wrong and I and I think that that
life opens up that commentarial space in
a way that the the our current laws of
physics or the what has contrived in a
deterministic initial condition Universe
even with the get out of the Multiverse
David deuts style which I love by the
way but I don't think is
correct um but it's it's it's kind it's
really
beautiful Multiverse the the David
Deutsch's conception of the Multiverse
is kind of like given um but I think
that the problem with wave particle
duality and quantum mechanics is not um
about the Multiverse it's about
understanding how determined the past is
well I don't think just think that
actually this is a a discussion I was
having with Sarah about that right she
was like oh I think we we' been debating
this for a long time now um about how we
how do we reconcile
novelty determinism
indeterminism so okay just to clarify
you both you and Sarah think the
universe is not
deterministic uh I'm I won't speak for
Sarah but I roughly I I think that the
Universe I think the universe is
deterministic looking back in the P back
in the past right but undetermined going
F going forward in the future so I'm
kind of having my cake and eat it eating
it here this is because I fundamentally
don't understand Randomness right as
Yasha told me or other people told me
but if I adopt a new view now which
um the new view is the universe is just
non-deterministic but I'd like to refine
that and say the universe appears
deterministic going back in the past but
it's but it's undetermined going forward
in the future so how can we have a
determinist a universe that has
deterministically looking rules that's
non-determined going in the future it's
this breakdown in Precision in the
initial conditions and we have to just
stop using initial conditions and start
looking at
trajectories and how how um the
commentor space behaves in expanding
Universe in time and space and assembly
Theory helps us quantify the transition
to biology and biology appears to be
novelty mining because it's making crazy
stuff you know um that that we are
unique to earth right there are objects
on Earth that are unique to Earth they
will not be found anywhere else because
you can do the commentarial
math uh what was that statement you made
about life is novelty mining from the
future yeah what's the what's what's the
little element of time that you
introducing that so what I'm kind of
meaning is cuz the future is bigger than
the present yeah in a deterministic
universe how do you go from the how do
how do the how do the states go from one
to another I mean there's a mismatch
right yeah so so that must mean that you
have a little bit of indeterminism
whether that's Randomness or something
else I don't understand I want to do
experiments to formulate a theory to
refine that as we go forward that might
help us explain that and um and I think
that's why I'm so um determined to try
and crack
the the non-life toli transition looking
at at networks and molecules and that
might help us think about it the the
mechanism but certainly the future is
bigger than the past in in my conception
of the universe and some conception of
the universe and by the way that's not
obvious right that's where was just kind
of the future being bigger than the
past well that that's one statement and
the statement that the universe is not
big enough to contain the future is
another statement yeah yeah yeah yeah I
that one is a big one I that was a
really big one I think so I think it but
I think it's
entirely because look we have the second
law and right now I mean I'm we don't
need the second law if the future's
bigger than the past it follows
naturally right so why are we
retrofitting all these these sticking
plasters onto our reality to hold on to
a Timeless Universe yeah but that's
because it's kind of difficult to
imagine the universe
that's they can't contain future but
it's not really exciting it's very
exciting but
it's it's hard uh I mean we're we're at
humans on Earth and we have a very kind
of four-dimensional conception of the
world of three de plus time it's just
hard to Inuit it a world where what does
that even mean a universe that can't
contain the
future yeah it's kind of it's kind of
crazy but obvious weird I mean I suppose
it sounds obvious yeah if it's true but
the nice thing is you can so what I I
mean so the reason why assembly Theory
turned me onto that was that you let's
let's just start in the present and look
at all the complex molecules and go
backwards in time and understand how
evolutionary processes go gave rise to
them it's not in it's not at all obvious
the taxo which is a complex one of the
most complex natural products produced
by biology was going to be invented by
biology it's a accident you know taxo is
unique to Earth there's no taxo
elsewhere in the universe and tax all
was
not decided by the initial conditions it
was decided by this kind of the this
interplay between the so the past simply
is embedded in the present it gives some
features but why the past doesn't map to
the Future one to one is because the
universe is too big to contain itself
that gives space for creativity novelty
and and un some things which are
unpredictable well okay so given that
you're disrespecting the power of the
initial conditions uh let me ask you
about so how do you explain that
cellometer are able to produce such
incredible complexity given just basic
rules and basic initial conditions I
think that that you you this falls into
the Brower um Hilbert trap mhm so how
would you get a autometer produce
complexity you have a computer you
generate a display and you map the
change of that in time mhm there are
some Casa repeat like functions like
it's fascinating to me that for pi there
is a there is a Formula where you can go
to the the millionth decimal place of Pi
and read out the the the number without
having to go there but there are some
numbers where you can't do that you have
to just crank through mhm this um
whether it's wol framan computational
reducibility or some other thing might
doesn't matter but these
Casa that complexity is that just
complexity or a number that is basically
you're mining that number in time mhm um
you know is that just a display screen
for that number that function well can't
you say the same thing about the
complexity on Earth then no because the
complexity on Earth um has a copy number
and an assembly index associated with
that that CA is just a number
running you don't think it has a copy
number wait wait a minute well it it
does in the human where where we're
looking at humans producing different
rules but then it's nested on selection
so those Casa are produced by selection
yeah I mean the ca is such a a
fascinating pseudo complexity generator
what I would love to do is understand um
quantify the degree of surprise in a CA
R it long enough MH but what that I
guess that means is we have to
instantiate we have to have a number of
experiments where we're generating
different rules and running them time
steps but oh got it ca are mining
novelty m in the F from the you know in
the future by iteration right and you're
like oh that's great that's great you
didn't predict it some rules you can
predict the what's going to happen other
rules you can't so for me if anything CA
are evidence that the the universe is
too big to contain itself because
otherwise you'd know what the rules are
going to do forever
more right I guess you were saying that
the
physicist saying that all you need is
initial conditions and the rules of
physics uh is somehow missing the bigger
picture and yeah and you know if you
look at CA all you need is the initial
condition and the and the rules and then
run the thing you
need three things you need the initial
conditions you need the rules and you
need time iteration to mine it out
without the coordinate you can't get it
out sure and that's that that to use
fundamental and you can't predict it
from initial conditions yeah if you
could then
it' be fine and that time is res the
foundation of uh the history the memory
of each the things that created it has
to have that memory of all the things
that led up to it I think it's yeah you
have to have the resource yeah because
time is a
fundamental resource and and um yeah I'm
becoming I think I had a
major
um uh epip about Randomness but I keep
doing that every two days and then it
goes away again it's random you're
you're a Time
fundamentalist you should be as well if
you believe in Free Will yeah the only
conclusion is there is time is
fundamental otherwise you cannot have
free will it logically
follows
well my my the foundation of my belief
in Free Will is just
uh is is uh observation
driven but that's I think if you use
logic
it's
like logically it seems like the
universe is deterministic looking
backwards in time and that's correct
universe is and then everything else is
is a is is a kind of leap it requires a
leap I mean I I I think that
um it's kind of this is what I think
machine learning is going to provide a
big a chunk of that right because um it
to help us explain this so the way I'd
say if you take that's interesting why
well let's let's let's just um my
favorite one one is because I'm I'm the
AI doomers are driving me mad and a the
fact that we don't have any intelligence
yet I call AI autonomous informatics
just to make people grumpy yeah um and
you're saying we're quite far away from
AGI I think that we have no conception
of intelligence and I think that we
don't understand how the human brain
does what it does I think that we are
neurosciences making great Advan but I
think that we have no idea about AGI so
I am a technological I guess Optimist I
believe we should do everything the
whole regulation of AI is nonsensical I
mean why would you regulate XL other
than the fact that clippy should come
back and I love XL 97 because we can
play um you know we can do the flight
flight simulator uh sorry in Excel yeah
have you not played the flight simulator
in Excel 97 yeah what does that look
like it's like wire fr game very very
basic but basically I think it's x0 y0
shift and it opens up and you can play
the fight simulator oh wow wait wait is
he using Excel Excel Excel 97 okay I
resurrected it the other day and saw
clippy again for the first time in a
long time well clippy is definitely
coming back but you're saying we don't
have a a great understanding what is
intelligence what is the intelligence I
am very frustrated underpinning the
human mind I'm very frustrated by the
way that um we're AI dooming right now
and people are bestowing some kind of
magic now um let's go back a bit so you
said about AGI are we far away from AGI
yes I do not think we're going to get to
AGI anytime soon I've seen no evidence
of it and the AI Doom scenario is
nonsensical in the extreme yeah um and
the reason why I think it's nonsensical
but it's not non
so I don't think there isn't things we
should do and be very worried about
right I mean there are things we need to
worry about right now what AI are doing
whether it's fake data fake users right
I want authentic people or authentic uh
um data I don't want everything to be
faked and I think it's a really big
problem and I'm absolutely want to go on
the record to say I really worry about
that what I'm not worried about is that
some fictitious entity is going to turn
us all to paperclips or detonate nuclear
bombs I don't
know maybe I don't know anything you
can't think of why is this is a and I'll
I'll take a very simple series of
logical
arguments and and this is the the the AI
doomers are have not had the correct and
this is had not had the correct they do
not have the correct
epistemology they do not understand what
knowledge is and until we understand
what knowledge is they're not going to
get anywhere because they're applying
things falsely so let me give you a very
simple argument people talk about the
probability P Doom
AI um I can we can work out the
probability of a asteroid hitting the
planet why because it's happened before
we know the mechanism we know that
there's a gravity well or that you know
space time is bent and stuff Falls in we
don't know the probability of AGI
because we have no mechanism so let me
give you the another one which is like
I'm really worried about AG what's ag ag
is anti-gravity one day we could wake up
and anti-gravity you know it's
discovered we're all going to die the
atmosphere is going to float away we're
going to float away we're all doomed
what is the probability of AG we don't
know because there's no NE mechanism for
AG do we worry about it no and I don't
understand the current um reason for
these for the for certain people in
certain areas to be generating this
nonsense I think they're not doing it
maliciously I think we're observing the
emergence of new religions how religions
come because religions are about kind of
some controls so you got The Optimist
saying AI is going to cure us all and AI
is going to kill us all what's the
reality well we don't have ai we have
really powerful machine learning tools
and they will allow us to do interesting
things and we need to be careful about
how we use those tools in terms of
manipulating human beings and faking
stuff right all right uh well let me let
me try just sort of Steal man theer's
argument and actually I don't know our
AI dumers in the owski camp saying it's
definitely going to kill us because
there's a spectrum 95% I think is the
limit yeah 95% plus that's no not not
plus I think I don't know I was seeing
on Twitter today various things but I
think yski is owski is at 95% but to
belong to the AI dumer Club is there a
threshold I don't know what the
membership maybe and what are the fees I
think well I saw I think Scott arenson
like I was quite surprised had put two I
I saw this online so it could be wrong
so sorry if it's wrong um says 2% but
the thing is if you were to go if you if
someone said there's a 2% chance you're
going to die going into the lift would
you go into the lift in the elevator for
the elev American English speaking
audience uh well no not for the elevator
so I would say anyone higher than 2% I
mean like I I mean I think there's a 0%
chance of AGI team zero just to push
back on the on the
argument we're at end of zero on the AGI
we can see on Earth that there's
increasing levels of intelligence of
organisms we can see what humans with
extra intelligence were able to do to
the other species so
that is uh a lot of
samples of data what a delta in
intelligence gives you when you have an
increase in intelligence how you're able
to dominate a species on Earth and so
the idea there is that if you
have a a being that's 10x smarter than
humans we're not going to be able to
predict what that's going to mhm what
that being is going to be able to do
especially if it has the power to hurt
humans which you can imagine a lot of
trajectories in which the more benefit
AI systems give the more control we give
to those AI systems over our power grid
over uh our nuclear weapons or weapons
of any sort and then it's hard to know
what a Ultra intelligence system would
be able to do in that case you don't
find that convincing I think is I would
I would fail that argument 100% here's a
number of reasons to fail it on first of
all um we don't know where the intention
comes from the problem is that people
think they keep you know watching all
the husters online with the prompt
engineering and all this stuff where
when I talk to a typical AI computer
scientist they keep talking about the AI
is having some kind of decision- making
ability that is a category
error the decision making ability comes
from human beings beings we have no
understanding of how humans make
decision we've just been discussing Free
Will for the last half an hour right we
don't even know what that is so the
intention I totally agree with you
people who intend to do bad things can
do bad things and we should not let that
risk go that's totally here and now I'm
do not want that to happen and I'm happy
to be regulated to make sure that
systems I generate whether they're like
computer systems or you know I'm working
on a new project called X called cam
mackina nice well done yeah yeah which
is basically
a um for people who don't understand the
point that xar is a great uh film about
I guess AGI embodied and K is the
chemistry version of that and I only
know one way to embody intelligence
that's in chemistry and human brains so
category era number one is agen they
have agency C era number two is saying
that assuming that anything we make is
going to be more intelligent now you
didn't say super intelligent I'll put
the words into our mouths here super
intelligent that I think that um there
is
no no reason to expect that we are going
to make systems that are more
intelligent more capable you know when
people play chess computers they don't
expect to win now right they just the
chess computer is very good at chess
that doesn't mean it's super intelligent
so I think that super intelligence I
mean I I think even Nick Bostrom is is
pulling back on this now because he
invented this so I see this a lot when
did see first happen Eric Drexler nanot
technology atomically precise ma
machines he came up with a world where
we had these atom cogs everywhere they
were going to we're going to make self
replicating Nanobots not possible why
because there's no resources to build
these self-replicating Nanobots you
can't get the Precision it doesn't work
it was a major category error in Def
taking engineering principles down to
the molecular level the only functioning
molecular technology we know sorry the
only functioning nanomolecular
technology we know produced by Evolution
there so now let's go forward to AGI
what is Agi we don't know it's super it
can do this or can humans can't think
that I would argue the only agis that
exist in the universe produced by
Evolution and sure we may be to make our
working memory better we might be be
able to do more things the human brain
is the most compact Computing unit in
the Universe uses 20 watts it's a uses a
really limited volume it's not like a
chat GPT cluster which has to have
thousands of whatts model that's
generated and has to be corrected by
human beings you are autonomous and
embodied intelligence so I think that
there are so many levels that we're
missing out we're just kind of went oh
we've discovered fire oh gosh the
planet's just going to burn one day
randomly I mean I just don't understand
that leap there are bigger problems we
need to worry about so what is the
motivation why are these people let's
assume they have their Earnest have this
conviction well I think it's just it's
kind of they're making leaps that
they're trapped in a virtual reality
that isn't reality well I mean I can
continue a set of arguments here but
also it is true that ideologies that
fear Monger are
dangerous because you can then use it to
control to to regulate in a way that um
halts progress to control people and to
uh to cancel people all that kind of
stuff so you have to be careful because
you reason ultimately wins right but
there there is a lot of concerns with
superintelligent systems very capable
systems when you I think when I when you
hear the word super intelligent you're
hearing like it's smarter than humans in
every way that humans are smart but the
paperclip manufacturing system doesn't
need to be smart in every way just need
to be smart in set of specific ways and
the more uh capable the a systems become
the more you could see us giving them
control over like I said our power grid
a lot of aspects of human life and that
means they will be able to do more and
more damage when there's unintended
consequences that come to life I I think
that that's right that the unintended
consequences we have to think about and
i' that I fully I fully agree with but
let's go back a bit sentient I mean I'm
again I'm far away from my comfort zone
and all this stuff but hey let's talk
about it cuz I give myself a
qualification yeah we're both qualified
in sentients I think yeah so as much as
anyone else I think the paperclip
scenario is just such a poor one because
let's think about how that would happen
um and also let's think about we are
being so um unrealistic about how much
of the Earth's surface we have command
deared mhm you know for paper M clip
manufacturing to really happen I mean do
the math it's like it's it's not going
to happen there's not enough energy
there's not enough resource where they
all going to come from I think that what
happens in evolution is
really why is why has a killer virus not
killed out all of not killed all life on
Earth what happens is sure super killer
viruses that kill the ribosome have
emerged but you know what happens they
nuke a small space because they can't
propagate they all die so there's this
interplay between evolution and
propagation right and death and so in
evolution it you don't think it's
possible to engineer for example sorry
to interrupt but like a perfect virus no
that's deadly enough no like nonsensical
okay I think that just wouldn't again it
wouldn't work it was too deadly it would
just kill the radius and not replicate
it yeah I mean but you don't think it's
possible to get a I mean if you were
super I mean I if you
were it not kill all of life on Earth
but kill all humans there's not many of
us there's only like 8
billion there there's so much more ants
I mean I don't I so many more
ants and they're pretty smart I think we
the nice thing about what we're where we
are I would love for the AI crowd to
take a leaf out of the book of the
biowarfare chemical warfare
crowd um I mean not love cuz actually
people have been killed with chemical
weapons in the first and second world
war and people and bioweapons have been
made and you know we can argue about
covid-19 and all this stuff let's not go
there just now but I think there is a
consensus that some certain things are
bad and we shouldn't do them right and
um and sure it would be possible for a
bad actor to to engineer something bad
but the the damage would be we would see
it coming and we would be able to do
something about
it um
now I I I gu what I'm trying to say is
when people talk about doom and they
just when you ask them for the mechanism
they just say um you know they just make
something up I'm I mean in this case I'm
with Yan laon I think you put out a very
good point about trying to regulate jet
engines before we've even invented them
yeah and I think that's what I'm saying
I'm not saying we should I just don't
understand why these guys are going
around making literally making stuff up
about us all dying yeah when basically
we need to actually really really focus
on now let's say there's some actors are
earnest right let's say owski is Being
Earnest right and he really cares but
then but he loves it goes and then
you're all going to die it's like you
know why don't we try and do the same
thing and say you could do this and then
you're going to be happy forever after
yeah you know well I I think uh there's
several things to say there uh one I
think there is a role in society for
people that say we're all going to die
cuz I
think uh it filters through as a message
as a viral message
that gives us the proper amount of uh
concern meaning not the it's not 95% but
when you say 95% and it filters through
Society it'll give an average of like a
0.3% an average so it's nice to have
people that are like we're all going to
die then we'll have a proper concern
like for example I do believe we're not
properly concerned about the threat of
nuclear weapons currently like that that
it just seems like people have forgotten
that that's a thing and you know there's
a war in Ukraine with the nuclear power
involved there's nuclear po throughout
the world and it just feels like we're
on the brink of a potential World War to
a percentage that I don't think people
are properly calibrating like in their
head we're all thinking it's a Twitter
battle as opposed to like actual threat
so like it's nice to have that kind of
level of concern but to me like what I
when I hear AI doomers what I'm
imagining
is with unintended consequences a
potential situation
where uh let's say 5% of the world
suffers deeply because of a mistake made
of unintended consequences I don't
imagine the entirety of human
civilization dying but there's could be
a lot of suffering if this is done poor
I I understand that and I'm I kind of I
guess I mean I'm involved in the whole
hype cycle like why what I would like us
to I don't want us to so what's
happening right now is there seems to be
so let me let's say having some people
saying ai ai Doom is a worry fine let's
give them that but it what seems to be
happening is there seems to be people
who don't think AI is doing they're
trying to use that to control regulation
and to push people to regulate where
which which stops humans generating
knowledge and I am an advocate for
generating as much knowledge as possible
MH when it comes to nuclear weapons I
grew up in the' 70s and where the
nuclear Doom a lot of adults were really
had existential threat almost as bad as
now with AI Doom they were really
worried right there was some great well
not great there was some hor horrific
documentaries I think there's one called
Freds that was generated in the UK which
was like it was terrible it was like so
scary um and I think that the correct
thing to do is obviously get rid of
nuclear weapons but let's think about
unintended consequences we've got rid of
this is such a nonse we got rid of all
the sulfur particles in the atmosphere
right all the all the s and what's
happened in the last couple of years is
global warming has accelerated because
we've cleaned up the atmosphere too
much so sure I mean the same thing if
you get rid of nuclear weapons you're
going I exactly that's my point is if so
what we could do is if we actually
started to put the AI in charge which is
I really like an AI to be in charge of
all World politics and this is sounds
ridiculous for a second hang on but if
we could all agree on the aiers just
woke up yeah yeah yeah on that statement
but I really don't like politicians who
are basically just looking at local
sampling but if you could say globally
look here's some Game Theory here
there's how what is the minimum number
of nuclear weapons we need to distribute
around the N the world to everybody to
basically reduce War to zero I mean just
the Start experiment of the United
States and China and Russia and major
nuclear Powers get together and say all
right we're going to distribute nuclear
weapons every single nation on Earth
y oh boy I mean that has a probably
greater than 50% chance of eliminating
major military conflict yeah yeah but
it's not 100% but but I don't think
anyone will use them because I think I
think and look what you've got to try
and do is like for to qualify for these
nuclear weapons I this is a great idea
the game theorist could do this this
right I think the question is this I I
really buy your question we have too
many nukes um from just from a feeling
point of view that we've got too many of
them so let's reduce the number but not
get rid of them because we'll have too
much conventional Warfare so then what
is the minimum number of nuclear weapons
we can just around to to remove what hum
humans hurting each other is something
we should stop doing it's in it's not
out with our our conceptual capability
but right now what about the Nations
certain nations are being
um exploited for their natural resources
in the future because for a short-term
gain because we don't want to generate
knowledge and and so if everybody had an
equal doomsday switch m i I predict the
quality of life of average human will go
up faster I am an optimist and I believe
that humanity is going to get better and
better and better that we're going to
eliminate more problems um but I think
yeah that's but uh the probability of a
bad
actor of one of the Nations setting off
a nuclear
weapon I mean you have to you have to
integrate that into the but we we get we
just give the N nukes like population
right we give what we do is we can't
believe but anyway let's let's just go
there they say so if a if a small nation
with a couple of nukes uses one because
they're a bit bored or annoyed they're
going to they the likelihood that they
are going to be pummeled out of
existence immediately is 100% MH and yet
they've only they've only nuked one
other City I know this is crazy and I
apologize for well no no I think this
just to be clear we're just having a
thought experiment that's interesting
but you know there's terrorist
organizations that would take that would
take would take that trade yeah I mean
we have to ask ourselves a question of
how many Which percentage of humans
would be suicide bombers essentially
where where they would sacrifice their
own life to to uh because they hate
another group of people and that I
believe it's a very small fraction but
is it large enough to uh if you give out
nuclear weapons I can predict a future
where we take all nuclear material we
burn it for energy right as because
we're getting there and the other thing
you could do is say look there's a gap
so if we get all the countries to sign
up to the virtual nuclear agreement
where we all exist we have a simulation
where we can nuke each other in the
simulation and the and the economic
consequences are
catastrophic sure in the simulation I
love it it's not going to kill all
humans it's just going to have economic
consequences
I don't know I just made it up it seems
like it's interesting I mean it's but
it's interesting whether that would have
as much power on human psychology as
actual physical Nuclear So it's possible
but people don't take Economic
Consequences as seriously I think as
actual nuclear weapons I think they do
in Argentina and they do in Somalia and
they do in a lot of these places where
no I I think this is a great idea I'm a
strong Advocate now for so what have we
come up with burning burning all the
nuclear material to have energy and
before we do that cuz mad is good
mutually assured destruction is very
powerful let's take it into the
metaverse and then get people to kind of
um uh subscribe to that and if they
actually nuke each other even for fun in
the metaverse there are dire
consequences yeah yeah so it's like a
video game we all have to join this
metaverse video game yeah I can't dire
Economic Consequences I don't know how
and uh it's all run by AI as you
mentioned which so the AI doomers is are
really terrified at this point no
they're happy they have a job for
another 20 years right oh Fe Monger yeah
yeah yeah we got I'm a Believer in equal
employment you've
mentioned that uh what you
call kakina yeah yeah so you've
mentioned that a a chemical brain is
something you're interesting
creating and uh that's a way to get
conscious AI soon
can you explain what a chemical brain is
I want to understand the mechanism of
intelligence that's gone through
Evolution right because the way that the
the way that um intelligence was
produced by Evolution appears to be the
following origin of Life
multicellularity
Locomotion senses once you can start to
see things come coming toward you and
you can remember the past and
interrogate the present and imagine the
future you can do something something
amazing right so and I think only in
recent years did humans become Che and
complete right yeah yeah yeah right
we'll get and so that true
incompleteness kind of gave us another
kick up um but our ability to process
that
information um is produced in a wet
brain and and I think that we are not
getting going to we do not have the
correct Hardware architectures to the
domain flexibility and the inte the
ability to integrate information and I
think
intelligence um also comes at a massive
compromise of data right now we're
obsessing about getting more and more
data more and more processing more and
more tricks to get dopamine hits so
we're going to when we look back on this
going oh yeah that was really cool cuz
when I chat asked chat GPT it made me it
made me really feel really
happy I got a hit from it but actually
it just exposed how little intelligence
I use in in every
moment because I'm easily fooled so what
I would like to do is to say well hey
hang on what is it about the brain so
the brain has this incredible
connectivity and it has the ability to
um you know as I said earlier about my
nephew you know I just I went from Bill
to Billy and he went all right Leroy
like how did he make that leap that he
was able to basically without any
training I extended his name he went G
he doesn't like he wants to be called
Bill he went back and said you like to
be called Lee I'm going to call you
Leroy um so human beings have a ma
brilliant ability or intelligent beings
appear to have a brilliant ability to
integrate across all domains all at once
and to synthesize something which allows
us to generate knowledge and and
becoming true and
complete on our own I don't although AIS
are built in cheing complete things
their their thinking is not cheing
complete in that they are not able to
build Universal
explanations and that lack of universal
explanation means that they're just
inductivist inductivism doesn't get you
anywhere in not not it's just basically
a party trick it's like you know the the
I like the um I think it's in the fabric
of reality from David deuts where
basically you know the farmer is feeding
the chicken every day and the chicken's
getting fat and happy and chicken's like
I'm really happy every time the farmer
comes in and feeds me and then one day
the farmer comes in and doesn't instead
of feeding the chicken just Rings its
neck you know and that's kind of and had
the chicken had an alternative
understanding of why the farmer was
feeding it m it's interesting though
because we don't know what's special
about the human mind that's able to come
up with these kind of
generalities uh this Universal theories
of things and come up with novelty I can
imagine because you gave an example you
you know about uh William and Leroy
I I feel
like example like that will be able to
see in future versions of large language
models will be really really really
impressed by the humor the
insights all of it because it's
fundamentally trained on all the
incredible humor and insights that's
available out on the internet right so
we'll be impressed I think we'll be
impressed oh I'm impressed right I'm
impressed increasingly so but we're
mining the past yes and what the human
brain appears to be able to do is mine
the future yes so novelty it is
interesting whether these large language
models will ever be able to come up with
something truly novel I can show on the
back of a piece of paper why that's
impossible and it's like the problem is
that and again these are domain experts
kind of
bullshitting each other the term
generative yes right average person
think oh it's gener no no no if look if
I take the the numbers between Zer and
1,000 and I train a model to pick out
the prime numbers by giving them all the
prime numbers between zero and a th it
doesn't know what a prime number is MHM
occasionally if I can cheat a bit it
will start to Guess that that it never
will produce anything out with the data
set because you mind the past the thing
that I'm getting to is I think that
actually current machine learning
Technologies might actually help reveal
why time is fundamental it's like kind
of insane because they tell you about
what's happened in the past but they can
never help you understand what's
happening in the future without training
examples sure if that thing happens
again it's like um so I think so let's
think about what large langage models
are doing we have the we have the Lang
we have all the internet as we know it
you know language but also they're doing
something else we having human beings
correcting it all the time those models
are being corrected um steered
corrected modified tweaked is well yeah
but I mean
cheating well you could say that
training on human data in the first
place is cheating well let me human is
in the loop sorry in TR yes so human is
definitely in the
loop uh but it's not just human is in
the loop a very large collection of
humans is in the look and that could
be I mean to me it's not intuitive that
you said prime numbers that the system
can't generate an
algorithm right
that the algorithm that can generate
prime numbers or the algorithm that can
tell you if a number is prime and so on
and generate algorithms that generate
algorithms that generate algorithms that
I I can that start to look a lot like
human reasoning you know I don't think I
think again we can show that on a piece
of paper that sure I think there has you
have to have so this is the failure in
epistemology like I'm I'm glad I even
can say that word let know what it means
you said it multiple times I know it's
like three times now
failure quit while your ahead just don't
say it again you did really well thanks
so I but I I think the so what is
reasoning so coming back to chemical
brain if I could basically if I could
show that in a cuz I mean I'm never
going to make an intelligence in in cam
macina because we don't have brain cells
they don't have Gile cells they don't
have neurons but if I can make if I can
take a matri a gel and engineer the gel
to have it be a hybrid hardware for repr
reprogramming which I think I know how
to do I will be process a lot more
information and train train models
billions of times cheaper and use cross
domain knowledge and there's certain
techniques I think we can do but it's
still missing
though the the the abilities of human
beings have had to become true and
complete and so I guess the question to
to give back at you and I it's like how
do you tell the difference between trial
and
error um and the generation of new
knowledge I think the way you can do it
is this is that you come up with a a
theory an explanation just inspiration
comes from out yeah and then you then
test that and then you you see that's
going towards a truth and human beings
are very good at doing that in and the
transition between philosophy
mathematics physics and Natural Sciences
where and I think that we we can see
that where I get confused is why people
misappropriate the term artificial
intelligence to say hey there's
something else going on here because I
think you and I both agree machine
learning is really good it's only get
better we're going to get happier with
the outcome but why would you ever think
the model was thinking
or reasoning reasoning requires
intention and the intention if the model
isn't reasoning the intentions come from
the
prompter and the intention has come from
the person who programmed it to do it so
I'm I um but don't you think you can
prompt it to have intention basically
start with the initial conditions and
get it going where the you know
currently large language models Chad
GPT only talks to you when you talk to
it there's no reason why you can't just
start it talking but but those initial
condition conditions came from someone
starting it yes and that causal chain in
there so that intention comes from the
outside I think that there is something
in that causal chain of intention that's
super important m i i don't disagree
we're going to get to AGI it's a matter
of when and what Hardware I think we're
not can do it in this hardware and I
think we're unnecessarily fet azing
really cool outputs and dopamine hits
because obviously that's what people
want to sell
us well but there could be I mean AGI is
is a loaded term but there could be
incredibly super
in
impressive intelligence
systems on the way to AGI so these large
language models I mean if it appears
conscious if it appears super
intelligent
uh poor would to say it's not I agree
but I the super intelligence I want I
want to I want to be able to have a
discussion with it
about um coming up with fundamental new
ideas that generate knowledge and if
this if the superintelligence generate
com mine novel E from the future that I
didn't see in its training set in the
past I would agree that something really
interesting is coming on I'll say that
again if the if the intelligent system
be a human being a chat chat bot
something else is able to produce
something truly novel that we I could
not predict even having full audit trail
from the past then I'll be sold well so
we should be clear that it can currently
produ it can currently produce things
that are in a shallow sense novel that
are not in the training set but you're
saying truly novel I think they are in
the training set I think everything it
produces comes from a training set they
might be in there's a difference between
interp novelty and interpolation MH we
do not understand where these leaps come
from yet that is what intelligence is I
would argue those leaps and some people
say no it's actually just what will
happen if you just do cross domain
training and all that stuff and that may
be true and I may be completely wrong
but right now the human mind is able to
mine novelty in a way that artificial
intelligence systems cannot and this is
why we still all have a job and we're
still doing stuff and you know I used
chat GPT for a few weeks oh this is cool
and then it took me too I had to I well
what happened is it took me too much
time to correct it then it got really
good and now they've they've done
something to it it's not actually that
good yeah right I don't know what's
going on there censorship yeah so I mean
that's interesting but it will push us
humans to uh characterize novelty better
like characterize the the novel like
what is novel what is truly novel what's
the difference between novelty and
interpolation I think that this this is
the thing that makes me most excited
about these Technologies is they're
going to help me demonstrate to you that
time is fundamental and unit future is
bigger than the than the than the
present which is why we we are human
beings are quite good at um generating
novelty because we have to expand our
data set and and to cope with unexpected
things in our environment our
environment frows them all at us again
we have to survive in that environment
and I mean I look I Never Say Never I
would be very interested in how we can
get um cross-domain training cheaply in
chemical systems cuz I'm a chemist and
bra the only any sen in thing I know of
as a human brain but maybe that's just
me being boring and predictable and not
novel Yeah you mentioned GPT for
electron density so a GPT like system
for uh generating molecules that can
bind to host automatically I mean that's
that's interesting that's really
interesting applying this same kind of
transforming mechanism yeah for I mean
this is one of um it goes my team I try
and do things that are non obvious but
non obvious in certain areas and one of
the things I was always asking about in
chemistry people like to represent
molecules as graphs and it's quite
difficult it's it's really hard in a
when if you're doing Ai and chemistry
you really want to basically have good
representations you can generate new
molecules are interesting and I was
thinking well molecules aren't really
graphs and they're not continuously
differentiable could I do something that
was continuously differenti I like well
molecules are actually made up of
electron density so I got thinking say
well okay
could there be a way where we could just
basically take a um take a database of
readily solved electron densities for in
millions of molecules so we took the
electron density for millions of
molecules and just trained a model to
put to learn What electron density
is and so what we built was a system
that you literally could give it a let's
say you could take a protein that has a
particular active site or you know a cup
with a certain hole in it you pour noise
into it and with the GPT you turn the
noise into electron density and then in
this case it hallucinates like all of
them do but the hallucinations are good
because it means I don't have to train
on such a large num such a huge data set
because these data sets are very
expensive because how do you produce it
so so go back a steps you've got all
these molecules in this data set but
what you've literally done is um a
quantum mechanical calculation where
produce electron densities for each
molecule so you say oh this
representation of this molecule has
these electron density associated with
it so you know what the representation
is and you train the neural network to
know what electron density is so then
you give it an unknown pocket you pour
in noise and you say right produce me
electron density it produces electron
density that doesn't look ridiculous and
what we we did in this case is we
produced electron density that um
maximizes the electrostatic potential so
the stickiness but minimizes the what we
call the steric hindrance so the overlap
so it's repulsive so you know make the
perfect fit and then with then used a
kind of
a kind of like a chat GPT type thing to
turn that electron density into what's
called a smile a smile string is a is a
is a a way of representing a molecule in
letters mhm and then we can then so just
generate them then just generates them
and then the other thing is and we bung
that into the computer and then just
makes it yeah the the computer being the
thing that right robot that we've got
that can basically just do chemistry
yeah so kind of we kind of got this end
to end drug Discovery machine where you
can say oh you want to buy into this
active site here you go I mean it's a
bit leaky and things kind of break but
it's it's a proof of principle well were
the hallucinations what are those
still uh accurate well the
hallucinations are really great in this
case cuz in the case of a large language
model the hallucinations just like just
make everything up to when it doesn't
just make everything up but it gives you
an output that you're plausibly
comfortable with and thinks you're doing
probabilistically the problem on these
electron density models is it's very
expensive to solve a shreding equation
going up to many heavy atoms and me and
large molecules and so we wondered if we
trained the um the the system on up to
nine heavy atoms whether it would go
beyond nine and it did it started to
generate molecules of 12 no problem they
look pretty good and I was like well
this hallucination I will take for free
thank you very much because it just
basically um this is a case where
interpolation extrapolation worked
relatively well um and we were able to
generate the really good molecules and
then what we were able to do here is and
this is a really good point what I was
trying to say earlier that we were able
to generate new
molecules from the known data set that
would bind to the the host so a new
guest would bind were these truly novel
not really because they they were
constrained by the host were they new to
us yes so I do un well understand I can
concede that machine Learning Systems um
artificial intelligence systems can
generate new entities but how novel are
they it remains to be
seen yeah and how novel the things that
humans generate is also difficult to uh
quantify MH they seem
novel that's what a lot of people say
like you know so the way to really get
to genuine novelty and assembly Theory
shows you the way is to have different
causal chains overlap and this really
this really um resonates with the the
the time is fundamental argument and if
you're bringing together um a couple of
object objects with different initial
conditions coming together when they
interact the more different their
histories the more novelty they generate
in time going forward and so it could be
that genuine novelty is basically about
mix mix it up a little and the human
brain is able to mix it up a little
little and all that stimulus comes from
the environment but all I think I'm
saying is the universe is deterministic
going back in time non-deterministic
going forward in time because the future
is too the universe is too big in the
future to contain in the present
therefore these collisions of known
things generate unknown things that then
become part of your data set and don't
appear weird
that's how we give ourselves Comfort the
past looks consistent with this initial
condition hypothesis but actually we're
generating more and more novelty and
that's how it works
simple so it's hard to quantify novelty
looking backwards I mean the the present
and the future of the novelty generators
but I I like this whole idea of mining
novelty I think it is um it is going to
reveal why the limitations of current AI
is a bit like a printing press right
everyone thought that when book when the
printing press came that writing books
is going to be terrible that you had
evil spirits and all this they were just
books and same would be with AI yeah but
there I think there just a scale you can
achieve in terms of impact with AI
systems is pretty nerve-wracking but
that's what the big companies want you
to
think but not like in terms of Destroy
All Humans but you can have
major consequences in the way social
media has had major
consequences both positive and negative
and so you have to kind of think about
it and worry about it but yeah people
that fear Monger you know my theory yeah
for this you want to know yeah is I
think that um a lot of and maybe I'm
being and I think I really do respect um
you know um a lot of the people out
there who are trying to have discourse
about the positive future so open AI
guys meta guys and all this and what I
wonder if they're trying to cover up for
the fact that social media has had a
pretty disastrous effect on some level
and they're just trying to say oh yeah
we should do this cuz and then covering
up for the fact that we have got some
problems with you know teenagers and
Instagram and Snapchat and you know all
this stuff and maybe they're just
overreacting now yeah it's like oh yeah
sorry we made the bubonic plate and gave
it to you all and you all dying and oh
yeah but look at this over here is even
worse yeah there's a there's a little
bit of that but there's also not enough
celebration of the positive impact that
all these technologies have had tend to
focus on the negative and tend to
forget that in part because it's hard to
measure like it's very hard to measure
the positive impact social media had on
the world yeah I I agree but if what I
worry about right now is like I'm really
I do care about the ethics of what we're
doing and the one of the reasons why I'm
so open about the the things we're
trying to do in the lab make life look
at intelligence all this is so people
say what are the consequences of this
and you say what are the consequences of
not doing it and I think that um
what I what worries me right now in the
present is lack of authenticated users
and authenticated data and human users
yeah
human I still think that there will be
AI agents that appear to be conscious
but they would have to be also
authenticated and labeled as such oh
there's too much there's too much value
in that you know like friendships with
AI systems there's too much meaningful
human experiences to have with a systems
that I just
but that's like a tool right it's a bit
like a meditation tool right some people
have a meditation tool it makes them
feel better but I'm not sure you can
ascribe sentience and legal rights to a
chatbot that makes you feel less
lonely uh sentience yes I think legal
rights no I think it's the same you can
have a really deep meaningful
relationship with a dog and with the dog
sent yes the chat bot's not not right
now using the technology we use is not
going to be
sent ah this is going to be a fun
continued conversation on uh Twitter
that I look forward to
uh since you've had also from another
place some debates that were inspired by
the assembly Theory paper let me ask you
about God is there any room
for Notions of God in assembly Theory um
who God yeah I I don't know what God is
a I mean so God exists in our mind
created by
selection so human beings have created
the concept of God in the same way that
human beings have create the concept of
super
intelligence sure but does it does it
mean does it
not it still could mean that that's a
projection from The Real World where
like we're just assigning words and
Concepts to a thing that
is fundamental to the real world that
there is something out there that is a
creative Force underlying the Universe
um I think the universe there is a
creative force in the universe but I
don't think it's it's Senti in I mean I
think the so I do not understand the
universe so who am I to say you know
um that that God doesn't exist I am an
atheist but I'm not an angry atheist
right I have lots of I have lots of
there are some people I know that angry
atheist and say you know say that
religious people are stupid I don't
think that's the case um I have faith in
some things CU I don't I mean when I was
a kid I kept like you know was like I
need to know what the charge of electron
is like I can't measure the charge on
electron that was you know I was just
gave up and had Faith okay you know
resists works so when it comes
to I want to know why the universe is
growing in the future and what humanity
is going to become and I've seen that
the the acquisition of
knowledge via the generation of novelty
to produce technology has uniformly made
humans lives better MH I would love to
continue that tradition
and you said that there's that creative
Force do do you think just to think on
that point do you think there's a
creative Force like is there like a
thing like a
driver that's like that's creating stuff
yeah I think that so I think that and
where what what is can you describe it
like mathemat well I think selection I
think selection selection is divorce
selection is the force in the universe
that creates
novelty so is selection somehow
fundamental like what what yeah I think
Persistence of objects that could Decay
into nothing through operations that
maintain that structure I mean think
about it if um is it's amazing that
things exist at all that we're just not
a big commentarial mess yes so the fact
and they exist and they I think that
exist persistent time yeah may I mean
let's think maybe the universe is
actually in the present the things
everything that can exist in the present
does
exist well that would mean is
deterministic right no I think the
universities might so the universe
started super small the past was
determined itic there wasn't much going
on it was able to mine mine mine mine
mine and so that the process I mean is
um somehow
generating um universe is
basically I can't put I'm trying to put
this into did you just say there's no
free will though no I didn't say that as
if Sor I said there is Free Will I think
I think I I I'm saying that fre
will occurs at the boundary between the
the future the past and the future yeah
I got you but everything that can exist
does exist everything that is so
everything that's possible to exist at
this so no I'm really put there's a lot
of loaded words there in what I mean
there's a time element loaded into that
I I think that the universe is able to
do what it can in the present right yeah
and then I think in the future there are
other things that could be possible we
can imagine lots of things but they
don't all happen sure so what that's
what I guess sneak in Free Will right
there yeah so I guess what I'm saying is
what what what exists is a com is a
convolution of the past with the present
and the Free Will going into the future
well we can still imagine stuff right we
can imagine stuff that never happen and
it's amazing Force because your imagina
this is a the most important thing that
we don't understand is our imaginations
can actually change the future in a
tangible way which is what the the
initial conditions and physics cannot
predict like your imagination has a
causal consequence in the future isn't
that weird too
yeah how do
you it breaks breaks the laws of physics
as we know them right
now yeah so you think the imagination
has a causal effect in the future yeah
but it does exist in there in the head
and there must be a lot of power in
whatever's going on there could be a lot
of power whatever's going on in there if
we then go back to initial conditions
yeah and that is simply not possible
that can happen but if we go into if we
go into a universe where we accept that
there is a finite ability to represent
numbers and you have rounding well not
rounding errors you have S the S what
happens the your ability to make
decisions imagine and do stuff is that
that interface between the certain and
the uncertain it's not as Yasha was
saying to me Randomness goes and you
just you know randomly do random stuff
it is that you are set free a little on
your trajectory Free Will is about being
able to explore on this narrow
trajectory um that allows you to build
you have a choice about what you build
or that choice is uh you interacting
with a future in the
present what do you is most beautiful
about this whole
thing the
universe the the the fact it seems to be
very undecided very open mhm and the
fact that
um every time I think I'm getting toward
an answer to a question there are so
many more questions that make the the
chase you know um do you hate that it's
going to be over at some point for you
no I I well for me I don't so I I I I
think if you think about it is it over
for Newton
now Newton has had causal consequences
in the future we discuss him all the
time his ideas but not the person the
person just had a lot of causal power
when he was alive but oh my God one of
the things I want to do is leave as many
Easter eggs in the future when I'm gone
to go oh that's cool would you be very
upset if somebody made a like a good L
large language model that's fine- tuned
to Lee corner it would be quite boring
because I mean I mean I I'm novelty
generation I would I mean if it's a
faithful representation of what I've
done in my life that's great that's
that's a interesting artifact but I
think the most most interesting thing
about knowing each other is we don't
know what we're going to do next
sure sure I mean within some constraints
I've got you know you might I I can
predict some things about you you can
predict some things about me but we
can't predict everything everything and
it's because we can't predict everything
is why we're exciting to come back and
discuss and see it's so yeah I'm I'm I'm
I'm kind of H I'm happy that it'll be
interesting that some things I've done
be captured but I'm pretty sure that
my angle on mining novelty from the
future will not be
captured
yeah
yeah so that that's what life is is just
uh some novelty generation and you're
done each one of us just generate a
little bit I or have the capacity to at
least I think life is a sele
produces life and life affects universe
and universes with life in them are
materially physically fundamentally
different than universes of life and
that's super interesting and I I have no
beginnings of understanding I think
maybe this is like in a thousand years
there'll be a new discipline and the
humans yeah of course this is how it all
works right and um in retrospect it will
all be obvious I think I think assembly
theory is obvious that's why a lot of
people got angry right they were like oh
my God this is such nonsense yeah you
know like oh yeah no actually it's not
quite but the the writing's really
bad well I can't wait to see where it
evolves uh Le and I I'm glad I get to
exist in this universe with you you're
fascinating human this is always a
pleasure I hope to talk to you many more
many more times and I'm a huge fan of
just watching you create stuff in this
world and thank you for talking today
it's a pleasure as always Lex thanks for
having me on
thanks for listening to this
conversation with Lee Ronin to support
this podcast please check out our
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me leave you with some words from Carl
Sean we can judge our progress by the
courage of our questions and the depth
of our answers our willingness to
embrace what is true rather than what
feels good thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time