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

i don't know what it's like to be an. alien i would like to know two alien. civilizations coexisting on a planet. what's that look like exactly when you. see them and they see you. you're assuming they have vision they. have the ability to construct in 3d and. in time there's a lot of assumptions. we're making what human level. intelligence has done is quite different. it's not just that we remember states. that the universe has existed in before. it's that we can imagine ones that have. never existed and we can actually make. them come into existence so you can. travel back in time.

sometimes yes you travel forward in time. to travel back yes. the following is a conversation with. sarah walker and lee cronin they have. each been on this podcast once before. individually and now for their second. time they're here together. sarah is an astrobiologist and. theoretical physicist lee is a chemist. and. if i may say so the real-life. manifestation of rick from rick and.

morty. they both are interested in how life. originates and develops both life here. on earth and alien life including. intelligent alien civilizations out. there in the cosmos. they are colleagues and friends. who love to explore disagree and debate. nuance points about alien life and so. we're calling this. an alien debate. very few questions to me are as. fascinating as what do aliens look like. how do we recognize them how do we talk.

to them and how do we make sense of life. here on earth in the context of all. possible life forms that are out there. treating these questions with the. seriousness and rigor they deserve is. what i hope to do with this conversation. and future ones like it. our world is rather than mystery we must. first be humble to acknowledge this and. then be bold and diving in and trying to. figure things out anyway. this is the lex friedman podcast to. support it please check out our sponsors.

in the description. and now dear friends here's sarah walker. and lee cronin. first of all welcome back sarah welcome. back lee you guys i'm a huge fan of. yours you're incredible people i should. say thank you to sarah for wearing uh. really awesome boots we'll probably. overlay a picture later on but why the. hell didn't you dress up please no this. is me dressed up you were saying that. you're. pink like your thing is pink. my thing is black and white the. simplicity of it.

where's the pink when when did the pink. when did it hit you that pink is your. car i became pink about. i don't know actually maybe 2017. you. know did you know me are you when you. first i think i met you pre-pink yeah. yeah so about about 2017 i think i just. decided i was boring. and i needed to make a statement and red. was too bright so i went pink salmon. pink. well i think you were always pink you. just found yourself in 2017. there's an amazing photo of him where.

there's like everybody in their black. gown and he's just wearing the pink. pants oh that wasn't the wagon in. university it's totally nuts 100 year. anniversary they got me to give the. plenary and they didn't they didn't find. that outfit for me so they're all. wearing these silly hats and these gowns. and there was me dressed up in pink. looking like a complete idiot we're. definitely going to have to find that. picture and overlay. big full screen. slow motion. all right let's talk about aliens we'll. find places we disagree in places we. agree. life intelligence consciousness universe.

all of that. let's start with a. tweet from neil degrasse tyson. stating his skepticism about aliens. wanting to visit earth. quote how egocentric of us to think that. space aliens who have mastered. interstellar travel across the galaxy. would give. pardon the french. uh would give a about humans on. earth. so let me ask you would aliens care. about visiting earth observing. communicating with humans let's take a.

perspective of aliens maybe sarah. uh. first are we interesting in the whole. spectrum of life in the universe. i'm completely biased at least as far as. i think right now we're the most. interesting thing in the universe um so. i would expect um based on the intrinsic. curiosity that we have. and how much i think that's deeply. related to the physics of what we are. that other intelligent aliens would want. to seek out examples of the phenomena.

they are. to understand themselves better and i. think that's kind of a natural thing to. want to do and i don't think there's any. kind of judgment on. it being a lesser being or not it's like. saying you have nothing to learn by. talking to a baby uh you have less to. learn probably more than you two talking. to somebody that's 90. so um. yeah so i think they absolutely would so. whatever the phenomena is. that is human. there will be an inkling of the same. kind of phenomenal within alien species. and then we'll be seeking that same.

i think there's got to be some features. of us that are universal and i think the. ones that are most interesting and i. hope i live in an interesting universe. are the ones that. are driven by. our curiosity and the fact that. our intelligence allows us to do things. that the universe wouldn't be able to do. without things like us existing. we're going to define a lot of terms one. of them is interesting yes. that's very interesting term to try to. define uh lee what what do you think are.

humans interesting for aliens. well let's take it from our perspective. we want to go find aliens as a species. quite desperately. so. if we put the shoe on the other foot of. course we're interesting. but i'm wondering. um and assuming that we're at the right. technological capability to go searching. for aliens. then that's interesting so what i mean. is. if there needs to be a massive leap in. technology that we don't have. how will aliens prioritize coming to. earth and other places but i i do think.

that they would come and find us because. they want to find out about our culture. what things are universal it what about. i mean i'm a chemist i would say well is. the chemistry universal right. are the creatures that we're going to. find making all this commotion. are they made of the same stuff. um. what does their science look like um are. they off planet yet um i guess there's. so i i think that neil degrasse tyson is. being slightly pessimistic and maybe. trying to play. the.

tune that the universe is vast and it's. not worth them coming here i don't think. that. but i just worry that maybe we we don't. have the ability to talk to them we. don't have the universal translator we. don't have the right physics but sure. they should come we are interesting i. want to know if they exist it would make. it easier if they just came. [Laughter]. so again i'm going to use uh your tweets. like it's shakespeare and analyze it so. sarah tweeted. uh thinking about aliens thinking about.

aliens. so. how much do you think aliens are. thinking about other aliens including. humans so you said we humans want. to visit. like we're longing to connect with. aliens why is that can you introspect. that is that an obvious thing that we. should be like what are we hoping to. understand. by meeting aliens. exactly. asking as an introvert it's like i ask. myself this all the time why go out on a. friday night to meet people what are you.

hoping for i think curiosity so when i. saw sarah put that tweet i think i. answered it actually as well which was. uh. we are thinking about trying to make. contact so they almost certain are. certain. certainly are but maybe there's a number. of classes there are the those aliens. that have not yet made contact with. other aliens like us. those aliens have made contact with just. one other alien and maybe it's an. anti-climax and slime. all right and aliens that have made. contact with not just one set of. intelligent species but several that. must be amazing actually literally there.

is some place in the universe there must. be one alien civilization to not make. contact with not one. but two other intelligent civilizations. so they must be thinking about there. must be entire. um. degree courses on aliens thinking about. aliens and cultural uh universal. cultural norms. do you think they will survive the. meeting. and by the way lee did respond saying. that's all the universe wants so sarah. said thinking about aliens thinking.

about aliens. they said that's all the universe wants. and then sarah responded cheeky universe. we live in. so cheeky is a is a cheeky version of. the word interesting all of which will. try to define. uh mathematically he might be harder. than interesting. because there's humor in that too yes. i think there's a mathematical. definition of humor but we'll talk about. that. yeah. so if you're. a graduate student alien looking at. multiple alien civilizations.

uh do you think they survive the. encounters. i think there's a tendency to. anthropomorphize a lot of discussions. about alien life which is a really big. challenge so i usually when i'm trying. to think about these problems i don't. try to think about. um us as humans but us as an example of. phenomena that exists in the universe. that we have yet to explain. um and it doesn't seem to be the case. that if i think about. the features. i would argue are most universal about. that phenomena that there's any reason.

to think that a first encounter with. another. lineage or. example of life would be antagonistic. um. i think. yeah and and i think there's this kind. of assumption. i mean going back to neil degrasse. tyson's uh quote i mean it kind of. bothers me because there's a i mean i'm. a physicist so i know we have a lot of. egos about how much we can describe the. world but that there's this like because. we understand fundamental physics so. well we understand.

alien life and we can kind of. extrapolate and i just think that we. don't um and the quest there is really. you know really to understand something. totally new about the universe and that. thing just happens to be us i agree i. agree there's something else more. profound i think neil is just being. again he's just trying to stir the pot. i would say from a. from a contingency point of view i want. to know how many ways does the universe. build structures build memories right. that and then. i want to know if those memories can. interact with each other and if you have.

to. um different origins of life and then. origins of intelligence and then these. things become conscious. surely you want to go and talk to them. and figure out. what commonalities you share and it. might be that we're just unable to. conceive of what they're going to look. like they're just going to be completely. different you know infrastructure. but surely we'll want to go and find out. a map and surely curiosity is a property. that evolution has made on earth and i. can't see any reason that it won't. happen elsewhere because curiosity. probably exists because we want to find.

innovations in the environment we want. to use that information to help. our technology. and also curiosity is like planning for. the future are they going to fight us. are they are we going to be able to. trade with them. so i think that neil's just i don't know. maybe. you know i mean give a that's. really i think that's really down on. earth right. how would aliens categorize humans do. you think. how would weak so let's put the other. way around slime category maybe no no no.

we maybe we could the thing is a bit odd. right look at instagram. twitter all these people taking selfies. i mean does the universe. is the ultimate state of consciousness. thinking beings that take photographs. themselves and upload them to an. interweb with other thinking beings. looking at each other's photos so. um i think that they will be wrong with. that. yeah. i did not say there was anything wrong. with it consciousness manifested at. scale. yeah selfies yeah instagram like the. mirror test at scale yeah i do think.

that curiosity. is really the driving force why we have. our technology right if we weren't. curious we wouldn't go out left the cave. so i think that um. so i think that neil's got it completely. wrong in fact actually of course they'd. want to come here it doesn't mean they. are coming here we've seen evidence for. that i guess we can argue about that. right. but i think that um we want i. desperately and i know that sarah does. too but i won't speak for you you're. here you can i desperately want to have. missions to look for life in the solar.

system right now i want to map life over. the solar system and then i want to. understand how we can go and find life. as quickly as possible at the nearest. stars. and also at the same time do it in the. lab just to compensate. you know. so sure. yeah just one more point on this if you. think about sort of what's driven. the most like features of our own. evolution as a species you could and try. to map that to alien species i always. think like optimism is what's going to. get us furthest and so i think a lot of. people always think that it's like war.

and conflict is going to be the way that. alien species will. expand out into the cosmos but if you. just look at how we're doing it and how. we talk about it zoe's our future and. space is always. you know built from narratives of. optimism and so it seems to me that if. intelligence does get out in the. universe that it's going to be more. optimism and curiosity driving it than. warren conflict because those things end. up crushing you. um so there might be some selective. filter uh of course this is me being an. optimist i'm a half.

half full kind of person but is it. obvious that curiosity. not obvious but what do you think is. curiosity a more powerful force in the. universe than. violence and. the will to power. so uh because you said you frame. curiosity as a way to also plan on how. to avoid violence which is an. interesting frame of curiosity but i i. could also argue that. violence is a pretty productive way. to uh operate in the world.

which is like that's one way to protect. yourself the best defense is offense. um i'm not qualified to answer this but. i'll have a go i think violent let's not. talk about violence that's the summary. of this podcast. i would yeah but maybe i would let's. call it violence but i call it erasure. so if you think about um the way. evolution works all the way uh um. obviously talk about assembly's theory. but. so if you say you you build pro. curiosity allows you to open up avenues. new graphs right so new features you can.

play. what. what the ability to erase those things. allows you to start again and do some. pruning so the universe i think. curiosity gets you further curiosity. gets you rockets that land it gets you. robots that can make drugs it gets you. poetry and art. and communication and then you know i. often think wouldn't it be great in. bureaucracy to have another world war. not literally a world war now please no. world war but a the equivalent so we get. remove all the admin bureaucracy right. all the admin violence get rid of it and.

start again do you know what i mean. because you get layers and you get. redundant systems built so actually. a reset let's call it violence a reset. in some aspects of our um. culture and our our technology allows us. to then. build more important things without the. because how many you know how many. cookies do i have to click on how many. think how many how many extra clicks i. do i have in the future of my life that. i could remove and a bit of. a reset would would allow us to.

to uh to start again and maybe that's. how i suppose our encounter with aliens. will be maybe they will fight with us. and say uh he went on as excited by you. so we thought we'll just get rid of you. so they might want to reset earth yeah. why not to be like let's see how the. evolution runs again this seems like. they've uh. uh there's nothing new happening here. they're observing for a while this is. just not let's keep it more fun let's. start with the fish again. i like how you equated violence to um.

resetting your cookies yeah i suppose. that's the kind of violence. in this modern world where wards are. violence resetting cookies i don't know. where that came from i'm completely yeah. that's poetic uh really okay so let's. talk about life. what is life. what is non-life. what is the line between life and. non-life and maybe at any point we can. pull in ideas of assembly theory. like how do we start to try to define. life and for people.

uh listening so sarah. identifies as a physicist and lee. identifies as a chemist of course they. are very interdisciplinary in nature in. general but. um. so what is life. yeah. yeah i love asking that question because. it's so absurdly big i know i love it um. it's my absolute favorite question the. whole universe um so i think i have. three ways of describing it right now um.

and i like to say all three of them. because people latch onto different. facets of them and so the whole idea of. what lee and i are trying to work on is. not to try to define life but to try to. find a more fundamental theory that. explains what the phenomena we call life. and then it should explain certain. attributes and you end up having a. really different framing than way people. usually talk so the way i i talk about. it three different ways. um life is how information structures. matter across space and time. um life is. uh. i don't know. this one's from you actually simple.

machines constructing more complex. machines. and the other one is the physics of. existence so to speak which is. life is the mechanism the universe has. to explore the space of what's possible. um that's my favorite. so can i yeah yeah can i add on to that. okay can you say the physics one again. uh oh the physics of existence yeah the. physics of existence i don't know what. to call it you know like if you think of. all the things that could exist only. certain things do exist and i think life. is basically the universe's mechanism of.

bringing things into physically existing. in the in the moment now. yeah. yeah well what's what's another one. we were debating this the other day so. if you think about universe that has. nothing in it that's kind of hard to. conceive of right because and this is. where physicists really go wrong they. think of a universe with nothing in it. they can't and you think non-existence. is really hard to think. yeah and then you think of universe with. everything in it. that's really hard and and you just you. just have this white blob right this is.

everything but the fact we have to. discrete stuff in the universe beyonce. planet so you've got stars space planet. stuff right the boring stuff. but i would define life or say that life. is where. there are architectures any. architectures and we should stop. fixating on. what bill is building the architectures. to start with and the fact that the. universe has discrete things and it is. completely mind-blowing. if you think about it for one second.

the fact there's any objects at all that. and there's because for me the the. object is a proxy for a machine that. built it some information. um. being moved around. actuation sensing. getting resource. and building these objects so for me. everyone's been obsessing about the. machine. but i'm like forget the machine let's. see the objects the you know and i think. in a way that assembly theory.

we realized maybe a few months ago that. assembly theory actually does. account for the soul in the objects not. mystically like say sheldrick's morphic. resonance or leibniz's monodology seeing. souls and things but when you see an. object and i've said this before but. this object is evidence of thought. and then there's a lineage of those. objects so i think what is fascinating. is. that um. you put it much more elegantly but but. the barrier between life and non-life is. accruing enough memories to then actuate.

so. so what that means is there are. contingency there are things that happen. in the universe get trapped these. memories then have a causal effect on. the future. and then when you get those concentrated. in a machine and you're actually able in. real time able to integrate. the past. the present with the future and do stuff. that's when you are most alive. are you being the machine yes wait a. minute why is the object so one one of. the ways to define life uh that sarah. said.

is simple machines creating complex. machines so. there's a million questions there so how. how the hell does a simple machine. create a complex machine. mutation. so this is what we're talking about at. the beginning you have the minimum. replicator so molecule so this is what i. was trying to convince sarah if the. mechanism get there years ago i think. but then you've been building on it and. saying. you have a small you have a molecule. that can copy itself. but then that be a has there has to be. some variability otherwise it's not. going to get more functional so you need.

to add bits on so you have a minimum. molecule that can copy itself but then. it can add bits on and that can be. copied as well and those add-ons can. give you additional function. um. to be able to acquire more stuff to. exist. so existence is weird. but the fact that there is existence is. why there is life and that's why i. realized a few days ago that there must. be that's why alien life must be. everywhere. because there is existence is there like. a conservation.

of cheeky stuff. happening so like how can you keep. injecting more complex things. like um. doesn't the machine that creates the. object need to be. as or more complex more. powerful than the things it creates. so how can you get complexity from. simplicity. so. the way you get complexity from. simplicity is that you. i would this i'm just making this up but. this is kind of my notion that you have. a large volume of stuff.

so you're able to get um. seeds if you like random cues from the. environment so you just use those. objects to basically write on your tape. ones and zeros whatever and that is that. is necessarily. rich complex. okay. but it has a low assembliness but even. though it has a higher assembly number. we can talk about that but then when you. start to then integrate that all into a. smaller volume as over time. and you become more autonomous.

you then make the transition. i don't know what you think about that i. think. the easiest way. to think about it is actually which i. know is a concept you hate but i also. hate which is entropy but people are. more familiar with entropy than what we. talk about in assembly theory. um and also the idea that. like say physics as we know it um. involves objects that don't exist across. time or as we would say low memory. objects. um so one of the the key distinctions. that that low memory objects yeah so.

physics is all physicists are low memory. memory objects. physicists are creators of low memory. objects or manipulators of low memory. objects absolutely that's a very nice. way. putting okay sorry guys yeah. sorry to keep in trouble no it's fine um. i like it too it's very funny um but i. think it's a good way of phrasing it. because i i think you know this kind of. idea we have an assembly theory is that. um. you know physics as we know it has. basically removed time as being a. physical observable of an object and the.

argument i would make is that when you. look at things like water bottles or us. we're actually. things that exist that have a large. extent in time. so we actually have a. physical size and time and we measure. that with something called the assembly. index. in molecules but presumably everyone. should have sort of a. uh do you want to explain what assembly. yeah let's you know what let's step back. and. and start at the beginning what is. assembly theory lee send me some slides.

there's a there's a big sexy paper. coming out probably. maybe i don't know we've almost finished. it. um. almost almost that's like that's also a. summary of science we're almost done yes. we're almost done the history of science. we are ready to start an interesting. discussion with our peers. right you're the machine that created. the object and we'll see where the. object takes. all right so what what is assembly. theory um yeah well i think i think the.

easiest way for people to understand it. is to think about um. assembly in molecules although the. theory is very general doesn't just. apply to molecules and this was really. leased in sight so it's kind of funny. that i'm explaining it but um okay i'll. mark you okay all right ready i'm ready. i'm ready tell me where i get the check. marks minus but it's your theory as well. yeah i know but ima imagine a molecule. um and then and then you can you know. break the molecule apart into elementary. building blocks they happen to be bonds. and then you can think of all the ways. for molecular assembly theory you can. think about all the ways of building up.

the original molecule so there's all. these paths. that you can assemble it and the sort of. rules or assembly is you can use pieces. that have been generated already. so it has this kind of recursive. property to it um and so that's where. kind of memory comes into assembly. theory and then the assembly index is. the shortest path in that space so it's. supposed to be the minimal amount of. history that the universe has to undergo. in order to assemble that particular. object and the reason that this is. significant is we figured out how to. measure that.

with a mass spec. in the lab and we had this conjecture. that if that minimal number of steps was. sufficiently large. it would indicate that you required a. machine or a system that had information. about how to assemble that specific. object because the combinatorial space. of possibilities is getting. exponentially large as the assembly. index is increasing so it's just sorry. to interrupt but so that means there's a. sufficiently high assembly index. that. if observed in an object. is an indicator that.

something. life like created it or is the object. itself life like. um both. but you might want to make the. distinction that a water bottle is not. life. but it would still be a signature that. you were in that domain of physics. and i might be alive. so um. so there will be potentially a lot of. arguments about where the line at which. assembly index. uh. does interesting stuff start to happen. the point is we can make all the.

arguments but it should be. experimentally observable and and we can. talk more about that part of it but the. point i want to make about it is there. was always this intuition that i had. that there should be some complexity. threshold in the universe above which. you would start to say whatever physics. governs life actually becomes operative. and i think about it a little bit like. we have planks constant which you know. and we have the fine structure constant. and then this sort of assembly threshold. is basically. another sort of. uh potentially constant of nature it. might depend on specific features of the.

system like but um which we debate about. sometimes but um. but then when you're past that you have. you have to have some other explanation. than the current explanations we have in. physics because now you're in high. memory um. uh the things actually require time for. them to exist and time becomes a. physical variable the the path to the. creation of the object is the memory. yeah so you need to consider that. yeah but the but the point is that's a. feature of the object. so it's it's it so when i think of all.

the things in this room uh you know we. see the the projection of them as a. water bottle but assembly theory would. say that this is a causal graph of all. the ways the universe can create this. thing that's what it is as an object and. we're all interacting uh causal graphs. and most of the creativity in the. biosphere is because a lot of the. objects that exist now are huge in their. structure across time four billion years. of evolution to get to us. is it possible to look at me. and. infer the history that led to me.

you as an individual might be hard you. as a representative of a population of. objects that have high assembly with. similar causal history and structure. that you can communicate with i.e other. humans you can refer a lot probably yeah. we'll stay with them which we do. genomically even i mean it's not like. like we have a lot of information and. that's we can reconstruct histories from. assembly is saying something slightly. deeper yeah one thing to add i mean it's. not just about the object but the. objects occur and not just objects for a. high assembly number because you can.

have random things that have a high. assembly number they must have there. must be a number of identical copies so. you know you're getting getting away. from the random because you could take a. snapshot this is why it's not i hate. entropy i love entropy when used. correctly but it's about the problem of. entropy you have to have a labeler and. so so you can label the beginning and. the end to start and the finish you know. what you can do in assembly is say oh i. have. a number of objects in abundance they. all have these features and then you can. infer. and one of the things that we debated a.

lot particularly during lockdown because. i almost went insane trying to crush the. produce the assembly equation so we came. up with the assembly equation i had just. imagine this so you have this string. where. oh. actually it makes me makes me sick. trying to remember it was so it did my. head in for a long time. yeah because i couldn't. so if you just have a string of say. words say you know a series of words. series of letters so you just have a aaa. bbb ccc ddd and you and you find that.

object and you just just have four a's. four b's four c's four d's together boom. then. and that really that you measured that. you physically measured that string of. letters. then what you could do is you can infer. sub. graphs of maybe the four a's the four. b's the four c's and four c's we don't. see them. in the real world you just infer them. and i really got stuck with that because. there's a problem to try and work out. what's the difference between a long. you know. a physical object in this assembly space.

of objects that we realized the best way. to put that is infer in time that so. although we can't infer your entire. history we know at some point the four. a's were made the four b's was made the. four c's were made in four d's were made. and they all got added together and and. that's one really interesting thing. that's come out the theory about the the. killer when we knew we were going beyond. um. and. beyond standard complexity theories was. incredibly successful. is that we realized we could start to.

measure these things for real across. domains. so the assembly index is actually an. intrinsic property of all stuff that you. can break into. components. particularly molecules are good because. you can break them up into smaller. molecules into atoms. the challenge will be making that more. general across all the domains but we're. working on it right now and i think the. theory will do that so components. domains so. you're talking about basically measuring. the complexity of an object.

in what biology chemistry physics that's. what you mean by domains. uh like if tesla's sociology computers. complexity of memes. you know memes yep. what was that ideas yeah i mean so. one of the ideas are objects and. assemblies areas. they're just pictures of the causal. graph i mean the fact i can talk to you. right now is because we're exchanging. structure of our assembly space. uh. so conversation is the. uh.

exchanging structures in assembly space. what is assembly space. when i started working on origins of. life i um i was writing about something. called top down causation which a lot of. like philosophers philosophers are. interested in and people that worry. about the mind body problem but the. whole idea is you know if we have um you. know the microscopic world of physics is. causally complete it seems like there's. no room for higher level causes like. our thoughts to actually have any impact. on the world and that didn't that seems. problematic when you get to studying.

life in mind because it does seem that. quote-unquote emergent properties do. matter to matter. um and so. um. and then there's this other sort of. paradoxical situation where information. looks like it's disembodied so we talk. about information like it can just move. from any physical system to any other. physical system and it doesn't require. um like you don't have to specify. anything about the substrate to talk. about information and then there's als. also the way we talk about mathematics. is also disembodied right like the. platonic world of forms and i think all.

of those things are. hinting that we really don't know how to. think about abstractions as physical. things. um. and. really i think what assembly theory is. pointing to is what we're missing there. is the dimension of time. and if you actually look at an object. being extended across time. what we call information and the things. that look abstract are things that are. entangled in the histories of those. objects they're features of the. overlapping assembly space so they look.

abstract because they're not. you know part of the current. structure but they're part of the. structure if you thought about it as. like the philosophical concept of a. hyper object an object that's too big in. time for us to actually to resolve. and so i think information is physical. it's just physical in time not in space. too. hyper object too difficult for us to. resolve so we're supposed to think about. of life. as this thing that stretches through. time and there's a causation chain that. led to that thing.

and then you're trying to measure. something with the assembly index about. the assembly index is the ordering the. or like um you could think of it as like. a partial ordering of all the things. that can happen. um so in in thermodynamics we course. grain things by temperature and pressure. in assembly theory we coarse grain by. the number of copies of an object and. the assembly index which is basically if. you think about the space of all. possible things it's like a depth of how. far you've gone into that space and how. much time was required to get there in.

the shortest possible version. not. average because can't you just 3d. with that question oh not not not 3d. can't you always 3d print the thing in. the heart no because i had such fight so. sarah's team and my team are writing. this paper at the moment and it's so. funny i think we kind of share the at. the beginning you were like no that's. not right oh yes right and we're doing. this for a bit and then the problem is. when you build a theory and build the. intuition. there's some certain.

features right of the theory that almost. felt like i was being religious about. saying right you have to do this a good. assembler assembly theorist does this. does this does this and. sarah's postdoc daniel and my postdoc. ambershek and they were both both. brilliant they're brilliant but they. were like now we don't we don't buy that. and i was like. it is is they were like well lee. actually um. i thought you're the first to say that. you know you can't if you can't explain. it it doesn't and you can't do an. experiment that doesn't exist and that.

saved me and i said to abhishek whoever. takes my postdoc in glasgow daniel was. sarah's postdoc in asu i was like. i have the experimental data so when i. basically take um the molecules and chop. them up in the mass spec the assembly. number is never the average it's always. the shortest it's an intrinsic property. and then the penny dropped for abhishek. said okay so i had these things that we. had to. believe to start with or to trust and. then we've done the math and it came out. and they now have the shortest path. actually it's up that explains why the. shortest path here's why the shortest. path is important not the average.

the shortest path needs you to identify. when the universe has basically got a. memory not an average so what you want. to do is to say. what is the minimum. number of features that i want to be. able to see in the universe when i find. those features i know the universe has. had a coherent memory. and it's basically a life. and and so. that means it gives you the lower bound. so that's like of course there's going. to be other paths we can be more.

ridiculous right we can have other parts. but it's just the minimum so. probabilistically. at the beginning because assembly theory. was built as a measure for biosignatures. i needed to go there. and then i realized it was intrinsic and. then sarah realized it was intrinsic and. these hyper objects were coming and we. were kind of fusing that notions. together and then the team were like. yeah but. if i have enough energy and i have. enough resources i might not take the. shortest path i might go a bit longer i. might take a really long path because it.

allows me then to. to do something else so what you do is. let's say i've got two different objects. a and b. and they both have different shortest. paths to get them but then if you want. to make a and b together. they will have a compromise so in the. joint assembly space. they might that might be an average but. actually it's the shortest way you can. make both a and b. with a minimum amount of resource in. time so suddenly you then layer these. things up and so the average becomes not. important but it's a.

as you. literally overlap those sets you get a. new shortest path and so what we realize. time and time again when we're doing the. math the shortest path is intrinsic is. fundamental and is measurable which is. kind of mind-blowing so what we're. talking about. some basic ingredients so maybe. we'll talk about that what those basic. ingredients could be and how many step. when you say shortest path how many. steps it takes. to turn those basic ingredients into the. final.

meal. so how to make a p what's the shortest. way to make a. pizza pie. an apple pie that's right. and a pizza and a pie together scratch. yeah uh so there's a lot of ways. um. there's the shortest way and then you. know you take the full spectrum of ways. and there's probably an average. uh like duration. for a noob to make an apple pie. is the average interesting still if you. measure the. average length of the path to assemble a.

thing. does that tell you something about the. way nature usually does it. versus. um. something fundamental about the object. which i think is what you're aiming at. with the assembly index yeah i mean look. we all love to quantify things the. minimum path gives you the lower bounce. you know you're detecting something you. know you're inferring something the. average tells you about really how the. objects are are existing in the. ecosystem or the technology.

and and that and though and there has to. be more paths explored because then you. can. um. happen upon other memories and then. condense them down i'm not making too. much sense but if you look at say let's. just say i mean maybe we're going to get. to alien civilizations later right but i. i would argue very strongly that alien. civilization a and alien civilization b. um they're different assembly spaces so. they're kind of going to be a bit messed. up if they happen upon one another only. when they find some joint overlap in.

their technology because if aliens come. to us and we they don't share any of the. causal graph we've shown but hopefully. they share the periodic table. and some other and bonds and things that. we're going to have to really think. about the language to talk to us aliens. by inferring by using assembly theory to. infer. um. the their language their technology and. other bits and bobs. and the shortest path will help you do. that quickly all right so all all aliens. in these causality graphs have a common.

ancestor. in the if the building blocks are the. same which means they live in the same. universe as us so this depends on how. far back in time you go though but the. universe has all the same building. blocks yeah and like we have to assume. that. so at least there's there's not. different classes of causality. graphs. right no the universe doesn't just say. like. here you get the the red. causality gravity you get the blue one. these basic ingredients and they're.

geographically constrained or. constrained in space or time or. something like that. they're constrained in time because uh. only by the virtue of the fact that. um you need enough time to have passed. for some things to exist. so the universe has to be big enough in. time for some things so just so one. point on the shortest path versus the. average path which i think will get to. this is um you had a nice way of saying. it's like the minimal compression is the. shortest path for the universe to. produce that but it's also like the. first time in the in the ordering of. events that you might expect to see that.

object. but the average path tells you. um something about the actual steps that. were realized and that becomes an. emergent property of that object's. interaction with other objects so it's. not an intrinsic feature of that object. it's the future of the interactions with. other things and so one of the nice. features of assembly is you've basically. gotten rid of you just look at the. things that exist and you've gotten rid. of the mechanisms for constructing them. in some sense like the machines are not. um. as important in the current construction.

of the theory although i would like to. bridge it to some ideas about. constructors. um. but then. um you could only communicate with. things as as lee was saying if you have. some overlap in the past history so if. you had an alien species that had. absolutely no overlap then there would. be no means of communication. but as we become. you know as we progress further and. further in time and more things become. possible because the assembly spaces are. larger because you can have a larger.

assembly space in terms of index and. also just the size of the space because. it's exponentially growing. then more things can happen in the. future and the example i like to give is. actually um when we made first contact. with gravitational waves um because uh. you know that's an alien phenomena. that's been permeating our plate not. alien in life phenom by alien like. something we had never knew existed it's. been you know like we're you know. there's gravitational waves rippling. through this room right now um but we. had to advance to the level of einstein.

writing down. um his theory of relativity and then 100. years of technological development to. even quote unquote see that phenomena. so the. okay to see that phenomena. our. causal graph have to start. intersecting yeah we needed the idea to. emerge first the abstraction right and. then we had to build the technology that. could actually. observe features of that abstraction so. the the nice promising thing is over. time the graph can grow so it can start. overlapping eventually yeah so the. interesting feature of that graph is.

there was an event you know 1.4 billion. years away of a black hole merger that. we detected on our detector and you know. now suddenly we're connected through. this communication channel with this. distant event in our universe that you. know if you think about 1.4 billion. years ago what was happening on this. planet or even further back in time. um that you know there was common. physics underlying all those events but. even for those two events to communicate. i understand what you were going on. about the other week yeah i'm sorry it's. a really abstract example but um but.

your causal graphs are not overlapping. well let's just say now our causal. graphs are overlapping in the deep past. yeah you made a connection with it no i. do like that no no you can tell me what. your epiphany is now that's good because. i was and i should get the jokes before. 30 seconds after. oh i get it now. i wasn't able to comprehend what you.

were talking about with saying the. channel communicating to the past but. what you're saying is. we were able to infer what happened. 1.4 billion years ago we detected the. gravity wave i mean i think it's amazing. that you know at that time we weren't. even we were just becoming multicellular. right it's like insane and then we we we. progress from multicellular clarity. through to technology technology. and build the detector and then for you. know and then we'll just extrapolate. backwards so. so i although we haven't didn't do.

anything back to the graph back in time. we understood his existence then. overlapped going forward and that well. that's because our graphs are larger. yeah but that means that has a that has. a consequence one of the things i was. trying to say is like i'm. i'm i'm i think. i don't know sarah might be she can. correct me information first and i'm a. object first kind of guy so i mean. there's things that get constructed. there has to be this transition in. random constructions so when the the. constructing the object is construct. being constructed by the process.

bakes in that memory and those memories. then add on and add on and add on. so as it becomes more competent and life. is about taking those memories and. compressing them increasing their. autonomy. and and so i think that you know like. the cell that we have in biology on. earth is our way of doing that that. really the maximum. ability to take memories and to act on. the future. oh i think that's mathematics. um no. mathematics doesn't exist no but that's. the point the point is that abstractions.

do exist they're real physical things we. call them. okay abstractions but the point. about mathematics that i think is so i i. don't i don't disagree i think you're. object first and i'm information first. but i think i'm i'm only information. first in the sense that i think the. thing that we need to explain is why. what abstractions are and what they are. as physical things because of all all of. human history we've thought that there. were these properties that are. disembodied exist outside of the. universe and.

really they do exist in the universe and. we just don't understand what their. physics is so i think mathematics is a. really good example we do theoretical. physics with math but imagine doing. physics of math and then thinking about. math as a physical object and math is. super interesting i think this is why we. think it describes reality so well. because it's the most copyable kind of. information it retains its properties. when you move it between physical media. which means that it's very. d and. so it seems to describe the universe. really well but it probably is because. it's information that's very deep in our.

past and it's just. we invented a way of. communicating it very effectively. between us. isn't math more. fundamental isn't as the assembly of the. graph isn't basically a i'm gonna sell i. sound completely boring it's like math. assembly theory invented math but it did. it has to be okay. [Music]. [Applause]. so what what is uh what is math. exactly it's a uh.

a nice simplification. at this simple description. of what so we have a computer scientist. a physicist in the chemist. here why i can do a bar i think the. chemist is going to define math and you. guys can correct me. go for it i would say. lay it honestly. we're ready. i think the ability to um to label. objects and and place them into classes. and then do operations on the objects is. what math is.

so on that point what does it mean to be. object first. versus information first. so what what's the difference between. object and information when you get to. that low fundamental level well i might. change my view so i'm stuff first the. stuff. and then when stuff becomes objects it. has to invent information. and then the information acts on more. stuff and becomes more objects so i. think there is a transition to. information. that occurs when you go from stuff to. objects.

yeah information is. emergent not emergent information is. actionable memories from the universe. so when when memories become actionable. that's information. but there's always memory but it's not. actionable. yeah and then it's not information great. and actionable is what you can create. you can use it. if you can't use it then it's not. information if you can't transmit it if. you if it doesn't have any causal. consequences in the force i don't.

understand why is that not information. it's not information it's it's um it's. uh stuff it's stuff happening but it's. not it's not cause yeah yeah we can this. is happening no not happening requires. information no no no no. stuff is always happening no this is. where the physicists get and the. mathematicians get themselves in a loop. because they think the universe i mean. i think uh say max tegmark and and is. very playful and say like the universe. universe just meth well the universe is.

just math then we might as well not. bother having any conversation because. the conversation already written we just. never go to the future and say can you. just give us the conversation it's. happened already so i think the problem. is that mathematicians. are so successful labeling stuff and so. successful understanding of stuff. through those labels they forget that. actually the those labels had to emerge. and that information. had to be built on those memories so. memory in the universe so constraints. graph when they become actionable and. the graph can loop back on itself or. interact with other graphs and they can.

intersect. those memories become actionable and. therefore their information and i think. you just changed my son my my mind on. something pretty big but i don't have a. pen so i can't i'm gonna write it down. later but roughly the idea is it's like. you've got these these two graphs of. objects of stuff. they have memories. and then when they intersect. and then they can act on each other. that's maybe the mechanism by which. information is then so then you can then. abstract so one when one graph can then.

build another graph and say hey you'll. have to go through all the nonsense we. had to go through here's literally the. way to do it staff always comes first. but then when staff builds the. abstraction the abstraction can be then. teleported onto other stuff directions. is the looping back yeah power. okay am i making i don't know i got. stuck yeah so first. a god made stuff. and after that. when you start to be able to uh form. abstractions that's when the.

god is the memory of the universe can't. remember. otherwise there's no way did you just. differ in that statement hundreds of. years from now what does that mean what. did the humans mean by this hey look. don't don't diss my my one-liners. 15 seconds to come up i don't know what. it means what does it mean. okay wait we need to. how do we get on to this. we were uh. time. causality mathematics.

so what is mathematics in this uh. picture of stuff. objects. memory. and um. information. is. what is accurate mathematics it's the. most efficient labeling scheme that you. can apply to lots of different graphs. well the labeling scheme. doesn't make it sound useful can i try. yeah sure please have you rejected my. definition of mathematics i'm shocked. yeah no i'm sorry um but it's correct.

oh i'm sorry excellent um no i mean i. think um i think we have a problem right. because we we can't not be us like we're. stuck in the shells we are and we're. trying to observe the world and so. mathematics looks like it has certain. properties and i guess the thought. experiment i find is useful is to try to. imagine if you were outside of us. looking at us as physical systems using. mathematics what would be the specific. features you associate. to the property of. understanding mathematics and being able. to implement it in the universe.

right. and um and when you do that mathematics. seems to have some really interesting. properties relative to other kinds of. abstraction we might talk about like. language or artistic expression. one of those properties is the one i. mentioned already that is really easy to. copy between physical media so if i give. you a mathematical statement you almost. immediately know what i mean if i tell. you the sky is blue you might say is it. cobalt blue is it is your blue what. color blue do you mean and you have a. harder time visualizing what i actually. mean so mathematics carries a lot of.

meaning with it when it's copied between. physical systems it's also the reason we. use it to communicate with computers. um and then the second one is it retains. its property of actually what it can do. in the universe when it's copied so the. example i like to give there is is think. about like newton's law of gravitation. um it's actually it's a it's a. compressed regularity of a bunch of uh. phenomena that we observe in the. universe but then it'll that information. actually is a causal in a sense that it. allows us to do things we wouldn't be.

able to do without that particular. knowledge and that particular. abstraction and in this case like launch. satellites to space or send people to. mars or whatever it is um. so. so if you look at us from the outside. and you say what is it for physical. systems to invent a thing called. mathematics and then to use uh. and and then. and then it to become a physical. observable mathematics is kind of like. the universally copyable information. that allows uh new possibility spaces to. be open in the future because it allows.

this kind of ability to map one physical. system to another and actually. understand that the general principles. yeah so is it helping the uh overlap of. causal graphs then by mapping oh well i. think that's the explanation for what it. is in terms of the physical theory of. assembly would be some feature of the. structure of. the assembly spaces the causal graphs. and their relationship to each other so. for example and i mean this is things. that we're going to have to work out. over the next few years i mean we're in. totally uncharted conceptual territory. here um but.

as is usual diving off the deep end um. but i would expect that we would be able. to come up with a theory of like why is. it that some physical systems can. communicate with each other. like language language is basically. because we're objects extended over time. and some of the history of that assembly. space actually overlaps and when we. communicate it's because we actually. have shared structure in our causal. history so let me have another quick go. at this right so i think we all agree so. i think um. we take mathematics for granted because.

we've gone through this chain right of. you know um we all we all share a. language now okay and we can well we. share length so we have languages that. we can we can make interoperable. and and so whether you're speaking. i don't know all the different dialects. of chinese all the different dialects of. english. french german whatever you can. interconvert them the interesting thing. about mathematics now is that everybody. on planet earth every human being and. computers um share that common language. that language was constructed by a.

process in time so what i'm trying to. say is assembly invented math is those. those pro right from the you know. mathematics didn't occur it didn't exist. before life abstraction was invented by. life right that doesn't mean that the. universe wasn't capable of mathematical. things wait wait a minute can we just. ask that that old famous question is. math invented or discovered so when you. say assembly invented. or whatever. uh you you it means this is simply a. mathematical theory but sorry.

right are we arguing exactly are we. arguing that that's what it sounds like. i we discovering. no well yes and no i would say. you called mathematics a language. i would say developing like i'm pretty. sure that um. there are some very common seeds of. mathematics in the universe right but. actually not the mathematics that we are. finding now. is not discovered it's invented. and but even though i think those two. terms are very triggering and i don't.

think they're necessarily useful because. i think that what people do the. mathematicians that say oh mathematics. was discovered. because they live in a universe where. there is no time and it just all exists. but what i'm saying is and i think in. the same way you can create let's say. i'm going to go and create and make a. piece of art. did i make that piece of art or did i. escape discover it. like inventing the airplane did i invent. the airplane let's stick with the. airplane the airplane's a good one i.

let's say i'm i did i discovered the. airplane well in a way the universe. discovered the airplane because it just. chucked a load of atoms together a load. of random human beings won't do stuff. and they we we discovered the aeroplane. in the space of possibilities but here's. the thing when the space of. possibilities is so. vast. infinite almost. and you're able to actualize one of. those in an object and you are inventing. it so in mathematics because there are. infinite number of theorems the fact. you're actually pulling there's no. difference between.

inventing a mathematical structure and. inventing the airplane they're the same. thing but that doesn't mean that now the. airplane exists in the universe there's. something weird about the universe that. you know so i think that the more this. is the thing that i you probably the. more memory. required for the object the more. invented it is so when a mathematical. theorem has a. hazard needs more bytes to store it the. more invented it is and the less bites. the more discovered is. but everything then is invented it's.

just more or less invented absolutely. okay. has to generate everything as it goes. yeah. and it wasn't there in the beginning and. the way we're thinking it. when you're thinking about the. difference between invented discovered. is because we're throwing away all the. memory yeah so if you start to think in. terms of causality and time. then those things become the same. everything is. invented and the idea is to make. everything intrinsic to the universe so. i think one of the features of assembly.

theory is we don't want to have external. observers there's been this long. tradition in physics of trying to. describe the universe from the outside. and not the inside. and. the universe has to generate everything. itself if you do it from the inside. assembly theory describes how the. universe builds itself. did it take you 15 seconds to say that. yeah to come up with that also no i've. thought about that before okay a good. line. it's like are you making funny no i'm. not making fun i'm having fun there's a. difference oh that's good all right i'm. you know she's inventing i'm not all.

intimidated. and there's a causal history to that fun. um. you mentioned that there's no way to. communicate with aliens until. there's overlap in the causal craft. communication. includes being able to see them. and like what are we. this is the question is. um. is communication any kind of detection. and if so. what do aliens look like as you get more.

and more overlap on the cause of gravity. you're assuming let's assume. that so when you see them when they see. you. you're assuming they have vision they. have the ability to construct in 3d and. in time there's a lot of assumptions. we're making what detection all right. let's step back so yes okay you're right. so when in the english language when we. say the word see we mean visually they. show up to a party it's like oh wow. that's an alien that's visual that's 3d. that's. okay. and that's also assuming scale.

spatial scale of something that's. visible to you so it can't be. microscopic or it can't be so big that. you don't even realize that's an entity. okay um but other kinds of detection too. i would make it more abstract and go. down i was thinking this morning about. how to rewrite the arecibo message in. assembly theory and also to abandon. binary because i don't think aliens. necessarily why should they have binary. well they have some basic elements with.

which to to do information exchange. let's make it more. fundamental more universal so we need to. think about what is a universal way of. making a memory and then we should. re-encode arecibo in that way. what's more basic than zeros and ones. well it's really difficult to get out. that causal chain because we're so let's. raise the idea of zero for a moment it. took human beings a long time to come up. with the idea of zero now now you've got. the idea of zero you can't throw it away. it's so useful to discover the idea yeah. to discover an event.

i don't know but it took a long time so. it was. invented that's right yeah i think zero. was invented so exactly so it's not a. given that aliens know what zero is that. that's the one the massive assumption. it's a useful it's a useful discovery. that you're saying if you break the. causal chain there might be some other. more efficient way of representing why i. want to meet him and ask him. for a shortcut but you won't be able to. um ask him until what so i interrupted. you and i think you're making a good. point i was just going to say well look.

thank you. sorry. rather than saying he's internet tweet. at him for the rude interruptions okay. i'm sorry no it's okay um maybe it's. change how do we so. oh i don't know what it's like to be an. alien i would like to know. what is the full spectrum of what aliens. might look like. to us. now that we've laid this all on. on the table of like all right so there. has to be some overlap and this.

uh causal chain that led to them. what are we what are we looking for what. do you think we should be looking for so. you met you mentioned mass spec. measuring certain objects that aliens. could create or are aliens themselves. um we show up to a planet or maybe not a. planet or maybe what what the what the. hell is the basic object we're trying to. show ourselves assembly index of let's. cut ourselves a break let's assume that. they are. they they're metabolized they've got an. energy source and they're they've.

there are a size that we can recognize. let's give our cut ourselves a break. because there could be aliens that are. so big we don't recognize we're seeing. them there might be aliens that are so. small we don't yet have the ability to. you know we have microscopes we can see. you know far enough away that just. wouldn't be i see them so that's a good. range so let's just make a range let's. just be very am for eccentric and say. we're gonna look for aliens roughly our. size and technology our size because we. we know it's possible on earth right i. mean a reasonable thing to do would be. to to find exoplanets that in the same.

zone as earth in terms of heat and stuff. and then say. hey if there's that same kind of gravity. same type of stuff we could reasonably. assume. that the alien life there might use a. similar kind of physical infrastructure. and then we're good so then then you'll. then then your question becomes really. relevant and say right let's use vision. sound touch. and and so okay that's really nice so. that if there's a lot of aliens out. there. if there's a good likelihood if you.

match to the planet that they're going. to be in the same spatial and temporal. operating in the same spatial temporal. domain as humans okay within that. what. wha. what did they look like. visually what do they sound like. uh what are they oh god this sounds. creepy tastes like. what is it. oh it smells like smell like that sounds. like our clubhouse and he's like can we. have sex with aliens which was basically.

me saying passionate love but it wasn't. actually about sex it was about is our. chemistry compatible right is there some. yeah so yeah yeah can can we um yeah are. they edible too they could be very. edible they could be delicious that's. why i want to see some aliens right. because i think are there i think. evolution. um. i mean evolution exploits symmetry right. because why why generate memory why. generate storage the need for storage. space when you can use symmetry. so. and symmetry is quite maybe quite. effective in allowing you to.

mechanically design stuff right. so maybe alien it could you could be. reasonable to assume that aliens could. have. they could be bipedal they could be. symmetric in the same way. might have a couple of eyes or a couple. of sensors well we can make make that. and perhaps there's this whole zoo of. different aliens out there and we'll. never get to be able to classify some of. the weird aliens we can't interact with. because they have made such weird stuff. yeah but we are just going to look at. we're going to find aliens that look. most like us why not.

because those are the first ones we're. likely to see yeah yeah but i i think. it's really hard to imagine what the. space of aliens is because the space is. huge because you know like one of the. arguments that you can make about why. life emerges in chemistry is because. chemistry. is the first. scale in terms of like you know building. up objects from elementary objects. um. that the number of possible things that. could exist is larger than the universe. can possibly make all at once right so. um. so you imagine you have two planets and. they're cooking some geochemistry you.

know our planet invented one kind of. biochemistry and presumably as you start. building up the complexity of the. molecules the chances of the overlap in. those trajectories those causal chains. being built up is probably very low. um and it gets lower and lower as it. gets further advanced along its. evolutionary path so i think it's very. difficult to. imagine predicting the technologies that. aliens are going to have. i mean it's it's so it's you're looking. at basically planets have kind of. convergent chemistry but there's some.

variability and then you're looking. basically at the outgrowth into the. possibility space chemistry so do you. think it would detect the the technology. the objects created by aliens before we. detect the aliens. possibly so when you're talking about. measuring assembly index. um don't you think we would detect the. garbage first. like at the outskirts of alien. civilizations is this is going to be. trash. [Music]. i think i would come back to arecibo the. arecibo message sent from the arecibo. telescope built by.

drake i think and and sagan how's. arecibo spelled. a-r-e-c-i-b-o yes thank you. yeah and there we go out there that. that's the telescope that sent the. message that you're doing so that. message was sent. where it was beamed it beamed at a star. of a specific star um and it was sent. out many years ago um. and what they did so this is why i was. pushing on binary is a binary message. i think it's a semi-prime. number of characters so i think 20 73 by.

23. i think and it basically represents. human bit proton. um binary human beings dna male and. female. and it's it's really cool. but i'm just wondering if um it could be. done. not making any because he's made. assumptions that aliens speak binary. make that assumption why not just assume. that if the difference between physics. chemistry and biology is the amount of. memory that's instead that's recordable.

by the substrate. then surely the universal thing my i'm. going to make some sacrilegious. statement which i think is pretty. awesome um for people to argue with so. this is uh we're looking at an image. where it's the the entirety of the. message encoded in binary. and then there's a probably. interpretation of different parts of. that image there's a there's a person. um there's green parts it looks like for. people just listening like a tetra game.

of tetris so it's encoding in minimal. ways a bunch of cool information. probably representing all of us so the. top it's kind of teaching us how to. count and then all goes all the way down. teaching you chemistry and then just. says. but it makes so many assumptions and i. think if we can actually so. i think i mean sarah's much more. eloquent expressing this but i'll have a. go and you can correct it if you want. which is like um we one of the things. that sarah has had a profound effect on. the way i. look at the origin of life and this is. one of the reasons why we're working.

together because. we don't really care about the origin of. life we want to make life make aliens. and find aliens make aliens find aliens. i think we might have to make aliens in. the lab before we find aliens in the. universe right i think that would be a. cool way to do it. so what is it about the universe that. creates a aliens well it's selection. through assembly theory creating. memories because when you create. memories you can then command. your domain you can basically do stuff. you can command matter.

so we need to find a way by. understanding what life is of how the. minimal way to command matter how that. would emerge in the universe. and be if we want to communicate i mean. maybe we don't want to necessarily. uniformly communicate. um what i would do perhaps if i had is i. would send out lots of probes. away from earth that have this magic way. of communicating with aliens get them. quite far away from earth. plausibly deniable and then send out the. message that would then attract all the. aliens and then basically work out if. they're a friend or foe and how they.

want to hang out the messages being. something has to do with the memory yes. like the the assembly version of arecibo. so that everyone in the universe that. has been understands what life is. so aliens need to work out what they are. once they've worked out what they are. they then can work out how to encode. what they are and then they can go out. and send messages it's like the. universal um the rosetta stone. for life in the universe. is working out how the memories are. built i don't know if sarah you have any. well.

um. whether that you would agree with that. no i i i wanted to raise a different. point which is about the fact that we. can't see the aliens yet because we. haven't gotten the technology. and presumably we think assembly theory. is the right way of doing it but i don't. think that we know how to go from the. kind of data you're describing lex like. you know visual data or smell to. construct the assembly spaces yet and in. some ways i think that the problem of. life detection really is the same. problem at the foundations of ai that we.

don't understand how to get machines to. see causal graphs to see reality in. terms of causation. um and so i i think assembly and ai are. going to intersect in interesting ways. hopefully. um. but the the sort of key point and i've. been trying to make this argument more. recently. um and might write an essay on it is you. know people talk about the great filter. right and which is again this like. doomsday thing that you know people want. to say there's no aliens out there. because something terrible happened to. them um and it matters whether that's in.

our in our past or our future as to the. longevity of our species presumably. which is why people find it interesting. but i think it's not it's not a physical. filter it's not like things go extinct i. think it's literally we don't have the. technology to see them. um and you can see that with microscopes. i mean we didn't know there were. microbes on this table for our tables. for thousands of years or telescopes. like there's so much of the universe we. can't see and then basically what we. have done as a species is outsource our. physical perceptions to technology. building microscopes based on our eyes.

um you know and building seismometers. based on our sense of feelings like feel. earthquakes and things and ai is. basically we're trying to outsource. what's actually happening in our. thinking apparatus into machines now. into technological devices and maybe. that's the key technology that's going. to allow us to see things like us and. see the universe in a totally different. way but you kind of mentioned the great. filter do you think there's a way. through technology to stop being able to. see stuff so can you take step backwards. i think so yeah did you imply that with. the great so like well no i mean i think. there's a great perceptual filter in the.

sense that. a. a. example of life evolving on a planet. over billions of years has to acquire a. certain amount of knowledge and. technology to actually recognize. the phenomena that it is well that's the. sense i have. is uh. i mean you talk with physicist engineers. in general that there's this kind of. idea that we have. most of the tools are ready just to hear. the signal. but to me it feels like we don't have.

any of the tools to see the segment yeah. i agree that's that's the biggest like. to hear we don't have the tools to. really hear to see yeah. are everywhere we just don't have the. the um yeah i mean well. oh that's i mean i got this in part. actually because you were like you know. that last time i was here was like look. at the carpet you know could it like if. you had an alien detector where the. carpet be aliens i mean i think we. really don't. i i would be both the aliens would. nevertheless have a high assembly index. or produce things like high assembly.

yeah yeah yeah and those things have a. high assembly index. uh you have to have a detector that can. recognize high assembly index in all its. forms yeah yes that's it that's it take. data. construct assembly space yes patterns. basically so one way to think about high. assembly index is interesting patterns. uh of basic ingredients i can give you. an example because i mean molecules. we've been talking about in objects but. we're also trying to do it in um spatial. trajectories like imagine you're just.

um like i i always get bothered by the. fact that like when you look at birds. flocking you can describe that with like. a simple boys model or like you know. people use spin glass to describe animal. behavior and those are like really. simple physics models yet you're looking. at a. system that you know has agency and. there's intelligence in those birds and. i and basically like you can't help but. think there must be some statistical. signatures of the fact that they're. those that's a group of agents versus. you know like i don't know you know the. physics example maybe like i don't know.

brownie emotion or something um and so. what we're trying to do is actually. apply assembly to trajectory data to try. to say there's a minimal amount of um. causal history to build up certain. trajectories for observed agents that's. like an agency detector for behavior do. you do you think it's possible to do. some like like voids or. those kinds of things. like artificial like cellular automata. play with those ideas with assembly um. with assembly theory have you found any. useful really simple mathematical.

um like simulation tools that allow you. to play with these concepts so like one. of course you're doing mass spec in this. physical space with with chemistry. but it just seems well i mean computer. science person maybe it seems easier to. just i agree with you and sexier in. terms of uh tweeting visual information. on. uh twitter or instagram more importantly. um. to play like here's an organism of a low.

assembly index and here's an organism of. a high assembly index and let's watch. them create more and more memories. uh and more and more complex objects and. so like and mathematically you get to. observe what that looks like to build up. an intuition what assembly index is like. we are building a toolkit right now so i. think it's a really good idea but what. we've got to do is i'm kind of still. obsessed with the infrastructure. required and one of the reasons why i. was pushing on. information and mathematics when human. beings. when human being we take a lot of the.

infrastructure for granted and and i. think we have to strip that back a bit. for going forward but you're absolutely. right i would agree that. i think. the fact that we exist in the universe. this is like i can see there are lots of. people disagree with the statement but i. don't think i don't think sarah will but. i don't know the fact that objects exist. i don't think anyone on earth can just. will disagree. that objects can exist elsewhere right. but they will disagree that life can. exist elsewhere but what perhaps i'm. trying to say is that the the.

the acquisition the universe's ability. to acquire memory. is the very first step for building life. and. that must be that's so easy to happen so. therefore alien life is everywhere. because all alien life is. is uh those memories being compressed. and minimalized and the alien equivalent. of the cell working. so i think that we will build new. technologies to find aliens. um but we do not we need to understand.

what we are first and and how we go from. physics to chemistry to biology. the most interesting thing as you're. saying between these two organisms. different assemblies is when you get. into biology biology gets more and more. weird more and more contingent where. physics is pro chemistry is less weird. because the rules of chemistry are. smaller than the rules of biology and. then going away to physics where you. have a very. nicely tangible number of ways of. arranging things.

and i think. assembly theory just helps you. appreciate that and so once we get there. my dream is that we are just going to be. able to suddenly are. i mean i'm i mean i'm maybe just being. really arrogant here i don't mean to be. arrogant it's just again i've just got. this hammer called assembly and. everything's nail but i think that once. we crack it we'll be able to use. assembly theory plus telescopes to find. aliens. do you have sarah do you have. disagreements with lee on the number of. aliens that are out there so and. actually yeah well and what they look.

like so any of the things we've been. talking about is there um nuanced. oh it's always nice to discover. uh wisdom. through nuance. disagreement yeah i i don't i don't. wholly disagree but i think um but i do. think i disagree it's kind of there's. nuance there um but but you can disagree. no it's fine um. it is nuanced right so you made the. point earlier that you think um. you know once we discover what alien.

like what life is we'll see alien life. everywhere. um and i think i agree on some levels in. the sense that i think the physics that. governs us is universal but i i don't. know how far i would go to say to say. that we're a likely phenomenon because. we don't understand. all of the features of the transition at. the original life which which we would. just say in assembly as you go from uh. the no memory physics to. uh. there's like a critical transition. around the assembly index where. assembliness starts to increase and. that's what we call the evolution of the. biosphere and complexification of the.

biosphere. so there's a principle of increasing. assembliness or that goes back to what i. was saying at the very beginning about. the physics of the possible that the. universe basically gets in this mode of. trying to make. as much possibilities as possible um now. how often that transition happens. that you get the kind of cascading. effect that we get in our biosphere i. think we don't know if we did we would. know the likelihood of life in the. universe and a lot of people want to say. life is common but i don't think that we. can say that yet so we have the. empirical data which i think you would.

agree with but then there's this other. kind of. thought experiment i have which i i. don't like um but i did have it um which. is um. you know if life emerges on one planet. and you get this real high density of. things that can exist on that planet is. it sort of dominating the density of. creation that the universe can actually. generate so like if you're thinking. about counting entropy right like the. universe has a certain amount of stuff. in it and then you know. assembly is kind of like an entropic. principle it's not entropy but the idea. is that now transformations among stuff.

or the actual physical histories of. things now become things that you have. to count as far as. saying that these things exist and we're. increasing the number of things that. exist. and uh and if you think about that. cosmologically maybe earth is sucking up. all the life potential of the whole. universe i don't know. but how's that can you explain that a. little bit why can any one geographical. region. suck up the creative capacity of the. universe um just like. i i know it's a ridiculous thought i.

don't i don't actually agree with it but. it was just the thought i love that you. can have thoughts. that you don't like and don't agree with. but you have to think through them. anyway yeah. the human mind is fascinating yeah i i. think these sort of um. like counter factual thought experiments. are really good when you're trying to. build new theories because you have to. think through all the consequences and. there are people that want to try to. account for say the degrees of freedom. on our planet in cosmological. inventories of you know talking about. the entropy of the universe and you know.

and when we're thinking about like. cosmological arrow of time and things. like that now i think those are pretty. superficial proposals as they stand now. but assembly would give you a way of. counting it and then the question is if. there's a certain maximal capacity of. the universe's speed of generating stuff. which lee always has this argument that. assembly is about time the universe is. generating more states really what it's. generating is more. assembly possibilities and then dark. energy might be one manifestation of. that that the universe is accelerating. its expansion because that makes more. physical space and what's happening on.

our planet is it's accelerating in the. expansion of possible things that exist. and maybe the universe just has a. maximal rate of what it can do to. generate things and then if if there is. a maximal rate maybe only a certain. number of planets can actually do that. or there's a trade-off about the pace of. growth on certain planets versus others. i have a million questions there would. you have you have thoughts and just a. quick yeah i'll just say something very. quickly. no it's good i think i get it i think i. get it so um all i want to say is. when i mean aliens are everywhere i mean.

memories are the prerequisite for. aliens via selection and then. concentration of selection when. selection becomes autonomous so what i. would love to do is to build say a. magical telescope that was a memory a. magical one yeah. or a real one there would be a memory. detector to see selection so you could. you could get to exoplanets and say that. exoplanet looks like there's lots of. selection going on there maybe there's. evolution and maybe there's going to be. life so what i'm trying to say is narrow. down the regions of space where you say.

there's definitely evidence of memory as. high assembly there or not the high. assembly because that would be life but. if select this where where it's capable. of happening and then we've then that. would also help us frame the search for. aliens i don't know how likely it is to. make the transition to cells and all the. other things i think you're right but i. think that is. yeah we just need to get more data well. i didn't like the thought experiment. because i don't like the idea that if. the universe has a maximal limit on the. amount it can generate per unit time. that our existence is actually.

precluding the existence of other things. i'll just say one thing but i think. that's probably true anyway because the. resource limitations so i don't like. your thought experiment because i think. it's wrong because well no no no i do. like thor express so what you're trying. to say is like there is a chain of. events that goes back that's manifestly. collimated with life on earth. and you're not saying that life isn't. possible elsewhere say that there has. been these number of things contingent. things that have happened that have. allowed life to merge here um that. doesn't mean that life can't emerge. elsewhere but you're saying that these. the intersection of events may have may.

be concentrated here right. um and i think that's not exact not. exactly it's more like um. like uh you know if you you look at say. the causal graphs are fundamental maybe. space is an emergent property which is. consistent with some proposals in. quantum gravity but also how we talk. about things in assembly theory. then the universe is causal graphs. generating. more structure in clausal graphs right. so this is how the universe is unfolding. and maybe there's a. cap on the rate of generation like the.

there's only so much stuff that gets. made per. update of the universe and then if. there's a lot of stuff being made in a. particular region that happens to look. the same locally spatially that's an. after effect. of the fact that the whole causal graph. is updating like it's it it. uh yeah i don't i don't know that i. think that that doesn't work i don't. think it works either but i don't have a. good argument in my mind about but i do. like the idea of the capacity the. universe because you've got the number. of states yeah we can come back to it. well let me ask real quick like why does.

uh different like local pockets. of the universe start remembering stuff. how does memory uh emerge exactly so. at the origin. of the universe. i was very forgetful that's when the. physicists were happiest as low memory. objects um. which is like ultra low memory objects. which is what the definition of stuff. okay so how does memory emerge how does. which is.

this how does this the temporal. stickiness. so objects emerge. um. i i i i'm going to take a very. chemocentric point of view because i. can't imagine any other way of doing it. you you could think of other ways maybe. um but i would say. heterogeneity in matter. is where the memory so you must have. enough. different ways of rearranging matter for. there to be a memory so what that means. is if you've got particles colliding in.

a box let's just take a um some in or. some elements in a box. those elements can combine in a. combinatorial set of ways so there's a. commentary explosion of the number of. molecules or minerals or solid objects. bonds being made. because there's such a large number the. population of different objects that are. possible this goes back to assembly. theory where assembly theory there's. four types of universes right so you've. got basically a um and this is what one. was up earlier where.

one universe where you've just got. everything is possible so you can take. all the atoms and combine them and make. everything then you've got basically. what is the assembly combinatorial where. you basically have to accrue information. in steps then you've got um assembly. observed right and then you've got the. object assembly going back so what that. mean what i'm trying to say is like if. you can take atoms and make bonds let's. say you take a nitrogen atom and add it. to a carbon atom you find an amino acid. then you add another carbon atom on in a.

particular configuration then another. one all different molecules they all. represent different histories. so i would say for me right now the most. simple route into life seems to be. through recording memories and chemistry. but that doesn't mean there can't be. other ways and can't be other emergent. effects but i i think if you can make. bonds and lots of different bonds. and they those molecules can have a. causal effect on the future so imagine a. box of atoms.

and then then you combine those atoms in. some way so you make molecule. a. from load of atoms and then molecule a. can go back to the box. and influence the box. then you make. a prime or a b or abc and that process. keeps going and that's where the. memories come from is that heterogeneity. in the universe from bonding. i don't know if it makes anything and. it's. beginning to flourish.

at the chemistry level. yeah so the physicists have no no. no like not enough yeah the phys i mean. they're like desperately begging well. the physicist would claim. freedom yeah uh and heterogeneous. components to play with yeah that's. exactly it what do you think about that. sarah i mentioned already i think it's. significant that whatever physics. governs life emerges actually in. chemistry it's not relevant at the.

subatomic scale or. even at the atomic scale it's in well. atomic scale because chemistry but like. when you get into this this. combinatorial diversity that you get. from combining things on the periodic. table that's when. selection actually matters or the fact. that some things can exist and others. can't exist actually starts to matter. so i think of it like. you don't you don't study gravity inside. the atomic nucleus you study it in terms. of large scale structure of the universe. or black holes or things like that and.

whatever we're talking about as physics. of information or physics of assembly. becomes relevant at a certain scale of. reality and um and the transition that. you're talking about i would think of is. just when you get a sufficient density. in terms of the assembly space of like. the relationship of the overlap and and. the assembly space which is like a. feature of common memory there is this. transition. um to assembly dominated physics. whatever that is. oh like when we're talking about and.

we're trying to map out exactly what. that transition looks like we're pretty. sure. you know of some of its features but we. haven't done all of that do you think if. you were there in the early universe you. would have been able to predict the. emergence of chemistry and biology and i. asked that because at this stage as. humans do you think we can possibly. predict. the length of memory that's that might. be able to be formed. later on. in this pocket in the universe like how. how complex. is uh what is the ceiling of assembly.

i think as much time as you have in the. past is how much you can predict in the. future because that it's actually. physical in the system and you have to. have enough time for. uh. features of that structure to exist. wait let me push back on that wait god. what isn't that isn't there somewhere in. the universe that's like a shortest path. that's been that stretches all the way. to the beginning yeah that's building. some giant monster. maybe yeah yes. so the universe has as much memory as.

the largest assembly object in the. universe yeah right but like so you. can't predict. you can't predict any deeper than that. no right so like that i guess. i'm saying is. like what intuition do you have about. complexity living in the world that. you'd have today. right because you you just you can. i mean i guess how long. um. does it get more fun like isn't there. going to be at some point because. there's a there's a heat death in the. universe isn't it. going to be a point of the most.

uh of the highest assembly of object. with the highest probability being. generated when is the universe going to. be the most fun and can we freeze. ourselves and then live then exactly. and will you know when you're having the. most fun that this is the best time. you're in your prime are you going to do. what everyone does which is deny that. you're in your prime and the best years. are still ahead of you. i don't know what option do you have um. uh. i i i mean the problem is with there's a. lots of. lots of really interesting features here.

i just want to mention one thing that. might be. is i do think assembly theory applies. all the way back to subatomic particles. and i also think that cosmological. selection might have been actually there. there might be it's not i would say it's. a really boring bit but it's really. important for a cosmologist that the. universes have gone through was it lee. smolin who proposed this maybe that. there is this that basically universe. evolves you've got the wrong constants. we'll start again and the most. productive constants where you can allow. particles to form in a certain way get. propagated to the next universe we go.

again so actually selection goes all the. way back and there's these cycle of. universes and now this universe has been. selected because. um life can occur and it carries on but. i've i've really butchered that there's. a much more so this is some aspect where. through the selection process. there's parameters that are being. fine-tuned and we happen to be living in. one where there's some level of. fine-tuning. is there given that. um can you still man the case that we. humans are alone in the universe we are.

the highest assembly index object in the. universe yeah i can i guess sad though i. mean so from is it possible yes. it's possible. let's assume. well we we know. i mean it's possible. so let me. so okay so there is a particular. set of elements on earth in a particular. ratio. and the right gravitational constant. and the right viscosity you know of. staff being able to move around the.

right right distance from our sun. right number of offense where we have a. moon. um the earth is rotating. um. the late heavy bombardment produced a. lot of. brought in the right stuff and um. and mars was cooking up cam you know the. right molecules first so it was. habitable before earth was literally. doing the combinatorial search and. before mars kind of became unhabitable. it it seeded earth with the right.

molecular replicators. and there was just the right stuff on. earth and that's how the miracle of life. occurred. although i find i'm very uncomfortable. with that because actually because life. came. so quickly in the earth's past. but that doesn't mean. that life is easy elsewhere it just. might mean that that the the because. chemistry is actually not a long-term. thing chemistry can happen quickly so.

maybe. going on with a steel manning of the. argument to say actually the fact that. life emerged quickly doesn't mean that. life is easy it just means that the. chemistry was right on earth and earth. is very special and that's why there's. no life anywhere else in the universe. yeah so sarah mentioned this kind of. cascading thing. so what if. that's the reason we're lucky is that we. got to have a rare cascading. of um like accelerating cascading effect.

in terms of the complexity of things. so like. maybe most of the universe is trying to. get sticky with the memory. and it's not able to really form it and. then we got really lucky in that and it. has nothing. like there's a lot of earth like. conditions let's say. but it's just. you really really have to get lucky on. this. but i'm doing experiment i'm doing. experiments right now in fact. experiments that sarah and i are working. on because we have some joint funding. for this where we're seeing that the. universe can get sticky really quickly.

now of course we're being very. anthropocentric we're using laboratory. tools we're using theory but actually. the phenomena of selection. the process of heterogen developing. heterogeneity. we can do in the lab we're just seeing. the very first hints of it and. it wouldn't it be great if um we can. start to pin down. a bit more precisely. um begin because becoming good. bayesianists for this for the origin of. life and the emergence of life to.

finding out what kind of chemistries we. really need to look for. and i'm becoming increasingly confident. we'll be able to do that in the next few. years make life in the lab or make some. selection in the lab. from inorganic stuff from sand from. rocks from dead stuff from moon wouldn't. it be great to get stuff from the moon. put it in our origin of life experiment. and make moon life. and restrict ourselves to interesting. self-replicating stuff that we find on. the moon. well sarah what do you think about this.

approach of engineering life in order to. understand life so building life in the. in the machine yeah so. i mean lee and i are trying right now to. build a vision for. a large. institute or experimental program. basically to do this problem but i think. of it as like. we need to simulate a planet so like the. large hadron collider was supposed to be. simulating conditions just after the big. bang lee built a lot of technology in. his lab to do these kind of selection. engines but the question you're asking.

is how many experiments do you need to. run what volume of chemical space do you. need to explore before you actually. see an event and i like to make an. analogy to one of my favorite particle. physics experiments which is super kami. akande that's looking for the decay of. the proton so this is something that we. predicted theoretically but we've never. observed in our universe and basically. what they're doing is every time they. don't see a proton decay event they have. a longer bound on the lifetime of a. proton so imagine we built an experiment. with the idea in mind of trying to.

simulate planetary conditions physically. simulate you can't simulate original. life in the computer you have to do it. in an experiment. simulate enough planetary conditions to. explore the space what's possible and. bound the probability for an original. life event even if you're not observing. it you can talk about the probability. but we hopefully. life is. not exponentially. rare and we would then be able to evolve. in an automated system.

alien life in the lab and if we can do. that then we understand the physics as. well as we understand what we can do in. particle accelerators. so keep expanding physically the. simulation. the physical simulation. until something happens yeah or just. build build a big enough volume of. chemical experiments and and evolve them. just say volume you mean like literally. volume i mean uh physical volume in. terms of space but i actually mean. volume in terms of the combinatorial. space of chemistry. so how do you nicely control the. combinatorial exploration the search.

space. such that it's always like. you keep grabbing the low-hanging fruit. yeah how do you build a search engine. for chemistry. well we should carry on doing this i. should pretend the physics be the. physicist you'd be the chemist no so the. way to do it is um. i will always play a joke because i i i. like writing grants um uh to ask for you. know money to do cool stuff but and i. years ago i started wanting to build so. i actually wanted the weather so i built.

this robot in my lab called the computer. which is this robot you can program to. do chemistry. um. now it's a pro i made a programming. language for the computer and made it. operate. chemist chemical equipment. um originally i wrote grants to say hey. i want to make an origin of life system. and no one would give me any money. for this this isn't what is ridiculous. why are you wanting to make oh it's. really hard it takes forever you're not. a very good origin of life chemist. anyway why would we give you any money.

and so i turned around and said can we. you can instead can you give me money to. make robots to make molecules are. interesting and everyone went yeah okay. you can do that. uh um. and that's so actually the funny thing. is the computer. um project which i have in my lab which. is very briefly it's just basically it's. like literally an automated test tube. and we've made a programming language. for the test tube which is cool um. um has come as literally came from this. i went to my lab one day said i want to.

make a search engine to get the origin. of life because i don't have a planet. and i thought about doing in a. microfluidic format so microfluidic is. very nano. very small channels in device where you. can basically have all the pipes. produced by lithography and you can have. a chamber maybe say between say 10 and. 100 microns in volume. and we slot them all together like lego. and we can make an origin of life system. and i i could never get it to work. um and i realized i had to make do. chemistry at the kind of. test tube level.

and what you want to be able to do yeah. yeah it goes back tonight that tweet. 1981 1981 the computer we're looking at. a tweet from lee in 1981 the computer. was a distant dream. and oh wow this is the scientist looking. back it is. the young boy who dreamed in 2018 it was. realized. spelled in a british way realized. um. so now there's a system that does the.

physical manifestation or whatever the. programming language. um. the spec. uh tells you to do yeah well in 1981 i. got my first computer zx81. what was the computer zx81 zx81. sinclair zx81 it was um and i got a. chemistry set. and i like i like the chemistry set and. i like the computer and i just wanted to. put them together i thought wouldn't be. cool if i could use use the computer to. control the chemistry set. and um and obviously that was insane and.

i was like. you know eight years old right nine. years going on nine years old and um and. then i i. i invented the computer. just because i wanted to build this. origin of life grid. right which is like literally a billion. test tubes connected together in real. time and real space. basically throwing a chemical dye dice. throw dice through a dice for a dice. you're gonna get lucky um and that's. what we i think sarah and i have been. thinking very deeply about because um.

you know there's more money being spent. on the. the the origin of. the gravity or looking at the higgs. boson than the origin of life right and. the origin of life. is the i think the biggest question or. not the biggest question it is a big. question let's put it that way the. biggest question you're okay saying that. okay all right. isn't it possible once you figure out. the origin of life that that's not going. to solve. um. that's not actually going to solve. the question of what is life.

like is isn't it because you're kind of. putting a lot of yeah i think that's the. same problem but you're putting is it. possible that you're. putting too many um. too much bets into this origin part. maybe the origin thing isn't. isn't there always a turtle underneath. the turtle isn't it a stack of turtles. because then if you create it in the lab. maybe you need some other stuff well. that's nothing but they already like you. like in the lab there's still memory. yeah yes right the experiment is already.

the product of evolution right in some. maybe really deep way not an obvious way. it's a very deep way yeah so maybe uh. the haters are always going to be like. well. you have to reconstruct the full do you. have to build it fortunately for us the. haters are not aware of that argument. well no i know i know you're the one. making that argument usually but. yeah i just think that. if we create life in the lab it's not. obvious that you'll get to the deep deep. understanding of necessarily um.

what is the line between life and. non-life no i think so there's so much. here i'm just saying god playing devil. so much here but let me play devil's. advocate back in a previous conversation. right and say um. uh. yeah i will why not we're not we've got. time school seller automata yes celery. all thomas are these these very. very um simple. things where you color squares. um black or white and implement rules. and play them in time and you can get. these very very complex patterns coming.

out you know there's nice rules there. are two and complete rules and. um. and um. i would argue that cellular automata are. that are don't really exist on their own. they have to exist on a in a computing. device. if that whether it's computing devices a. piece of paper an abstraction a. mathematician drawing a grid or um a. a a framework. now so i would argue cas are beautiful. things simple going complex but the. complexity is all borrowed from the.

lithography the not numbers. right now let's take that same argument. with the um. the chemistry experiment origin of life. cat what you need to be able to do is go. and i'm inspired to do this to go out. and look for cas occur in nature. you know let's kind of let's find some. um some cas that just emerge in our. universe and for people just decide to. interrupt for people um just listening. and in general i think what we're. looking at.

um is a cellular automata where again as. lee described there is just binary black. or white. squares and they only have local. information and they they're born and. they die. and. you would think nothing interesting. would emerge but actually what we're. looking at is something that i believe. is called glider guns. uh or or a glider gun which is uh. moving objects in this multi-cell space. that look like they're organisms. that have much more information.

that have much more. complexity than the individual building. components in fact look like they have a. long-term memory. uh well while the individual components. don't seem like they have any memory at. all. yeah it's just fascinating the argument. here is um. that has to exist on all this layer of. infrastructure right and though it looks. simple. and then what i would make the argument. i would make a value say well i think. cas are really simple and everywhere is. safe show me how they emerge and. substrate now let's go to the origin of.

life where or machine i don't think we. want to do the origin of life just any. origin is good so we do so we literally. have our sand shaker shake the sand like. massive grid of chemistry experiments. shaking sand shaking whatever. and then because we know what we've put. in so we know where how we've cheated. and the same way with ca we know how. we've cheated we know what the micro we. know the number of operations needed we. know how big a grid we want to get this. if we could then say okay how can we. um. generate this recipe in the lab and make.

a life form. what were the what contingency did we. need to put in and we're up front about. how we cheated. okay say oh you had to shake it was it. periodic planet rotates. it's tried comes in and out so and then. we can start to basically say okay how. difficult is it for these features to be. found and then we can look for. exoplanets and other features so i think. sarah's absolutely right we want to. explain to people we're cheating in fact. we have to cheat no one has given i'm.

good at writing grants i used to be i'm. not very good right now keep getting. rejected but i writing a grant for a. planet and 100 million years no grant. fund there is going to give me that but. maybe money to make a a kind of a grid a. computer grid. origin of life computing into this space. in physical space and just do it so. sarah said something which is you can't. simulate the or engine of life in a in a. computer so like in simulation. why not. what what were your you said it very.

confidently so yeah is it possible. and why would it be very difficult like. what's your intuition there. i think. it's very difficult right now because we. don't know the physics but if you go. based on principles of assembly theory. and you think every molecule is actually. a very large causal graph not just the. molecule then you have to simulate all. the features of those causal graphs and. i think it becomes computationally. intractable you might as well just build. the experiment. because you have in the physical space. you have all the objects with all the.

memories yes. and in the computer you would have to. copy them and reconstruct yes. that's a beautifully put and i would say. that. lots of people. you you just don't have enough resources. it's easier to actually do the physical. experiment because. we are literally i would view the. physical experiment almost like a. computational experiment we're just. outsourcing it's just basically we're. just outsourcing all the matrix. and algebra on your point about the. experiment being.

also. an example of life it's almost like you. want to design it's like you know all of. us are. lineages of propagating information. across time and so everything we do. becomes part of life because it's part. of that causal chain so it's like you. want to try to pinch off as much as you. can of the information from your causal. chain that goes into the experiment but. you can't pinch off all of it to move it. to like a different timeline it's always. going to be part of your timeline but at. least if you can control how much. information you put in you can try to. see how much does that particular. trajectory you set up start generating.

its own assembly so you you know where. it starts and then you want to try to. see it take off on its own when you try. to pinch it off as much as possible. got it. quick pause bath break yes all right. cool. and now we're back. all right. we talked about the early days of the. universe when there was just stuff and. no memory. not even causality i think lee at least. implied the causality's immersion. somehow we could discuss this what.

happened before. this all originated. what's outside the universe. divided by zero. okay so it's not. it's not relevant not understandable. is it useful to even ask the question. because it's so hard no it's not hard. it's just not a question. if i can't do an experiment or even. think of experiment the question doesn't. exist. well no you can't think of a lot of.

experiments no effects. what i mean is your causality graph is. like this is what we've been talking. about. it's like. there is limits to your ability. to construct experiments i agree but i'm. i'm i was trying to be facetious and i'm. trying to make a point i think that if. you if there is a. causal bottleneck. through which information can't. propagate in principle.

then it's very hard. to ask to think of an experiment even in. principle even one that's beyond my my. mediocre. intellect right which is fine i'm happy. to accept that but this is one of the. things i actually do think there was. something before the big bang because. i'm i would say that i think the big. bang just couldn't occur and create time. time created the big bang. but uh there was time before the big. bang yeah there was no space but those. times yeah. yeah. but i mean i'm just making that stuff up. just to make all the physicists happy.

but i think it's. dad would you think that would make them. happy because they would be quite upset. actually and why would they be upset. because they would say that. like time can't exist before yeah i mean. this goes back to an argument that you. might not want to have the argument here. i i was talking to sarah earlier today. about an argument we had about time a. long time ago. time and time and what i would it's like. i think there is this thing called time. or state creation the universe is. creating states and it's outside of. space.

but they create space so what i mean is. you can imagine there are states being. created all the time and there is this. thing called time. time is a clock which you can use to. measure when things happen. but that doesn't mean because you can't. measure something that states aren't. being created. and so you might locally refer to. the big bang and the bing bang occurred. at some point. in when those states were there. probably there had to be enough states. for the big bang to occur.

um and then. but i i i think that there is something. wrong with our conception of how the. universe was created in the big bang um. because we don't really get time and. because again you know. i don't want to become boring and sound. like a broken record but but um. time is a real thing. and until. i can really explain that more elegantly. i'm just going to get into more trouble. we're going to talk about time because. uh time is useful measuring device for. experiments but also time is as an idea.

all that okay but let me first ask sarah. is like what what do you think. is it a useful question to ask what. happened. before the big bang is a useful question. ask what's outside. the universe. so i would think about it as. the big bang is an event that we. reconstructed as probably happening in. the past of our universe based on. current observational data and so the. way i like to think about it is. we exist locally. in something called the universe.

um so and and going back to like the. physics of existence we exist locally in. the space of all things that could exist. and we can infer certain properties of. the structure of where we exist locally. and one of the properties that we've. inferred in the past is that there is. a. thing we call the big bang there's some. signatures of our local environment that. indicate that there was a very um low. information. uh. event that started our universe i think.

that's actually just an artifact of. the structure of the assembly space that. when you. when you. start losing all the memory in the. objects it it looks like what we call a. big bang. um so i think it makes sense to talk. about where you are locally i think it. makes sense to talk about counterfactual. possibilities what could exist outside. the universe in the sense that they. become part of our reasoning and. therefore part of our causal chain of. things that we can do. um so like the multiverse.

in my mind exists but it doesn't exist. as a multiverse of possible universes it. exists as an idea in our minds that. allows us to reason about how physics. works and then to do physics differently. because we reason about it that way. um so i always like to re-center it on. things exist but they don't always exist. like we think they exist. um so when we're thinking about things. outside the universe they absolutely. exist because we're thinking about them. but they don't look like. they don't look like the projections in. our minds they're something else.

something you said just gave me an idea. to go back to your question. if. there was court i mean some if something. caused the big bang if there was some. memory or some artifact of that then of. course it's to answer your question it's. worth going back to that because it that. would imply there is something beyond. that barrier that filter yeah and that's. what you were saying i guess right. i'm agnostic to what exists outside the. universe i just don't think that like i. think the most interesting things for us. to be doing are finding explanations. that allow us to do more like like that.

optimism so i tend to draw the boundary. on questions i ask as being scientific. ones because i find. that. that's where the most creative potential. is to impact the future trajectory of. what we're doing on this planet the. interesting thing about the big bang is. basically from our. current perspective of what we're able. to detect. it's the time when things were forgotten. yes. it's the time the reset. from our limited perspective. and so the question is is it useful to.

ever. study the thing that was forgotten. um or should we focus just on the on the. memories that are still there well the. point i was trying to make with. experiment is i was trying to say both. things and i think perhaps yes from the. pot following point of view if you could. then imagine what was forgotten. and then work forwards you will have. different consequences so then it. becomes testable. so i'm as long as we can find tests and. it's definitely worth thinking about. what i don't like is when physicists say. what happened before the big bang and. before before before without giving me.

any credible. um conjecture about what we would. what how would we know the difference. but the way you've framed it is quite. nice i like that it's like what. what have we forgotten. is there room for god. in assembly theory. who's god. i like arguments for a necessary being. better than god. well i think i said it earlier. like something that has to exist. oh so you like i mean you like the.

shortest path like does god need no no i. i mean well you can go back to like. thomas aquinas and arguments for. the existence of god but i think i think. most of the interesting theological. arguments are always. about whether something has to exist or. there was a first thing that had exist. but i think there's a lot of logical. loopholes in those kind of organs well. so god here meaning the machine. that creates. that generates. the stuff. because god so what i was trying to say.

earlier isn't that just the universe. yeah yeah well yeah well but i there's a. difference between. i i should i imagine like a black box. like a machine. yeah that's then i would be more. comfortable calling that god. because it's a machine you go into a. room and there's a thing with a button. yeah i don't like the great programmer. in the sky version can i yeah but if. it's more kind of uh. um like i don't like to think of if you. look at a cellular automata. if it if it's the cells and the rules.

that doesn't feel like god that. generates a bunch of stuff but if. there's a machine. like uh that does that runs the cellular. automata and set the rules then that. feels like god. that the other sort of in terms of. terminology so i wonder if there's like. a machine that's required to generate. this universe that's very sort of. important for running this in the lab. so as i said earlier i think i said this. earlier that i can't remember the phrase.

but something like i mean does god exist. in our universe yes. where does god exist exhaust god at. least exists in the abstraction in my in. our minds. particularly people who have who have. religious faith they believe in but. let's then take your but you're talking. a little bit more about generics say. well. is there a mechanism beyond the universe. you're calling god i would say god. did not exist at the beginning. but he or she does now. because i'm saying the mix well you.

don't know if. he didn't exist in the beginning. so like uh. this could be us in our minds trying to. like just. listening to gravitational waves. detecting gravitational waves it's the. same thing us trying to. uh go back further and further into our. memories to try to understand the. machines that make up. that make up us and so it's possible. that we're trying to. um. grasp that possible kind of. what kind of machines could create.

uh there's a there's always a tweet. there's always a tweet uh if the. universe is a computer then god must. have built it because computers need. creators there you go. and then uh yoshibok replied. since there's something rather than. nothing perhaps existence is the default. if existence is the default then many. computers exist creator gods are. necessary computers unnecessarily. computers too i'm very confused by that.

but that's an interesting idea that. existence is a default versus. non-existence i agree with that but the. rest is the response perhaps this. reasoning is incomplete that's. that's how scientists talk trash each. other on twitter apparently uh which. part don't you agree with. uh when he said if existence is default. then many computers exist this comes. back to the inventor and discovery. argument. i would say the universe at the. beginning wasn't capable. of computation.

because there wasn't enough technology. enough states. so what you're saying is the mec if god. is a mechanism. so i might actually agree but then the. thing is lots of people seem more see. god is more than a mechanism for me god. could be the causal graph and assembly. theory that creates all the stuff that. the memories we know and the fact that. we can. even relate to each other is because we. have the same we share that heritage and. why we love each other or we like to see. god in each other is. it's just.

we. know we have a shared existence. so that if the god is the mechanism that. created this whole thing. i think a lot of people see god you know. in a religious sense. as a. as that mechanism also being able to. communicate with the objects it creates. and if it's just the mechanism it won't. be able to create with the object uh. communicate with the objects it creates. it can only create you can't like. interact. with the uh there's versions of god that. create the universe and then left.

you know. yeah like spark for some for some. religions but the first spark yeah yeah. but i i think i liked your analogy of. the machine and the rules right but. um. i think part of the problem is you i. mean we have this conception that we can. disentangle the rules from the physical. substrate right and that's the whole. thing about like software and hardware. being separate or the way newton wrote. his laws that there was some you know. like they exist outside the universe. they're not actually a feature of the. universe they don't have to emerge out.

of the universe itself. so i think if you if you merged your two. views then it gets back to the god is. the universe and then i think the the. deeper question is why does it seem like. there's meaning and purpose. and. if i think about the features of the. universe that give it the most meaning. and purpose those are the the what we. would call the living components of the. universe so if you wanted to say god is. a physically real thing which you were. saying is like an emergent property of. our minds but i would just say. you know the way the universe creates.

meaning and purpose there is really a. physics there it's not like a illusory. thing and that is just what what the. physics of life is. um is it is it possible that we've. forgotten much of the mechanisms that. created the universe. so like is. so basically you know whatever if god is. that mechanism. we just leave parts of that behind well. but the universe is constantly. generating itself so if god is that. mechanism it would be that that would. still be active today i don't belie like. i'm agnostic but if i if i if i.

recall would call the things i believe. in god in the way that some people. talk about god i would say that god is. you know like in the like universe now. it's not an absent thing. are you. i'm so i think there's a mislabeling. here because you're. i mean from. i mean i'm. a professional idiot um actually but but. you should put that on your cv yeah.

yeah professionally but not. recreationally or amateur but. professionally but i think for it. i would say if you were talking about. god i mean again i'm way out way out of. my death and i almost feel uncomfortable. yeah but i feel quite uncomfortable. articulating but i'll try. for me a lot of people that think of god. as a consciousness a reasoning entity. that actually has causal power. and you're just human like intelligence. and you're and so you're like then. you're saying like gravity could be god. or time could be god i mean i think for. me.

for my conception of time is probably as. fundamental as god because it gave rise. to human intelligence and consciousness. in which we can have this abstract. notion of god. um. so i i think that. you're maybe talking about god in a very. mechanistic kind of unsophisticated. sense. whereas other people say that god is. more sophisticated and got all this you. know feelings and love and. you know. and this abstracting ability so. is that what or do you mean that do you. mean god as in this conscious entity.

that decided to flick the universe into. existence. well. one of the features that god. would have is the ability to flick the. universe into existence. i you know like windows 95 i don't know. if god is windows 95 or windows xp or. windows 10 i don't know the full feature. set okay so you at the very least you. have to flick the universe into. existence. and then.

other features might include ability to. interact with that universe in. interesting ways. and then. how do you interact with the universe. interesting ways you have to be able to. speak the language of its different. components. so in order to interact with humans. you have to. um. know how to act human-like. so so i don't i don't know. but it seems like.

whatever mechanism created the universe. might want. to also generate. local pockets of mechanisms that can. interact with that. inject. god was lonely. yeah it was long i mean it could be just. a teenager and another. just playing a video yeah maybe well i. was gonna say i mean i i don't so this. is referring from our origin of life. engine it's like i i don't believe in. god but that doesn't mean i don't want. to be one.

right. i want to make a universe and make a. life form but that maybe that may be. rude to people who have you know dear. religious beliefs what i mean by that is. isn't it if we are able to create an. entirely new life form different. chemistry different culture. what does it make up and makes us good. by that definition it makes us gods. right well there is i mean like when you. have children you're like one of the. magical things of that is you're kind of. mini gods i mean first of all.

uh from a child's perspective parents. are gods for quite a while. and then you i mean they're they're in. the positive sense there's a magic to. that's why i love robotics is you. instill life into something and that. makes you. um feel god like in a sort of positive. way being a creator is a positive. creator yeah exactly and a small scale. and then god is would be a creator at. the largest possible scale i suppose. okay.

you mentioned offline the assembledtron. assemblytron assemblytron yep uh what. what's an assemblytron these are the. there's an early idea of something. you're thinking about um so sarah's team. uh well i think sarah's team are. interested in um. under using ai to understand life my. team is and i'm and i'm think wondering. if we could apply the principles of. assembly theory that is. um the causal structure that you get. with assembly theory and hybridize it.

and make a new type of. neuron if you like i mean there are. causal. neural networks out there but they are. they are not quite the architecture like. what i would like i would like to. associate. memory bits with um. basically i'd like to make a rather than. have an asic for neural networks i want. to make it asic for assembly networks. right and um so can you say that again. assembly networks uh. uh so what what is a.

like a. a thing with an input and output and. it's like a neural network type of thing. what does it do exactly what's the input. what's the output so in in this case so. if you're talking about a general neural. network i mean in general neural network. you can train it on all sort any sort of. data right depending on. the the framework whether it's like um. text or. or image data or whatnot. and that's fine but there's no. causal structure associated with that.

data now just imagine. rather than you know let's say we're. going to classify a difference between. cat and good dog right classic cat and. dog neural network what about if the. system understood the assembly space it. created the cat and the dog. and rather than. guessing what was happening and training. on those images and not understanding. those features. you almost like you could imagine doing. a. going back a step and doing an and. training going back a step and doing the.

training going back a step back a step. back a step and and i wonder if that is. actually the origin of intelligence or. how we'll crack intelligence. because we need to because we'll we'll. create the entire graph of events. and. and be able to kind of look at calls and. effect across those graphs i'm. explaining it really badly but it's it's. a gene of an idea and i'm guessing very. smart very rich. um people in ai are already doing this. trying to not generate cats and dogs but.

trying to generate. things of high assembly index yeah and i. think that i think and and also using. causal graphs in neural networks and. machine learning and deep learning maybe. building a new architecture i'm just. wondering is there something we can get. out assembly theory allows us to rebuild. current machine learning architectures. to give more give causation more cheaply. i mean i don't know if that's what you. we've been inventing this for a little. while but we're trying to finish the. theory paper first before we do anything.

else yeah you also want to have um. say goal directed behavior in neural. networks then assembly theory is a good. framework for doing that danielle's been. thinking about that a lot yeah and i. think it's a really interesting idea. that you can map concepts from. how neural networks learn to thinking. about goal directed. behavior as a learning process that. you're learning a specific goal the. universe is learning a goal when it. generates a particular structure and. that you can map that physical structure. into a neural network how. what's the goal.

uh. well in a neural network you're. designing the goal and um. in. biology i mean you know people are not. supposed to use teleological language in. biology which is ridiculous but um. uh because goals are real things they're. just. post-selected so you can talk about. goals after the fact. um. you know once a goal emerges in the. universe that physical entity has a goal. but but lee and i came up with a test. for um like a turing test for goal. directed behavior uh based on the idea.

of assembly when like we have to. formalize it still but i i would like to. write a paper on it but like the basic. idea is like if you. like if you had two systems that were. completely equivalent. um. you know like in the instantaneous like. physical experimental setup so lee has. to figure out how to do this. but there was something that would be. different in their future. um and there was a symmetry breaking you. observe in the present based on that. possibility that future outcome then you. could say that that system had some. representation of of some kind of goal.

in mind about what it wanted to do in. the future. um and i so so goals are interesting. because. they don't exist as instantaneous things. they exist across time which is one one. of the reasons that assembly theories. may be more naturally. uh able to account for the existence of. goals. um so goals are they they only exist in. time. or they manifest themselves in time. through. um you said symmetry breaking so it's. it's almost like.

imagine like if representations in your. mind are real right. um and you you can imagine future. possibilities but imagine everything. else is physically equivalent and the. only thing that you actually change your. decision based on is what you model as. being the future outcome. then somehow that representation in your. mind of the future outcome becomes. causal to what you're doing now so it's. kind of like retrocausal effect but it's. not actually retrocausal it's just that. your. your assembly space is actually. includes those possibilities as as part.

of the structure it's just you're not. observing all the features the assembly. space in the current moment. well the possibilities exist but they. don't become. a goal until they're realized so so one. of the features of assembly space that's. super interesting and it's easier to. envision with like legos for example. is if you're thinking about an assembly. space you can't observe the entire. assembly space in any instant in time so. if you imagine a stack of legos and you. want to look at the assembly space of a. stack of legos you have to break the. legos apart.

and then you look and then you look at. all the possible ways of building up the. original object so now you have in your. mind the goal of building that object. and you have all the possible ways of. doing it and those are actual physical. features of that object but that object. doesn't always exist what exists is the. possibility of generating it right and. the possibilities are always infinite. uh well for that particular object. you know like you know it has a. well-defined assembly space and i guess. what i'm saying is that object is the. assembly space but you actually have to. unpack that object across time to view.

that feature of it it's only an. observable across time the term goal is. such a. important and difficult to explain. concept right because what you want is a. way is like um. i think only conscious beings can have. conscious goals. everything else is doing selection. and but selection does invent goals and. in a way that um. the the way that biology reinterprets. the past in the present.

is kind of how allows you to understand. there was a goal in the past now right. it's kind of like goals only exist back. in time. so first of all um. only conscious beings can have. conscious goals i'm not even going to. touch that one. why. well. go for it come on what what the line. between conscious goals and uh. non-conscious goals exactly right and. also maybe just on top of that you said.

a touring test for gold directed. behavior what's what's what's it what's. the turn what is the touring test. potentially look like so if you've got. two objects we were thinking about this. so we we actually got some funding to. work together two teams so. i'm trying to do in part of this is i'm. trying to do a bit theory and sarah is. teaching me a bit of theory and sarah's. trying to design experiments and i'm. teaching experiments because i think. it's really good for us to have that. just say. um when would a. so that's good i like this this i'm sure. we use the dandenon essay right on.

google yeah and i can explain why we. wouldn't want to call it a turing test. after but yeah yeah so dan dalett wrote. this really nice essay about um. uh herding cats and free will inflation. the title is so pretty it's the actual. title i think so hurting cats and free. will inflation yeah something like that. i mean it's not maybe not and so no i. think that's right so if you've got a. let's imagine you've got two objects on. a hillside. okay and this happens to be a snowy hill. and let's just say you see an object go. rolling down the hill.

or you you you and the rocker rolls. downhill but the start goes to the end. how do that objects had a goal now you. unveil the object and you'll see it's. actually a skier. and the skier starts the top and goes. down the bottom. great. then you look at the rock rock rolls. down the hill gets to the bottom how can. you tell the difference between the two. so and what dan says is like well this. is clear the skier's in control. and the um because they're they're. adjusting trajectory so some updating. going on then the only way you can.

really do that is you have to put the. skier back to the top of the hill again. they would tend to start roughly in the. same space and probably go. take all that that complex set of. trajectories and end up pretty much at. the same finish point right with plus or. minus view mirrors whereas if it's just. a random rock going down random. trajectory that wouldn't happen and so. what sarah and i were kind of doing when. we were writing this grant we're like we. need to somehow. instantiate the skier and the rock in an. experiment and then say okay when does. the object.

when it so. for an object to have a goal it has to. have an update it has to have some. sensing and some kind of you know. in-built actuation to respond to the. environment and. and then we just have to iterate on that. and maybe sarah you can then fill in the. turing test part well yeah i guess the. motivation for me was slightly different. so i i get really frustrated about. conversations about consciousness as. most people do um you know a lot of. people are. which is not necessarily related to to. free will directly or to this goal.

directed behavior but i think there's a. whole set of bundled and related topics. here but i think for me i was you know. everybody's always interested in. explaining intrinsic experience and. quantifying intrinsic experience and. there's all sorts of problems with that. because you can never actually be. another physical system so you can't. know what it's like to be another. physical system um so i always thought. there must be some way of getting at. this problem about. if an agent or an entity is conscious or. at least has internal representations. and those are real physical things that.

they're it must. have causal consequences. so the way i would ask the question of. consciousness is not you know what it is. like intrinsically but if if things have. intrinsic experience. is there any observable difference from. the outside about the the kind of. causation that that physical system. would enact in and for me the most. interesting thing that humans do is have. imagination so like we can imagine. rockets centuries before we build them. they become real physical things because. we imagine them and people might.

disentangle that from conscious. experience but i think a lot of the sort. of imagination we do is actually a. conscious process so then this becomes a. question of if i were observing systems. and i said one had an internal. representation which is slightly. different than a conscious experience. obviously so i'm entangling some. concepts but it's a loose set of thought. experiments then how and i and i set. them up in a physically equivalent. situation. um would it be the case that.

there would be. experimental observables associated with. it and that that became the idea of. trying to actually. measure for internal representation or. conscious so turing basically didn't. want to do that you just wanted the. machine that could emulate and trick you. into having the behavior but never dealt. with the internal experience because. he didn't know how to do that and i. guess i was wondering is there a way to. set up the experiment where you could. actually test for that. for imagination the blood.

to the that there was something internal. going on some kind of. inner world as people say but i i or you. could say. you know like it actually is an agent. it's making decisions it has an internal. representation and whether you say. that's experience or not is a different. thing but at least the the feature that. there's some abstraction it's doing. that's not obvious from looking at the. physical substrates do you think it's. possible to do that kind of thing one of. the compelling things about the turing. test. is that. you know defining intelligent defining.

any complicated concept. as. um as a thing like observing it from the. surface and not caring about what's. going on deep inside because how do you. know. that's the point so the idea is exactly. that so. what we're trying to do the turing test. for goal directedness is literally. um take some objects that clearly don't. have any internal representation grains. of sand blowing on the beach or. something right. and i know a crab wandering around on. the beach. and then generating an experiment where.

we literally the experiment generates an. entity that literally has no internal. representation to sand be like a drop. these are oil droplets actually we've. got in mind a robot that makes all. droplets but then what we want to try. and do is train the oil droplets to be. like crabs. give them an internal representation. give them the ability to. integrate information from the. environment so they unders they remember. the past. are in the present. and can imagine a future.

and a very limited way their kind of. game engine their limited simulation of. the world. allows them to then make a decision your. objects across time. so then you would run a bunch of crabs. like over and over and over and over how. many crabs lee how many is that what. what's because you have to have a large. number of crabs what is. what does your theory say is there a. mathematical we're working on it i mean. this is limit crab limit there's. literally a excellent there's lit. literally what's the herding cats have. to do oh that's random wait what's cats.

in the title by uh daniel dennett. hurting cats and the free will inflation. so um what does herding cats mean what. does free will inflation mean so this i. love this essay um because it explained. to me how i could live in a. deterministic universe. um but. have. not free will but have freedom you know. um and beca and also it helped me. explain that. that time needed to be a real thing in. this universe so what basically dan was.

saying here is like um how do you how do. these cats appear to just do what they. want. right and how if you live in a. deterministic universe why do the cats. do these things you know aren't they. just isn't it all obvious. um and how does free will inflate the. universe and for me. i mean probably i love the essay because. my interpretation of the essay in. assembly theory makes complete sense. um. because. you need an expanding universe in.

assembly theory. to create novelty. that you search. for that then when you find something. interesting and you keep doing it. because it's cool and it gives you an. advantage. then it appears in the past to be a goal. so what what does in assembly theory the. expansion of the universe. look like. what are we what are we talking about. why is why. why does the expansion universe give you. more possibilities of novelty and cool. stuff.

so for me i don't think about the. universe in terms of big bang in space i. think about in terms of the big the big. memory expansion that you have one you. only have the ability to store one bit. of information so then you can't do very. much so what the universe has been doing. since the since forever it's been. creating more. it's been increasing the size of its ram. okay so it's like one megabyte two. megabytes three megabytes four megabytes. all the way up and so. the more ram you have.

the more you can remember about the past. then which allows you to do cooler. things in the future so if you can. remember how to launch a rocket then you. might be able to imagine how to land a. rocket. and then re-launch re-land and carry on. because and so the the. you able you're able to expand the space. and remember the past and so that's why. i think it's very important but not a. perfect memory it's it's a it's an. interesting question whether there's. some forgetting that happens it might. increase.

is the expansion of the. forgetting at some point accelerate. faster than. the remembering i think that that's a. very important thing that probably. intelligence does and we're going to. learn in machine learning about because. you want machine learning right now or. artificial intelligence right now it. doesn't have memory right but you want. the ability to. or not for if you want to get to. human-like consciousness you need to. have the ability i suppose to remember. stuff and then to selectively forget. stuff so you can re-remember it and. compress it arguably the way that we.

come up with new physical laws. yeah you like it that's it for that yeah. sorry you were confronted no no that's. all right no i just wanted it i i think. that um. there is a. a great deal to be gained from having. the ability to remember things but then. when you forget them you can then have a. you can basically do the simulation. again and work out if you get to that. compressed representation. so that it's in cycles so cycles of. memory remembering and and forgetting. are probably important but there.

shouldn't be excuse to. have a universe with no memory in it the. universe is going to remember that it. forgot but just not tell you. i'm i'm looking at the this paper and. it's talking about a puppet controlling. a puppet controlling a puppet. controlling a puppet controlling a. puppet controlling a puppet conception. easy to understand but physically. impossible as physically impossible as. predicting a fair coin toss i don't know. what he's talking about but there's. pictures of puppets controlling puppets. um let me ask you there's a there's a.

few things i want to ask but we brought. up time quite a bit. you guys tweet about time quite a bit. uh what is time in all this we kind of. mentioned it a bunch. um is it not important at all in terms. of uh is it just a word should we be. talking about causality mostly like sir. what do you think. is uh we've talked about like memories. is that the fundamental thing that we. should be thinking about and and time is. just a useful measurement device or. something like that well there's.

different concepts of time right so i. think in assembly theory when we're. talking about time we're talking about. the ordering of things so that's the. causal graph part and so then the. fundamental structure of the universe is. that there is a certain ordering. and certain things can't happen till. other things happen but usually when we. colloquially attack colloquially talk. about time we're talking about the flow. of time um. and i guess lee and i were actually. debating about this this morning so and. talking on it walking on the river here. which is a very lovely spot for talking. about time um but that the you know that.

when the universe is updating it's. transitioning between. things that exist now and things that. exist now. that's really the flow of time. so there's there's. you have to separate out those concepts. at bare minimum and then there's also an. arrow of time that people talk about in. physics which is that time doesn't. appear to have a directionality in. fundamental physics but it does um to us. right like we can't go backwards in time. and usually we you know that would be. explained in physics in terms of um well.

there's a cosmological arrow of time but. there's also the thermodynamic arrow of. time of increasing entropy. um but what we would say in assembly. theory is that there is a clear. directionality the universe only runs in. one direction which is why some things. it's easy to make if the universe ones. and runs in one direction it's easy to. make processes look reversible for. example if they have no memory they're. easy to run forward and backwards which. is why the laws of physics that we have. now look the way they do because they. involve objects that have no memory but. when you get to things like us it. becomes very clear that the universe has. a directionality associated to it so.

it's not reversible at all it's the um. no man ever steps in the same river i. just have to bring that out because yeah. on the river no man ever steps in the. same river twice for it's not the same. river and he's not the same man uh so. that it's not reversible any of this no. no but reversibility is an emergent. property right so we think of the. reversibility of laws as being. fundamental and the irreversibility is. being emergent but i think what we would. say. from how we think about it and certainly. sees the case for our perception of time. but also you know what's happening in.

biological evolution. you can make things reversible but it. requires work to do it and it requires. certain machines to run it forward and. backward and akira marletto is working. some interesting ideas on constructor. theory related to that which is totally. different set of ideas so you can travel. back in time. sometimes yes. you can not you can't travel actually. back in time but you could reconstruct. yeah you tried things that have existed. in the past you're always moving forward. in time but you can cycle through like i.

i mean i might clarify yeah yeah go for. it quickly you travel forward in time to. travel back yes that thank you that. really clearly. what what's sarah saying you don't go. back in time you recreate what happened. in the past in the future and inspect it. again so in that local pocket of time. it's as if you travel back in time so i. i don't. how's that not traveling back in time. because you're not going back to your. same self back in time you are you're. creating that in the future what else is. the same as it was in the past. no.

no no no. it's not in registry i mean it goes back. to the big question i'm saying i mean. this is something. i was trying to look up today when i. first we first had this discussion and i. was talking to sarah on skype and i said. by the way. time because time is the fundamental. thing in the universe she's almost hung. up on me right but but you can even i. mean if you want to make an analogy to. computation and i think charles bennett. actually has a paper on this like about. reversible computation and reversible. turing machines in order to make it. reversible you have to store memory to. run the process backwards.

so. time is always running forward in that. because you have to write the memory. erase the memory you can erase the. memory but the point. when you go back to zero right but the. whole point is that in order to have a. process that even runs in both. directions you have to start talking. about memory to store the information to. run it backwards i got it so you can't. really then. you can't have it exactly how it was in. the past yeah you exactly so you either. have extra stuff extra baggage always.

okay a really important thing i want to. say on this i think if i try and get it. right to say that if you can think that. the universe is expanding in terms of. the number of. boxes that it has to store states. right. um and this is where the directionality. of the universe comes from everything. comes from you could erase what's in. those boxes but the fact you've now got. so many boxes at time now in the in this. present there's more of those boxes than. there were in the past see but the boxes. aren't physical boxes.

they. why is the number of boxes always. expanding it's very hard to imagine this. because we live in space. so what i'm saying which is i think. probably correct. is that we just let's just imagine for a. second. there is a non-local situation but there. are these things called states. and that the universe. um irrespective of whether you measure. anything. there is a universal let's call it a.

clock or a state creator. maybe we can call it this way maybe you. can call it god but let's call it a. state creator where the universe is. expanding in the number of states it has. why are you saying it's expanding though. is that obvious that it's expanding it's. obvious because that's where the because. um we. we. that's a source of novelty it's a source. of novelty and it also explains why the. universe is not predictable. um and you know it's not predictable. well. i just like interrupting you i'm sorry. it's fun as you're struggling i'm.

struggling because it's but i'm trying. to be as concrete as possible and not. sound like i'm insane yeah um and i'm. not insane it's it's obvious because you. did um. i'm a chemist so as a chemist i grew. into the world understanding. irreversibility all irreversibility is. all i knew. and when people start. telling me the universe is actually. reversible it's a magic trick we can use. time to do it so what i mean is the the.

the second law. is um. really the. magical. but why does it need to be magical the. universe is just asymmetric all i'm. saying is the universe is asymmetric in. the state production. and we can erase those states but we. just have more computational power so. what i'm saying is that the universe is. deterministic horizon this is one of the. reasons we can't live in a simulation by. the way.

we can't live in a simulation the. irreversibility yeah yeah so basically. every time you try and simulate the. universe. in this you know live in a simulation. the universe has expanded in states like. oh damn it i need to make my computer. bigger again and every time you try and. contain the universe in the computation. because it's got bigger a number of. states and so i'm saying. the fact the universe has novelty in it. is going to turn out experimentally to. be proof. that time. as i've labeled it is fundamental.

and exists as a physical thing that. creates space. okay so if you can prove. that novelty is always being created. you're saying that it's possible to also. then prove that it's always expanding in. the state space those are things that to. be. have to be proven that's what working. experiments for yeah and you're trying. to like by looking at the sliver of. reality. show that there's always novelty being. generated yeah. because if we go and live in a universe. that the conventional physicists would.

live in it's a big lookup table of stuff. and everything exists. i want to prove. that that book is. that book doesn't exist it's. continuously being added pages on so. what i'm saying if the universe is a. book. we started the universe at the beginning. only had no pages and they have all had. one page another page another page. whereas a physicist will now say all the. pages exist and we could in principle. access them i'm saying that is. fundamentally incorrect do you know. what's written in this book the free. will question.

um is there room for free will. in this. uh. in us in this view of the universe is. generating novelty and getting greater. and greater assembly. uh structures. built. sarah. yes. okay. done. next question. why what's the source of free will in. this well so i i think it depends on. what you mean by free will um. but. yeah well please.

i think i think what i'm interested in. as far as the. phenomena of free will is. uh do we have. individual autonomy and agency. and you know when i do things is it. really me or is it my atoms that did it. um and. that's the part that's interesting to me. i guess there's also the determinism. versus randomness part. um but the way i think about it is like. each of us are. like a thread or like an a you know. assembly space through.

you know this this giant possibility. space and it's like we're moving. on our own trajectory through that space. and that is defined by our history so. we're sort of causally contingent on our. past. but also because of the. sort of. intersection of. novelty generation it's not completely. predetermined by the past. and so. so then you have the causal. control of the determinism part that you. are your causal history and there's some. determinism from that past but there's.

also. room for creativity and i think it's. actually. necessary that something like free will. exists if the universe is going to be as. creative as possible because. if i were. all intelligent being inventing a. universe. and i wanted it to have. maximal number of interesting things. happen again we should come up with the. metric of interesting um but. generating yes i know generating um you. know maximal possibilities then i would.

want the agents to have free will. because it means that they're. more individual like they are like each. entity actually is a different causal. force in the universe. and it's intrinsic and local property of. that system. there's a greater number of distributed. agents. like are you always creating more and. more individuality. kind of. i i would say you're creating more. causal power but so cause of power.

the word consciousness is is the cause. of power somehow correlated with. consciousness i mean that that's why i. have this conception of consciousness. being related to imagination because the. more that we can imagine can happen and. the more counter-factual possibilities. you have in mind the more you can. actually implement and somehow free will. is also at the intersection of the. counter factual becoming the actual. um so can you elaborate on that a little. bit that consciousness in his. imagination i don't know exactly how to. articulate it and i'm sure people take. you know aim at certain things i'm.

saying but i think the language is. really imprecise so i'm not the best way. to really it's really interesting like. what is imagination and what is it uh. what role does it play. in the human experience in experience of. any yeah. i love imagination i think it's like the. most amazing uh thing we do but i guess. one way i would think about it is we. talked about the transition to life. being the universe acquiring memory and. life does something really interesting. just think about biology generally it. remembers states of the past to adapt to.

things that happen in the future so so. the longer life has evolved on this. planet the deeper that past is the more. memory we have the more kinds of. organisms and things but what human. level intelligence has done is quite. different it's not just that we remember. states that the universe has existed in. before it's that we can imagine ones. that have never existed and we can. actually make them come into existence. and i think that's the most unique. feature about the transition to whatever. we are from what life on this planet has. been doing for the last four billion.

years. and i think it's deeply related to the. phenomena we call consciousness yeah i. was gonna i mean just agree with that i. think that consciousness is the ability. to generate those counter factuals now. whether you can say you know are there. degrees of consciousness i mean and i. mean. i mean i'm i'm sorry. pan psychists but electrons don't have. counterfactuals although they do have. some kind of they are able to search the. space and pathways but but i think that. there is a very. concrete or. concrete there's a very specific.

property that humans have and i'm and i. don't know if it's unique to humans i. mean maybe dogs can do it and and and. birds can do it right and where they are. basically solving a problem because. consciousness was invented or this. abstraction was invented by evolution. for that for a specific reason. um and so look the. one of the reasons why i came to the. conclusion that time was fundamental was. actually because sarah and i had. completely different the most heated.

debate on skype chat ever no no no no. no i no it goes back to the free will. thing so i i think that although i've. changed my view a bit because there's. some really interesting physicists out. there who talks about how the. measurement problem. in in in newtonian space but i want to. go there just now because i think i'll. mess it up but. briefly. um. i could not see how the universe how we. can have free will and i mean this is. really boring because like this is like. this is a well trodden path but.

but it's not so boring i suppose it's. kind of we just want to be precise. if the universe is deterministic how can. we have free will. right so. uh sarah is a physicist. i think she believes but not believe can. show that the most of the laws we have. are deterministic to some degree quantum. mechanics onto newtonian stuff and yet. there's serotonin i mean she believes in. free will and i'm like. you but your belief system is broken. here right because you you're demanding. free will. in a deterministic universe.

and and then i've. realized that i i agreed with her that i. do think that free will is a thing. because we are able to search for. novelty and then that's where i came to. the conclusion that time the universe. was expanding in terms of novelty and it. goes back to that dan dennett essay they. were talking about the free will. inflation. free will so you are you have so the. past. it did not exist in the past the past. exists in the present what i mean is. like you are the there was no past there.

is only present. that means you are the sum total. although everything that occurs in the. past is it is manifestly here in the. present. and then. you have this little echo state in your. consciousness because you're able to. you're able to imagine something without. actualization but the fact you imagine. it that occurs in electrons and. potassium iron flows in your neural. network in your brain maybe. consciousness is just the present. so so somehow you imagine that.

and then by imagining oh that's good. yeah um i'm gonna make a robot then do. this thing. and program it and then you physically. then go and do it. so that changes the future sorry. what's imagination. does it require the past does it require. the future does it require memory does. it it's imagination. does it only exist in the moment so. imagination is. yeah probably it's an instantaneous. readout of what's going on you can maybe. your your subconscious brain has been.

generating all the all the bits for it. but no imagination occurs. when you. in your game engine you you remember the. past and you integrate sensory the. present and you try and work out what. you want to do in the future and then. you go and make that happen so the. imagination is this is like imagine. asking what imagination is about asking. what surfing is. you can see you can surfboard surfer. wave coming in when you're on that wave. and you're surfing. that's where the imagination is i think.

i think imagination is just accessing. things that aren't the present moment in. the present moment so like i can i'm. sitting here and i'm looking at the. table and i can imagine. the river in things or whatever it was. and so it seems to be that it's like. it's our ability to access. things that aren't present but so. conjure up worlds some of them might be. akin to. something that happened to you recently. right but they don't have they don't. have to be things that actually happen. in your past and i think this gets back.

to assembly theory like the way i would. think about imagination from an assembly. theoretic standpoint is i'm a giant. causal graph. and i exist in a present moment as a. particular configuration of sarah. and. but there's a lot of i carry a lot of. evolutionary baggage i have that whole. causal history and i can. access parts of it now when you talk. about getting to something as complex as. us having as large assembly space as us. there's ways of. like there's a lot of things in that.

causal graph that have ever actually. never existed in the past history of the. universe because like the universe got. big enough to contain the three of us in. this room. in time but. not all the features of each one of us. individually. have come into existence as physical. objects we would recognize as individual. objects this goes back to your point. that we actually have to explain why why. things. actually even look like objects and. aren't just a smear of. mass. um.

and just on the the free will and. physics thing. when you were talking i was i just want. to bring this up because i think it's a. really interesting viewpoint that. nicholas jizzin has that um you know. like we want to use the laws of physics. and then say you can't have free will. and his point is you have to have free. will in order to even choose to set up. an experiment to test the laws of. physics so in some sense free will. should be more fundamental than physics. is to because to even do science there's. some assumption. that. the agents have free will and i always. thought it was really perplexing that.

um. you know physics wants to remove agency. because the idea that i could do an. experiment here on this part of earth. and then i can move somewhere else and. prepare an identically you know. identically prepared experiment run an. experiment again. seems to imply something about the. structure of our universe that is not. encoded in the laws that we're testing. in those experiments. so this kind of dream of physics that. you can do multiple experiments. different locations and then validate. each other. um you're saying that's uh that's an. illusion no i'm saying that requires.

decision making and free will to be a. real thing i think. like i think that i think the fact that. we can do science is not arbitrary and i. think people you know the standard canon. in physics would be well you could trace. all of that back to the initial. condition the universe but the whole. point of science is i can imagine doing. the experiment and i can do it and then. i can do it again and again and again. all over the place to you imagination. somehow fundamentally. generative of novelty yes so it's not. like the universe could have predicted. the things you imagined imagination. super so coming back to novelty i think.

novelty can exist outside of imagination. but it supercharges it it's another. transition i think. i mean i would say. i mean this may be a boring statement. but i would say that they're sorry i'm. not sure it's a heart these are hard. questions yeah i mean i think the fact. that objects exist is yet another proof. that. that time is fundamental and novelty. exists right. because i think again. if you ask a physicist to write down in. their infinite bible of the universe. let's call it the bible the the you know. matebook.

the mathematical universe whether you're. max tag mark or sean carroll or frank. wilcheck. [Laughter]. or or stephen wolfram okay yeah. i like that book yeah i love it too lots. of pretty pictures. it's really interesting that they they. cope with the enormity of the universe. by saying well it's all their. mathematics it all exists right and and. i would say that. that's why i'm excited about the future. of the universe because it. it although it is somehow dependent upon.

the past. it is not constrained. just by the past. which is kind of mad. yeah that's what free will is it's not. constrained by the past it's dependent. on the past. this moment it's not just dependent this. moment is the past and yet it has the. capacity to generate a totally. unpredictable future i mean the other. thing i would say is super important for. human beings right human beings have. actually very little causal control in. the future.

i realized this the other week. yeah yeah so what happened so this is. what i think it is the way. by reinterpreting your past i mean talk. about from a kind of cognitive. psychological cognitive point of view by. reinterpreting your past. in your current mind. you can actually helps you shape your. future again. so you but you you have much more. freedom to interpret your past to act in. the present to change your future than. you do to change your future it may. sound weird so i'm saying everybody.

imagine your past think about your past. reinterpret your past in the nicest way. you can. then imagine what you can do next or. imagine your past in a more negative way. and what you do next and look at those. two counterfactuals they're different. yeah it's fascinating i mean daniel. o'connor talks about this that most of. our life is lived in our memories it's. interesting because you can essentially. in imagination choose the life you live. so maybe free will exist in imagination. choices are made in your imagination.

and that results in you basically able. to control how the future unrolls. because you're like. imagining. like reinterpreting constantly the. things that happen to you exactly so. you're the if you want to increase your. amount of free will. those people that have most i don't. think everyone has equal amounts of. agency because of uh because of our sad. sad constraints whether whether you know. happenstance with health. economic. born born in a certain place right. but.

you're those of us that have the ability. to go back and reinterpret our past. and and and use that to change the. future. are the ones that exert most agency in. the present. and i i want to i want to achieve higher. degrees of agency and enable everyone. else to do that as well to have more fun. in the universe then we'll hit that peak. maximum fun i don't think there's ever. going to be a maximum pop but i think. it's the wonderful thing about the. future is always always gonna be more. fun yeah you i think again going back to.

um. to twitter i think you lee tweeted. something about being a life maximalist. that you want to maximize the number of. life. the the amount of life in the universe. so and you know that's the more general. version of that. goal is to maximize the amount of fun in. the universe because life is a subset of. fun all kinds of i suppose they're. either correlated or exactly equal i. don't know. anyway speaking of fun let me ask you. about alien sightings.

so there's been quite a bit of ufo. sightings and all that kind of stuff. what do you think. would be the first time. when humans cite aliens see aliens in a. sort of. unquestionable way. this. extremely strong and arguable way. we've made contact with aliens. sarah what would it look like obviously. the the the space of possibilities is is.

huge here but. if you were to kind of look into the. future what would that look like would. it be inklings of ufos here and there. that slowly unravel a mystery. or or would it be like an obvious. overwhelming signal. so i think we have an obsession with. making contact with events. so uh. what i mean by that is. you know like people have a ufo sighting. they make contact. um and i always think.

you know. what's interesting to me about. the ufo narratives right now is not that. i have a disbelief about. what people are experiencing or feeling. but like the discussion right now is. sort of. at the level of modern mythology aliens. are our mythos. in modern culture and and when you treat. it like that then then i want to think. about when do things that we. traditionally only regularize through. mythology actually become things that. become standard knowledge so you know.

like it used to be you know variations. in the climate were described by some. kind of gods or something and now it's. like you know our technology picks up an. anomaly or someone sees something we say. it's aliens and i think the real thing. is it's not contact with events but like. first contact is actually contact with. knowledge of the phenomena or the. explanation and so. this is very subtle and very abstract. but. when does it become something that we. actually understand what it is that. we're talking about that's first contact. it's not would you make the myth would.

you give credit to the myth the. mythology as first contact. because i think yes i think it's the. rudimentary that we have some. understanding that there's a phenomena. that we have to understand and. regularize so i think right to. understand that there is weather yes you. have to construct the pathology around. that yes. it's something that's controllable. right yeah like this is i see mythology. basically as like baby knowledge. right. it could be that you know although. there's lots of there's lots of alien.

sight up so-called alien sightings right. so there are a number of things you can. do you could just dismiss them and say. that's not true they're kind of made up. or you say well there's some there's. something interesting here right we keep. seeing the commonality right we see the. same phenomenon again and again and. again. also this is interesting about human. imagination. even if they are. let's not say made up but mis. misappropriated kind of other inputs. the fact that human consciousness is. capable of imagining contact with aliens. does that not tell us about something.

about where we are in our position in. our culture and our technology it tells. us where in time we are could it be that. we're making contact with let's say that. so let's say let's take the most. miserable version there are no aliens in. the universe life is only on earth. that then the interpretation of that is. we're desperate to kind of understand. why we're the only life in the universe. right the other one is the other most. extreme is that aliens are visiting all. the time and we just you know we're just. not able to capture them coherently or. there's a big conspiracy and you know. there's an area 51 and there are lizards.

everywhere and. there's that. um or i i'm i kind of in favor of the. idea that maybe humanity is waking up to. the idea that we aren't alone in the. universe and we're just running the. simulation. and we're seeing some evidence you know. we don't we don't know what life is yet. we are we do have some anomalies out. there. we can't explain everything. um. and over time. um you know we will start to unpack that. one very plausible thing we might do.

which might be boring for the average. alien. um. observer or believes that aliens are as. in intelligent aliens are visiting earth. it could be that we might go to the. outer solar system. and find a new type of life that has. completely new chemistry bring these. cells back to earth where you could say. in my hand on earth here's rna dna and. proteins and look cells self-replicate. from titan we've got this new set of. molecules new set of cells. and we feed it stuff and it grows.

that for me. if we were able to do that which. would be like the the most that would be. my ufo sighting that's a good test so. you feed it and it grows yeah. we've made so not until you know how to. feed the thing. [Music]. it grows somehow we can make a comic. book you know the tiger that came for. tea the alien that came for tea. what would you say is. between the two of you is the biggest.

disagreement about aliens alien life out. there. is it. from the basic framework of thinking. about what is life to maybe what aliens. look like to alien civilizations to a. ufo sightings. what would you think. so i would say the biggest one is that. um the emergence of life does not have. to be. um. that can it can't just happen once on. the planet that it could be two or more. life forms present on the planet at once.

and i think sarah doesn't agree with. that. i think that's like. logically inconsistent. that's really polite you're saying it's. nonsense but because you think that yeah. how likely is that so the idea that what. is what does it look like let's imagine. uh two alien civilizations coexisting on. a planet what's that look like exactly. so i would say um. i think i've got to get around your. argument okay yeah let's say that say. that on this planet there's just like. there's lots of available chemistry.

and one life form gets some. emerges based on carbon and interacts. and there's a there's an ecosystem based. on carbon and there's an orthogonal. um. and so it's planetary phenomena which is. what you i think right. but there's also one that goes on. silicon. and and because there's enough energy. and there's enough. stuff. that these light forms might not. actually necessarily compete um. evolutionarily yeah but they would have. to not interact at all because they're.

going to be co-constructing each other's. causal chains i think that's where you. just got me yeah so there's no. so there's no overlap. in terms of their causal change they're. very limited yeah so i think the only. way i can get away with that is to say. right life can emerge on a planet. underneath. and uh okay lizard people under the. quest of the year i think i think i. think let's go d i i i think. that but look as you can see we disagree. so and i think sarah actually has. convinced me because of that that life. is a planetary for not the emotional.

slice of planetary phenomena and and. actually um because of the way evolution. selection works then nothing occurs in. isolation the causal chains interact so. there is a common there's a consensus. model for life on the earth but you. don't think you can place aliens. from elsewhere onto the can't you just. uh place multiple alien civilizations on. one planet right but i think. so you can take. two original life events that were. independent and co-mingle them but. i don't think when you're talking about.

when you when you look at the. interaction of that structure it's it. it's like the same idea as like an. experiment being an example of life. right that's a really abstract and. subtle concept and i guess what i'm. saying is. life is information propagating through. matter so once you start having things. interacting. they in some sense commingle and they. become part of the same. chain. so. the commingling starts quickly yeah. proceeds we proceed to co-mingle quickly.

right right so you you could say so the. question is then. the more interesting question is are. there two distinct origins events and i. still think that there's reasons that on. a single planet you would have one. origins event because of the time scales. of cycling. of geochemistry on a planet and also the. fact that i don't think that the origin. of life happens in a pool and like. radiates outward through evolutionary. processes i think it's a multi-scale. phenomena it happens at the level of. individual molecules interacting.

collections of molecules interacting and. entire planetary scale cycles so life as. we know it has always been multi-scale. and there's i'm brilliant examples of. individual mutations at the genome level. changing global climate right so there's. a tight coupling between things that. happen. at you know the largest scale our. planetary scale and the smallest scale. that life mediates but it still might be. difficult within something you would. call as a single civil alien. civilization you know different their.

species and stuff but i think what yeah. they might not be able to communicate. but you're asking about life not species. right so what's the difference between. one. living civilization this this is almost. like a category question yeah. versus species because it can be very. different like evolution because there's. like island like literally islands that. you can involve different kinds of. turtles and stuff and they can. so i guess what i'm saying is weird if. you look at the structure of two.

interacting. living things populations. and you look in their past and they have. independent origins for their causal. chain then you would say one was alien. you know they have different independent. origins events but if you look at their. future by virtue of the fact they're. interacting their causal chains have. become co-mingled so that and then in. the future they they. they are not independent. um right right so that's why you would. even define them as aliens so the. structure across time.

is two examples of life become one. example of life because life is the. entire structure across time right but. there could be a lot of variation with. this yeah so the question we're all. interested in is how many. independent origins of a complexifying. causal chain are there in the universe. see but. is the idea of origin. is easy for you to define. because like um well. when the two when the species split in. the evolutionary process.

and you get like um. a dolphin versus a human or neanderthal. versus homo sapien that. isn't there let me make a distinction. here um quickly so i think um sorry to. interrupt um. what we're saying i mean i mean i mean. i mean sarah what we won that argument. because she i think she's right that um. once the calls will change interact and. going forward so we're talking about a. number of things let's go all the way. back before origin of life origin life. on earth on earth.

chemistry emerges there's so there's all. these i would say there's probably. mechanistically. the chemistry is desperately trying to. find anyway get replicators the ribosome. kind of was really rubbish at the. beginning and they just competed. competed competing and got better and. better ribosomes and suddenly that was a. technology the ribosome is the. technology that boom allowed evolution. to start. so what i was trying to why i. interrupted you is say that once. evolutionist started using that. technology then you can speciate and i.

was trying to and i think what sarah. said was convinced me of because i was. like no we can have lots of different. chemistry shadow biosphere on earth and. she's like no no no. you have to have this you have to get to. this. minimum. evolutionary. machine. and then when that occurs speciation. occurs exactly what it's like dolphins. humans. everything on earth. but when you're looking at aliens or. alien life. um there's not gonna be two different. types of chemistry because they compete. they compete and interact and cooperate.

because the causal chains overlap one. might kill the other one might combine. with the other and then you go on and. then you have this kind of. this average and sure there might be. re-speciation it might be have two types. of emerging chemistry it almost looks. like the origin of life on earth. required two different pre-life forms. the peptide world and the rna world. somehow they got together and by. combining you got the ribosome and that. was the minimum competent entity for. evolution and.

would all alien civilizations. have an evolutionary process. on a planet. so like that's one of the almost it's. almost the definition of life to create. all those memories you have to. have something like change in time yeah. and then but there has to be selection. um that's like an official there's no. other way to do it no i don't well never. say never because students say that's. what that's the part that depresses me. though going back to like i don't know. the earlier discussion on violence and. things like and i i don't know where.

somebody was tweeting about this. recently but like you know how much. stuff had to die. maybe it was you yeah ah yeah so. yes sorry so we were talking we're. talking about life yeah and uh. i guess a lot of murder had to occur. right so selection means things had to. be weeded out right so well we can. celebrate that death makes way for too. long yeah i mean it and also you know. one of the most interesting features of. major extinction events in the history.

of our planet is how much novelty. emerged immediately after. right so and of course you know a lot of. people make arguments we wouldn't be. here if the dinosaurs didn't go extinct. so. um. in some ways we can attribute our. existence to all of that but i guess i. was just wondering and sort of like if i. was going to build a universe myself. in the most optimistic way would i. retain that feature but it does seem to. be a yeah you have to i mean i think. we're i think we're probably being over. um anthropomorphizing i remember.

watching uh the blue i think it was the. blue planet david attenborough was. showing these seals and because of. climate change some seals were falling. off a cliff and how tragic it was i was. like. i'm saying my son that's pretty cool. look at look at those ones down there. they've obviously got some kind of. mutations some and they're not doing. that daft thing and so that that that. poor gene will be weeded out of course. at the individual level it looks tragic. and of course as human beings have the. ability to abstract and we empathize we. don't want to cause suffering on other. human beings and we should retain that.

but we shouldn't look back in time and. say. you know how many butterflies. had to die. i remember making with this how many. if you think about the caterpillar. become the chrysalis and then the. butterfly getting out. how many if that suffering we call it. suffering if that process of pruning had. not occurred we have no butterflies so. none of the butterfly beauty in the. world without all that pruning so. pruning is required but we shouldn't. amphimorphize and feel sorry for the.

biological entities. but because that's that seems to be a. backwards way of looking at it what we. should do is project forward and maybe. think about what values we have across. our species our ecosystem and our fellow. human beings you know you know now that. we know that animals suffer at some. level. think about humane farming when we find. that plants can in fact are conscious. and can think and have pain then we'll. do. humane gardening until that point we. won't do it right.

i like this. famous chemist endorses the majestic. nature of murder that's actually. that's the title. um i didn't say that but it came well i. just it's inserted i have a hard time. with it though i think the way you put. it it's kind of. but it it's the reality of it's the. reality of it is beautiful. um you know there's an instagram account. called nature's metal. and i i keep following and unfollowing. it because i can't handle it for.

prolonged periods of time we evolve. together you die alone. yeah we evolved together well you die. alone so i you live alone too it's a. gatsby thing i don't know we evolved. together we're still together the. together is the murder the population. and the sex i just. my romantic vision of it to try to make. me happy sarah instead of sad sarah um i. talk in third person when i think very. abstractly sorry um. is um. you know like like this whole like you. know the like certain things can.

co-exist so the universe is trying to. maximize existence but there's some. things that just. aren't. the most projective productive. trajectory together but it doesn't mean. that they don't exist on another. timeline or another chain somewhere else. like i like and maybe you would call. that like then some kind of multiverse. or things but. what am i saying. i think you can't i just you can't go. down just making stuff up no you're not. no matter. i don't underst it is illogical and we. need we know i know if you look at.

bacteria if you look at virus i mean. just just the number of organisms that. are constantly like looking at bacteria. they're just dying non-stop right. slaughter right so well and this goes. back to the conversation about god i. mean like there's the whole thing about. like why does the universe enable. suffering individuals don't exist right. in individual so for this i think if you. think about life as an entity on earth. right. let's just let's just go back a second i. mean i like to i'll be ludicrous for a. second i don't exist you don't exist. right um but you but the actions you do.

the product of evolution exists right. the objects you create exist. quantitatively in the real world if you. then understand life on earth or alien. life or any life in the universe there's. this integrated entity. where you need you need cells in your. body to die otherwise you'd just get. really big. and you wouldn't be able to walk around. right so you know you do. yeah yeah. yeah so yeah so i think. the patterns that persist not the. physical things and of course we you.

know we have we have we place and. mention values on fellow human beings. and i'm. my majestic professor does like other. individual human beings or now you're. talking in third person too i know it. happens right so death would you say i. mean because you said evolution is a. fundamental part of um. life so death is a fundamental part of. life yeah. it might right now it might not be in. the future we might hack some aspects of. death. we could and will evolve in different. ways but isn't there i think sarah.

mentioned like this life density. um is it can't that become a problem. like too much. to too much uh bureaucracy too much of. baggage uh builds up like you need to. keep. erasing okay that we dissipate like i. don't think of like like i'm. disappearing yes no but i mean like like. we're so fixated on ourselves as. individuals and agents and we were. talking about this last night actually. over dinner but like. um you know an individual persists for a. certain amount of time but what you want.

to do like if you're really concerned. with immortality is not to live. indefinitely as an individual but. maximize your causal impact so like what. are the traces of you that are left. i and and you're still a real i always. think of einstein like for a period of. time he was a real physical thing we. would identify as a human and now we. just see echoes of that human in all of. the ways that we talk about his you know. causal impact or frankly right is. another great example because how many. easter eggs can you leave in the future. say hello. so i guess the the question is how much.

do you want to control the localization. of. certain features. of say a prop a packet of propagating. information we might call a person and. keep them localized to one individual. physical structure do you wanna you know. is there a time when that just becomes a. dissipated feature. of. the society that it once existed in and. i'm okay with the dissipated feature. because i just think. that makes more room for more creativity. in the future. so you mentioned engineering life in the.

lab. let me take you to computer science. world. what about robots. so. is it possible to engineer see because. you're really talking about. like engineering life at the chemistry. level. but do you think it's possible to. engineer. life. at the like humanoid level at the at the. dog level. like or is that like at which level can.

we instill the magic of life into. uh inanimate stuff no i think you could. do it at every level i just think that. we're particularly interested in. chemistry because. it's the. origin life transition. that presumably or at least is how i. feel about it it's going to give you the. most. and interesting or deepest insights into. the physics. but. presumably everything that we do and. build is an example of life and the. question is just how much. do you want to take from things that we. have now and put them into like examples.

of life and copy them into machines. uh i saw that there was this. tweet again uh i think you're at the. mars conference and you were hanging out. with a humanoid robot yes. making lots of new friends at mars 2022. did you guys color match ahead of time. with the robot or. did that accidentally happen. accidentally i went up and i wanted to. say hi to the boys would that be the. correct name for the color i think so we. didn't color coordinate our outfits uh.

well you didn't maybe through what did. the robot probably did much more stylish. so for people who are just listening. there's there's a picture of sarah. standing next to a humanoid robot i. guess you like them with a small head. and perfect vision actually no i just um. i did the perfect there's a lighter. no i mean i think i was just deeply. interested because um what was sorry to. interrupt was it manually controlled was. it actually uh stabilizing itself oh no. it was walking around oh nice yeah nice.

it was pretty impressive i mean actually. there's some videos online of jeff bezos. walking with one of those across the. lawn. nearby there so. yeah. um. so. i wasn't invited. [Laughter]. um. yeah but um. there you go. see that's incredible wasn't it yeah see. you look at the walking robot where did. the idea for walking come from was. invented by evolution right. and us as human beings able to.

conceptualize and design and engineer so. the calls will change so that robot is. evidence of life. and so i think what's going to happen is. there's. the um. we want to find where the spark comes. from mechanistically how can you. literally go from sand to cells. so that's the first transition i think. you know there are a number of problems. we want to do make life in lab. great then when i make life in lab we. want to suddenly start to make. intelligent life. or life that can solve start to solve. abstract problems.

and then we want to make life. that is conscious. okay in that order i think it has to. happen that order you know this getting. towards this artificial general. intelligence i think that artificial. general intelligence. can't exist in a vacuum it has to have a. causal change all the way back to luca. right yeah and so the question i think i. really like the question is to say. what are we how is. how. is our pursuit of more and more life. like i know you want to you like your.

robots you want to project into them you. want to interact with them you you i. think you would want if you have a robot. dog and a robot dog does everything. expect of a normal dog and you can't. tell a difference. you're not really going to ask the. question anymore if it's a real dog or. not or you've got a personality you're. interacting with it and so i think what. would be interesting would be to kind of. understand the computational. architecture how that evolves because. you could then you know teleport the. personality from one object to the other. and say right does it act the same. and i think that as we go along we're.

going to get better and better at. integrating our consciousness into. machines well let me ask you that. question just so. to link on it. i would i would call that a living. conscious thing potentially eyes as a. human allegedly but your would you. as a person trying to define life. if you passed the turing test are you a. life form. one of the reasons i walked up to the. robot was um. because i wanted to meet the robot right.

right so. i. it felt like i was. and i i. i base a lot of my interaction with. reality on emotion and feeling but like. like how do you feel about an. interaction and i always love your point. about like is it enough to have that. shared experience with a robot right so. so walking up to it does it feel like. you're interacting with a living thing. and it did to an extent but in some. degrees it feels like you're interacting. with a baby living thing so i think our. relationship with technology in. particular robots we build is really.

interesting because. um basically. they exist as objects in our future in. some sense like we're a much older. evolutionary lineage. than robots are but we're all part of. the same causal chain. and presumably. you know they're. kind of in in their infancy so it's. almost like you're looking at the future. of life when you're looking at them but. it hasn't really become life in in. in a full manifestation of whatever it. is that they're gonna become. um. and you know the the more uh the example.

the walking robot was super interesting. but they also had a dolphin that they. put in the pool at the cocktail party at. mars and it looked just like a real. dolphin swimming in the pool. and um. and you know it's in this kind of. uncanny valley because and i was having. this conversation um. with a gentleman mutu who was super. perceptive but he was basically saying. like it made him feel really. uncomfortable. um. and i think often. yeah and i think a lot of people would. have that response and i guess my point.

about it is it is kind of interesting. because you're basically trying to make. a thing that you think is non-living. mimic a living thing and so so the. thought experiment i would want to run. in that case is imagine we replaced. every living thing on earth with a robot. equivalent like all the dolphins. and things and in some sense then you're. making if you think that the robots. aren't experiencing reality for example. the way that a biologically evolved. thing would you're basically making the. philosophical zombie argument become. real. yeah and and basically building reality.

into a simulation because you've made. everything. quote unquote fake in some sense you've. replaced everything with an emu a. physical simulation of it so as opposed. to being excited by the. possibility of creating. something new you're. um terrified of being humans being. replaced i was just trying to run like. what would be the absolute. you know thought experiment but i don't. i don't think that scenario would. actually play out i guess what i i think.

is weird for why we feel this kind of. uncanny valley interacting with. something like the robot dolphin is. we're looking at an object we know is. kind of in the future in the sense of. like if everything's ordered in time but. it's borrowing from a structure that we. have common history with and it's. basically copying. in a kind of superficial way things from. one. part of the causal chain to another. yeah. well that's that's the video. every believed it was real. they look so real. um.

and obviously the technology was was. developed for movies so. well i think we're confusing our. emotional response and understanding the. causal chain of how we got there right. because a philosophical zombie argument. thinks about um. objects just appearing right that you're. facsimiled in some way whereas there is. that cause what the chain of events that. caused the uh dolphin to be built went. for a human being yeah would uh. philosophical zombies still have a high. assembly index yeah. because it came it can't be. philosophical zombies can't like like.

boltzmann brains just can't appear out. of nowhere well i guess my question. would be in that that scenario where you. build all the robots and replace. everything on earth with robots would. the with the biosphere be as creative. under that scenario or not yeah and so. are there. are there quantitative differences you. would notice over time and it's not. obvious either way right it's not. obvious right now because we don't. really we don't understand we haven't. built into machines how we work so. that's i think the there are one of the. big missing things that i think that. we're both looking for right it's a cute. robot but but the points there is that.

um the biosphere won't be as creative if. you did it right now no of course i. think that's why but. but in the future. it we will be able to solve the problem. of. origin of life. intelligence and consciousness. because they exist in physical. substrates we just don't understand. enough about the material substrate and. the causal chain but i'm very confident. we will get to an agi but it won't be. what people think it won't be solution.

won't be a we'll get forward a lot and. so gpt3 is getting better at falling us. and gpt 153 might. really fool us but it won't have the. magic we're looking for it won't be a. creative. but it will help us understand the. differences between really though. because. isn't that what love is being fooled. like what why why are you not giving. much value to the emotional connection. with objects with with robots with.

humans emotion is that thing which. happens when you're when you're. the uh. the fun your expectation function is is. dashed and something else happens right. i mean that's what emotion is is that. what love is too yeah. you were expecting one thing and. something else happened yeah i don't. know i don't think that's true either. well what is it then i think no emotion. look i'm i'm sorry emotion is that but. but i think love is just fulfilling your. purpose. no but okay i mean look like look like.

whatever that means that's not i mean. so yeah okay so when are you happiest. it's like when you're all right all. right let me go back if you want to if. you want me to follow your bliss let me. define love quickly okay go for it in. terms of assembly space right okay. excellent i didn't think i'd be doing. this today okay wait until assembly. theory 101 is taught and the second. lecture is assembly theory of love. but actually but look but. it's being surprised the expectation is. being broken i'm just i'm not no go for. it i don't know i want to hear you i'm. not an emotional being but i would say.

so let's talk so we'll talk about. emotion but love is more complex is love. is a very complex set of emotions. together and logical stuff but if you've. got this. thing this person that's on this causal. chain that has this empathy for this. other thing. love is being able to project ahead in. your assembly space. and work out what you're the person. you're in love with has a need for. and to do that for them without. selflessly. right because you can project ahead what. they're going to need and they are there. and. maybe you can see someone is going to.

fall over and you catch them before they. fall over or maybe you can anticipate. that someone's going to be hungry and. without helping you you just help them. that's what that sounds like empathy. but it's more complex than that right. it's more complex it's more about not. just empathy it's understanding it's. about kind of sharing that experience. it's an expression of love though that's. not what it's like to feel love like. feeling love is like. i like i think it's like when you're. aligned with things that you feel like. are your purpose or your reason for. existing.

so if you have those feelings. uh towards the robot. why is that rope i mean. because you said like the aj will build. an agi but it won't there'll be a. fundamental difference between aging. right we'll build it it's going to. emerge from our technology so i think. you guys all are doing the same thing i. just said that gpt that we do not. correctly capture the causal chain that. we have within gpg. yeah. don't you think it captures because gpt3. is fundamentally trained.

on a. corpus of knowledge. you know like the internet don't you. think it it gets better and better. better capturing the memory of all them. it will be better at fooling you and at. some point you won't care. but when it comes i my guess this is as. quick as i was getting to right before. we got i got in the love trap. i love trap yeah it was like.

but i think there are other features. that allow that we pull on innovation. that allow us to do more than what we. just see in gpthree so if you're being. fooled there so i think what i mean is. human beings have this ability to be. surprising and creative whereas is it. dali. this thing or or if you take um gpt3 is. not going to create a new verb. shakespeare created new verbs.

you're like wow. and that required shakespeare to think. outside of language in a different. domain. so i think having that connections. across multiple domains is what you need. for agi yeah but i don't know if you. need. um. i don't know if there's any limitations. gpt gpt. and. not being able to be cross domain the. number one problem is um it's. instantiated in a resource limited. substrate um that we don't in silicon um. it is tr is tr the the architecture is.

used for training for learning it is. about falling it's not about. understanding. and i think that there is some. understanding that we have that is not. yet symbolically representable language. learning language and using language. seems to be fundamentally about fooling. not understanding. why um why do you use language exactly i. might disagree with that quite. fundamentally actually um but i don't i. i'm not sure i understand how to make a.

coherent argument for that but my. feeling is. that there is. there are there is. comprehension. in reality in our consciousness below. language. and. and we use those for language for all. sorts of expressions and we don't yet. understand that there's a gap we will. get there but i'm saying wouldn't it be. interesting it's a bit like saying could. i facsimile you or sarah into a new. human being right and and let's just say. i could copy all your atoms in the.

positions of all your atoms the. electrons. into. into this other person they would be you. the answer is no and it's quite easy to. show using assembly theory because. actually the feature space you have that. graph the only way to copy you is to. create you on that graph so everything. that's happened to you in your past we. have to have a faithful record for if. you want another copy of lex you have to. do the exact thing another copy sarah. another copy of lee the exact past has. to be replicated let me push back on. that a little bit that's maybe from an. assembly theory perspective but it.

i don't think it's that difficult to. recreate a version of me like a clone. that would make everybody exactly. equally as happy. like they wouldn't care which one and. like there's two of me. and then. they get to pick which one and they'll. kill either one they'll be fine as long. as they're forced to kill they'll be. fine but here's what will happen is. let's say we make artificial legs and it. was like wow that's so cool it looks the. same interact then there'll be this. battle of like right we're going to tell.

the difference we're going to we're. going to basically keep nudging lex and. artificial lex until we get. in novelty from one and we'll kill the. other one. and i think thank you we're not novelty. is a fuzzy concept that's the whole. problem of novelty so i will define. novelty it's not fuzzy novelty is the. ability. um for you to create. um architectures. that are. um or create an architecture so let's. say you've got corpus of architectures.

known you can write down you've got some. distance measure and then i create a new. one and the distance measures so far. away from what you'd expected. there's no linear algebra we're going to. get this like. that. is creativity and we don't know how to. do that yet. on any level well i was also thinking. about like your argument about free will. like you wouldn't be able to know it was. it doesn't work instantaneously it's not. like a micro level thing but more a. macro level thing over the scale of. trajectories or longer term decisions so. if you think that the novelty manifests.

over those longer time scales it might. be. the two lexes. diverge quite a bit. over certain time scales of their. behavior nobody would notice. the difference. they might not. and the universe the earth won't notice. the difference the universe won't notice. the universe would notice the difference. no the universe doesn't know about his. novelty that's being generated that's. the whole point of well no but this is. what selection is right it's like taking.

nearly equivalent ones and then deciding. like the universe selects right so what. whatever selection is select some things. to persist in time yeah i'm going to. select the artificial one someone still. likes that one better well you're mixing. up two arguments here so look let's go. back a second what are you basing this. argument on like i'm just saying that i. kind of. don't think cause at least said that. it's not possible. like if you uh. the the if you copy every single. molecule in a person's body that's not. going to be the same person.

that that they won't have the same. assembly index they won't have it won't. be the same person and i just don't i. think copying you can compress not only. do i disagree with that. i just. i think you can even compress a person. down to some where you can fool the. universe i'm saying. let me restate it it is not possible to. copy somebody. on because you unless you copy the. causal history also you can't have two. identical i mean actually i really like.

the idea that everything in the universe. is unique so even if like there were two. lectures i know you like that idea. because you're human and you think. you're unique yeah exactly but also i. can make a logical argument for it that. even if we could copy you know all of. your molecules and all their positions. the other you would be there and you. have a different position in space. you're distinguishable yeah the other. thing always how unique are you just. about the position in space really sure. but then how much does that light. translation of lex well that's. i see but.

but no wait wait a minute. is part of the definition of something. being interesting is how much it affects. the future. yes yes. but let me come back don't you agree but. let me up you disagree one point quickly. that you were making sure i think i. probably agree yeah if there's two. lectures right there's a robot lex that. you just basically it's a it's a it is a. charade it's a facsimile. it's just coded. to emulate you. are you robot lex but another one no. let's get that but let's get there's a.

point a very important point here. because he's he's ducking and diving. between this i so so if i faximilied you. into a robot then it would you your. robot might be. would be a representation of you now but. fundamentally be boring because you'll. go and have other ideas if however you. built an architecture that itself was. capable of generating novelty you would. diverge in your causal chain and you. both be equally interesting to interact. with yeah we don't know that mechanism. all i'm trying to say is we don't yet. know that mechanism we do not know the. mechanism that generates novelty and at.

the moment in our ais we are emulating. we are not generating you don't think. we're sneaking up on that do you think. there's something no no there is no. ghost in the machine. and i want there to be one. i want the same thing you want sorry i. know you want that as a human because. everything you just said makes you feel. more special i want to be certain no no. no screw my specialness i just want to. be surprised. if i negoroba can surprise you if i if. you can produce an algorithm.

instantiated in a row what surprised me. i will. i will i will i will. i will have one of those robots it'll be. brilliant but they won't surprise me. but why why is it a problem to think. that humans are special. maybe it's not the special you're right. it's the better than yes. because then you start to not recognize. the magic in other life forms that you. either have created or you have observed. because i just think there's magic and. uh. legged robots moving about and they are.

full of surprises yeah so this is. nationality. yeah so i'm a little. uh i know where you like cellular. automata right but the specialness in. your robot. comes from the roboticist that built it. yeah it's part of the lineage yeah and. so that's fine i'm happy with that. that's what i felt like looking at the. standing robot was i was looking at four. billion years of evolution yeah right if. it wasn't so i think i'm happy i mean. i'm happy we're going to co-exist i'm.

just saying you're going to get more. excitement there's something missing in. our understanding of intelligence. intelligence isn't just. training. uh the way the neural network is. conceived right now is great and it's. lovely and it'll be brighter and we'll. argue forever but. you want to know wouldn't it be great if. i said look i know how to invent an. architecture and i can give it a soul. and what i mean by a soul. is some i know for. real that there is internal reference. as soon as like not fake internal.

reference and if we could generate that. mechanism for internal reference that's. why our goal direction that's why you. have to we can do that. get that goal directing this you would. love that robot more than the one that's. just made to look like it does. because you'll have more fun with it. because you better generate. search other problems get more novelty. hell you'll be able to fall in love with. that robot for real but not the one. that's faking it. what about fake it till you make it. well i think a lot of people fall in. love with with um with with fake.

yep humans yeah it's it's nice to it's. nice to fall in love with something. that's full of novelty yes i. you know i can imagine all kinds of. robots that i would want to have a close. relationship with. and i don't mean like sexual i mean like. intimacy. because but i just don't think that um. novelty generation is such a special. okay there's like mathematical novelty. or something like that and then there's. just humans being surprised and i think.

we're easily surprised that's fine but. that's that but you don't think that's a. good deal no that's good i'm happy to be. surprised. um. but not globally surprised because. someone else but i really want i was why. i'm a scientist i really want to be. the first to be surprised about. something and the first thing in the. first in the universe to create that. novelty and to know for sure that that. novelty has never occurred anywhere else. that's a real buzz right that's a way to. really know that i i you have to have a. really big look update.

right yeah you're never gonna know for. sure right that's that's one of the hard. things about being. and scientists searching for this type. of novelty maybe that's why mathematics. mathematicians love. discovery but actually they are creating. and then when they create a new um. mathematical structure that they can. then they you can you can write code to. work out whether there's whether that. structure exists before that that's. almost why i would love to have been a. mathematician from that regard to invent. new math that really i know pretty much.

for sure to not exit does not exist. anywhere else in the universe because so. contingent right but this gets into like. you are you said a few times but i still. really don't understand how you actually. plan to do this to build an experiment. that detects how the universe is. generating novelty or that time is the. mechanism. so the problem that we all have which i. think is what lex is pushing against is. if i built the experiment. you don't know what you put into it so. you don't know what. like if you unless you can quantify. everything you put in all of your agency.

all the boundary conditions you don't. know if you somehow biased it in some. way so is the novelty actually intrinsic. to that experiment or to that robot or. is it something you gave it but you. didn't realize it's gonna be it's gonna. asymptote towards that right you're. never gonna know for sure but you can. start to take out you know you can use. good bayesian approaches and just keep. updating and updating and updating until. you point to one sense of purposes found. on how much novelty generation could be. yeah got it. so the ability generate novelty is.

correlated with high assembly index. with assembly index yeah and yeah. because the space possibilities is. bigger. so. um that's the key this could be a good. so a running joke of like why lex is. single this could be a good part for. uh so so what you're looking for. in a robot partner is ability to. generate novelty.

and that's i suppose you would say it's. a good definition of intelligence too. boy is novelty a um. a fuzzy concept. is creativity better. yeah i mean that's all pretty fuzzy. it's kind of the same maybe that's why. aliens haven't come yet it's because. we're not creating enough novelty like. there's some kind of a hierarchy of.

novelty in the universe well i think. novelties like things surprise you right. so it's a very passive thing but i guess. i would remember by saying creativity is. i think it's much more active like you. think there's like a mechanism. of like the things that exist are. generating the creativity novelty seems. to be there's some spontaneous. production it has it's completely. decoupled from the things that exist no. i i understand i think there's this. really really creativity is the. mechanism and novelty is the observable. yeah. novelty could just be surprising your. model of the world was broken and and.

not necessarily in a positive way that's. the prize so there's three things now. let's go back that's cool right let's go. you've got surprise which is basically. i'm i don't i mean i'm surprised all the. time because i don't read very much i'm. pretty dumb i was like oh wow. i often used to invent new scientific. you know ideas and i was really. surprised by that and then when looking. literature properly and it's there so. surprise that's to the extent that you. don't have full information. um creativity the act of pushing. on that um kind of on the causal.

structure. and novelty which is measuring that. degree. right so i think that's pretty well. defined in that regard so you want your. robo you mean in the and in the end. that's why actually the way the internet. and the printing press share. some um i actually think creativity has. dropped a bit since it created since the. internet because everyone's just just. you know just regurgitating stuff but of. course now it's beginning to accelerate. again because everyone is using this. tool to be creative. and boom is exploding.

so i think that's what happens when you. create these new technologies. that's really that's really helpful. there's a difference between novelty and. surprise okay i was i think i was. thinking about surprise. if you give me a toy that surprises me. for a bit it'd be great robot surprises. me you know experiment that surprises. you yeah i mean that's why i love doing. experiments because i'm i can't it's. still exciting yeah surprise is exciting. yeah. even negative surprise like some people. love drama in relationships like. it's like why the hell. why'd you do this.

that could be exciting i could imagine. companies selling updates to their their. companion robots that just basically. generate negative surprise just to just. spice things up a bit yeah it's the push. and pull that's that's one of the. components of love as you said love is a. complicated thing. oh beauty i wanted to mention this. because you also tweeted i think this. was sarah no it might have been lee i. don't remember but it was a survey. published in nature showing that. scientists uh find yeah yeah um. anyway there's a there's a plot this is.

published in nature of what scientists. find beautiful in their work and it. separates biologists and physicists it'd. be nice if you showed the full plot. and there's simplicity elegance hidden. order. inner logic of systems symmetry. complexity harmony and so on um is there. any interesting things that stand out to. you. i think the fact that biologists like. complexity and pleasing colors. oh there's pleasing calls on there yeah.

yeah yeah yeah or shape or shapes. pleasing. and then physicists obviously love. simplicity. elegance. simplicity elegance yeah they love. symmetry and then biologists love. complexity. and uh well they just love a little bit. less. they love everything a little bit less. the complexity a little bit more a. little bit more. that's so interesting and pleasing. colors are shapes. do you think it's a useful i forget what. your tweet was that this is missing some. of the things oh no i think i it's.

because i think about how. um. explanations become causal to our future. so. i have this whole philosophy that um. the theories we build and the way we. describe reality should be. have the largest. breadth of possibilities for the future. of. what we can accomplish so in some sense. it's not like. occam's razor is not for simplicity it's. for optimism or the kind of future you. can build. and so i think um.

i think you have to think this way when. you're thinking about life and alien. life because ultimately we're trying to. build i mean science is just basically. our narratives about reality and now. you're building a narrative that is what. we are as physical systems it seems to. me it needs to be as positive as. possible because it's basically going to. shape the future trajectory where we're. going and we don't use that as a. heuristic in theory building because we. think theories um. are about predicting features of the. world not causing them but if you look. at the history of all of the development.

of human thought it's caused the things. that happen next so. it's not just about looking at the world. and observing it it's about. actually. that feedback loop. that's missing and it's not in any of. those categories. what do you think. is the most beautiful idea. in the physics of life and the chemistry. of life. in this um through all your exploration. with assembly theory.

what is the um. the thing that made you step back and. say this is this this um. idea is beautiful. or potentially beautiful. for me it's that the universe is a. creative place i guess i i. i want to think and whether it's true or. not is that. we are special in some way and it's not. like an arbitrary. added on epi phenomena or ad hoc feature. of the universe that we exist but it's. something deep and intrinsic to the. structure of reality.

um and to me the most beautiful ideas. that come out of that is that the the. reason we exist is for the universe. to generate more things and to think. about itself and use that as a. mechanism for creating more stuff. um. that's for me uh so like the the life. that. this however uh common it is is an. intrinsic part. as a fundamental part of uh this. universe at least that we live in i. think so i mean it's always interesting.

to me because um. you know like we have theories of. quantum mechanics and gravity and. they're supposed to be like our most. fundamental theories right now and they. describe you know things like the. interaction of massive bodies or the way. that um charges accelerate or all these. kind of features. and and they're these really deep. theories and they tell us a lot about. how reality works but they're they're. completely agnostic to our existence and. i just i can't help but think that like. whatever describes us has to be even. deeper than that. um and i i think.

incorporating memory i guess yeah. causality whatever the term you want to. use into the physics view of the world. might be that's the easiest way to do it. it's the it's the cleanest so here we go. again with the physicists i'm a. physicist the clean i was going to say. the simplest most elegant way of. resolving all of the kind of ways. that um we have we have these paradoxes. associated with life when you it's not. that life is not um. current physics is not incompatible with. life but it doesn't explain life and.

then you you want to know where are the. explanatory gaps and this idea that we. have an assembly that time is. fundamental and and. objects actually are extended in time. and have physical extent in time is the. cleanest way of resolving a lot of the. explanatory gaps. so i. i've been struck i struggle with. assembly theory for many years because i. could see this gap. and i think when i first met sarah and. we realized we were kind of. talking about the same problem but we.

were we. understood none of the language it was. quite hilarious actually because it's. like look i have no idea what we're. talking about but i think it sounds. right so for me the most beautiful thing. about assembly theory is i realized. the assembly theory explains why the. universe my life is a universe. developing a memory but not only that. poetically. i could actually go and measure it. and i was like. holy we were just we physically. measured this thing abstra this abstract. thing and we could measure it.

and not only could we measure it but we. can then start to quantify the causal. consequences. and because. i mean you know i i think. as a kind of inventing this together. with sarah and her team. i thought there was a quite a high. chance that you know we're doing science. there's such a high probability we're. wrong. you know. on this and i remember kind of trying to. go to. hard.

physicists mathematicians complexity. theorists and everyone just kind of. giving me such a hard time about it. i said you know this is kind of this is. you've just done this you've just done. that it's it's you know if you've just. re capitulated an old theory. and i and i was unable i lacked the. language to really explain and i had to. it was a real struggle so this. realization that life what life does. that physics cannot understand or. chemistry is the universe develops a.

memory that's causally actionable. and then we can measure it but it isn't. just a. one thing there is this intrinsic. property of all the objects in the. universe like like i've said before but. you know me holding up this water bottle. is just any other water bottle but it is. a sum total of all the water bottles. that have existed right. and will likely change the future of. water bottles. and for other objects so it's that this. kind of. so for me. assembly theory explains the soul. in stuff mm-hmm.

but it is the monology it's not like. sheldrick's morphic resonance where we. have this kind of wooy thing permeating. universe. is the interaction of objects of other. objects and some objects have more. instantaneous causal power. that's. life. living things and some objects are the. instantaneous output of that causal. power dead objects but they're part of. the lineage and that for me is. fascinating and really beautiful when i. and i think that um even if we're.

determined to be totally wrong. i think it will help us. help. hopefully understand what life is and go. into tech life elsewhere and make life. in the lab. how does that make you feel by the way. does it make you feel less special that. you're so deeply integrated. interconnected to the lineage i mean i. came on one level i just wanted in my. life as a scientist i wanted to have an. interesting idea just once or an. original idea. i mean it was like you know uh so i. think that was cool that we had this.

idea and we were playing with it and i. think also that um i i kind of i mean it. took me ages to realize that sarah had. also had the same kind of form coming. towards the same formulation just from a. completely different point. because i um but no it makes me feel. special it also makes me feel connected. to the universe it also makes me feel. not just humble about you know being a. living object in the universe but the. fact that it makes me really optimistic. about what the universe is going to do. in the future. because we're not just. isolated phenomena we are connected i.

will be able to have you know one of my. small objectives in life is to change. the future of the universe in some. profound way just by existing yeah. that's not ambitious at all. i think it's also good because it makes. me feel less lonely because i just. realized i'm not like i mean i'm a. unique assembly structure but i have so. much overlap with the other entities i. interact with that we're not completely.

individual right and yet. your existence does have a. huge amount of impact on the how this. whole thing unrolls on the future. of the as individuals that's yeah all. right but i was going to say packets of. agency i think we all have a profound. impact on the future some more than. others right all human beings all life. and i mean that's why. i think it's a privilege in a way for. you know to say like to assert some. degree of ego and agency. you know i'm going to make a computer or.

make an origin life machine or you know. this thing but actually it's just like. you know life's probably living. if there is a god or there's a soul in. everything it's really laughing at us. going. i fool these guys by giving them ego so. they strive for this stuff and look what. it does for you know the assembly space. of the universe and there's always a. possibility that science can't answer. all of it so. that part's challenging for me. there might be a limit to this thing. let me ask you a bunch of ridiculous. questions and i demand.

relatively short. answers uh lee what's the scariest thing. you've ever done. okay. yeah or what's a scary thing that pops. to mind. giving lecture giving giving seminars in. front of other scientists. yes yeah that is terrifying i i could if. i were. more time i would ask you about the most. embarrassing but will spare you uh what. about you sarah scariest thing.

um. up there. some of the scary things you've done. um. actually the scariest for me was. deciding i want to get divorced because. it was like a totally radical like um. life transformation yeah because we had. been married for a really long time. um and i think it was just so much like. i realized like so much of my individual. agency i didn't realize i had before and. that was just really like scary like. empowering scary but like terrifying. like you were living in a kind of one. way for your whole life and then you. realize your life could be a different.

way. and. yeah there is a between humans i mean. that's the. the the the beautiful thing about love. is the the connection you have but it's. also becomes a dependency and breaking. that whether it's a mentor with your. parents do you it's almost like waking. up like like just there's a different. reality yeah that was scary reinventing. yourself. okay if you could uh leave maybe i'll. actually we'll alternate sarah if you. could uh be someone else for a day. someone alive today you haven't met who. haven't met yet or maybe you could do.

one who you've met who would it be. kim kardashian. no joke. the woman's brilliant i would just like. to experience i just i think she's got. such an interesting. uh and very deep understanding of social. reality but you also said you have a. appreciation a love for fashion i do. but that but that's actually the same. like i just think it's really. interesting because we live in a social. reality which is completely artificially. constructed and some people are really. genius about moving through that and i.

think she's particularly good at i. wonder if she's good at understanding or. if she's i think it's very deeply. intrinsic to her so i don't know if. she's like surfing away how much. cognitive awareness she has of it or how. strategic it is but i think it's deeply. fascinating so i guess that's the first. one that comes fine. uh what about you lee if you could be. somebody. for a day don't say yoshi. don't say kim kardashian. let's do it off the table off the table. no i was going to say i would like to. like to be a. uh does that have to be here today i was. going to say i'd like to be um.

the latest um. uh arm processor. obviously. i would like to be the latest arm. processor i would like to understand. what i would like to know what it feels. like to basically um. you like being objects i like being. always obsessed with being objects ever. since i was a kid what's the best part. of being an armed processor for a day i. mean i'd like to understand how i access. my memory what i anticipate it's coming. next and clock cycles what about how it. feels like yeah i want to know how it. feels like it could be to be useful to.

people. i mean thanks for that. all right um if uh leaf everyone. on earth disappeared and it was just you. left what would your days look like what. would you do nobody else left to impress. nobody no probably can't really do any. real science at scale what would you do. with your remaining yeah every possible. tool i could. and put it in my workshop and just make.

stuff. as so try to make stuff just try and. make stuff make companions i'm probably. not making companions probably yeah. so in the physical space yeah. what about you sir what would you when. you're just left alone on earth. in this scenario no living beings no. plants. no plants. oh interesting i was going to say i. would just i would try to walk the. entire planet at least all the land mass. well this that's true so you probably.

don't know. if there's stuff you could be you could. be searching for plants or other humans. what would i eat. it's uh. you just have. daily just. allotment i would just walk all the time. i don't know why i just walk that's just. what came to mind i would just walk. and i guess i would make a goal of. covering all of the entire earth because. what else are you going to do with your. time what's an item on your bucket list. sarah that you haven't done yet but you.

hope to do um. skydiving i travel to space um. i don't know. you know what's funny with my bucket. list i only know it was on my bucket. list once i check it off once you check. it off so your bucket list is like a fog. it's like a mystery yeah almost by doing. it yeah so it's very subconsciously. driven um so it's in your subconscious. in there and i think you're bringing it. to the surface i think most of the. steering of our agency is in our. subconscious anyway so i just kind of go. with the flow but i guess um.

no seriously yeah no i get it. i don't know i guess i would like to go. in a submarine like to the bottom of the. ocean i think that'd be really cool the. bottom of the ocean are you captivated. by the mystery of the ocean like i am. yeah. yeah what about you lee. what uh item on your bucket list. i don't have a bucket list i've just. made on i would love to take a computer. to the moon or mars. and make drugs off the world be the. first chemist to make drugs off world of.

the first drug manufacturer in space. yeah why not drop do they have to be. somehow like be able to habitate like to. be able to survive on that particular. space. or. like what's the connection between being. on mars and do makeup i just would like. to be that i'd like to take. um the ability to make have command and. control over chemicals. programmatically off earth to somewhere. else. that just seems like you like difficulty. engineering. problems. before i die if i can do that would you.

travel to space before yeah yeah that's. what i'm saying i'd love to go into. space but not just to be a tourist i. want to take scientific experiment in. space and do a thing in space that never. been done before. that's a real possibility yeah yeah yeah. so that's why there's no point in. listing things i can't do. yes. all right. what small act of kindness were you once. shown that you will never forget. small act of kindness not big. somebody was just kind to you somebody.

did something sweet. when i was. a phd student um. someone helped me out with uh. just. i was. basically i needed a computer i needed. some power computation power and someone. just took pity on me and helped me. and gave me so i was really touched they. didn't have to and they were actually. quite um they're a disabled scientist. they had other things to do rather than. help some random phd student gave me. access taught me a lot of stuff. yeah actually when when you're a grad.

student or when you're a student when. even a student you know the younger it. is the better. uh the attention the. the support the love you get from from. an older person a teacher or something. like that is super powerful it's. fascinating and like from the. perspective of the teacher they might. not realize the impact they have but. that little bit. those few words uh a little bit of help. can have a have a lot of impact what. about you sarah. um so i'm gonna give you a free. starbucks at some point i love free. starbucks i like it when you're like in.

the line at starbucks and somebody buys. your coffee in front of you and then you. buy the next one i love those but yeah. uh that's not my example oh those are. great too yeah it makes me happy and now. my kids get all excited when we do it. when we go in for the first ones in line. doing it but um. uh. um i guess i i can use a similar example. about just being a student um. uh so paul davies um is a very well. known theoretical physicist and i um. uh you know he was generous enough with.

his time to take me on as a postdoc um. but before i became his postdoc he. invited me to a workshop at arizona. state university in the beyond center. and. um took a walk with me around campus. just to talk about ideas after and i. think. there were two things that were. completely generous about. uh. that one is um paul's philosophy is. always interacting with young people is. like you interact with a mind in the. room it doesn't matter um you know how. well known or whatever it's like you you. evaluate the person for the person so um.

but he also gave me a book uh the eerie. silence that he had written and he wrote. in it um this is how e e gets to e t. um which was an anatomic excess which i. worked on as a phd student was the. origin of home of chirality um all the. way up to what the book was about which. was are we alone in the universe and is. there intelligent life out there. and it was just. so. much about the questions i wanted to ask. because it's like it was just everything. about like just it was it was just. really really kind. like that it's okay to ask these.

questions yeah and you can actually i. mean i think a lot of my career is. mostly his encouragement to ask deep. questions like he gave me the space to. do it in ways that a lot of previous. mentors had i mean i have i've had a. good experience with mentors but. it was like go off the deep end ask the. hardest questions. and i think that's the best gift you can. give somebody. what would you because you're both. fascinating minds and not i would say. uh non-standard. in the best possible way is there advice.

you can give to young folks how to be. non-standard. how to stand out novelty how to generate. novelty that's what i want on my. tombstone i have one um. he he generated novelty no no how to. it's like how to. how still um. i just love doing science and so. when i was younger i was just just. wanted to i mean i'm still not sure i'm. a real scientist right so i want to try. so my advice for the young people is. just. if you just if you love asking questions.

then. don't be afraid to ask the question even. if it pisses people off because if you. piss people off you're probably asking. the right question. what i would say though is don't do what. i do which is just piss everyone off. try and work out how to. you know i think. if you're if other people are challenged. by your questions. you will get. not only your respect but people will. give you create space for you because. you're doing something really new.

i really try to create space in my. academic career my my team. really try and praise them and push them. to do new things so my advice is. try to do new things get feedback. and the universe will help you. because the universe likes novelty i. think so i think so right if this one. will keep them around. what about you sarah um you two like to. ask the really. out there. yeah.

uh because i have a strong passion for. them so i think um. uh it goes back to the love like if you. if you're doing the thing you're. supposed to be doing you should really. love it. um so i always tell people that they. should do the thing they're most. passionate about but i think a flip side. of that is. that's when you become uh in some mind. like not to sound cheesy but like your. best version of yourself so i guess like. for me as i become more successful in my. career i feel like i can be more myself. as an individual and so there's this. i've always been following the questions. i'm most interested in which very early.

on i was discouraged from knowing by. many people because they thought they. were unanswerable questions and i always. just thought well if no one's even. trying to answer them of course they're. going to be unanswerable and then that. was kind of an odd viewpoint but the. more i i found my way in that space the. more i also made a space for myself as a. person because you're basically. generating the niche that you want to. exist in um and so i think um. i think that's. that's part of it is not just to follow.

your passion but also think about like. who do you want to be. and create that. yeah who am i who you want to be i mean. yeah play temporally with it yeah who am. i now who do i want to be now but who do. i want to be in the future they're not. decoupled yeah i always wonder if that's. like. if i become something. am i finding myself or am i creating. myself yeah. and i think those are somehow the same. kind of thing i do feel often like that. i was always meant to be this kind of.

thing yeah. but. um. is that created or discovered i don't. know but basically go towards that. direction. if you were abducted by aliens sarah. excellent i'm waiting. [Laughter]. there on a spaceship there. and then they somehow figured out the. language you speak. um. and ask you what are what are you. what is what. explain yourself. not you sarah but the species oh.

what's. life on earth. uh. like we we don't have time we're busy. grad students from another uh planet i. see what what what's interesting about. human civilization what's interesting. about you. uh you specifically too they could be. very kind of personal and kind of pushy. um. and. yeah. okay um. i have one um because you know like.

obviously i self-identify as a scientist. and a physicist but intrinsically i feel. more like an artist but it's almost like. you're an artist that you don't know. what you're painting yet um and i guess. i feel like that's humanity like in in. some sense we're we're creating. something i think is profound and. potentially very beautiful like. existence of the universe but we're just. so. night like not night oh we're just early. we're we're early we're young we don't. know what we're doing yet yeah what's. with the nuclear weapons is the question.

too like what are you guys what are we. doing with them this creativity that you. talked it sounds very nice but it's. you're seeing we're making things that. are like very destructive and like the. rockets what this seems very aggressive. yeah i know this is my my blinders on um. i don't know i i mean it goes back to. the whole conversation about suffering i. have a hard time uh regularizing certain. aspects of reality into what i want to. envision and that's obviously. problematic but you know nuclear power.

has also given us a lot of good things. so um so both that's human nature both. both human beings and the technology we. create has the capacity for evil and the. capacity yeah we can't all be good all. the time i mean there's like this huge. misnomer that you need to be liked by. everyone universally and obviously. that's like an ideal but it's physically. impossible you like you can't get a. group of people in the room and have. everyone like each other all the time so. i think that kind of tension is actually. really important um that we have.

different aesthetics. different goals. uh. and. and sometimes. conflict comes out of that yeah speaking. of which do you lee and yoshibach ever. say anything nice to each other or is it. always conflict. we never have conflict we argue but i. don't i don't think they argue arguments. are bad. i mean i think the problem i have yeah. not a problem i think here we go. and he's not here as defendants no i. just i don't necessarily understand. the the what i mean he's just talking at.

such a high level yeah you know. i'm i'm a dimwit so i'm like i spend. some so i think a lot of our. conflict is not conflict we actually we. actually have i think i mean i can't. speak for i have a deep appreciation for. him he's brilliant but i i think i'm. kind of frustrated and i'm trying to. he thinks the universe. is a computer and i want to turn the. universe into a computer yeah that's. that's a small disagreement so what. would you how would you defend your life. to an alien when you're being abducted.

would you focus on the specifics of your. life no no i would be i would try to be. as random as possible and try and. confuse them oh good. good. excellent that might be the wiser choice. the easter eggs in reality no i mean if. the aliens would die. i would try and be as random as but i. would try and do something that would. surprise the hell out of them which i. thought i mean are probably like brisket. they might kill me but i think that. might be funny that might yeah they. might want to study you for prolonged. periods my reasoning is if i wanted to.

stay alive okay so if the thing is if i. wasn't going back to earth and the job. was to stay alive if i could be as. surprising as possible they'd keep me. around like a pet right. pet lee on the aliens you'd be okay. being being a pet well no but i mean the. last the last human that survives would. just be a pet to the alien i i don't. know but i mean i think um that might be. fun because then that might might i. might get some feedback from their. curiosity but yeah let me ask you this. question. given our conversation has a very.

different meaning. not. more profoundly perhaps but would you. rather lose all of your old memories. or never be able to make new ones. i would have to. um. lose all my old memories. again it's the novelty. um what about you sarah i'm not saying. because i don't think. like it's about the future experience. right and in some sense. like you were saying earlier. most of our lived experience is actually.

in our memories so if you can't generate. new memories it's like you're not alive. anymore. that's it. what comforts you on bad days when you. look at human civilization when you look. at your own life. what gives you hope what makes you feel. good about what we're doing about life. at the small scale of you as a human and. the big scale of us is a human. civilization may be the big scale of the. universe. children my kids but i i also mean that.

in like a grand sense of like. not a grant but like like. future minds in some sense so for me. like the most bleak movie ever you know. people worry about apocalyptic things. like ai existential risk and climate. change which children of men you know. the whole premise of the movie was there. can be no children born on the entire. planet and the youngest person on the. planet is like 18 years old or something. like can you imagine a world without. children it's just. it's harrowing that's the scariest thing. so i think um.

what gives me hope is always youth and. um. the the hope of children and the you. know the possibilities of the future. they see and they grow up in a. completely different reality than adults. do um and i i think we have a hard time. seeing. what their reality actually looks like. but i i think i think most of the time. it's. super interesting yeah they have dreams. of imagination. they have this kind of excitement yeah. so it's so cool so fun to watch.

and. yeah you feel like you're almost getting. in the way yeah of all that. uh imagination what about you lee what. gives you hope. so when i go back to my eight-year-old. self. the thing that i dreamed of my old self. was this world in which technology. became programmable when there was. internet how do i get information. and i would expand my consciousness by. just. just. you know um getting access to everything. that was going on and it's happened in.

my lifetime and we really do have that i. mean okay there's some bad things you. know there's tick tock everyone just or. whatever all the bad things about social. media but. i think um. i mean i'm i can't quite believe my luck. being born now so amazing. being able to program reality in some. way yeah and the thing that i really. find fascinating about human beings. is that. just how ingenious they are. i'm you know whether it's from my my. kids.

my research group my peers. other companies just how ingenious. everyone is. and um and i'm pretty sure humanity has. a v or. our causal chain in which humanity is a. vital part in the future. is going to have a lot of fun and i'm. just yeah it's just it's just. mind-blowing just to watch and you know. so humans are ingenious and i i hope to. help them be more ingenious if i can. well what gives me hope what makes me. feel good on bad days is the existence.

of wild. minds like yours novelty generators. assembly structures that generate. novelty. and do so beautifully and then tweet. about it. uh sarah this. i really really enjoy talking to you i. enjoy following you i'm a huge fan. sarah lee i hope i hope to talk to you. many times in the future maybe with your. shabbat you're just incredible people. thank you for everything you do you're. awesome thank you for talking today i. really really appreciate it thank you. yeah it's been brilliant to be here. thanks for listening to this.

conversation with sarah walker and lee. cronin to support this podcast please. check out our sponsors in the. description. now let me leave you with some words. from arthur c clarke. two possibilities exist. either we are alone in the universe or. we are not. both are equally terrifying. and let me if i may. add to that by saying that both. possibilities at least to me are both. terrifying and exciting and keeping.

these two feelings in my heart is a fun. way to explore to wander to think and to. live. always a little bit on the edge of. madness. thank you for listening i hope to see. you. next time. you.