Kind: captions
Language: en
so you have an original life event it
evolves for 4 billion years at least on
our planet it evolves a technosphere the
Technologies themselves start having
this property we call life which is the
phase we're undergoing now it solves the
origin of itself and then it figures out
how that process all works understands
how to make more life and then can copy
itself onto another planet so the whole
structure can reproduce
itself the following is a conversation
with Sarah Walker her third time in the
podcast she is an astrobiologist and
theoretical physicist interested in the
origin of life and in discovering alien
life on other worlds she has written an
amazing new upcoming book titled life as
no one knows it the physics of life's
emergence this book is coming out on
August 6th so please go pre-order it now
it will blow your mind this is Al Le fre
podcast to support it please check out
our sponsors in the description and now
dear friends here's Sarah
Walker you open the book life as no one
knows it the physics of life's emergence
with a distinction between the
materialists and the vitalists so what's
the difference can you maybe Define the
two I think the question there is about
whether life can be
described in terms of matter and you
know physical physical things or whether
there is
some other feature that's not physical
that actually animates living things so
for a long time people maybe have called
that a soul it's been really hard to pin
down what that is so I think the
vitalist idea is really that it's it's
kind of a dualistic interpretation that
there's sort of the material properties
but there's something else that animates
life that is there when you're alive and
it's not there when you're dead and
materialists kind of don't think that
there's anything really special about
the matter of life and the material
substrates that life is made out of so
they disagree in some really fundamental
points is there a gray area between the
two like maybe all there is is matter
but there's so much we don't know that
there might as well be magic that that
like whatever that magic that the
vitalists see meaning like there's just
so much mystery that it's really unfair
to say that it's boring and understood
and as simple as quote unquote physics
yeah I think the entire universe is just
a giant mystery um I guess that's what
motivates me as a scientist and so often
times when I look at open problems like
the nature of life or Consciousness or
you know what is intelligence or are
there souls or whatever whatever
question that we have that we feel like
we aren't even on the tip of answering
yet I think you know we have a lot more
work to do to really understand the
answers to these questions so it's not
magic it's just the unknown and I think
a lot of the history of humans coming to
understand the world around us has been
taking ideas that we once thought were
magic or Supernatural and really
understanding them in a much deeper way
um that we learn what those things are
and they still have an air of mystery
even when we understand them there's
there's no there's no sort of bottom to
our understanding
so do you think the vitalists have a
point that they're uh more eager and
able to notice the magic of life I think
that no tradition vitalists included is
ever fully wrong about the nature of the
things that they're describing so a lot
of times when I look at different ways
that people have described things across
human history across different cultures
there's always a seed of Truth in them
and I think it's really important to try
to look for those because if there are
narratives that humans have been telling
ourselves uh for thousands of years for
thousands of generations there must be
some truth to them you know we've been
learning about
reality um for a really long time um and
we recognize the patterns that reality
presents us we don't always understand
what those patterns are and so I think
it's really important to pay attention
to that so I don't think the vitalists
were actually wrong and a lot of what I
talk about in the book but also I think
about a lot just professionally is the
nature of our definitions of what's
material and how science has come to
invent the concept of matter and that
some of those things actually really are
inventions that happened in a particular
time in a particular technology that
could learn about certain patterns and
help us understand them and that there
are some patterns we still don't
understand and if we knew how
to uh measure those things or we knew
how to describe them uh in a more
rigorous way we would realize that the
material World matter has more
properties than we thought that it did
and one of those might be associated
with the thing that we call life life
could be a material property and still
have a lot of the features that the
vitalist thought were mysterious so we
may still expand our understanding what
is Incorporated in the category of
matter that will eventually incorporate
such magical things that the vitalists
have noticed like life yeah so I think
about um I always like to use examples
from physics so I'll
do that to like like it's just my it's
my go-to place um but you know in in the
history of gravitational physics for
example in the history of motion you
know like when Aristotle came up with
his theories of motion he did it by the
material properties he thought things
had so there was a concept of things
falling to Earth because they were solid
like and things raising to the heavens
because they were air likee and things
moving around the planet cuz they were
Celestial like but then we came to
realize that thousands of years later
and after the invention of many
technologies that allowed us to actually
measure um time in a mechanistic way and
track planetary motion uh and we could
you know roll balls down incline planes
and track that progress we realized that
if we just talked about mass and
acceleration we could unify all Motion
in the universe in a really simple
description um so we didn't really have
to worry about the fact that my cup is
heavy and the air is light like the same
laws describe them um if we have the
right material properties to talk about
what those laws are actually interacting
with and so I think the issue with life
is we don't know how to think about
information in a material way and so we
haven't been able to build a unified
description of what life is or the kind
of things that Evolution builds um
because we haven't really invented the
right material concept yet so when
talking about motion the laws of physics
appear to be the same everywhere in the
universe you think the same is true for
other kinds of matter that we might
eventually include life
in I think life obeys Universal
principles I think there is some deep
underlying exploratory framework that
will tell us about the nature of life in
the universe and will allow us to
identify life that we can't yet
recognize um because it's too different
you write about the Paradox of the
finding life why does it seem to be so
easy and so complicated at the same time
you know all the sort of classic
definitions people want to use just
don't work they don't work in all cases
so uh Carl Sean had this wonderful essay
on definitions of life where I think he
talks about aliens coming from another
planet if they saw Earth they might
think that cars were the dominant life
form because there's so many of them on
our planet and like humans are inside
them and you might want to exclude
machines uh but any definition you know
like classic biology textbook
definitions would also include them and
so you know he wanted to draw a boundary
between uh these kind of things by
trying to uh exclude them but they were
naturally included by the definitions
people want to give and in fact what he
ended up pointing out is that all of the
definitions of life that we have whether
it's life is a self-reproducing system
or life eats to survive or life requires
compartments whatever it is there's
always a counter example that challenges
that definition this is why viruses are
so hard or why fire is so hard and so uh
we've had a really hard time trying to
pin down from a definitional perspective
exactly what life is yeah you actually
bring up the the zombie an fungus I
enjoyed looking at this thing as an
example of one of the challenges
mentioned viruses but this this is a
parasite look at that did you see this
in the jungle infects ants actually one
of the interesting things about the
jungle Jungle everything is Emeral like
everything eats everything really
quickly so if you uh if an organism dies
uh that organism disappears isn't yeah
it's a machine that doesn't have
uh I wanted to say doesn't have a memory
or history which is interesting given
your work on history in defining a
living being the jungle forgets very
quickly it wants to erase the fact that
you existed very quickly yeah but it
can't erase said it's just restructuring
it and I think the other thing that is
really you know Vivid to me about this
example that you're giving is how much
death is necessary for life so I I worry
a bit about um Notions of immortality
and whether immortality is a good thing
or not um so I have sort of a broad
conception that life is the only thing
the universe uh generates that actually
has even the potential to be immortal
but that's as like this sort of process
that you're describing where life is
about memory and historical contingency
and construction of new possibilities
but when you look at any instance of
life especially one as dynamic as what
you're describing it's a constant birth
and death process but that birth and
death process is like the way that the
Universe can explore what possibilities
can exist and not everything not every
possible human or every possible ant or
every possible zombie ant or every
possible tree will ever live so it's uh
you know it's an incredibly Dynamic and
creative place because of all that death
so does this thing this is a parasite
that needs the ant so is this a living
thing or is this not a living thing so
this is yeah so it just pierces the ant
I mean it it right and I've seen a lot
of this by the way um organisms working
together in the jungle like ants
protecting a delicious piece of fruit so
they need the fruit but like if you
touch that fruit they're going to
like the forces emerge they're fighting
you they're defending that fruit right
to the death it just nature seems to
find mutual benefits right yeah it does
um I I think the thing that's perplexing
for me about these kind of examples is
you know effectively the ant's dead but
it's staying alive now because it's
piloted by this fungus and so that gets
back to this you know thing that we were
talking about a few minutes ago about
how the boundary of life is really hard
to Define so you know anytime that you
want to draw a boundary around something
and you say this feature is the thing
that makes us alive or this thing is
alive on its own there's not ever really
a clear boundary and these kind of
examples are really good at showing that
because it it's like the thing that you
would have thought is the living
organism is now dead except that it has
another living organism that's piloting
it so the two of them together are alive
and some sense but they're you know now
in this kind of weird symbiotic
relationship that's taking this an to
its death so what do you do with that in
terms of when you try to Define life I
think we have to get rid of the notion
of an individual as being
relevant and this is really difficult
because you know a lot of the ways that
we think about life like the fundamental
unit of life is the cell individuals are
alive um but we don't think about how
how gray that distinction is so for
example um you might consider you know
self- reproduction to be the most most
defining feature of Life a lot of people
do actually like you know one of these
standard different definitions that a
lot of people may feel like to use in
astrobiology is life is a
self-sustaining chemical system capable
of darwinian evolution which I was once
quoted as agreeing with and I was really
offended um because I hate that
definition I think it's terrible um and
I think it's terrible that people use it
I think like every word in that
definition is actually wrong as a
descriptor of life life is a
self-sustaining chemical system capable
of darwinian evolution why is that that
seems like a pretty good yeah I know if
you want to make me angry you can
pretend I said
that and believed it so self- sustaining
uh chemical system darwinian Evolution
what is self- sustaining what's what
what's so frustrating I mean which
aspect is frustrating to you but it's
also those are very interesting words
yeah they're all interesting words um
and you know together they sound really
smart and they sound like they box in
what life is but you can use any of this
any of the words individually and you
can come up with counter examples that
don't fulfill that property the self
sustaining one is really interesting
thinking about um humans right like
we're not self- sustaining we're
dependent on societies and so you know I
find it paradoxical that you know it
might be that societies because their
self-sustaining units are now more alive
than individuals are and that could be
the case but I still think we have some
property associated with life I mean
that's the thing that we're trying to
describe so that one's quite hard and in
general you know no organism is really
self- sustaining they always require an
environment so being self-sustaining is
coupled in some sense to the world
around you uh we don't live in a vacuum
um so so that part's already challenging
and then you can go to chemical system I
don't think that's good either I think
there's a confusion because life emerges
in chemistry that life is chemical I
don't think life is chemical I think
life emerges in chemistry because
chemistry is the first thing the
universe builds where it cannot exhaust
all the possibilities because the
combinatorial space of chemistry is too
large well but is it possible to have a
life that is not a chemical system yes
well there's a guy I know named Lee
Cronin has been on a podcast a couple
times who just got really pissed off
listen he probably got really pissed off
hearing that I for people somehow don't
know he's a chemist yeah but he would
agree with that statement would he I
don't think he would I don't think he
would he would broaden the definition of
chemistry until it would include
everything oh sure okay so you or maybe
I don't know but wait but you said that
universe that's the first thing it
creates is chemistry we're the very
precisely it's not the first thing it
creates obviously like it has to make
atoms first but it's the first thing
like if you think about you know the
universe originated uh atoms were made
in you know Big Bang nuclear synthesis
and then later in stars and then planets
formed and planets become engines of
chemistry they start exploring what kind
of chemistry is possible and the
combinatorial space of chemistry is so
large that even on every planet in the
entire universe you will never express
every possible molecule um I I like this
example actually that that Lee gave me
which is to think about taol it has a
molecular weight about
853 it's got you know a lot of atoms but
it's not astronomically large and if you
try to make um one molecule uh with that
molecular formula in every
three-dimensional shape you could make
with that molecular formula it would
fill
1.5 universes in volume so that with one
unique molecule that's just one molecule
so chemical space is huge um and I think
it's really important to recognize that
because if you want to ask a question of
why does life emerge in chemistry well
life emerges in chemistry because life
is the physics of how the universe
selects what gets to exist um and those
things get created along historically
contingent pathways and memory and all
the other stuff that we can talk about
um but the universe has to actually make
historically contingent choices in
chemistry because it can't exhaust all
possible molecules what kind of things
can you create that's outside the the
combinatorial space of chemistry that's
what I'm trying to understand oh if it's
not chemical so I think some of the
things that have evolved on our
biosphere I would call as much alive as
chemistry as a cell um but they seem
much more abstract so for example I
think language is alive I think um or at
least life um I think memes are I think
you're saying language is life yes
language is alive oh boy I'm going to
have to explore that
one okay life Maybe not maybe not alive
but I don't I actually I don't know
where I stand exactly on that um I've
been thinking about that a little bit
more lately but mathematics too um and
it's interesting because people think
that math has this platonic reality that
exists outside of our universe and I
think it's a feature of our biosphere
and it's telling us something about the
structure of
ourselves um and I find that really
interesting because when you would sort
of internalize all of these things that
we notice about the world and you start
asking well what do these look like if I
was you know something outside of myself
observing these systems that we're all
embedded in what would that structure
look like and I think we look really
different than the way that we talk
about what we look like to each other
what do you think a living organism in
math is is it one exatic system or is it
individual theorems or is
it the fact that it's um open-ended in
some sense it's it's another open-ended
uh combinatorial space and the recursive
properties of it allow creativity to
happen uh which is what you see with you
know like the revolution in the last
century with girdle theorem and Turing
and you know there's there's clear
places is where mathematics notices
holes in the universe so it seems like
you're sneaking up on a different kind
of definition of Life open-ended large
combinatorial space yeah room for
creativity definitely not chemical I
mean chemistry is one subed to chem
chemical okay what about the third thing
which I think would be the the hardest
CU you probably like it the most is
evolution or selection well specifically
it's darwinian Evolution and I think
darwinian evolution is a problem but the
reason that that definition is a problem
is not because evolution is in the
definition but because the implication
is that you know that PE most people
would want to make is that an individual
is alive and The evolutionary process at
least the darwinian evolutionary process
most evolutionary processes they don't
happen um at the level of individuals
they happen at the level of populations
so again you would be saying something
like what we saw with the self-
sustaining definition which is that
population are alive but individuals
aren't because populations evolve and
individuals don't and obviously like
maybe you're alive because you know your
gut microbiome is evolving but Lex as an
entity right now is not evolving by
canonical theories of evolution in
assembly Theory which is attempting to
explain life evolution is a much broader
thing so so in an an individual organism
can evolve under assembly theory yes
you're constructing yourself all the
time assembly theory is about
Construction How the Universe selects
for things to exist what if you
reformulate everything like a population
is a living organism so that's fine too
but but this again gets back to so um so
I think what all of the you know like we
can nitpick at definitions I don't think
it's like incredibly helpful to do it
but the reason for for me fun yeah it is
fun it is really fun and actually do I
do think it's useful in the sense that
when you see the way the ways that they
all break down um you either have to
keep forcing in your like sort of
conception of life you want to have or
you have to say all these definitions
are breaking down for a reason maybe I
should adopt a more expansive definition
that encompasses all the things that I
think and are life and so for me I think
life is the process of how information
structures matter over time and space
and an an example of life is what
emerges on a planet and yields an
open-ended Cascade of generation of
structure and increasing complexity and
this is the thing that life is and any
individual is just a particular instance
of these
lineages that are you know structured
across time um and so we focus so much
on these individuals that are these
short temporal moments in this L larger
causal structure that actually is the
life on our planet um and I think that's
why these definitions break down because
they're not General enough they're not
Universal enough they're not deep enough
they're not abstract enough to actually
capture that regularity cuz were focused
on those that little affir thing that we
call human life Aristotle focusing on
you know heavy things falling because
they're earthlike and you know things
floating because they're air likee it's
the wrong thing to focus on so what what
exactly are we missing by focusing on
such a short span of time I think we're
missing most of what we are so one of
the issues I've been thinking about this
all like really viscerally lately it's
weird when you do theor physics cuz I
think it like literally changes the
structure of your brain and you see the
world differently especially when you're
trying to build new abstractions do you
think it's possible if you're a
theoretical physicist that like it's
easy to fall off the cliff and go
descend to Madness I mean I think you're
always on the edge of it but I think
what is amazing about being a scientist
um and trying to do things rigorously is
it keeps your sanity so I think if I
wasn't a theoretical physicist I would I
would be probably not saying
um but what it forces you to do is hold
the like you have to hold yourself to
the fire of like these abstractions in
my mind have to really correspond to
reality and I have to really test that
all the time and so I love building new
abstractions and I love going to those
like incredibly
creative uh you know spaces that people
don't
see um as part of the way that we
understand the world now but ultimately
I have to make sure that whatever I'm
pulling from that space is something
that's really usable and really like
relates the world outside of me that's
what science is so we were talking about
what we're missing when we look at a
small stretch of time in a small stretch
of space yeah so the issue is um we
evolve perception to see reality a
certain way right so for us Space is
really important and time feels bleeding
and I I you know I had a really
wonderful Mentor Paul Davies most of my
career and Paul's amazing because he
gives these like little he thought
experiments all the time like you know
something he used to ask me all the time
was when I was a postto this is kind of
a random tangent but was like you know
how much of the universe be could be
converted into technology if you were
thinking about like you know long-term
Futures and stuff like that and it's
like a weird thought experiment but like
there's a lot of deep things there I do
think a lot about the fact that we're
really limited in our interactions with
reality by the particular architectures
that we evolved um and so we're not
seeing everything and in fact our
technology tells us the solid time
because it allows us to see the world in
new ways um by basically allowing us to
perceive the world in ways that we
couldn't otherwise and so what I'm
getting at with this is I think that
living objects are actually huge like
they're some of the biggest structures
in the universe but they are not big in
space they are big in time and we
actually can't resolve that feature we
don't interact with it on a regular
basis so we see them as these fleeting
things that have this really short
temporal clock time without seeing how
large they are when I'm saying time here
I really like the way that people could
picture it is in terms of causal
structure so if you think about the
history of the universe to get to you
and you imagine that that entire history
is you that is the I the picture I have
in my mind when I look at every living
thing so you have a you have a tweet for
everything you tweeted doesn't everyone
you have a lot of poetic profound tweets
um sometimes
they're
puzzles that take a long time to figure
out well you know what it is the trick
is the reason they're hard to write is
because it's compressing a very deep
idea into a short amount of space and I
really like doing that intellectual
exercise because I find it productive
for me yeah it's a very interesting kind
of compression algorithm though yeah I
like language I think it's really fun to
play with yeah I wonder if AI can uh
decompress it that' be
interesting I would like to try this but
I think I use langu anguage in certain
ways that are non-canonical and I do it
very purposefully and it would be
interesting to me how AI would interpret
it yeah your tweets would be a good
touring test for this for super
intelligence anyway you tweeted that
things only look
emergent because we can't see time mhm
so if we could see time what would the
world look like you're saying you'll be
able to see everything that an object
has been every step of the way that led
to this current
moment and all the interactions that
required to make that Evolution happen
so you would see this gigantic Tale the
universe is far larger in time than it
is in space yeah and this planet is one
of the biggest things in the universe
also the more complexity the
bigger yeah Tech technosphere I think
the the modern technosphere is the
largest object in time in the universe
that we know about and when you say
technosphere what do you mean I mean uh
the global integration of life and
Technology on this planet so all the
things all the technological things we
created but I don't think of them as
separate they're like very integrated
with the structure that generated them
so you can almost imagine it like time
is constantly bifurcating and it's
generating new structures and these new
structures are um you know locally
constructing the future and so things
like you and I are very close together
in time because we didn't diverge like
very early in the history of universe
it's very recent um and I think this is
one of the reasons that we can
understand each other so well and we can
communicate effectively um and I might
have some sense of what it feels like to
be you but you know other organisms um
bifurcated from us in time earlier this
is just the concept of philogyny right
um but if you take that deeper and you
really think about that as the structure
of the physics that generates life um
and you take that very seriously all of
that causation is is still bundled up in
the objects we observe today and so um
so you and I are are close in this
temporal structure but we're also um
we're so close because we're really big
and we only are very different in sort
of like the most recent moments in the
time that's like Ed in
us uh it's hard to use words to
visualize what's in
Minds I have such a hard time with this
sometimes I'm like I like I actually I
was thinking on the way over here I was
like I like you know you have pictures
in your brain and then they're hard to
put into words but I realized I always
say I have a visual but it's not
actually I have a visual it's I have a
feeling because oftentimes I cannot
actually draw a picture in my mind for
the things that I say but times they go
through a picture before they get to
words but I like experimenting with
words because I think they help paint
pictures yeah it's again some kind of
compressed feeling that you can query to
get a a sense of the bigger
visualization that you have in mind it's
just a really nice
compression but I think the idea of this
object that in it contains all the
information about the history of an
entity that you see now just trying to
visualize that is pretty cool yeah it's
I mean obviously the Mind breaks
down quickly as you step seconds and
minutes back in time but for
sure I guess it's just a
gigantic object yeah supposed to be
thinking about yeah I think so and I
think this is one of the reasons that we
have such an ability to abstract um as
humans because we are so gigantic that
like the space that we can go back into
is really large so like the more
abstract you're going like the you're
going in that space But in that sense
aren't we fundamentally all connected
yes and this is why the the definition
of Life cannot be the individual it has
to be these lineages because they're all
connected they're interwoven and they're
exchanging Parts all the time yeah so
maybe there's certain aspects of those
lineages that can be lifelike they can
be characteristics that can be measured
like with the sun theory that have more
or less life but they're all just
fingertips of
a of a much bigger object yeah I think
is very high dimensional and in fact I
think you can be alive in some
dimensions and and not in others like if
you could if you could project all the
causation that's in you in some in some
features of you you know very little
causation is required and like very
little history and in some features a
lot is so it's quite difficult to take
this really
high-dimensional uh very deep structure
and project it into things that we
really can understand and say like this
is the one thing um that we're seeing
because it's not one thing it's funny
we're talking about this now and I'm
slowly starting to realize one of the
things I saw when I took
iwasa afterwards actually so the actual
ceremony is 4 five hours but afterwards
you're still riding whatever the thing
that you're riding and I got a chance to
um afterwards hang out with some friends
and just shoot the shit in the you know
in the forest
and I get to see their
faces and what was happening with their
faces and their hair is I would get this
interesting effect first of all
everything was beautiful and and I just
had so much love for everybody
but I could see their past selves like
behind them it was this effect where um
I guess it's a blurring effect of where
like if I move like this the faces that
were just there are still there and it
would just float like this these uh
behind them which will create this
incredible effect but it's also another
way to think about that is I'm
visualizing a little bit of that object
of the thing they wore just a few
seconds ago it's a cool little effect
very cool and now it's like uh giving it
a bit more profundity to to the effect
that was just beautiful aesthetically
but it's
also beautiful from from a physics
perspective because that is a past self
I get a little Glimpse at the past self
that they they were but then you take
that to its natural conclusion not just
a few seconds ago but just to the
beginning of the universe and you can
probably years get down that lineage
it's crazy that there's billions of
years inside all of us all of us yeah
and then we connect obviously not too uh
not too long ago yeah uh you you
mentioned the technosphere and you also
wrote that the most alive thing on this
planet is our technosphere yeah why is
the technology we create a kind of life
form why do you why are you seeing it as
life because it's creative but with us
obviously like not independently of us
and also because of this sort of lineage
view of life and I I think about life
often as a planetary scale phenomena
because that's sort of the natural
boundary for all of this causation
that's bundled in every object in our
biosphere
and so for me it's just sort of the
current boundary of how far life on our
planet has pushed into the things that
our universe can
generate and so it's the furthest thing
it's the biggest thing um and I think a
lot about the nature of Life across
different scales and so uh you know we
have cells inside of us that are alive
and we feel like we're alive but we
don't often think about the societies
that we're embedded in
as alive or a global scale organization
of us and our technology on the planet
as alive um but I think if you have this
uh deeper view into the nature of Life
uh which I think is necessary also to
solve the original life then you have to
include those things all of them you
have to simultaneously think about life
at every single scale the planetary and
the bacteria level yeah this is the hard
thing about solving the problem of life
I think is how many things you have to
integrate into building a sort of a a a
unified picture of this thing that we
want to call life and and a lot of our
theories of physics are built on um
building deep regularities that explain
a really broad class of phenomena and I
think we haven't really traditionally
thought about life that way uh but I
think to get it at some of these hardest
questions like looking for life on other
planets or the original life you really
have to think about it that way and so
most most of like my professional work
is just trying to understand like every
single thing on this planet that might
be an example of life which is pretty
much everything and then trying to
figure out like what's the deeper
structure underlying that yeah shinger
wrote that living matter while not
alluding the laws of physics as
established up to date is likely to
involve other laws of physics hether to
unknown so to him I love that quote
there was a
that at the bottom of this are new laws
of physics that could explain this thing
that we call Life yeah short really
tried to do what physicists try to do uh
which is explain things um and he his
attempt was to try to explain life in
terms of non-equilibrium physics because
he thought that was the best description
that we could generate at the time and
so he did come up with something really
ightful which was to predict the
structure of DNA as an AP periodic
Crystal um and that was for a very
precise Reas reason that you know that
was the only kind of physical structure
that could encode enough information to
actually specify a cell we knew some
things about genes but not about DNA and
its actual structure when he proposed
that but in the book he tried to explain
life is kind of going against entropy
and so some people have talked about it
as like Schrodinger's Paradox how can
life persist when the second law of
thermodynamic is there um but in open
systems that's not so problematic and
really the question is why can life
generate so much order and we don't have
a physics to describe that and it's
interesting you know generations of
physicists have thought about this
problem oftentimes it's like when people
are retiring they're like oh now I can
work on life uh or they're like more
senior in their career and they worked
on other more traditional problems and
there's still a lot of impetus um in the
physics Community to think that n
equilibrium physics will explain life
but I I think that's not the right
approach uh I don't think ultimately the
solution to what life is is there and I
don't really think entropy has much to
do with it unless it's entirely
reformulated well because you have to
explain how interesting order how
complexity emerges from the soup yes
from Randomness from Randomness physics
currently can't do that no physics
hardly even acknowledges that the
universe is random at its base
like to think we live in a deterministic
universe and everything's deterministic
but I think that's probably uh you know
an artifact of the way that we've
written down laws of physics since
Newton invented modern physics uh in his
conception of motion and gravity which
you know he he formulated laws that had
initial conditions and um fixed
dynamical laws and that's been sort of
become the standard Canon of how people
think the universe works and how we need
to describe any physical system is with
an initial condition and a law of motion
and I think that's not actually the way
the universe really works I think it's a
good approximation for the kind of
systems that physicists have studied so
far and I think it will radically fail
um in the long term at describing
reality at its more basal levels not I'm
not saying there's a base I don't think
that reality has a ground and I don't
think there's a theory of everything but
I think there are better theories and I
think there are more explanatory
theories and I think we can get to
Something that explains much more than
the current laws of physics do when you
say Theory of Everything you mean like
everything everything yeah yeah you know
like in in physics right now it's really
popular to talk about theories of
everything so string theory is supposed
to be a theory of everything because it
unifies quantum mechanics and gravity um
and you know people have their different
pet theories of everything and and the
challenge with a theory of everything I
really love this qu quote from David
crack hour which is a Theory of
Everything is a theory of everything
except those things that theorize oh you
meaning removing the Observer from the
thing yeah but it's also it's also weird
because if a theory of everything
explained everything it should also
explain the theory so the theory has to
be recursive and none of our theories of
physics are recursive so it's just a
it's a it's a weird concept yeah but
it's very difficult to integrate The
Observer into a theory I don't think so
I think you can build a theory
acknowledging that you're an observer
inside the universe but doesn't it
become recursive in that way and that's
you're saying it's possible to make a
Theory that's okay with that I think so
I mean I don't think there's always
going to be um the Paradox of another
meta level you could build on the The
Meta level right so like if you assume
this is your universe and you're the
Observer outside of it you have some
meta description of that universe but
then you need a metad description of you
describing that Universe right so uh you
know this is one of the biggest
challenges that we face um being
observers inside our universe and also
you know why the paradoxes and the
foundations of mathematics and any place
that we try to have observers in the
system or a system describing itself uh
show up um but I think it is possible to
build a physics that builds in those
things intrinsically without having them
be paradoxical or have holes in the
descriptions um and so one one place I
think about this quite a lot which I
think can give you sort of a more
concrete example is is the nature of
like what we call
fundamental so uh we typically Define
fundamental right now in terms of the
smallest indivisible units of matter so
again you have to have a definition of
what you think material is and matter is
but right now that you know what's
fundamental are Elementary particles um
and we think they're fundamental because
we can't break them apart further and
obviously we have theories like string
theory that if they're right would
replace the current description of
what's the most fundamental thing in our
universe by replacing with something
smaller um but we can't get to those
theories because we're technologically
Limited
and so if you if you look at this from a
historical perspective and you think
about explanations
changing as physical systems like us
learn more about the reality in which
they live we once considered Adams to be
the most fundamental thing um and you
know it literally comes from the word
indivisible and then we realized Adams
had substructure because we built better
technology which allowed us to quote
unquote see the world better and resolve
smaller features of it and then we built
even better technology which allowed us
to see even smaller structure and get
down to the standard model particles and
we think that there's might be structure
below that but we can't get there yet
with our technology so what's
fundamental the way we talk about it in
um current physics is not actually
fundamental it's the boundaries of what
we can observe in our universe what we
can see with our technology and so if
you want to build a theory that's about
us
and
about what what's inside the universe
that we can observe not what's at the
boundary of it um you need to talk about
objects that are in the universe that
you can actually break apart to smaller
things so I think the things that are
fundamental are actually the constructed
objects they're the ones that really
exist and you really understand their
properties because you know how the
universe constructed them because you
can actually take them apart you can
understand the intrinsic laws that built
them but the things at the boundary are
just at the boundary they're Evol in
with us and we'll learn more about that
structure as we go along but really if
we want to talk about what's fundamental
inside our universe we have to talk
about all these things that are
traditionally considered emergent but
really just structures in time that have
causal histories that constructed them
and um you know are really actually what
our universe is about so we should focus
on the construction methodology as the
fundamental thing do you think there's a
bottom to the the smallest possible
thing that makes something un I don't
see one and it'll take way too long
it'll take longer to find that than it
will to understand the mechanism that
created life I think so yeah I I think
for me the frontier in modern physics
where the new physics lies is not in
high energy particle physics it's not in
quantum gravity it's not in any of these
sort of traditionally sold this is going
to be the newest deepest Insight we have
into the nature reality it is going to
be in studying the problems of life and
intelligence and the things that are
sort of
also our current existential crisis as a
civilization or a culture that's going
through uh you know an existential
trauma of inventing technologies that we
don't understand right now the
existential trauma and the terror we
feel that that technology might somehow
destroy us us meaning living intelligent
living organisms yet we don't understand
what that even means well humans have
always been afraid of our Technologies
though right so it's kind of a
fascinating thing that every time we
invent something we don't understand it
takes us a little while to catch up with
it I think also in part humans kind of
love being afraid yeah we love being
traumatized it's weird we want to learn
more and then when we learn more it
traumatizes
us you know I never thought about it
this before but I think this one of the
reasons I love what I do is because it
traumatizes me all the time that sounds
really bad but what I mean is like I
love the shock of like realizing that
like coming to understand something in a
way that you never understood it before
uh I think
it seems to me when when I see a lot of
the ways other people react to new ideas
that they don't feel that way
intrinsically but for me that's like
that's why I do what I do I I love I
love that feeling but you're also
working on a topic where it's
fundamentally ego destroying CU you're
talking about like life it's humbling to
think that we're not the individual
human is not special yeah and you're
like very viscerally exploring that yeah
I'm trying to embody that uh because you
I think you have to live the physics to
understand it but uh there's a great
quote about Einstein I don't know if
this is true or not that he once said
that he could feel light beam in his
belly uh and I
think but I think like you got to think
about it though right like you're if
you're a really deep thinker and you're
really thinking about reality that
deeply and you are part of the reality
that you're trying to describe like you
feel it you really feel it that's what I
was saying about you always is like
walking along the cliff if you fall off
you're falling into madness yes it's a
constant constant descent in Madness the
fascinating thing about physicists and
Madness is that you don't know if you've
uh fallen off the cliff yeah I know you
don't know that's that's the cool thing
about I rely on other people to tell me
actually this is very funny cuz like I
have these conversations with my
students often like they're worried
about going crazy and I have to
like reassure them that like one of the
reasons they'll stay sane is by trying
to work on concrete problems
going crazy or waking up I don't know
which one which one it is yeah uh so
what do you think is the origin of life
on Earth and how can we talk about it in
a productive way the origin of life is
like this
boundary um that the Universe can only
cross if a structure that emerges can
reinforce its own existence which is
self- reproduction autocatalysis things
people traditionally talk about but it
has to be able to maintain its own
existence against this sort of
Randomness that happens in chemistry and
this Randomness that happens in the
quantum world and like it's in some
sense the emergence of like a
deterministic structure that says you
know I'm going to exist and I'm going to
keep going um but uh you know pinning
that down is really hard we have ways of
thinking about it in assembly theory
that I think are pretty rigorous and one
of the things I'm really excited about
is trying to actually quantify uh in an
assembly theoretic way when the original
life happens but the basic process I
have in mind is like a system that has
no causal contingency no constraints of
objects basically constraining the
existence of other objects or forming or
are allowing the existence of other
objects um and so that sounds very
abstract but like you can just think of
like a chemical reaction can't happen if
there's not a catalyst for example or a
baby can't be born if there wasn't a
parent um so there's a lot of causal
contingency that's necessary for certain
things to happen so um you think about
this sort of unconstrained random system
there's nothing that reinforces the
existence of other things so so the sort
of resources just get washed out in all
of these different structures and none
of them exist again um or they just you
know they're they're not very
complicated if they're in high abundance
and some random events allow some things
to start
reinforcing the existence of a small
subset of objects and if they can do
that um you know like just molecules
basically recognizing each other and
being able to catalyze certain
reactions uh there's this kind of uh
transition point that happens
where unless you get a self reinforcing
structure something that can maintain
its own existence it actually can't
cross this boundary to make any objects
in high abundance without having this
sort of past history that it's carrying
with us and maintaining the existence of
that past history and that boundary
point where objects can't exist unless
they have this selection and history in
them is what we call the original life
and pretty much everything beyond that
boundary um is holding on for dear life
to all of the causation and causal
structure that's basically put it there
um and it's carving its way through this
possibility space um into generating
more and more structure and that's when
you get the open-ended Cascade of
evolution but that boundary point is
really hard to cross and then what
happens when you cross that boundary
point and the way objects come into
existence is also like really
fascinating Dynamics because you know
like as Things become more complex the
assembly index increases I can explain
all these things sorry you can tell me
what you want to explain uh me to
explain or what people want will want to
hear um this uh sorry I have like a very
Vivid visual in my brain and it's really
hard to articulate it got to convert it
to language I know
so hard it's not it's like it's going
from like a feeling to a visual to
language is so stifling sometimes I have
to convert it yeah from language to to a
visual to a feeling yeah I think it's
working I hope so I really like the
self-reinforcing objects I
mean just so I understand one way to
create a lot of the same kind of object
is make them self
reinforcing yes so self- reproduction
has its property right like if a system
can make itself then it can it can
persist in time right cuz all objects
Decay they all have a finite lifetime so
if you're able to make a copy of
yourself before you die before the
second law eats you or whatever people
think happens um then that structure can
persist in time so that's a way to sort
of emerge out of a random soup out of
randomness of soup right but things that
can copy themselves are very rare yeah
um and so what ends up happening is that
you get structures that enable the
existence of other things and then
somehow only for some sets of objects
you get closed structures that are
self-reinforcing and allow that entire
structure to persist right so the one
object a reinforces the existence of
object B but you know object a can die
yeah so you have to like close that Loop
right so this is the class all very
unlikely statistically but you know
that's sufficiently um it's so you're
saying there's a chance there is a
probability and then but once you solve
that once you close the loop you can
create a lot of those objects and that's
what we're trying to figure out is what
are the causal constraints that close
the loop so there is this idea that's
been in the literature for a really long
time that was originally proposed by
Stuart Kaufman as really critical to the
origin life called autoc cic set so
autoc set is exactly this property we
have a makes b b makes c c makes a and
you get a closed system but the problem
with the theory of autoc cataly sets is
incredibly brittle as a theory and it
requires a lot of ad hoc assumptions
like you have to assume function you
have to say this thing makes B it's not
an emergent property the association
between a and b and so the way I think
about it is much more General if you
think
about um these histories that make
objects it's it's kind of like the
structure of the histories
becomes um collapses in such a way that
these things are all in the same sort of
causal structure and that causal
structure actually Loops back on itself
to be able to generate some of the
things that make the higher level
structures Lee has a beautiful example
of this actually in malinam it's like
the first
nonorganic autocatalytic set it's a
self-reproducing malum ring uh but it's
like like ium and and basically like if
you look at the malum it makes a huge
malum ring I don't remember exactly how
big it is it might be like 150 malum
atoms or something but if you think
about the configuration space of that
object you know it's exponentially large
how many possible molecules so like why
does the entire system collaps on just
making that one structure if you start
from like you know malum atoms that are
maybe just like a couple of them stuck
together and so what they see in this
system is there's a few intermediate
stages so there's like some random
events where the chemistry comes
together makes these structures and then
once you get to this very large one it
becomes a template for the smaller ones
and then the whole system just
reinforces its own production how did
Lee find this malib
denum close loop if I knew how Le's
brain work I think I would understand a
more about the universe but I this is
not an algorithmic Discovery it's a like
no but um but you I think it goes to the
deepest roots of like when he started
thinking about origins of life so I like
I I mean I don't know all his but like
what he's told me is um he started out
in
crystallography um and you know there's
some things that he would just you know
like people would just take for granted
about chemical structures um that he was
like deeply perplexed about like just
like why are these like really intricate
really complex structures forming so
easily under these conditions and he was
really interested in life um but he
started in that field so he's just
carried with him these sort of deep
insights from these systems that seem
like they're totally not alive and just
like these metallic
chemistries um into actually thinking
about the Deep principles of life so I
think he
already uh he already knew a lot about
that chemistry and he
also um you know assembly Theory came
from him thinking about how these
systems work uh so he had some intuition
about what was going on with this mum
ring the malib might be able to be the
thing that makes a ring they knew about
them for a long time but they didn't
know that the mechanism of why that
particular structure form was autoc
catalic feedback um and so that's what
they they figured out in this this paper
and I actually think that paper is
revealing some of the mechanism of the
origin life transition because really
what you see like the origin of life is
basically like you should have a comori
explosion of the space of possible
structures um that are too large to
exhaust and yet you see it collapse on
this you know really small space of
possibilities that's mutually
reinforcing itself to keep
existing that is the origin of life
there's some set of structures that
result in this autoc catalytic feedback
yeah and this what is it tiny tiny tiny
tiny percent I think it's a small space
but chemistry is very large so so like U
there might be a lot of them out there
but we don't know and one of them is the
thing that probably started life on
Earth that's right or many many starts
yes and it keeps starting maybe yeah I
mean there's also all kinds of other
weird properties that happen around this
kind of um phase
boundary um so this other project that I
have in my lab is focused on the origin
of
chirality um which is uh you know
thinking about so so chirality is this
property of molecules that they can come
in Mirror Image forms so like just like
chyro literally means hand so your your
left and right hand are what's called
nons superimposable because if you try
to lay one on the other you can't
actually lay them directly on top of
each other um and that's the property
being a mirror image so there's a sort
of perplexing property of the chemistry
life that no one's been able to really
adequately explain that all of the amino
acids in proteins are left-handed and
all of the uh bases in RNA and DNA are
right-handed and yet the chemistry of
these these building block units the
amino acids and nuclear bases is the
same for left and right-handed so you
have to have like some kind of symmetry
breaking where you go from these
chemistries that seem entirely
equivalent to only having uh one
chemistry takeover as the dominant form
and for a long time I had been really I
actually did my PhD on the origin of
chirality I was working on it as like a
symmetry breaking problem in physics
this is how I got started in the
original life and then I left it for a
long time because I thought it was like
one of the most boring problems in the
original life but I've come back to it
cuz I think there's something really
deep going on here related to this like
common torial explosion of the space of
possibilities um but just to to to get
to that point like this feature of this
handedness has been the main focus but
people take for granted um the existence
of chyro molecules at all that this
property of of having a handedness um
and they just assume that you know like
it's just a generic feature of chemistry
but if you actually look at molecules if
you look at chemical space which is like
the space of all possible mole ules that
people can generate and you look at
small molecules things that have less
than about 7 to 11 heavy atoms so things
that are not hydrogen almost every
single molecule in that space is a chyal
like doesn't have a chyal center so it
would be like a spoon a spoon doesn't
have a like it's the same as its Mirror
Image it's not like a hand that's
different than its Mirror Image but if
you get to like this threshold um
boundary above that boundary almost
every single molecule is chyal so you go
from a universe where almost nothing has
a mirror image form there's no mirror
image Universe of possibilities to this
one where every single structure has
pretty much a mirror image version and
what we've been looking at in my lab is
that it seems to be the case that the
original life transition happens around
the time when you start accumulating you
you push your molecules to a large
enough complexity that KY chyal
molecules become very likely to form and
then there's a Cascade of molecular
recognition where where chyal molecules
can recognize each other and then you
get this sort of autoc catalic feedback
and things self-reinforcing so is
chirality in
itself interesting feature is just an
accident of no it's a super interesting
feature I think chirality breaks
Symmetry and time not space so we think
of it as a space spatial property uh
like a left and right hand but if I
choose the left hand I'm basically
choosing the future of that system for
all time because I've basically made a
choice between the ways that that
molecule can now react with every other
object in its chemical Universe oh I see
and so you've you're actually like when
you have this splitting of making a
molecule that now has another form it
could have had uh by the same exact
Atomic composition but now it's just a
mirror image isometry you're basically
splitting the universe of possibilities
every time yeah in two in two but
molecules can have more than one chyro
Center and that's not the only
stereometry that they can have so this
is one of the reasons that all fills 1.5
universes of space it's all of these
spatial permutations that you do on
these objects that actually makes the
space so huge so the point of this this
sort of chyal transition that I'm I'm
pointing out is is chirality is actually
signature of being in a complex chemical
space um and the fact that we we think
it's a really generic feature of
chemistry and it's really prevalent is
because most of the chemistry we study
on Earth is a product already of life
and it also has to do with this
transition and assembly this transition
and possibility space is because I I
think there's something really
fundamental going on at this boundary um
that you don't really need to go that
far into chemical space if you can to
actually see life in terms of this depth
in time this depth in in symmetries of
objects in terms of like chyro
symmetries or this assembly structure um
but but getting past this boundary
that's that's not very deep in that
space requires life it's a it's a really
it's a really weird property and it's
really weird that so many abrupt things
happen in chemistry at that same scale
so would that be the the greatest
invention ever made on Earth in its
evolutionary history so I really like
that formulation of it uh Nick Lane has
a book called life ascending where he
lists the 10 great inventions of
evolution the origin of life being first
and DNA the hereditary material that
encos the genetic instructions for all
living or organisms then photosynthesis
the process that allows organisms to
convert sunlight into chemical energy
producing oxygen as a byproduct the
complex cell eukariotic cells which
contain a nucleus and organel arose from
simple bacterial cells sex sexual
reproduction movement so just the
ability to move under which you have the
predation the Predators and ability of
living organ in there that's cool yeah I
but a movement includes a lot of
interesting stuff in there like Predator
pre Dynamic right which not to
romanticize a Nature's metal that seems
like an important one I don't know it's
such a
computationally powerful thing to have a
predator and prey well it's efficient
for things to eat other things that are
already alive because they don't have to
go all the way back to the base
chemistry well that but maybe I just
like deadlines but it creates an urgency
you're going to get eaten you got to
live yeah like so survival it's not just
the static environment you're better
against you're like yeah the the the
dangers against which you're trying to
survive are also evolving this so just
much faster way to uh explore the space
of possibilities I actually think it's a
gift that we don't have much time yes uh
sight the ability to see so the
increasing complexifying of sensory
organisms
Consciousness and death
the concept of programmed cell of death
these are
all inventions yeah along the line I
like invention as a word for them I
think that's good which are the more
interesting inventions to you what
origin of life because you kind of are
not glorifying the origin of life and
self there's a there's a process no I
think the origin of life is a continual
process that's why I'm interested in the
first transition and solving that
problem because I think it's the hardest
but I think I think I think it's
happening all the time when you look
back at the history of Earth like what
are you impressed to happen I like sight
um as an invention uh cuz I think having
sensory perception and trying to
comprehend the world to use
anthropocentric terms is like a really
critical feature of life and I also it's
interesting the way that site has
complexified over time right so like if
you think at the original life uh
nothing on the planet could see
mhm right so like for a long time life
had no sight um and then you know like
Photon receptors were invented and then
when multicellularity evolved those
cells eventually grew into eyes and we
had the multicellular eye and then it's
interesting when you get to societies
like human societies that we invent even
better Technologies of seeing like
telescopes and microscopes uh which
allow us to see deeper into the universe
or at smaller scales um so I think I
think that's pretty profound the way
that site has
transformed the ability of life to
literally see uh the reality in which
it's existing in
um I think Consciousness is
also obviously deeply interesting I've
gotten kind of obsessed with like
octopus I don't like I they're just so
weird and the fact that like they
evolved complex nervous systems kind of
independently is like seems very alien
yeah there's a lot of alien like
organisms that's another thing I saw in
the
jungle yeah just things that are like oh
okay they make one of those huh they
just feels like any
examples there's a frog that's as as
thin as a sheet of paper and I was like
what and it gives birth through like
pores like oh I've seen videos of that
so gross when the babies come out did
you see that like like in person like
the babies coming out no I saw the uh
without the have you seen videos of that
it's so gross it's one of the grossest
things I've ever seen well so gross is
just the other side of beautiful I think
it's like oh wow that that's that's
possible I guess if I was one of those
frogs I would think that was the most
beautiful event I'd ever seen although
like human child birth is not that
beautiful either yeah it's all a matter
of perspective well we come to the world
so vient
it's just like it's amazing well I mean
the world is a violent place yeah so
again
another it's just another side of the
coin you know what this actually makes
me think of one that's not up there
which I do find really incredibly
amazing is
um is the process of like the germline
cell
in you know in organisms like basically
like every living thing on this planet
at some point in its life has to go
through a single cell
and this whole issue of like development
like the developmental program is kind
of crazy like how do you build you out
of a single cell how does a single cell
know how to do that like you know
pattern formation of a multicellular
organism obviously like evolves with DNA
but there's a lot of stuff happening
there about when cells take on certain
morphologies and things that people
don't understand like the actual shape
formation mechanism and a lot of people
study that and it's um and there's a lot
of advances being made now in that field
I think it's pretty shocking though that
like how little we know about that
process uh and often it's left off of
people's list it's just kind of
interesting embryogenesis is fascinating
yeah because it you start from just one
cell yeah and the genes and all the
cells are the same right so like the
differentiation has to
be something that's like much more about
like the actual
like you know expression of genes over
time and like how they get switched on
and off and also the physical
environment of like the cell interacting
with others cells and there there's just
a lot of stuff going on yeah the
computation the intelligence of that
process yes might be like the most
important thing to understand and we
just kind of don't really think about it
right we think about the final product
yeah maybe the the key to understanding
the organism is understanding that
process not the final product probably
yes I think most of the things about
understanding anything about what we are
are embedded in time well of course you
would say that I know so
[Laughter]
predictable it's turning into a
deterministic universe it always has
been always was like the meme yeah
always was but it won't be in the future
well that's before we talk about the
future let's talk about the past the
assembly theory yes can you uh explain
assembly Theory to me I listened to Lee
talk about it for many hours and I
understood nothing no I'm just kidding
uh I just wanted to take another you've
been already talking about it but just
just just another
just what from a big picture
view is the assembly Theory way of
thinking about our world about our
universe yeah I think the uh first thing
is you know that like the observation
that uh life seems to be the only thing
the universe that builds complexity in
the way that we see it here and
complexity is obviously like a loaded
term so I'll just use assembly instead
uh because I think assembly is more
precise um but the idea that like you
know all the things on your desk here
from your computer to the pen to uh you
know us sitting here don't exist
anywhere else in the universe as far as
we know they only exist on this planet
and it took a long evolutionary history
to get to us um is a real feature that
we should take seriously as one that's
deeply embedded in the laws of physics
and the structure the universe that we
live in uh standard physics would say
that you know all of that complexity
traces back to
the
infinitesimal uh deviations and like the
initial state of the universe that there
was some order there um I find that
deeply unsatisfactory and uh what
assembly Theory says uh that's very
different is
that the universe is basically
constructing itself and when you get to
these common torial spaces like
chemistry uh where the space of
possibilities is too large to exhaust
them all um you can only construct
things along historically contingent
paths like you basically have causal
chains of events that happen to allow
other things to come into existence and
uh and that this is the way that complex
objects get formed is basically on
scaffolding on the past history of
objects making more complex objects
making more complex object objects that
idea in itself is easy to State and
simple but it has some really radical
implications as far as what you think um
is the nature of the physics that would
describe life and so what a assembly
Theory does formally is try to measure
the boundary um in the space of all
things that you know chemically could
exist for example like all possible
molecules where is the boundary above
which we should say these things are too
complex to happen outside of an
evolutionary chain of events outside of
selection um and we formalized that um
with two observables one of them is the
copy number of the object so how many of
the object Did You observe and the
second one is what's the minimal number
of recursive steps to make it so if you
start from elementary building blocks
like bonds for molecules and you put
them together and then you take things
you've made already and build up to the
object what's the shortest number of
steps you had to take and what what
Lee's been able to show in the lab with
his team is that for organic
chemistry uh it's about 15 Steps and
then you only see molecules uh that you
know the only molecules that we observe
that are past that threshold are ones
that are are in life and in fact one of
the things I'm trying to do with this
idea of like trying to actually quantify
the origin of Life as a transition in
like a phase transition assembly theory
is actually be able to um explain why
that boundary is where it is because I
think that's actually the boundary that
life must cross so the idea of going
back to this thing we're talking about
before about these these structures that
can reinforce their own existence and
move past that boundary uh 15 seems to
be that boundary in chemical space uh
it's not a universal number it will be
different for different assembly spaces
um but that's what we've experimentally
validated so far and then so literally
15 like the assembly index is 15 it's 15
or so for the experimental data yeah so
that's when you start getting the
self-reinforcing that's when you have to
have that feature in order for to
observe molecules in high abundance in
that space so the copy number is the the
number of exact copies that's what you
mean by high abundance and assembly
index or the complexity of the object is
how many steps it took to create it
recursive recursive yeah so you can
think of objects in assembly theory is
basically recursive stacks of the the
construction steps to build them so
they're like it's like I you take this
step and then you make this object and
you make it this object and make this
object and then you get up to the final
object but that object is all of that
history rolled up into the current
structure what if you took the long way
home the you can't take the long way why
not the long way doesn't exist it's a
good song though uh what do you mean the
long way doesn't exist if I do if I do a
random walk from A to B I'll eventually
if I start at a I'll eventually end up
at B and that random walk be
longer than the no if you look at
objects and you so the we we Define
something we call the assembly universe
and the assembly universe is ordered in
time it's actually ordered in in the
causation the number of steps to produce
an object and so all objects in the
universe are in some sense um existed a
layer that's defined by their assembly
index um and the size of each layer is
growing
exponentially so what you're talking
about if you want to look at the long
way of getting to an object as I'm
increasing the assembly index of an
object I'm moving deeper and deeper into
an exponentially growing space and it's
actually also the case that the sort of
typical path to get to that object is
also exponentially growing with respect
to the assembly index and so if you want
to try to make a more and more complex
object and you want to do it by a a a
typical path that's actually an
exponentially receding Horizon and so
most objects that come into existence
have to be causally very similar to the
things that exist cuz they're close by
in that space and they can actually get
to it by an almost shortest path for
that object yeah the the almost shortest
path is the most likely and like by a
lot by a lot okay so if you see a high
copy number yeah imagine greater than
one yeah I mean basically we live the
more complex we get we live in a a space
that is growing exponentially large and
the the ways of getting to objects in
the space are also growing exponentially
large and so we're this kind of uh
recursively like stacked structure of
like all of these objects that are
Clinging On to each other for existence
and then they like grab something else
and are allow like able to bring that
thing into existence because it's kind
of similar to them but there is a face
transition there is a there is a
transition there is a place where you
would say oh that's I think it's
actually abrupt I've never been able to
say that in in my entire career before
I've always gone back and forth about
whether the original life was kind of
gradual or abrupt I think it's very
abrupt
uh poetically literally with snaps okay
that's very snaps okay we'll be poetic
today but no I think there's like a lot
of random exploration and then there's
like and then the structure the
possibility space just collapses on the
structure kind of really fast um that
can reinforce its own existence because
it's basically fighting against
non-existence yeah you uh tweeted the
most significant struggle for existence
in The evolutionary process is not among
the objects that do exist but between
the ones that do and those that never
have the chance to this is where
selection does most of its C cause of
work the the objects that never get a
chance to exist yeah the struggle
between the ones that never get a chance
to exist and the ones that okay what
what's that line exactly I don't know we
can make songs out of all of these what
are the objects that never get a chance
to exist what does that mean so there
was there was this uh website I forgot
what it was but it's like it's like a a
neural network that just generates a
human face and it's like this person
does not exist I think that's what it's
called right so you can just click on
that all day and you can look at people
all day that don't exist yeah all of
those people exist in that space of
things that don't
exist yeah but there's uh the real
struggle yeah so the struggle of of the
quote the struggle of for existence is
you know that goes all the way back to
Darwin's writing about natural selection
right so like the whole idea of survival
of the fittest is everything struggling
to exist this Predator prey Dynamic um
and and the fittest survive and so the
struggle for existence is really what
selection is all about but you're and
that's true uh we do see things that do
exist competing to continue to exist um
but each time that like if you think
about this space of possibilities and
you know each time the universe you know
generates a new structure like a an an
object
that exists generates a new structure
along this causal chain it's generating
something that exists that never existed
before and each time that we make that
kind of decision we're excluding a huge
space of possibilities and so actually
like as this process of increasing
assembly index it's not just that like
the space that these objects exist in is
exponentially growing but there are
there are objects in that space that are
exponentially receding away from us so
they're becoming exponentially less and
less likely to ever exist and so
existence excludes a huge number of
things just because of the accident of
History how it ended up yeah it's it it
is in part an accident because I think I
think some of the the structure that
gets generated is is driven a bit by
Randomness um I think a lot of it you
know so uh you know one of the
conceptions that we have in assembly
theory is you know the universe is
random at its base you can see in
chemistry like unconstrained chemical
reactions are pretty random uh and then
and also quantum mechanics you know like
there's less places that that give
evidence for that um and deterministic
structures emerge by things that can
causally reinforce themselves and
maintain persistence over time and so we
are some of the most deterministic
things in the universe and so like we
can generate very regular structure and
we can generate new structure along a
particular linear aged but the
possibility space at the sort of tips
like the things we can generate next is
really huge so there's some
stochasticity and what we actually you
know instantiate as like the next
structures that get built in in the
biosphere um it's not completely
deterministic because the space of
future possibilities is always larger
than the space of things that exist now
so how many
instantiations of life is out there do
you
think uh so how how often does this
happen what we see happen here on Earth
how often is this process repeated
throughout our galaxy throughout the
universe so I I said before like right
now I think the original life is a
continuous process on earth like I think
this this idea of like combinatorial
spaces that our biosphere generates not
just chemistry but other spaces um often
cross this threshold where they then
allow themselves to persist with
particular regular structure over time
so language is is another one where you
know like the space of
you know possible configurations of the
26 letters of the English alphabet is
astronomically large but we use with
very high regularity certain structures
um and then we associate meaning to them
because of the regularity of like how
much we use them right so meaning is an
emergent property of the causation and
the objects and like how often they
recur and and what the relationship of
the recurrence is to other objects
meaning is the emerging property okay
got it well this is why you can play
with language so much actually so words
don't really carry meaning it's it's
just about how you lace them together
yeah but from from where does but you
don't have a lot of room obviously as as
a speaker of a given language you don't
have a lot of room with a given word to
wiggle but you do have you do have you
have a certain amount of room to push
the meanings of words yeah and um and I
do this all the time and you have to do
it uh with the kind of work that I do
because if you want
to uh discover an abstraction like some
kind of concept that we don't understand
yet we it means we don't have the
language and so the words that we have
are inadequate to describe the things
this is why we're having a hard time
talking about assembly Theory because
it's a newly emerging idea um and so um
so I'm constantly playing with words in
different ways to try to convey the
meaning that is actually behind the
words but it's hard to do so you have to
wiggle within the constraints yes lots
of Wiggle the uh the Great orators are
are just good at
wiggling do you
wiggle I'm not a very good wiggler no
this is the problem this is part of the
problem no I like playing with words a
lot um you know it's very funny because
you know like I I know you talked about
this with Lee but like people are so
offended by the writing of uh the paper
that came out last fall and it was it
was interesting because the ways that we
use words were not the way that people
were interacting with the words um and I
think that was part of the mismatch
where we were trying to use words in a
new way because we were trying to
describe something that uh you know
hadn't been described adequately before
but we had to use the words that
everyone else uses for things that are
related and so it was really interesting
to watch that Clash play out in real
time for me being someone that tries to
be so precise with my word usage knowing
that it's always going to be vague boy
can I relate it's like
uh what is truth is truth the thing you
meant when you wrote the words or is
truth the thing that people understood
when they read the words oh yeah I I
think that compression mechanism into
language is really interesting one and
that's why Twitter is a nice exercise I
love Twitter you get to write a thing
and you think a certain thing when you
write it and then you get to see all
these other people interpret it in all
kinds of different ways I use it as an
experimental platform for that reason I
wish there was a higher diversity of
interpretation mechanisms of applied to
tweets meaning like oh all kinds of
different people would come to it like
some people that see the good in
everything and some people that are
Ultra cynical a bunch of haters and a
bunch of lovers and a bunch of maybe
they could do better jobs with
presenting material to people like you
know the the Rand like like how things
you know it's like usually based on
interest but I think it would be really
nice if you got like 10% of your Twitter
feed was random stuff sampled from other
places that'd be kind of fun true I also
would love to filter just like
been uh the response to tweets by like
the people that hate on everything yes
the people that are oh that would be
fantastic the people that are like super
positive about everything and that
they'll just kind of I guess normalize
the response cuz then it'd be cool to
see if the people that you're usually
positive about everything are hating on
you or like totally don't understand or
completely misunderstood yeah usually
takes a lot of clicking to find that out
yeah yeah so be better if it was sorted
Yeah the more clicking you
do the more damaging it is to the soul
yeah it's like instead of like like you
could have the blue check but you should
have like are you a pessimist an
optimist yeah there a neutral
what rainbow of
checks and then you realize there's more
categories than we can possibly Express
in colors yeah of course uh people are
complex that's our best feature I don't
know how we got to the wiggling required
given the constraints of language
because I think we started about me
asking about alien life which which is
uh how
many different times that the uh face
transition happen elsewhere do you think
there's other alien civilizations out
there this goes into like the you know
like are you on the boundary of insane
or not um but you know when you think
about the the structure of the physics
of what we are that deeply it really
changes your conception of things and um
you know going to this idea of the
Universe
um you know being kind of small in
physical space compared to how big it is
in time and like how large we are it
really makes me question about whether
there's any other structure that's like
this giant crystal in time this giant
causal structure like our biosphere
techn spere is anywhere else in the
universe um why not I don't I don't just
because this one is gigantic doesn't
mean there's other G there's other
gigantic but I think when the universe
is expanding right it's expanding in
space but in assembly Theory it's also
expanding in time um and actually that's
driving the expansion in space and the
expansion in time is also driving the
the expansion in the sort of
combinatorial space of things on our
planet so that's driving the sort of you
know pace of technology and all the
other things so time is driving all of
these things uh which is a little bit
crazy to think that the universe is just
getting bigger because time is getting
bigger um but like the sort of visual
that gets built in my brain about that
is like the structure that we're
building on this planet is packing more
and more time in this very small volume
of space right cuz our planet hasn't
changed its physical size in 4 billion
years but there's like a ton of
causation
uh and recursion and time whatever word
you want to use information packed into
this and I think this is also you know
embedded in sort of the virtualization
of our Technologies or the abstraction
of language and all of these things
these these these things that seem
really abstract are just really deep in
time um and so uh so what that looks
like is you have a a planet that becomes
increasingly virtualized and so it's
getting bigger and bigger in time but
not really expanding out in space and
the rest of space is like kind of moving
away from it it's again it's a sort of
exponentially receding Horizon and I'm
just not sure how far into this
evolutionary process something gets if
it can ever see that there's another
such structure out there what do you
mean by virtualized in that context
virtual as sort of a play on virtual
reality and like simulation theories um
but virtual also in a sense of uh you
know we talk about virtual particles in
um in particle physics which you know
they they are very critical to doing
calculations about predicting the
properties of real particles but we
don't observe them directly so what I
mean by virtual here is virtual reality
for me things that appear virtual appear
abstract are just things that are very
deep in time in the in the structure of
the things that we are so if you think
about you as a 4 billion year old object
uh the things that are part of you like
your Capac to use language or think
abstractly or have mathematics are just
very you know like deep temporal
structures that's why they look like
they're informational and Abstract is
because they're like they're existing in
this temporal part of you but not
necessarily spatial part just because I
have a 4 billion year old history why
does that mean I can't hang out with
aliens there's a couple ideas that are
embedded here so one of them comes again
from Paul he wrote this book years ago
about
um you know like the Eerie silence and
why we're alone and he concluded the
book with this idea of Quint
intelligence or something but like this
idea that like really advanced
intelligence would basically just um
build itself into a quantum computer and
it would want to operate in the vacuum
of space because that's the best place
to do Quantum computation and it would
just like run out all of its
computations indefinitely but it would
look completely dark to the rest of the
universe and I don't think as as typical
like I don't think that's actually like
the right physics but I think something
about that idea as I do with all ideas
is partially correct and frean Dyson
also had this amazing paper about how
long life could persist in a universe
that was exponentially expanding and his
conception was like if you imagine an
analog life form uh it could run slower
and slower and slower and slower and
slower as a function of time and so it
would um it would be able to run
indefinitely even against an
exponentially expanding Universe because
it would just run exponentially slower
and so I guess part of what I'm doing in
my brain is putting those those two
things together along with this idea
that we are building um you know like if
if you imagine with our technology we're
now building virtual realities right
like things we actually call virtual
reality which required you know four
billions of years of history and a whole
bunch of data to basically embed them in
a computer architecture so now you can
put like you know an Oculus headset on
and think that you're in this world
right and what you really are embedded
in is in a very deep temporal structure
and so it's huge in time but it's very
small in space and you can go lots of
places in the virtual space right but
you're still stuck in like your physical
body and like sitting in the chair and
so you know part of it is it might be
the case that sufficiently
evolved uh biospheres kind of virtualize
themselves and they internalize their
Universe in their sort of temporal
causal structure and they close
themselves off from the rest of the
Universe I just don't know if a deep
temporal structure necessarily means
that you're closed off no I don't either
so that's kind of my fear so I'm not I'm
not sure I'm agreeing with what I say
I'm just saying like this is one sort of
conclusion and you know like in my most
sort of like it's interesting because I
I don't do psychedelic drugs uh but when
people describe to me like your thing
with the faces and stuff and like I have
you know had a lot of deep conversations
with friends that have done psychedelic
drugs for intellectual reasons and
otherwise um but I'm always like oh it
sounds like you're just doing
theoretical physics like that's what
brains do on theoretical physics um so I
I live in these like really abstract
spaces uh most of the time but um
there's also this this issue of
Extinction right like Extinction events
are basically pinching off an entire
like causal structure the one of these
like I'm going to call them time Crystal
I don't like know what but they're like
these very large objects in time
pinching off that whole structure from
the rest of it and so it's like if you
imagine that sort of same thing uh in
the universe I you know I once thought
that sufficiently Advanced Technologies
would look like black holes that would
be just completely imperceptible to them
yeah um so so there might be lots of
aliens out there maybe that's
explanation for all the singularities
they're all pinched off causal
structures that virtualized their
reality and kind of broke off from us
black holes in every way so like um
Untouchable to us or unlikely be
detectable by us right with whatever
sensory mechanisms we have yeah but the
other way I think about it is um is
there is probably hopefully life out
there so like I do work on life
detection uh efforts in the solar system
and I'm trying to help with the
habitable worlds Observatory Mission
planning right now um and working with
like the BIOS signatures team for that
like to think about exoplanet bio
signature so like I have some optimism
that we might find things um but there
are the challenges that we don't know
the likelihood for life like which is
what you were talking about so if I get
to a more grounded discussion what I'm
really interested in doing is trying to
solve the origin of life so we can
understand How likely life is out there
so I don't think that the I think that
the problem of discovering alien life
and solving the original life are deeply
coupled and in fact are one in the same
problem um and that the first contact
with alien life will actually be an An
Origin life experiment um but but that
part I'm super interested in and then
there's this other feature that I think
about a lot which is um our own
technological phase of development as
sort of like what is this phase in the
evolution of uh life on a planet if you
think about a a biosphere emerging on a
planet and evolving over billions of
years and evolving into a
technosphere um when a technosphere can
move off planet and basically reproduce
itself on another planet now you have uh
biospheres reproducing
themselves basically they have to go
through technology to do that um and so
there are ways of thinking about sort of
the nature of intelligent life and how
it spreads in that capacity that I'm
also really excited about and thinking
about um and all of those things for me
are connected like we have to solve the
origin of life in order for us to get
off Planet because we basically have to
start life on another planet and we also
have to solve the original life in order
to recognize other alien intelligence
like all of these things are like
literally the same problem right
understanding the origin of life here on
Earth is a way to understand ourselves
and to uh understanding ourselves as a a
prerequisite for being able to detect
other
intelligent civilizations I for one take
it for what it's worth
anasa one of the things I did is zoom
out like aggressively like like a
spaceship and it it would always go
quickly to the Galaxy and from the
Galaxy to
this uh representation of the universe
and at least for me from that
perspective it seemed like it was full
of alien life uh not just alien life but
uh intelligent life I like that and
conscious life so like I don't know how
to convert it into words is more like a
feeling like you were saying a feeling
converted to a visual to uh converted to
words so I had a visual with it but
really was a feeling that it was just
full of this vibrant energy that I was
feeling when I'm looking at the people
in my life yeah and full of gratitude
but that same exact thing is everywhere
in the universe right so I totally agree
with this like that visual I really love
and I think we live in a universe that
like generates life and purpose and like
it's it's part of the structure of just
the world um and so maybe like this sort
of lonely view I have is uh I never
thought about it this way till you're
describing that I was like I want to
live in that universe and I'm like a
very optimistic person and I
love uh I love building visions of
reality that are positive but I think
for me right now in the intellectual
process I have to Tunnel through this
this particular way of thinking about
the loneliness of being like separated
in time from everything else which I
think like we also all are because time
is what defines us as individuals so
part of you is drawn to the trauma of
being alone deeply in a
physics also part part of what I mean is
like you have to go through ideas you
don't necessarily agree with to work out
what you're trying to understand and I'm
trying to be inside the structure so I
can really understand it and I don't
think I've been able to like like I'm so
deeply embedded in what we are uh
intellectually right now that I I don't
have an ability to see these other these
other ones that you're describing if
they're there well one of the things you
kind of described that you already spoke
to you call it the great perceptual
filter yeah so there's the the famous
great filter which is B
basically the idea that there's some
really powerful moment in every
intelligent civilization that where they
destroy
themselves yeah that explains why we
have not seen aliens and you're saying
that there's something like that in the
temporal history of the creation of
complex objects that at a certain point
they become an Island an island too far
to reach based on the perceptions I not
yeah I worry about it yeah but that's
basically meaning there's something
fundamental about the universe where if
the more complex you become the the
harder it will be to perceive other
complex I mean just think about us with
microbial life right like we used to
once be cells and for most of human
history we didn't even recognize
cellular life was there until we built a
new technology microscopes that allowed
us to see them right so that's kind of
it's kind of weird right like like
things that and they're close to us
they're close they're everywhere but
also in the history of the development
of complex objects they're pretty close
yeah super close super close like yeah I
mean all everything on this planet is
like it's like pretty much the same
thing like like the space of
possibilities is so huge it's like we're
virtually identical so how many
flavors or kinds of Life do you think
are possible I'm like trying to imagine
all the little flickering lights in the
universe like in the way that you were
describing that was kind of cool it was
so I mean it was
it was exactly that it was like lights
yeah the the way you maybe see a city
but a city from like up above you see a
city with the flickering lights but
there's a coldness to the city uh
there's some you know that you know
humans are capable of Good and Evil and
you could see like there's a complex
feeling to the city I had no such
complex feeling about seeing the
lights of uh all the galaxies whatever
the billions of galaxies yeah this is
kind of cool a question a second but I
just maybe like this idea of flickering
lights and intelligence is interesting
to me because I you know like we have
such a human Centric view of alien
intelligences that a lot of the work
that I've been doing with my lab is just
trying to take inspiration from uh
non-human life on Earth and so I have
this really talented undergrad student
that's basically building a model of
alien communication based on fireflies
so one of my colleagues or at pel is
she's totally brilliant but she she goes
out with like GoPro cameras and like you
know films in high resolution all these
Firefly flickering and she has like this
theory about how their signaling evolve
to like maximally
differentiate um the flickering pattern
so like she has a theory basically that
predicts you know like this species
should flash like this if this one's
flashing like this this other one's
going to do it at a slower rate so that
they you know like they can distinguish
each other living in the same
environment and so this undergrad is
building this model where you have like
a pulsar background of all these like
giant flashing sources in the universe
and an alien intelligence you know wants
to Signal it's there so it's flashing
like a firly uh and I just like I like
the idea of thinking about non-human
aliens so that was really fun the
mechanism of the flashing unfortunately
is like the diversity of that is very
high and we might not be able to see it
that's what yeah well I think there's
some ways we might be able to
differentiate that signal I'm still
thinking about this part of it so one is
like like if you have pulsars and they
all have a certain Spectrum to their
pulsing patterns and you have this one
signal that's in there that's basically
tried to maximally differentiate itself
from all the other sources in the
universe it might stick out in the
distribution like there might be ways of
actually being able to tell if it's it's
an anomalous Pulsar basically um but I
don't know if that would really work or
not so still thinking about it you
tweeted if one wants to understand how
truly combinatorially and
compositionally complex our universe is
they only need step into the world of
fashion yeah it's B unkers how big the
construct constructible space of human
Aesthetics is uh can you explain can can
we explore the space of human
Aesthetics yeah I don't know um I've
been kind of obsessed with the uh I
never know how to pronounce it chappelli
like you know like like they they have
ears and things like it's such like a
like a weird grotesque aesthetic but
like it's it's totally bizarre um but
what I meant like I like I have a
visceral experience when I walk into my
closet I have like a lot of how big is
your closet it's pretty big uh it's like
I do assembly Theory every morning when
I walk in my closet because I have I
like I really like a very large Comon
tutorial diverse palette but I never
know what I'm going to build in the
morning do you get rid of stuff
sometimes or do you have trouble getting
rid of St like I have trouble getting
rid of some stuff it depends on what it
is if it's very if it's vintage it's
hard to get rid of because it's kind of
hard to replace um it depends on the
piece yeah so you have your closet is is
the one of those temporal time crystals
that yeah they just you get to visualize
the entire history it's a physical
manifestation of my personality right uh
so so why is that a good visualization
of the the the
combinatorial and uh compositionally
complex I think it's an interesting
feature of our species that we allow we
get to express ourselves through what we
wear right like if you think about all
those animals in the jungle you saw like
they're born looking the way they look
and then they're stuck with it for life
that's true I mean it is one of the
loudest clearest most consistent ways we
signal to each other the clothing we
wear yeah and it's highly Dynamic I mean
you can be dynamic if you want to very
few people are are it's it there's a
certain bravery but it's actually more
about confidence um willing to play with
style and like and play with Aesthetics
um and I think it's interesting when you
start experimenting with it how it
changes the fluidity of the social
spaces and the way that you interact
with them but there's also commitment
like you have to wear that outfit all I
know I know a big commitment do you feel
like that every
morning I were that's why feel like this
is a life commitment so all I have is
suits and the black shirt and jeans
those are the two outfits yeah well see
this is the thing though right it
simplifies your thought process in the
morning so like I have other ways I do
that I park in the same exact parking
spot when I I go to work on the fourth
floor of a parking garage because no one
ever parks on the fourth floor so I can
I don't have to remember where I park my
car um but I really like uh Aesthetics
and playing with them so I'm willing to
spend part of my cognitive energy every
morning trying to figure out what I want
to be that day did you deliberately
think about the the outfit you're
wearing today yep was there backup
options were you going back and forth
between three or four but I really like
were they drastically different yes okay
it's okay even this one could have been
really different because like you know
it's not just the the sort of jacket and
the shoes and like and the hairstyle
it's like the jewelry and the
accessories so like any outfit is is a
lot of small decisions well I think your
current off is like a lot of shades of
yellow there's like a theme yeah it's
nice it's it's really I'm grateful that
you did that it's like it's it's it's
own art form yeah yellow's my daughter's
favorite color and I never really
thought about yellow y much but she's
been obsessed with yellow she's seven
now uh and I don't know I just really
love it I guess you can pick a color and
just make that the constraint and it
just go with it understand I'm playing
with yellow a lot lately like this is
not even the most yellow cuz I have
black pants on but I have I've worn
outfits that have probably five shades
of yellow in them
wow what uh what do you think beauty is
we seem to so underlying this idea of
playing with Aesthetics is we find
certain things beautiful yeah what is it
uh that humans find beautiful and why do
we need to find things
beautiful yeah you know it's
interesting it's not I'm not I I mean I
am attracted to to to style and
Aesthetics because I think they're
beautiful but it's much more because I
think it's fun to play with um and so um
so I will get to the beauty thing but I
like I I guess I want to just explain a
little bit about my motivation in the
space cuz it's really an intellectual
thing for me um and you know Stuart
brand has this great
infographic uh about the layers of like
human society um and I think it starts
with like the Natural Sciences and like
physics at the bottom and it goes
through all these layers and it's like
economics and then like fashion is at
the top it's like the fastest moving
part of human culture and I think I
really like that because it's so Dynamic
and so short and it's temporal longevity
uh contrasted with like studying the
laws of physics which are like you know
like deep structure reality that I feel
like I like bridging those scales tells
me much more about the structure of the
world that I live in that said there's
certain kinds of Fashions like a dude in
a black suit a black tie seems to um be
less Dynamic yeah it seems to persist
through time are you embodying this yeah
I think so I I I
think I think it's just i' like to see
you wear yellow leg I don't I wouldn't
even know what to do with myself I would
freak out I wouldn't know how to act
know how to be you yeah I know this is
amazing though isn't it amazing like you
have the choice to do it but but one of
my favorite um just on the question of
beauty one of my favorite uh fashion
designers of all time is Alexander
McQueen um and he he was really
phenomenal but like his early and
actually I kind of I kind of used like
what happened to him in the fashion
industry is a coping mechanism with our
paper when uh like the nature paper in
in the the fall when everyone was saying
it was controversial and how terrible
that like you know like but
controversial is good right but like
when Alexander McQueen you know first
came out with his fashion lines he was
mixing horror and Beauty um and people
were horrified it was so controversial
like they like it was macabra he had
like you know like look like there were
Blood on the models and like um that
beautiful just looking at some pictures
here yeah no I mean his stuff is amazing
um his first uh like Runway line I think
was called
nism I don't know I don't know if you
could find it um you know I mean he was
really dramatic I he he carried a lot of
trauma with him uh there you go that's
yeah uh yeah wow um but he changed the
fashion industry his stuff became very
popular that's that's a good outfit to
show up to party right right but this
gets to the question like is is that
horrific or is it beautiful um and I
think you know he he had a traumatic he
he ended up um uh committing suicide and
actually he he left his death note on
The Descent of Man um so he was he was a
really deep uh person so I mean great
fashion certainly has that kind of depth
to it yeah it sure does uh so I think
it's the intellectual Pursuit right like
it's not um so this is like very highly
intellectual and I think it's a lot like
how I play with language is the same way
that I play with fashion or the same way
that I play with ideas in theoretical
physics like there's always this space
that you can just push things just
enough so they're like they look like
something someone thinks is familiar but
they're not familiar um and yeah and I
think that's really cool it seems like
beauty doesn't have much function right
but but it seems to also
have a lot of influence on the way we it
has tons of what do you mean it doesn't
have function I guess sexual selection
incorporates Beauty somehow but why
because beauty is a sign of health or
something I don't even oh evolutionarily
maybe but then Beauty becomes a signal
of other things right so it's really not
like and then Beauty becomes an Adaptive
trait so it can change with different
spe like you know maybe some PE some
species would think well you thought the
Frog having babies come out of its back
was beautiful and I thought it was
grotesque like there's not a universal
definition of what's beautiful it is
something that is dependent on your
history and how you interact with the
world and I guess what I like about
beauty like any other concept is when
you turn it on its head so um you know
maybe the traditional uh conception of
you know why women wear makeup and they
dress certain ways is because they want
to look beautiful and you know pleasing
to people and I just like to do it cuz
it's a confidence thing it's about
embodying uh the person that I want to
be and about owning that person and then
that the way that people interact with
that person is very different than if I
didn't have the like if I wasn't using
that attribute as part of and obviously
that that's influenced by the society I
live and like what's aesthetically
pleasing things but it's interesting to
be able to turn that around and not have
it necessarily be about the Aesthetics
but about the power dynamics that the
Aesthetics create but you're saying
there's some function to Beauty in that
way in the way you're describing in the
dynamic it creates in the social
interaction well well the point is
you're saying it's an Adaptive trait for
like sexual selection or something and
I'm saying that the adaptation that
beauty confers is far richer than that
and some of the adaptation is about
social hierarchy and social Mobility um
and just plain social dynamics like why
do some people dress goth it's because
they identify with a community and a
culture associated with that and they
get you know and that's a beautiful
aesthetic uh it's it's a different
aesthetic some people don't like it um
so it has the same richness as does
language yes it's the same kind of yes
and I think I think too few people think
about the way way that they the
Aesthetics they build for themselves in
the morning and how they carry it in the
world and and the way that other people
interact with that because they put
clothes on and they don't think about
clothes as carrying
function let's jump from beauty to
language there's so many ways to explore
the topic of language you called that
you said that language
is parts of language or language in
itself and the mechanism of language is
is is a kind of living life form um
you've tweeted a lot about this in all
kinds of poetic ways let's talk about
the computation aspect of it you you you
tweeted the world is not a computation
but computation is our best current
language for understanding the world it
is important we recognize this so we can
start to see the structure of our future
languages that will allow us to see
deeper than computation allows us so
what's the use of language in helping us
understand and make sense of the world I
think one thing that I feel like I I
notice much much more viscerally than I
feel like I hear other people
describe is that the representations in
our mind and the way that we use
language are not the things
like actually I mean this is an
important Point going back to to what
girdle did but also this idea of signs
and symbols and and all kinds of ways of
separating them there's like the word
right and then there's like what the
word means about the world and we often
confuse those things and what I I feel
very viscerally I almost sometimes think
I have some kind of like synesthesia for
language or something and I just like
don't interact with it like the way that
other people do um but for me words are
objects and the objects are not the
things that they describe they have like
a different ontology to them uh like
they're physical things um and they
carry causation and they can create
meaning um but they're
not they're not they're not what we
think they are and and also like the
internal representations in our mind
like the things I'm seeing about this
room are probably you know like they
small projection of the things that are
actually in this room and I think we
have such a difficult time moving past
the way that we build representations in
the mind and the way that we structure
our language to realize that those are
approximations to what's out there and
they're fluid and we can play around
with them and we can see deeper
structure underneath them that um I
think like we're missing a lot yeah but
also the life of the mind is
in some ways richer than the physical
reality what's going on in your
mind might be a projection actually here
but there's all also all kinds of other
stuff going on there yeah for sure I
love this um essay by Pan about like
mathematical creativity where he talks
about this sort of like frothing of all
these things and then like somehow you
build theorems on top of it and they
become kind of concrete but like and I
also think about this with language it's
like there's a lot of stuff happening in
your mind but you have to compress it
and this few sets of words to try to
convey it to someone so it's it's a
compactification of the space um and
it's not a very efficient one uh and I
think just recognizing that there's a
lot that's happening behind language is
really important I think this is this is
one of the the great things about the
existential trauma of large language
models I think is the recognition that
language is not the only thing
required uh like there's something
underneath it uh not
everybody can you just speak
to the feeling you have when you think
about words so is there like what's the
magic of words to you is it like do you
feel that it almost sometimes feels like
you're playing with it like yeah I was
just going to say it's like a playground
but but you're almost like uh I think
one of the things you enjoy maybe I'm
projecting is deviating like using words
in ways that not everyone uses them like
slightly
sort of deviating from the norm a little
bit I love doing that in everything I do
but especially with language but not so
far that it doesn't make sense exactly
so you're always like Tethered to
reality to the norm but like are playing
with it like basically fucking with
people's minds a little bit I mean like
you know and in so doing creating um a
different perspective on the thing
that's been previous exploring in a
different way yeah it's literally my
favorite thing to do yeah like use words
as one way to make people think yeah so
I you know a lot of my sort of like what
happens in my mind when I'm thinking
about ideas is I've been presented with
this information about how people think
about things and I try to go around to
different communities and hear the ways
that different whether it's like you
know hanging out with a bunch of artists
or philosophers or scientists thinking
about things like they all think about
it different ways and then I just try to
figure out
like how do you take the structure of
the way that we're talking about it and
turn it
slightly uh so you have all the same
pieces that everybody sees are there but
the description that you've come up with
seems totally different so they can
understand that there's like they
understand the pattern you're describing
but they never heard the structure
underlying it described the way that you
describe it is there words or terms you
remember
that uh Disturbed people the most maybe
the positive sense of disturbed his
assembly Theory I suppose is one yeah I
mean the the first couple sentences of
that paper Disturbed people a lot and I
think they were really carefully
constructed in exactly this kind of way
what was that let me look it up oh it
was really fun um but I think uh it's
interesting cuz I do uh you know
sometimes I'm very upfront about it I
say I'm going to use the same word in
probably six different ways
uh in a lecture um and I will you're
right scientists have grappled with
reconciling biological evolution with
immutable laws of the universe defined
by physics these laws underpin life's
origin Evolution and this with Lee when
he was here too the development of human
culture well he was I think your love
for Words runs deeper than Le yeah for
sure um I mean this is part of the the
sort of um brilliant thing about our
collaboration is um uh you know
complimentary skill set so I love
playing with the abstract space of
language and it's a really interesting
uh playground when I'm working with Lee
because uh he thinks that a much deeper
level of abstraction than can be
expressed by language and the ideas we
work on are hard to talk about for that
reason what do you think about
computation as a language I think it's a
very poor language a lot of people think
it's a really great one but I I think it
has some nice properties um but I I
think the the feature of it that you
know is is compelling is this kind of
idea of universality that like you can
if you if you if you have a language you
can describe things in any other
language well for me one of the people
who kind of
revealed the expressive power of
computation aside from alen touring is
Steven Wolfram through all the
explorations of like cell aoma type of
objects that uh he did in a new kind of
Science and after afterwards so what
what do you get from that like
the the kind of computational Worlds
that are revealed through even something
as simple cellular aoma like it seems
like that's a really nice way to explore
languages that are far outside our human
languages and do so rigorously and
understand how those kinds of complex
systems can interact with each other can
emerge all that kind of stuff um I don't
think that they're outside our human
languages I think they Define the
boundary of the space of human languages
they allow us to explore things within
that space which is also fantastic but I
think there is a set of ideas that takes
and and Steven Wolfram has worked on
this quite a lot um and contributed very
significantly to it and um you know I
really like some of the stuff that
Stephen's doing with like his physics
project but don't agree with a lot of
the foundations of it but I I think the
Space is really fun that he's exploring
um you know there's this assumption that
computation is at the base of reality
and I kind of see it at the top of
reality um not at the base um because I
think computation was built by our
biosphere it's a it's something that
happened after many billion years of
evolution um and it doesn't happen in
every physical object it only happens in
some of them and I think one of the
reasons that we feel like the universe
is computational is because it's so easy
for us as things that have the theory of
computation um in our minds and actually
in some sense it it might be related to
the functioning of our minds and how we
build uh languages to describe the world
and sets of relations to describe the
world um
but it's easy for us to go out into the
world and build computers and then we
mistake our ability to do that with
assuming that the world is computational
and I'll give you a really simple
example this one came from John Conway I
one time had a conversation with him um
which was really delightful he was
really fun um but he was pointing out
that if you um you know string lights in
a barn uh you know you can you can
program them to have your favorite
one-dimensional CA uh and you might even
be able to make them you know do a like
be capable of universal computation is
Universal computation a feature of the
string lights well no no it's probably
not it's a feature of the fact that you
as a programmer had a theory that you
could embed in the physical architecture
of the string lights now what happens
though is we get confused by this kind
of distinction between us as agents in
the world that actually can transfer
things that life does onto other
physical substrates with what the world
is and so for example you'll see people
uh you know doing studying the
mathematics of chemical reaction
networks and saying well chemistry is
turning Universal or studying the laws
of physics and saying the laws of
physics are turning Universal but
anytime that you want to do that you
always have to prepare an initial State
you have to uh you know you have to
constrain the rule space and then you
have to actually be able to demonstrate
the properties of computation and all of
that requires an agent or a designer to
be able to do that but it gives you an
intuition if you look at a 1D or 2D
cellular autometer
it gives you uh it allows you to build
an intuition of how you can have
complexity emerge from very simple
Beginnings very simple condition I think
that's the intuition that people have
derived from it the intuition I get from
cellular aoma is that the flat space of
an initial condition in a fixed
dynamical law is not rich enough to
describe an open-ended generation
process and so the way I see cellular
aoma is they're embedded slices in a
much larger causal structure and if you
want to look at a deterministic slice of
that causal structure you might be able
to extract a set of consistent rules
that you might call a cellular automa
but you could embed them in this much
larger space that's not dynamical and is
about the causal structure and relations
between all of those computations and
that would be the space uh Cell tomama
live in and I think that's the space
that uh Stephen is talking about when he
talks about his ruad and these
hypergraphs of all these possible
computations but I wouldn't take that as
my base reality because I think again
computation itself this abstract
property computation is not at the base
of reality so can we just uh Ling on
that ruad this uh one ruad to rule them
all yeah so what this is part of uh wol
from physics project it's what he calls
the entangled limit of everything that
is computationally possible so what
what's your problem with the rad well
it's interesting so so Stephen came to a
workshop we had in the Beyond Center in
the fall and the workshop theme was
mathematics is it evolved or Eternal and
he gave a talk about the ruad and he was
talking about how uh you know a lot of
the things that we talk about in the
Beyond Center like does reality have a
bottom you know if it has a bottom what
is it um you know like I need to I need
to go we'll have you to one sometime
this is great um but this reality have a
bottom yeah so we had one that was um it
was called um infinite turtles or ground
truth and it was really just about this
this this issue but the but the thing
that was interesting I think I think
Stephen was trying to make the argument
that you know fundamental particles
aren't fundamental gravitation is not
fundamental uh you know these are just
uh turtles and computation is
fundamental and I just I I remember
pointing out to him I was like well
computation is your turtle and I think
it's a weird Turtle to have first of all
isn't it okay to have a turtle it's
totally fine to have a turtle everyone
has a turtle you can't build a theory
without a turtle
um it's just um so it depends on the
problem you want to describe and I
actually the the reason I can't get
behind Steven's ontology is I don't know
what question he's trying to answer and
without a question to answer I don't
understand why you're building a theory
of reality and the question you're
trying to answer is uh what life is what
life is which another simpler way of
phrasing that is how did life originate
well I started working on the original
life um and I think what my challenge
was there was no one knew what life was
and so you can't really talk about the
origination of something if you don't
know what it is and so the way I would
approach it is if you want to understand
what life is then proving that physics
is solving the original life so there's
the theory of what life is but there's
the actual demonstration that that
theory is an accurate description of the
phenomena you aim to describe so again
they're the same problem it's not like I
can decouple original life from what
life is it's it's like that is the
problem um and I the the point I guess
I'm making about having a question is no
matter what slice of reality you take
what regularity of nature you're going
to try to describe there will be there
there will be an abstraction that
unifies that structure of reality um
hopefully um and and that will have a
fundamental layer to it right because
you have to explain something in terms
of something else but so if I want to
EXP explain life for example then my
fundamental description of Nature has to
be something I think that has to do with
time being fundamental but if I wanted
to
describe um I don't know the sort of
interactions of uh matter and light you
know I have Elementary particles be
fundamental um if I want to describe
electricity and magnetism in the 1800s I
have to have waves um be fundamental
right so like you you or in quantum
mechanics like it's a wave function
that's fundamental cuz that's the the
sort of explanatory Paradigm of your
theory
um so I guess I don't know what problem
saying computation is fundamental
solves doesn't he want to understand how
does the basic quantum mechanics and
general relativity
emerge yeah but and howest time right so
I think then that doesn't really answer
an important question for us well I
think the the issue is general
relativity and quantum mechanics are
expressed in mathematical
languages and then computation is a
mathematical language so you're
basically saying that maybe there's a
more Universal mathematical language for
describing theories of physics that we
already know that's an important
question and I do think that's what
Steven's trying to do and do well um but
it's then the question becomes does that
formulation of a more universal language
for describing the laws of physics that
we know now tell us anything new about
the nature of reality
or is it a
language and to You languages are
fundament can be
fundamental the language itself self is
never the fundamental thing it's
whatever it's describing so one of the
possible titles you were thinking about
originally for the book is the hard
problem of Life sort of reminiscent of
the hard problem of Consciousness so
you're saying that assembly theory is
supposed to be answering the question
about what is life so let's go to the
other hard problems you also say that's
the easiest of the hard problems is the
is the hard problem of
Life uh so what do you
think is the nature of intelligence and
Consciousness you think something like
assembly Theory can help us understand
that I think if assembly theory is an
accurate depiction of the physics of
Life uh it should shed a lot of light on
those problems and in fact I sometimes
wonder if the problems of Consciousness
and intelligence are at all different
than the problem of Life
generally um and I'm not I'm I I'm of
two minds of it but I I in general try
to you know like the process of my
thinking is trying to regularize
everything into one Theory so pretty
much every interaction I have is like oh
how do I fold that into and like so I'm
just building this giant abstraction
that's basically trying to take every
piece of data I've ever gotten in my in
my brain into a theory of what life is
um and Consciousness and intelligence
are obviously some of the most
interesting things that life has
manifest and so I think they're very
telling about some of the deeper
features about the nature of life it do
seem like they're all flavors of the
same thing but it's interesting to
wonder like at which stage
that's something that we we would
recognize as life in a sort of canonical
silly human way and something that we
would recognize as
intelligence at which stage does that
emerge like at which assembly index does
that emerge and which assembly index is
a Consciousness something that we would
canonically recognize as Consciousness
is this the use like this use of flavors
the same as you meant when you're
talking about flavors of alien int like
alien life yeah sure yeah I mean it's
same as the flavors of ice cream and the
flavors of fashion yeah like but we were
talking about in terms of colors and
like very non-descript but the way that
you just talked about flavors now was
more in like the space of Consciousness
and intelligence it was kind of like
much more specific it'd be nice if there
was a formal way of of expressing
quantifying flavors quantifying flavors
yeah it it seems
like um I would order it life
Consciousness intelligence probably as
like uh the order in which things emerge
and they're all just it's a part the
same they're the same we're using the
word life differently here I mean life
sort of when I'm talking about what is a
living versus a non-living thing at a
bar with a person I'm already
like four or five drinks in that kind of
thing just that like we're not we're not
being too philosophical like here's the
thing that moves and here's the thing
that doesn't move and uh but maybe
Consciousness precedes that it's a weird
dance there like is life precede
Consciousness or Consciousness precede
life and I think that understanding of
what life is in the way you're doing
will help us disentangle that depending
on what you want to explain as I was
saying before you have to assume
something's fundamental and so because
people can't explain Consciousness uh
there's a Temptation for some people to
want to take Consciousness as
fundamental and assume everything else
is derived out of that and then you get
some people um that want to assume
Consciousness preceded life and I don't
I don't find either of those views
particularly
Illuminating um I think because I don't
I don't want to assume a feminology
before I explain a thing and so what
I've tried really hard to do is is not
assume that I think life is anything um
except hold on to sort of the patterns
and structures that seem to be the sort
of consistent ways that we talk about
this thing and then try to build a
physics that describes that um and I
think that's a really different approach
than saying you know Consciousness is
this thing you know we all feel and
experience about things um I would want
to understand the regularities
associated with that and build a deeper
structure underneath that and build into
it I wouldn't want to assume that thing
and that I understand that thing which
is usually how I see people talk about
it the difference between uh life and
Consciousness yeah which which comes
first yeah so I think if you're thinking
about
um this sort of thinking about living
things as these giant causal structures
or these objects that are deep in time
or whatever language we end up using to
describe it
um it seems to me that
Consciousness is about the fact that we
have a conscious experience is because
we are these temporally extended objects
so Consciousness and the abstraction
that we have in our minds is actually a
manifestation of all the time that's
rolled up in us and it's just because
we're so huge that we have this very
large Inner Space that we're
experiencing that's not and it's also
separated off from the rest of the world
because we're the separate thread in
time um and so our Consciousness is not
exactly shared with anything else
because nothing else occupies the same
uh part of time that we occupy but I can
understand something about you may be
being conscious because you and I didn't
separate that far in the past um in in
terms of our causal history so in some
sense we can even share experiences with
each other through language because of
that sort of overlap in our structure
well then if uh Consciousness is merely
temporal separateness then that comes
before life it's not merely temporal
separateness it's about the depth in
that time so it's the reason that my
conscious experience is not the same as
yours is because we're separated in time
the fact that I have a conscious
experience is because I'm an object
that's super deep in time so I'm huge in
time and that means that there's a lot
there that I am basically in some sense
a Universe on to myself because my
structure is so large relative to the
amount of space that I occupy um but it
feels like that's possible to do before
you get anything like bacteria I think
there's a horizon and I don't know how
to articulate this yet it's a little bit
like the Horizon at the original life
where the space inside a particular
structure becomes so large that it has
some access to a space that's not um
that doesn't feel as physical it's
almost like this idea of
counterfactuals um so I think like the
the past history of your horizon is just
much larger than can be encompassed in
like a small configuration of matter so
you you can like pull this stuff into
existence this property is maybe a
continuous property but there's
something really different about um
human level physical systems and human
level ability to understand reality I
really love David Deutsch's conception
of universal explainers and like and
that's related to theory of universal
computation um and I think there's some
transition that happens there um but
maybe maybe to describe that a little
bit better what I can also say is like
what intelligence is in this this
framework so you have these these these
objects that are uh you know large and
time they were selected to Exist by
constraining the possible um space of
objects to this particular like all of
the matter is funneled into this this
particular configuration of object um
over time and so these objects arise
through selection but the more selection
that you have embedded in you the more
possible selection you have on your
future and so um so selection and
evolution we usually think about in the
past sense where selection happened in
the past
um but objects that are high density
configurations of matter that have a lot
of selection in them are also selecting
agents in the universe so they actually
embody the physics of selection and they
can select on possible Futures and I
guess what I'm saying with respect to
Consciousness and the experience we have
is that there's something very deep
about that structure and the nature of
how we exist in that structure that has
to do with how how we're navigating that
space and how we generate that space and
how we continue to persist in that
space is there shortcuts we can take to
artificially engineering living
organisms artificial life artificial
Consciousness artificial intelligence so
maybe just looking
pragmatically at the uh llms we have
now do you think those can
exhibit qualities of Life qualities of
consciousness qualities of intelligence
in the way we think of intelligence I
mean I think they already do but not in
the way I hear popularly discussed so
they're obviously signatures of
intelligence and
um and and a part of a ecosystem of
intelligent systems but I don't know
that
individually uh you know I would assign
all the properties to them that people
have it's a little like uh so you know
we talked about the history of eyes
before and like how eyes scaled up into
technological forms and language has
also had a really interesting history
and got much more interesting I think
once we started writing it down um and
then you know in inventing books and
things but like you know every time that
we started uh storing language in a new
way uh you know we were kind of EX
existentially traumatized by it so like
you know the idea of written language
was traumatic because it seemed like the
dead were speaking to us even though
they were deceased and books were
traumatic because um you know like
suddenly there were lots of copies of
this information available to everyone
and it was going to somehow dilute
dilute it and large language models are
kind of interesting because they don't
feel as static they're very Dynamic but
if you think about language in the way I
was describing before as language is
this very large in time structure and
before it had been something that was
distributed over human brains as a
dynamic structure and occasionally we
store components of that very large
dynamic structure in books or in written
language now we can actually store the
Dynamics of that structure in a physical
artifact which is a large language model
um and so I think about it almost like
the evolution of genomes in some sense
where you know there might have been
like really primitive genes in the first
living things and they could they didn't
store a lot of information or they were
like really messy um and then we you
know like you by the time you get to the
ukar cell you have this really Dynamic
genetic architecture that's rewritable
right and like and has all of these
different properties and
I think large language models are kind
of like the genetic system for language
um in some sense where it's it's
allowing and a sort of archiving that's
highly Dynamic um and I think it's very
paradoxical to us because obviously in
human history we haven't been used to
conversing with anything that's not
human um but now we can converse uh
basically with a crystallization of
human language in a computer uh that's a
highly Dynamic Crystal because it's a
crystallization in time of this massive
abstract structure that's evolved over
human history and is now put into a
small device I think crystallization
kind of implies that a limit on its
capabilities I think there's not uh I
mean it very purposefully because a
particular instantiation of a language
model trained on a particular data set
becomes a crystal of the language at
that time it was trained but obviously
we're iterating with the technology and
evolving it I guess question is when you
crystallize it when you compress it when
you archive it you're
archiving some slice of the collective
intelligence of the human species that's
right and the question is like how
powerful is that right it's a societal
level technology right we've actually
put collective intelligence in a box
yeah I mean how much smarter is the
collective intelligence of humans versus
a single human and that's that's the
question of AGI
versus uh human level intelligence
superhuman level intelligence versus
human level intelligence like how much
smarter can this thing when done well
when we solve a lot of the uh complexity
computation complexities maybe there's
some data complexities and how to really
archive this thing crystallize this
thing really well yeah how powerful is
this thing going to be like what's your
I I think I I actually I don't like the
sort of language we use around that and
I think the language really matters um
so I don't know how to talk about how
much smarter one human is than another
right like usually we talk
about abilities or particular talents
someone has um and you know going back
to you know David D's idea of universal
explainers it like you know adopting The
View that uh you know we're the first
you know kinds of structures our
biosphere has built that can understand
the rest of reality we have this
Universal comprehension capability um
you know he makes an argument that uh
basically we're the first things that
actually are capable of understanding
anything it doesn't matter it doesn't
mean an individual understands
everything but like we have that
capability and so there's not a
difference between that and what people
talk about with AGI in some sense AGI is
a universal explainer but you know like
it might be that a computer is much more
efficient at doing um you know uh I
don't know prime factorization or
something than a human is but it doesn't
mean that it's
necessarily smarter or has a broader
reach of the kind of things that can
understand than a human does and so I
think we really have to think about is
it a level shift or is it we're
enhancing certain kinds of capabilities
humans have in the same way that we can
enhanced eyesight by making telescopes
and microscopes are we enhancing
capabilities we have into Technologies
and the entire Global ecosystem is
getting more intelligent or is it really
that we're building some super machine
in a box that's going to be smart and
kill everybody like I like that sounds
like a scci like it's not it's not even
a science fiction narrative it's a bad
science fiction narrative I like I just
don't think it's actually accurate to
any of the Technologies we're building
or the way that we should be describing
them it's not even how we should be
describing ourselves so the benevolence
story is there's a benevolent system
that's able to uh transform our economy
our way of life by just you know 10 Xing
the GDP of well these are human
questions right I don't think they're
necessarily questions that we're going
to like Outsource to an artificial
intelligence I think what is happening
and will continue to happen is there's a
co-evolution between humans and
Technology that's happening and we're
coexisting in this ecosystem right now
and we're maintaining a lot of the
balance and for the balance to shift to
the technology would require some very
bad human actors which is a real risk or
some sort
of
um I don't know some sort of dynamic
that
favors like I I just don't know how that
plays out without human agency actually
trying to put it in that direction it
could also be how rapid the rate the
rapid rate is scary so like I think the
things that are you know terrifying are
um you know the ideas of deep fakes or
um you know like you know all the the
kinds of issues that become legal issues
about artificial intelligence
Technologies um and uh using them to
control weapons or uh using them for you
know like child pornography or you know
like the or like you know faking out
that someone's um you know loved one was
kidnapped or killed and it you know like
and rans like there's all kinds of
things that are super scary in this
landscape and all kinds of new
legislation needs to built and all kinds
of um guard rails on the technology to
make sure that people don't abuse it
need to be built and that needs to
happen and I think one function of sort
of the artificial intelligence uh
doomsday uh sort of part of our culture
right now is it's sort of our immune
response to knowing that's coming um and
we're over scaring ourselves so we try
to act more quickly which is good um but
I I I just you know it's it's about the
words that we use versus the actual
things happening behind the words I
think one thing that's good is when
people are talking about things
different ways it makes us think about
them and also when things are
existentially threatening we want to pay
attention to those but the ways that
they're existentially threatening and
the ways that we're experiencing
existential trauma I don't think that
we're really going to understand for
another Century or two if ever um and I
certainly think they're not the way that
we're describing them
now well creating existential trauma is
one of the things that makes life fun I
guess yeah it's just what we do to
ourselves it gives us really exciting
big problems to solve yeah for sure do
you think we will see these AI systems
become conscious or convince us that
they're conscious and then maybe we'll
have relationships with them romantic
relationships well I think people are
going to have romantic relationships
with them and I also think that some
people would be convinced already that
they're conscious but I think in order
you know what does it take to convince
um convince people that something is
conscious I think that we actually have
to have an idea of what we're talking
about that it's like it's like we have
to have a theory that explains when
things are conscious or not that's
testable right and we don't have one
right now so I think until we we have
that it's always going to be this sort
of gray area where some people think it
hasn't and some people think it doesn't
because we don't actually know what
we're talking about that we think it has
so you think it's possible to get out of
the gray area and really have a formal
test for Consciousness for sure and and
for life as you were for sure as we've
been talking about for somebody
Consciousness is a tricky one it is a
tricky one I mean that's why it's called
the hard problem of Consciousness um
because it's hard and you know it might
even be outside of the purview of
science which means that we can't
understand it in a scientific way there
might be other ways of coming to
understand it but that those may not be
the ones that we necessarily want for
technological utility um or for
developing laws with respect to because
the laws are are you know the things
that are going to govern the technology
um well I think that's actually where
the the hard problem of Consciousness a
different hard problem of Consciousness
is
that I fear that humans will
resist that's the last thing they will
resist is calling something else
conscious oh that's interesting I think
it depends on the culture though because
I mean some cultures already think like
everything's imbued with uh you know a
life essence or kind of conscious I
don't think those cultures have nuclear
weapons no they don't and they're
probably not building the most Advanced
Technologies the cultures that are
primed for destroying the
other uh constructing a very effective
propaganda Machines of what the other is
uh the group to hate uh are the are the
cultures that uh I worry would yeah I
know
would um would be very resistant to uh
label
something to sort of acknowledge the
Consciousness Laden in a thing that was
created by as humans and so what do you
think the risks are there that the
conscious things will get angry with us
and fight back no that that would that
we would torture and kill conscious
beings
oh yeah I think we do that quite a lot
anyway without I I mean I I I don't I
mean it goes back to your and I I don't
know how to feel about this but you know
like we talked already about the
Predator prey thing that like in some
sense uh you know being alive requires
eating other things that are alive and
even if you're a vegetarian or you know
like try to have like you're like you're
still eating living things I yeah so
maybe part of the the story of Earth
will involve a predator pre dynamic
between humans that's Str forist
Creations yeah
that is part of the but I don't like
thinking about them as like our
Technologies as a separate species
because this again goes back to this
sort of levels of selection issue um and
you know if you think about humans
individually alive you miss the fact
that societies are also alive and so I
think about it much more in the sense of
I an ecosystem is not the right word but
we don't have the right words for these
things of like and this why I talk about
the technosphere it's a system that is
both human and technological it's not
human or
technological um and so this is the part
that I think we're really good for the
like and this is driving in part A lot
of the sort of attitude of like I'll
kill you first with my nuclear weapons
um we're really good at identifying
things as other we're not really good at
understanding when we're the same or
when we're part of an integrated system
that's actually functioning together in
some kind kind of cohesive way so even
if you look at like you know the
division in American politics or
something for example it's important
that there's multiple sides that are
arguing with each other because that's
actually how you resolve society's
issues it's not like a bad feature I
think like some of the sort of extreme
positions and like the way people talk
about are maybe not ideal um but uh but
that's how societies solve problems what
it looks like for an individual is
really different than the societal level
outcomes and the fact that like there is
uh I don't want to call it cognition or
computation I don't know what you call
it but like there is a process playing
out in the Dynamics of societies that we
are all individual actors in and like
we're not part of that you know like it
requires all of us acting individually
but like this higher level structure is
playing out some things and like things
are getting solved for it to be able to
maintain itself um and that's the level
that our Technologies live at they don't
live at our level they live at the
societal level and they're deeply
integrated with the social organism if
you want to call it that um and so I
really get upset when people talk about
the species of artificial intelligence
I'm like you mean we live in an
ecosystem of all these kind of
intelligent things and these animating
technologies that were uh you know in
some sense helping to come alive we are
we are generating them but it's not like
the biosphere eliminated all of its past
history when it invented a new species
all of these things get scaffolded and
we're also augmenting ourselves at the
same time that we're building
Technologies I don't think we can
anticipate what thatst is going to look
like so in some fundamental way you
always want to be thinking about the
planet as one organism the planet is one
living thing what happens when it
becomes multiplanetary is it still just
a still the same causal chain same
causal chain it's like when the first
cell split into two that's what I was
talking about when the when a planet
reproduces itself the technosphere
emerges enough understanding it's it's
it's like this recursive like the entire
history of life is just recursion right
so you have an original life event it
evolves for 4 billion years at least on
our planet it evolves a technosphere the
Technologies themselves start to
become having this property we call life
which is the phase we're undergoing now
it solves the origin of itself and then
it figures out how that process all
works understands how to make more life
and then can copy itself onto another
planet so the whole structure can
reproduce
itself and so the original life is
happening again right now on this planet
in the technosphere with the way that
our planet is undergoing another
transition just like at the original
life when geochemistry transitioned to
biology which is the global for me it
was a planetary scale transition it was
a multiscale thing that happened from
the scale of chemistry all the way to
Planetary Cycles um it's happening now
all the way from Individual humans to
the internet which is a global
technology and all the other things like
there's this multiscale process that's
happening and transitioning us globally
and it is really like it's a dramatic
transition it's happening really fast um
and you we're living in it you think
this technosphere that we created this
increasingly complex technosphere will
spread to other planets it I hope so I
think so do you think we'll become a
type two kardashev civilization I don't
really like the kardashev scale uh and I
it goes back to like I don't like a lot
of the narratives about life because
they're very like um you know survival
of the fittest energy consuming this
that the other thing it's very like I
don't know sort of oldw world you know
like conqueror mentality um what's the
alternative to that exactly I mean I
think it does require life to use new
energy sources in order to expand the
way it is so that part's accurate but I
think this sort of process of Life uh
gener like being the the mechanism that
the Universe creatively expresses itself
generates novelty explores the space of
the possible is really the thing that's
most deeply intrinsic to life and so you
know these sort of um energy consuming
scales of technology I think is missing
the sort of
actual feature that's most prominent
about any alien life that we might in
find which is that it's literally our
universe our reality trying to
creatively Express itself and trying to
find out what can exist and trying to
make it exists see but past a certain
level of complexity unfortunately maybe
you can correct me but we're built all
complex life on Earth is built on a
foundation of that Predator pre Dynamic
yes and so like I don't know if we can
escape that I don't know we can't but
but this is why I'm okay with having a
finite Lifetime and you know one of the
reasons I'm okay with that actually yeah
goes back to this issue of the fact that
we're resource bound we live in a you
know like we have a finite amount of
material whatever way you want to Define
material I think like for me you know
material is time material is information
but we have a finite amount of material
um if time is a generating mechanism
it's always going to be finite because
the universe is you know like it's it's
it's a resource that's getting generated
but it has a size um which means that
all the things that could exist don't
exist and in fact most of them never
will so death is a way to make room in
the universe for other things to exist
that wouldn't be able to exist otherwise
so if the universe over its entire
temporal history wants to maximize the
number of things want is a hard word
maximize a hard word all these things
are approximate but wants to maximize
the number of things that can exist the
best way to do it is to make recursively
embedded stacked objects like us that
have a lot of structure and a small
volume of space and to have those things
turn over rapidly so you can create as
many of them as possible so there for
sure is a bunch of those kinds of things
throughout the Universe hopefully
hopefully our universe is teaming with
life this is like early on in the
conversation you mentioned that we
really don't understand
much like there's mystery all around us
yes if you had to like bet money on it
like what percent so like say aill
million years from now the story of
science
M and uh human understanding
understanding that uh started on Earth
is written like what chapter are we on
are We like is this like 1% 10%
20% um 50% 90% how much do we understand
like the big stuff not not like the
details of like like big important
questions yeah and ideas I think we're
in our
20s and 20% 20 no like agewise let's say
we're in our 20s but the lifespan is
going to keep getting longer you can't
do that I can you know why I use that
though I'll tell you why uh why my brain
went there is because uh you know
anybody that gets an education in
physics you know has this sort of Trope
about how all the great physicists did
their best work in their 20s uh and then
you don't do any good work after that
and I always thought it was kind of
funny because for me physics uh is
um is not complete it's not nearly
complete but most physicists think that
we understand most of the structure of
reality and so I I think I I actually I
think I put this in the book somewhere
but like this idea to me that societies
would discover everything while they're
young is very consistent with the way we
talk about physics right now um but I
don't think that's actually the way that
things are going to go and you're you're
finding that people that are making
major discoveries are getting older in
some sense than they were and our
lifespan is also increasing so I think
there is something about age and your
ability to learn and how much of the
world you can see that's really
important over a human lifespan but also
over the lifespan of societies and so I
don't know how big the frontier is I
don't actually think it has a limit I I
don't believe in Infinity as a physical
thing but I think as a a receding
Horizon I think because the universe is
getting bigger you can never know all of
it well I think it's
about
1.7% 1.7 where is that come from it's a
finite I don't know I just made it up
but it's like that number had to come
from somewhere it certainly I think
seven is the thing that people usually
pick 7% so I I wanted to say 1% but I
thought it would be funnier yeah a point
you know soor inject a little humor in
there so the seven is for the humor one
is for how much mystery I think there is
out there 99% mystery 1% known in terms
of like really big important questions
yeah it's like the list say there's
going to be like 200 chapters like the
stuff that's going to remain
true but you think the book has a finite
size yeah yeah and I
don't I mean not that I believe in
infinities but I don't I think the size
of the book is
growing well the fact that the size of
the book is growing is one of the
chapters in the book oh there you go oh
we're we're being
recursive I think you have to you can't
you can't have an Ever growing book yes
you can I mean you just I mean I don't
even because then well you couldn't have
been asking this at the original life
right because obviously like you
wouldn't have existed the original life
but like the question of intelligence
and icial General like those questions
did not exist then and so and they in
part existed because the universe
invented a space for those questions to
exist through
Evolution but like I think that question
will still stand a thousand years from
now it will but there will be other
questions we can't anticipate now that
we'll be asking yeah and maybe we'll
develop the kinds of
languages that would be able to ask much
better questions right or like like the
theory of like gravitation for example
like when we invented to that theory
like we only knew about the planets in
our solar system right and now you know
many centuries later we know about all
these planets around other stars and
black holes and other things that we
could never have anticipated so and then
we can ask questions about them um you
know like we wouldn't have been asking
about singularities and like can they
really be physical things in the
universe several hundred years ago that
question couldn't
exist yeah but it's not I still think
those are chapters in a book like I
don't get a sense from that so do you
think that Universe has an
end if you think it's a book with an end
I think the number of words required to
describe how the universe works as an
end
yes meaning like I don't care if it's
infinite or not right as long as the
explanation is simple and it exists oh I
see and I think there is a finite
explanation for each aspect of it the
Consciousness the life yeah um I mean
very probably there's like
some the black hole thing is like what's
going on there where's that going like
where do they what and then you know why
the Big Bang like what right it's
probably there's just a huge number of
universes and it's like universes inside
univers I think universes inside
universes is maybe possible I just think
it's it um every time we assume this is
all the is it turns out there's much
more the universe is a huge place and we
mostly talked about the past and the
richness of the past but the future I
mean with with many worlds
interpretation of quantum
mechanics so oh I'm not a many worlds
person you're not no are you how many
lexes are there depending on the day
well do some of them wear yellow jackets
at the m at the moment we asked the
question there was one at the moment I'm
answering it there's now in near
Infinity apparently
um I mean the future
is the future is bigger than the past
yes yes okay well there you go but in
the past according to already gigantic
yeah but yeah I mean that's consistent
with many worlds right because like
there's this constant branching so but
it doesn't really have a directionality
to it it's it's a I don't know many
worlds is weird so my interpretation of
reality is like if you fold it up like
all that bifurcation of many worlds and
you just fold it into the structure that
is you and you just said you are all of
those many worlds
and like that sort of you know like like
your history like converged on you but
like you're you're actually an object
exists that's like that you know was
selected to exist and you're
self-consistent with the other
structures so like the quantum
mechanical reality is is not the one
that you live in it's this very
deterministic uh classical world and
you're carving a path through that space
But I don't think that you're constantly
branching into new spaces I think you
are that face wait so to you at at the
bottom it's deterministic I thought you
said the universe no it's random at the
bottom right but like this Randomness
that we see at the bottom of reality
that is quantum mechanics I think like
people have assumed that is reality and
what I'm saying is like all those things
you see in many worlds all those
versions of you just collect them up and
bundle them up and like they're all you
and what has happened is you know like
Elementary particles don't have they
don't live in in a deterministic
universe the things that we study in
Quantum experiments they live in this
fuzzy random space But as that structure
collapsed and started to build
structures that were deterministic and
evolved into you you are a very
deterministic microscopic macroscopic
object and you can look down on that
universe that doesn't have time in it
that random structure um and you can see
that all of these possibilities look
possible but they don't look they're not
possible for you because you're
constrained by this giant like causal
structural history
um so you can't live in all those
universes you'd have to go all the way
back to the very beginning of the
universe and retrace everything again to
be a different you so where's the source
of the Free Will for the macro object um
it's the fact that your deterministic
structure living in a random background
and also all of that selection bundled
in you allows you to select on possible
Futures so that's where your will comes
from and there's just always a little
bit of Randomness because the universe
is getting bigger and you know like uh
this idea that the past is in the
present is not large enough yet to
contain the future the extra structure
has to come from somewhere um and some
of that is because outside of those
giant causal structures that are things
like us it's fucking random out
there and it's scary and we're all
hanging on to each other because the
only way to hang on to each other like
the only way to exist is to like cling
on to all of these causal structures
that we have happen to co-inhabit
existence with and try to keep
reinforcing each other's
existence all the selection bundled in
us but but free Will's totally
consistent with that I don't know what I
think about that that's complicated to
imagine just that little bit of
Randomness is enough okay well it's also
it's not just the randomness there's two
features one is the randomness helps
generate some novelty and some
flexibility but it's also that like
because you you're you're the structure
that's deep in time you have this common
tutorial history that's you and uh I
think about time and assembly Theory not
as linear time but as comori time so if
you have all of the structure that
you're built out of you in principle you
know your future can be combinations of
that structure you obviously need to
persist yourself as a coherent you so
you want to optimize for a Comin like a
a a future in that combinatorial space
that still includes you um most of the
time for most of us
um and um and when you make those kinds
and then that gives you a space to
operate in uh and that's your sort of
horizon where your free will can operate
and your free will can't be
instantaneous so for like ex example
like I'm sitting here talking to you
right now I can't be in the UK and I
can't be in Arizona but I could plan I
could execute My Free Will over time
because Free Will is a temporal feature
of Life uh to be there you know to
tomorrow or the or the next day if I
wanted to but what about like the
instantaneous decisions you're making
like to I don't know to put your hand on
the table that's I think those were
already decided a while ago I don't
think that that I don't think Free Will
is ever instantaneous but on a longer
time Horizon yep there's some kind of
steering going on
mhm and who's doing the steering you
are and you being this macro object
that's
encompasses or you being
Lex whatever you want to call
it there there you are assigning words
to things once again I know why does
anything exist at
all you've kind of taken that as a
starting point yeah it exists I think
that's the hardest question isn't it
just hard questions stack on top of each
other wouldn't it be the same kind of
question of what is life it is the same
well that's that's sort of like I try to
fold all of the questions into that
question because I think that one's
really hard and I think the nature of
existence is really hard you think
actually like answering what is life
will help us understand existence maybe
maybe
there's it's it's Turtles all the way
down it it'll
just understanding the nature of turtles
will help us kind of March down even if
we don't have the experimental
methodology of reaching before the bang
bang right so well I think there's
there's sort of two questions embedded
here I think the one that we can answer
by answering life is why certain things
exist and others don't um but I think
the sort of ultimate question the sort
of like prime mover question of why
anything exists we will not be able to
answer what's outside the universe oh
there's nothing outside the universe so
I I have a very um I am a very like I am
like the most physicalist that like
anyone could be so like for me
everything exists in our universe and
and like I like to like think like
everything exists here so even when we
talk about the Multiverse I don't like
to me it's not like there's all these
other universes outside of our universe
that exist the Multiverse is a concept
that exists in human Minds here and it
allows us to have some counterfactual
reasoning to reason about our own
cosmology and therefore it's causal in
our biosphere to understanding the
reality that live in and building better
theories but I don't think that the
Multiverse is something like and and
also math like I don't think there's a
platonic world that mathematical things
live in I think mathematical things are
here on this planet like I don't think
it makes sense to talk about things that
exist outside of the universe if you're
talking about them you're already
talking about something that exists
inside the universe and is part of the
universe and is part of like what the
universe is building it all originates
here it all exists here in some I mean
what else would there be
there could be things you can't possibly
understand outside of all of this that
we call the universe and you can say
that and that's an interesting
philosophy but again this is sort of
like pushing on the boundaries of like
the way that we understand things I
think it's more constructive to say the
fact that I can talk about those things
is telling me something about the
structure of where I actually live and
where I exist just because it's more
constructive doesn't mean it's
true well it may not be true it may be
something that allows me to build better
theories I can test to try to understand
something objective and in the end
that's a good way to get to the truth
exactly even if you realiz I can't do
experiment yeah so there's no such thing
as experimental platonism but if you
think math is an object that emerg in
our biosphere you can start
experimenting with that
idea and that to me is really
interesting like to think about well
people I mean mathematicians do think
about math sometimes as an experimental
science but to think about math itself
as a a a object for study by physicists
rather than a tool physicists use to
describe reality it becomes the part of
reality they're trying to describe to me
is a deeply interesting inversion what
to you is most beautiful
about this kind of exploration of the
physics of life that you've been doing
um I love the way it makes me
feel and then you have to try to convert
the feelings into visuals and the
visuals into words yeah so I think I
love um yeah I love the way it makes me
feel to have
ideas um that I think are
novel and I think the the Dual side of
that is the painful process of trying to
communicate that with other human beings
to test if they have any kind of reality
to them uh and I also love that process
I love trying to figure out how to
explain really deep abstract things that
I don't think that we understand
and trying to understand them with other
people and I also love the shock value
of uh you like this kind of idea we were
talking about before of like being on
the boundary of like what we understand
and so people can kind of see what
you're seeing but they haven't ever saw
it that way before and I I I love the
shock value that like people have like
that immediate moment of recognizing
that there's something beyond the way
that they thought about things before
and being able to deliver that to people
I think is one of the biggest Jo that I
have is just like and maybe it's that
sense of mystery like to share that
there's something beyond the frontier of
how we understand and we might be able
to see it and you get to see the humans
transformed by a new idea yes and I
think my my
greatest wish in life is to somehow
contribute to an idea that some that
transforms the way that we think like
you know I have my problem I want to
solve but like the thing that gives me
Joy about it is really changing
something
um and ideally getting to a deeper
understanding of how the world works and
what we
are yeah I would say understanding life
at a deep level yeah is uh probably one
of the most exciting problems one of the
most exciting
questions um so I'm glad you're trying
to answer just that and doing it in
style it's the only way to do
anything thank you so much for this in
conversation thank you for being you
Sarah this was awesome thanks Lex thanks
for listening to this conversation with
Sarah Walker to support this podcast
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description and now let me leave you
with some words from Charles
Darwin in the long history of humankind
and animal kind too those who learn to
collaborate and improvise most
effectively have
prevailed thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time