Lex Fridman Podcast
Reformatted for readability — timestamps removed, lightly restructured. Not verbatim.
Lee Cronin
"Every star in the sky probably has planets and life is probably emerging on these planets."
Lex Fridman
"Intersect, you don't mean in time or space-"
Lee Cronin
"Time and the ability to communicate."
Lex Fridman
"The ability to communicate."
Lee Cronin
"Yeah. My biggest fear in a way is that life is everywhere, but we've become infinitely more lonely."
Lex Fridman
"So your big assembly theory paper was published in Nature. Congratulations."
Lee Cronin
"Thanks."
Lex Fridman
"It created, I think it's fair to say, a lot of controversy, but also interesting discussion."
Lee Cronin
"Go for it."
Lex Fridman
"So assembly theory says that if we look at any object in the universe, we can quantify complexity."
Lee Cronin
"Yep. That's spot on. Yep."
Lex Fridman
"What is an object?"
Lee Cronin
"Objects need to be finite and decomposable into sub-units."
Lex Fridman
"Persists over time... is breakable such that constraints to construct it are quantifiable."
Lee Cronin
"The history is in the objects. It's kind of cool, right?"
Lex Fridman
"What defines the object is its history or memory, whichever is the sexier word."
Lee Cronin
"I'm happy with both depending on the day."
Lex Fridman
"What is an assembly index?"
Lee Cronin
"It's the minimum number of steps you take to add parts together to reproduce the object."
Lex Fridman
"That doesn't seem like a trivial thing to do."
Lee Cronin
"With molecules, it is not trivial, but it is possible."
Lex Fridman
"What's the computational complexity of figuring out the shortest path?"
Lee Cronin
"It's a hard problem. But actually there are shortcuts."
Lee Cronin
"If you shine light on a molecule, the molecule has each bond absorbs infrared differently."
Lee Cronin
"I've started assembly theory of emoticons with my lab, believe it or not."
Lee Cronin
"In chemistry we assume the bond is fundamental. We assume the resolution is fundamental."
Lex Fridman
"But Lee, what's the factory that made the factory?"
Lee Cronin
"The factory emerges in the interplay between the environment and objects."
Lee Cronin
"Yeah, so this is probably what the paper... we should talk about the paper."
Lee Cronin
"So what happened is the evolutionary biologists got angry."
Lee Cronin
"Scientists have grappled with reconciling biological evolution with immutable laws."
Lee Cronin
"I am not… I would do it all again."
Lee Cronin
"What I love about being a scientist is sometimes I don't understand what people tell me."
Lee Cronin
"Yeah, that's really good. For selection, something that can form and persist."
Lee Cronin
"Very simply, actually. Let's say we'll go to Mars with a mass spectrometer."
Lee Cronin
"If I give you a really complicated molecule... is it just really random?"
Lee Cronin
"Ultimate randomness and ultimate complexity are indistinguishable until structure."
Lex Fridman
"So copies implies structure."
Lee Cronin
"Yeah. The factory-"
Lee Cronin
"The most exciting criticism came from evolutionary biologist."
Lee Cronin
"The origin of, the emergence of life was not and cannot, in principle, be encoded."
Lee Cronin
"Time."
Lee Cronin
"Yeah. I think selection produces intelligence."
Lex Fridman
"You're almost implying that selection is intelligence. No."
Lee Cronin
"Kind of, I would go out in limb and say that."
Lex Fridman
"So we escaped Darwinian evolution and now we're onto some other kind?"
Lee Cronin
"And assembly theory will measure that as well, right?"
Lee Cronin
"Yeah, there seems to be a disconnect between computational approach."
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