Lee Cronin on life, assembly theory, evolution, entropy, time | Thing in itself w/ Ashar Khan
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- Lee Cronin is the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and the originator of assembly theory.
0:00 intro
1:57 evolution beyond biology
11:03 different biologies
14:17 time
19:31 ontology of math
22:58 foundations of physics
32:47 entropy
37:35 assembly theory
44:21 top down causality
48:55 intelligence, cognition, consciousness, IIT
55:02 abstractions in assembly theory
56:59 chemputation
www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/
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Lee Cronin in 2023 addressing his 2011 Ted talk claim of 'we are two years away from making life in the lab'
7. 25: "And I stand by that. Its just the wrong two years." Tells you all you need to know about Cronin's logic.
I doubt someone’s ability to communicate tells you all there is to know about a persons value in a particular industry.
@@dnickelson This has nothing to do with his ability to communicate, it is what he is communicating that is the problem here.
Definitely not all I need to know.
Not two years, two billion of years. It will happen, trust me. Life always finds a way. Now give me my funding!
@@DartNoobo Yeah, without funding will happen for sure.
One of the best quotes I have ever come across states: 'Life begins when information takes control of matter'.
One of my own theories suggest an other law of nature I have called 'Life Force'.
That is the “Elian Vital” of Henry Bergson. The “Life Impulse”.
So you think information is consciousness ? And where did the information come from?
@@Edruezzi
Anybody can talk endlessly about Life Force. It's one of those wonderful empty phrases invented for the purpose of enabling content-free speech and writing.
Sounds like what folks probably mean by "GOD"...
Lee, Sara Walker and Lex Fridmans conversation was wild.
This channel is fantastic! Please hire someone to do shorts, marketing, and operations. You will blow up so quick!
Thanks so much!
Folks, for some reason, love to believe that mindlessness did everything by accident. People of tremendous and literally blind faith!
Loved this. Interesting ideas.
One primitive on the journey may be a the propensity of long molecules to overlap and create complex loops with increased functionality.
Could a process of spherical symmetry forming and breaking form the characteristics of three-dimensional space forming statistical entropy with a potential forever-greater symmetry formation as in cell life?
At the fundamental level, the link you're looking to hone in on is that between mass and biomass over time. Perhaps combine that with the notion of '(universal form of) energy enables everything'.
It's all about highly specific digitally encoded information plus the nanomachines specified in the information all appearing precisely in the same tiny area with the correct physiochemical millieu ,twice, where it's destruction does not occur before organismal replication occurs.
Aminoacyl-trna synthetases plus pre-existing tRNAs for specific amino acids is far too complex to bot simultaneously appear AND be encoded for, because no back-coding occurs.
Have the following problems been solved:
Homochirality of the building blocks
Solve the water paradox problem
Biopolymer reproduction
Nucleotide sequences forming useful code
Means of gene regulation
Means of repairing polymers
Selectively permeable membranes
Harnessing energy
Interdependency of RNA , DNA and proteins
Coordinated cellular purpose
You're saying you've got an "astronomically long amount of time" for chance to create and adapt life.
But "astronomically" large numbers are way too small:
To pick just 14 numbered balls out of 28 takes 3.5 X 10^18 tries.
The universe is only 4.35 X 10^17 seconds old !
Cronin states that science had been asking the wrong question on how life started and that they should really have been asking what is the phenomena that gave rise to life???? Lee, that is what they have always been asking. They have always been asking what was the phenomena/circumstances etc from which first life could have sprung.
I know. What an odd error.
@@James-ll3jb Yes but even if that was blatantly pointed out to him Cronin would still not see that as an error. That is the level of the OoL researchers that get all the funding.
Interesting episode. :) Thank you for your work.
Lee seems to be materialist or at least physicalist, he like explanations and he doubt about platonic realm and top down causation. But I think he would like cybernetics as he see solutions in selection mechanism and I think it's a proto-element for "control and communication in the animal and the machine" which is cybernetics all about.
If I find a time I will look closer to his assembly theory. Seems promising. :]
He is in 2 episodes with Lex Fridman, 1 on 1 and with Sarah Walker.
Valentin Turchin, in "The Phenomenon of Science" (1977) starts with first principles from a 1-bit system, works up through natural selection, eventually arriving at the scientific method. It's like a cybernetic version of Dawkins' "gentle slope", without all the antitheist digs. Well worth a look.
The nitty gritty , there is the nub of any pearl.
Good talk!
Great topic! I would like to see some attempts at estimating the time required for this selection process to come up with anything viable.
There is life on earth, therefore it happened. Now give me some more maoney for my research
@@DartNoobo The trouble is that it is not the only option.
@@nealesmith1873 whos trouble? Lee sees no trouble, he is golden.
@@DartNoobo Just because you see an end result does not mean you have identified the process. I have never heard Lee specify how selection happens pre-life.
@@nealesmith1873 he doesn't need to. As long as he promises you the result - he gets the funding. And that is all that matters.
The top down thing does seem important because then you can have change much faster than with evolution. There should be a time element added to assembly theory.
I'm convinced that the rate of change is *also* subject to selection.
Sex, one of the most important developments in natural selection, it acts as a *brake* on diversity (preventing non-viable reproduction, by offering a "type-check" at every generation).
@@BrennanYoung This makes a lot of sense. If selection happens in a primordial soup, it has to be fast before it dries up or get ruined in some other way.
This looks like a really useful quantifying description of constructivism. But it needs to be coupled with an actual motor for change, a reason to use energy this way and not that. Jeremy England's Dissipative Theory of Abiogenesis is an argument for why entropy can be topically driven backwards to reduce the entropy represented by the generation of organised complexity within an energy flux, albeit at the cost of a greater increase in entropy more generally.
Broadly, by generating the lower entropy, more organised, structure the flow of that energy is better enabled. Were it a heat flow, the thermal resistance would be lowered and more such "work" could be done within the flux. Life thrives when it makes better use of its available energy. A Universal Principle of Least Action seems to undergird all physical processes. Feynman's beguiling Lecture 19 has still to become the first thought physicists need to have.
A pan of water on a hob, when the heat flux and geometries and fluid properties are just so, will spontaneously generate hexagonally nested cells of toroidal circulation, to replace the rather chaotic flow that usually pertains. Why? It is more efficient. It reduces the temperature difference between the bottom and top surfaces of the pan. Life better satisfies the demands of physics than geochemistry...sometimes. But even that chemistry is already the result of the principle of least action.
i've watched every episode of your podcast, loved all of them!! keep up the great work!!! you're on your way brother, don't give up!!! you offer so much value! you deserve so many likes and subs and they'll come!!!
Thank you so much!! Really appreciate it!!
@OptInOptimist I agree. :]
lol thank you for the discussions!
@@PeterIntrovert did you say there's a discord server for the podcast? i think that's great! i'd love to join, the current link in the description has expired or is invalid
Yes, please do! Here is the current one: discord.gg/GyTKT5ct
Sorry about that. I didn't realize that it was broken, will fix it.
Examining how logic gates work does not tell one how to develop a video game, but that doesn't mean we need a new physics of video games.
Video games depend on computers. The simplest computers came from calculators. Calculators came from logic gates. Could an AI build a traffic light controller? A calculator? A simple microprocessor?
the glaring missing ingredient is the origin of the forces that holds every particle together.
it's like assuming the presence of mortar (without access to it) while speculating on how to build a brick wall.
evolution seems to be a combination of fixing the variability of horizontal (background) and vertical (active in interaction) tendencies of function and functional systems.
“That took us a wee while for us to get there…” :) ❤ at 6:50 or so
Well, on PBS Aeons I heard an explanation for the emergence of fractal forms as an optimal energy transfering gradient on a high energy surface facing a low energy space (perhaps convection? I'm no physicist! I may use the words wrongly), and so the emergence of life can be extrapolated at least from there. So Lee Cronin seems to be wrong in his initial assumptions.
presupposing that there is a physical explanation behind everything
One should assume a physical explanation behind everything because that is the only kind of data there is. If something completely different is discovered, then we can look there but so far there is nothing else that has any scientific merit. .
@@lrvogt1257 That's circular reasoning
@@pdworld3421 : No. It's like saying; if your chair has scratch marks you should start watching the cat and not insisting it's a unicorn.
@lrvogt1257 again, your presuppositions without evidence to support your claim
@@pdworld3421 : Is there ANY quantifiable evidence that anything is other than natural phenomena? Anything?
Is there ANY quantifiable evidence that anything is supernatural? Anything?
We have an entire standard model of particle physics that is extremely accurate... and not one thing for magic.
So I presuppose nothing. I look at the evidence.
Why don't we see abiogenesis around us today? If life is common, we should see it forming in Earth's environment -- a known hospitable place for life.
Good point, but we cannot rule out such paradigms in our midst.
The planet is very different than it was at the beginning and life has literally filled every tiny niche. A drop of sea water can contain a million organisms so there is a lot of competition now and all the chemistry has been changed.
Because abiogenesis is not only impossible, but it requires a long list of simultaneous impossible events
@@PedroHenrique-x17 : It's not impossible because magic isn't real. Only natural phenomena are real. You seem to be making the case that magic is possible AKA the supernatural, and yet, unlike the laws of nature, there is... no evidence whatsoever for it.
Like lamarckism?
If life is the product of random, unintended, purposeless collision of stuff in the first place, why should anything, anything at all matter?
Because you are one of the only known entities that has, somehow, evolved a nervous system that anticipates the future through the emulation of consciousness. An undetectable spirit has dominated through your DNA to will you to existence, hark! Under Darwinian evolution, you merely came to be, but under assembly, we can finally start to identify what the spirit of life truly is
One might say that while it might not matter it minds
Your comment is the type I would expect from religiously driven people. Nothing should matter, but it does to us because we decide what matters.
Besides, your 'if 'shows that you have limited understanding.
@@VaughanMcCue Nope, his 'if' is exactly right, it is your comment that shows the limited understanding.
@@rl7012
Perhaps you will explain yourself and convince me that you and JF are correct.
We’re seeded.
Lee Cronin: _"Time is not emergent because the future cannot be predicted."_ I think that this is a non-sequitur fallacy, because of ... statistics. Even if future is in principle predictable, we cannot, due to an exponential explosion of "adding up" minor variations that emerged from the random nature of the quantum world.
Assembly is integration, convergence or syntropy.
Integration (syntropy, assembly) is dual to differentiation (entropy, disassembly) -- abstract algebra.
Attraction is dual to repulsion.
Intrinsic (internal) is dual to extrinsic (external) -- probability.
Real is dual to imaginary -- complex numbers are dual, photons or probability waves are dual.
Reducing the number of dimensions or states is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Absolute truth (universals) is dual to relative truth (particulars) -- Hume's fork.
Making predictions to track targets, goals or objectives is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Complexity is dual to simplicity.
Lee, take a look at constructor theory. Forget Penrose. Causation is an abstraction just as QM. Everett didn’t extrapolate anything, he just took QM seriously. Entanglement does not imply non-locality. Different times are just correlations in the Multiverse.
Yes, Everett confused QM with "reality" ("he just took QM seriously") and forgot that QM is a model of the Universe and not the Universe itself. Sean Carroll makes the same stupid assumption. Give me a break.
@@williamnelson4968 I agree with you, QM will have a successor and we’ll never have a true(flawless) theory of physical reality.
@@williamnelson4968 BTW, comparison to Sean was hurtful.
In other words: abiogenesis is Impossible.
How did you get that out of this?
@@joshuasalmonson2109 Assembly Theory presumes that biology and abiotic chemistry are distinct and therefore distinguishable. Yes?
@sentientflower7891 No. It doesn't draw a line between them at all. That's up for debate.
@@joshuasalmonson2109 chirality exist.
...and yet here we are.
Of course, one can invoke magic but that's very unscientific.
I wonder if Lee Cronin can tell us how glycolysis, the "oldest" process of ATP production, evolved. Since it needs 10 enzymes that must have been encoded by DNA. The problem would be that the replication fork of DNA uses ATP, so how did DNA replicate before glycolysis? Well, biologists will just regress into the fantasy of a "simpler" system. The problem is theres no organism, even bacteria, that doesn't use glycolysis for energy production. THIS leaves the realm of science, and enters the realm of fable.
Too bad you didn't send him a decent mic to use, he's really hard to understand.
If the big bang happened and it cooled then there was a time when everywhere was at the right temperature for life.
Attempting to analyze nature to conclude about its mechanism and laws using results of observations and experiments on the surface of the earth and in celestial bodies, without any link to events inside the earth and the development of PLANTS on its surface, is identical with attempting to derive life of beings as an exclusive function of their excreta (CO2, urine and stool).
That is exactly the situation of medicine at present, for medicine concludes about the sources of diseases by analyzing excreta (urine, stool, blood and breathing), while totally ignoring the link to the single sustainer of all life functions in the entire known universe, THE PLANTS.
To understand life, physics must derive growth of plants as a function of particle interactions inside the earth, inatead of starting with cells and DNA, which only occur on the surface, as a separate science BIOLOGY.
We must derive our own ideal state that nature SHOULD sustain and then look for means to imolement it instead of trying to slavishly understand how "nature selects" and follow them fatalistically as inevitable, immutable and irrefutable givens.
DESTINISM instead of DETERMINISM/PROBABILISM dichotomy.
TEOS (The Experimental and Observational Science), in this respect, is even more systematically fatalistic and slavish than all the conventional religions taken together.
Mathematics is not a subjective construct or a cultural construct. The universality of mathematics is reflected in the universality of physical law. Read Quine. Read Frege. Read Penelope Maddy and Kurt Godel.
Maths are descriptive, modeling tools… they are not and should not be conflated with the stuff modeled and described
Math more than just modeling tools, it is a subject to study and explore. Most people experience mathematics through its applications and as tools for building models. Mathematicians experience mathematics as an infinite realm to be explored and truths discovered.@@paul_to_the_music
Physics operates on an underlying foundation of Consciousness.
What is the quantifiable data that suggests that? That's magical thinking.
He lets his phone distract him a few dozen times.
"the current physics that we have in the universe is not sufficient to explain the life forms in it. so, we can explain the universe but we can't explain life"
these are very strange and totally wrong assertions in the very beginning. on one hand we do not have at present a complete and precise description of the universe and its structures both on very large and very small scales based on our currently two best physical theories - the Standard model of cosmology (LambdaCDM) and the Standard model of particle physics which are both incomplete and till now cannot be combined together into a single accurate and comprehensive description of the Universe. on the other hand these two theories plus thermodynamics permit us to understand the phenomenon of life and its physics much deeper to the extent which totally changes our previous Darwinian understanding of life, of its place and role in the general picture of the Universe.
Oh! LOOK MUMMY! Another TH-cam SCHOLAR!
@@gwilymyddraig nice to see you mischief urchin, behave yourself))
@@sergeynovikov9424 totally wrong ASSertion.
@@sergeynovikov9424 I bet you say that to all the cute boys that wish you'd shut up.
28:49
"When he started with his totally wrong assertion. Is almost a half an hour into the interview."
Like I said, we have your full attention.
Lee trys to "dumb down" his answers and ends up making the listner more confused. Just give me the chemistry on how this happens. Instead, i get weird analogies and hyperbole.
Driving the conversation for an audience is more up to the interviewer and setup than on the interviewee…unless you’re saying he always does this, then you’re basically just complaining that your watching a video aimed at a different audience than yourself.
This.
He’s not “dumbing down” he’s just dumb.
there is no rational chemistry respective to abiogenesis so cronin has to rely on nonsense staements like '...evolution is a well understood phenomenon'....pure sophistry
It does not explain how life happened this is a far reach and a miss
"Phenomena" is plural dammit!
Okay fair! Fixed 😑
I am the same way with lack of punctuation.
Physics won't be able to 'explain' life until it can explain consciousness, but we then have the problem of the observer and the observed. Great discussion, liked and subbed.
Great video indeed! I believe if assembly theory can be proven, that would explain how life is to form, though it somewhat ignores consciousness and excuses it as a result of increasing entropy and complexity in the creation of novel objects/ideas. If this were to be the case it could help dispute the problem of the observer and the observed as we are simply using consciousness as a means to mathematically describe the creation of all things, which would ultimately lead us to knowing that life and consciousness is a fundamental feature of a universe of increasing entropy.
Gets a little circular doesn't it :) @@Zane_Alto
The observer is dual to the observed -- David Bohm.
Assembly is integration, convergence or syntropy.
Integration (syntropy, assembly) is dual to differentiation (entropy, disassembly) -- abstract algebra.
Attraction is dual to repulsion.
Intrinsic (internal) is dual to extrinsic (external) -- probability.
Real is dual to imaginary -- complex numbers are dual, photons or probability waves are dual.
Reducing the number of dimensions or states is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Syntropy (prediction) is dual to increasing entropy -- the 4th law of thermodynamics.
"Always two there are" -- Yoda.
Absolute truth (universals) is dual to relative truth (particulars) -- Hume's fork.
Making predictions to track targets, goals or objectives is a syntropic process -- teleological.
Teleological physics (syntropy) is dual to non teleological physics (entropy).
Complexity is dual to simplicity.
It don't see any reason why life requires consciousness. It just needs the capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.
Lee claims his new lab experiment of looking at sand closely will show how molecular machines were built and it will be easy. Seriously? How is this man taken seriously? He is absolutely clueless.
Sounds like you've been listening to that evangelist quack James Tour.
@@lrvogt1257 So explain to me how sand will show how molecular machines were built then?
@@rl7012 : How should I know? It's not my experiment and we don't know what the experiment is.
Edison was once asked how it felt to fail a thousand times inventing the light bulb. Edison replied it was a. success with a thousands steps.
@@lrvogt1257 Well why are you defending deluded establishment pushing no nothing Cronin then if you too are clueless to about his silly claims?
@@lrvogt1257 Cronin is no Edison, don't be so deluded, you would be better off comparing him to a historical charlaton instead.
Traditional physics is inherently forced to use math to describe and prove anything but how could math describe events and phenomena that are proven to involve uncertainties, theoretically undetectable (sub-Planck) physical properties, assumed thermodynamic probabilities and even, worst of all, dual nature and all that infinity? Successful discovery of the natural reality, most obviously at subatomic levels, is fundamentally incompatible with the kind of mathematics we currently use. Being mathematically sharp and precise, as well as never questioning ancient dogmas (like the uniformity of rules and constants of the nature regardless of e.g. size scale), are drawing a sharp and dogmatic boundary around our scope of possible discovery (discoverable universe) that scientists love to call EVERYTHING. An intellectually limited person’s idea of everything is inherently restricted to just a subset of the actual everything. When operating a shaking patient, it is a disadvantage for the surgeon to have steady hands - he must be adaptive and flexible. The only dogma or axiom that I still find valid is that any description or model that requires or results in extremely complicated mathematics (and fishy normalization trickery) is necessarily a misuse of both science and math - not much more productive than using religion or esoteric lunatism that are misuse of reasoning itself.
"a general phenomenon that creates life" ... :))))
... and that's why life emerged only once 3.5 billions year ago ... and then never again ... (according to Darwinists) ...
so this "general phenomenon that creates life"-theory makes lot of sense :))))
what's wrong with Cronin ?
_
This thing is almost proof of other life in the universe. Where ever the local phase space allows for complex life, life will happen.
No highly complex base 4 digitally encoded information in kilobyte to megabyte quantities, no life as found on Earth. Nor elsewhere.
It is nowhere near proving other life in the universe.
"Where ever" ... right, so maybe like, once per every 10^500 meters perhaps? Or once per 10^10^500 meters? Or what exactly does that "prove"?
*13:00** - **19:30** Cronin should Stop making claims about Physics or any science he know nothing about. There are two forms of Time. A] The concept we apply linear process in life that clocks are based on. and B] the real physics science and demonstrable evidence of Space Time which is created and dictated by gravity and gravitational fields and lensing effect distance. ...Cronin is ignorantly using the A] concept, to explain the B] physics position.*
Nice that biologists borrow life to "prove" evolution, but haven't proved how the life they borrow came to be.
Delusional. He reminds me of the Monte Python episode where John Cleese describes how to play a flute ... "You blow in this end and move your fingers up and down the other end. Next week we will solve the war in Indochina."
this fellow doesn't even know what he's looking for (min 7-8) but claims he's hot on the trail of finding abiogenic factors that will demonstrate how life 'evolved' from random chemicals...too ridiculous to even be ridiculous
Anything to avoid metaphysics
A lost soul??
The guy is a lunatic lol
I feel bad for him
Lol. How so?
Guess you are using an atheistic phone, better forget being a materialist in light of current popularity of phenomenology and non-reductionism. Gaian belief of the universe is sorta pseudo-science , too.
Idea fight behind the idea hall!!!!!! 😂
@@christopherhamilton3621 We live in a multifacet world, m not gonna gamble my eternal soul big.
@@TanengtiongWTF is an atheistic phone?😂
God is Universal Creative Intelligence (Consciousness) that creates all things!