Lex Fridman Podcast

Lex Fridman Podcast


#404 – Lee Cronin: Controversial Nature Paper on Evolution of Life and Universe

December 09, 2023

Lee Cronin is a chemist at University of Glasgow. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

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EPISODE LINKS:

Lee’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/leecronin

Lee’s Website: https://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/

Nature Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06600-9

Chemify’s Website: https://chemify.io


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OUTLINE:

Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

(00:00) – Introduction

(09:37) – Assembly theory paper

(30:06) – Assembly equation

(43:19) – Discovering alien life

(1:01:38) – Evolution of life on Earth

(1:09:34) – Response to criticism

(1:27:12) – Kolmogorov complexity

(1:39:02) – Nature review process

(1:59:56) – Time and free will

(2:06:21) – Communication with aliens

(2:28:19) – Cellular automata

(2:32:48) – AGI

(2:49:36) – Nuclear weapons

(2:55:22) – Chem Machina

(3:08:16) – GPT for electron density

(3:17:46) – God