Lex Fridman Podcast
#404 – Lee Cronin: Controversial Nature Paper on Evolution of Life and Universe
Sat, 09 Dec 2023
Lee Cronin is a chemist at University of Glasgow. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get $1 per month trial - Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex to get special savings - AG1: https://drinkag1.com/lex to get 1 month supply of fish oil Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/lee-cronin-3-transcript 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 PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman 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
Full Episode
The following is a conversation with Lee Cronin, his third time on this podcast. He is a chemist from University of Glasgow, who is one of the most fascinating, brilliant, and fun to talk to scientists I've ever had the pleasure of getting to know. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
We've got NetSuite for business management software, BetterHelp for mental health, Shopify for e-commerce, Hatesleeve for naps, and AG1 for delicious, delicious health. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team where I was hiring, go to lexfreeman.com slash hiring. You can also get in touch with me if you go to lexfreeman.com slash contact.
There's so many more things I could say. Let me just keep going. Now on to the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but if you must skip them, friends, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system.
I usually do these ad reads and say whatever the heck I want, but sometimes the sponsors ask politely, never required but always politely, to mention a few things. Two things they ask me to mention. One is that NetSuite turned 25 years old this year. Congratulations. Happy birthday, NetSuite. And also, they want me to mention that 37,000 companies have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle.
37,000 companies. I wonder how many companies are out there. Isn't that amazing? Just companies are amazing. A small, a medium, a large collection of humans get together, much as we did in the caveman days around the fire, but here around the office, and tied together with a mission to do something, to build something, but do so under the immense pressures of the capitalist system.
Like you have to succeed. It's not zero sum, but it is a kind of game where there's competitors and you're always at tension, but also a little bit of a collaboration. It's a dance and it's just a beautiful thing. A dance of humans inside the company, a dance of companies in the big capitalist system that are also interacting with the full human civilization society.
So it's a dance of humans and companies selling stuff, buying stuff, creating stuff. It's just all beautiful. Anyway, if you're one of those companies, you should use good tools to manage all of this stuff. And NetSuite is one such good tool. You can download NetSuite's popular KPI checklist for free at netsuite.com. That's netsuite.com for your own KPI checklist.
This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P, help. I think whenever I mention BetterHelp, I have a lot of thoughts in my head. One of them is I believe a BetterHelp ad read that Tim Dillon has done. I think it goes on, if I remember correctly, for a very long period of time. And Tim Dillon is hilarious, so what can you say?
But also there's a meta-ironic, absurd, hilarious aspect to it. Of all people, Tim Tillons, with the beautiful complexity of his mind and the beautiful complexities of his upbringing and family life, the dynamics of that, that he is doing an ad read for BetterHelp. I love it. I love it. I mean, there's an absurdity and an irony to me doing the same.
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