Alien Debate: Sara Walker and Lee Cronin
生物与进化物理与宇宙学太空与探索AI 与机器学习音乐与艺术
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universedonassemblyspacealiensexistcausalstuffsarahinterestingobjectstheoryfuturememorytryingsayingphysicalablephysicsgoing
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🎙️ 完整对话（6202 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
I don't know what it's like to be an alien.
我不知道当外星人是什么感觉。
Lex Fridman (00:01.720)
I would like to know.
我想知道。
Lex Fridman (00:03.040)
Two alien civilizations coexisting on a planet,
两个外星文明共存于一个星球，
Lex Fridman (00:05.560)
what's that look like exactly?
那到底是什么样子的？
Lex Fridman (00:07.080)
When you see them and they see you,
当你看到他们，他们也看到你时，
Alien Debate (00:09.720)
you're assuming they have vision,
你假设他们有远见
Lex Fridman (00:11.440)
they have the ability to construct in 3D and in time.
他们有能力及时进行 3D 构建。
Alien Debate (00:14.520)
That's a lot of assumptions they're making.
这是他们做出的很多假设。
Lex Fridman (00:16.360)
What human level intelligence has done is quite different.
人类水平的智能所做的事情是完全不同的。
Alien Debate (00:19.660)
It's not just that we remember states
这不仅仅是我们记住状态
Lex Fridman (00:21.600)
that the universe has existed in before,
宇宙以前就存在过，
Alien Debate (00:23.880)
it's that we can imagine ones that have never existed
我们可以想象那些从未存在过的东西
Lex Fridman (00:26.600)
and we can actually make them come into existence.
我们实际上可以让它们成为现实。
Lex Fridman (00:29.200)
So you can travel back in time sometimes.
所以有时你可以回到过去。
Lex Fridman (00:32.560)
Yes.
是的。
Alien Debate (00:33.400)
You travel forward in time to travel back.
你在时间中向前旅行，然后返回。
Lex Fridman (00:35.040)
Yes.
是的。
Alien Debate (00:38.960)
The following is a conversation
以下是一段对话
Lex Fridman (00:40.320)
with Sarah Walker and Lee Cronin.
与莎拉·沃克和李·克罗宁一起。
Alien Debate (00:42.720)
They have each been on this podcast once before
他们之前都曾参加过这个播客
Lex Fridman (00:45.280)
individually and now for their second time,
Alien Debate (00:48.400)
they're here together.
Lex Fridman (00:49.880)
Sarah is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist.
Alien Debate (00:53.960)
Lee is a chemist and if I may say so,
Lex Fridman (00:57.760)
the real life manifestation of Rick from Rick and Morty.
Alien Debate (01:01.580)
They both are interested in how life originates
Lex Fridman (01:04.360)
and develops both life here on earth and alien life,
Alien Debate (01:08.520)
including intelligent alien civilizations
Lex Fridman (01:11.240)
out there in the cosmos.
Alien Debate (01:13.240)
They are colleagues and friends
Lex Fridman (01:15.520)
who love to explore, disagree and debate
Alien Debate (01:18.000)
nuanced points about alien life.
Lex Fridman (01:20.200)
And so we're calling this an alien debate.
Alien Debate (01:24.560)
Very few questions to me are as fascinating
Lex Fridman (01:27.280)
as what do aliens look like?
Lex Fridman (01:29.000)
How do we recognize them?
Lex Fridman (01:30.640)
How do we talk to them?
Lex Fridman (01:32.160)
And how do we make sense of life here on earth
Lex Fridman (01:34.920)
in the context of all possible life forms
Lex Fridman (01:37.120)
that are out there?
Lex Fridman (01:38.640)
Treating these questions with the seriousness
Lex Fridman (01:41.320)
and rigor they deserve is what I hope to do
Lex Fridman (01:44.240)
with this conversation and future ones like it.
Alien Debate (01:48.200)
Our world is shrouded in mystery.
Lex Fridman (01:50.400)
We must first be humble to acknowledge this
Lex Fridman (01:52.720)
and then be bold and diving in
Lex Fridman (01:54.840)
and trying to figure things out anyway.
Alien Debate (01:57.360)
This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
Lex Fridman (01:59.480)
To support it, please check out our sponsors
Alien Debate (02:01.560)
in the description.
Lex Fridman (02:02.960)
And now, dear friends, here's Sarah Walker and Lee Cronin.
Alien Debate (02:08.600)
First of all, welcome back Sarah, welcome back Lee.
Lex Fridman (02:11.080)
You guys, I'm a huge fan of yours.
Alien Debate (02:12.680)
You're incredible people.
Lex Fridman (02:13.680)
I should say thank you to Sarah
Alien Debate (02:14.880)
for wearing really awesome boots.
Lex Fridman (02:17.320)
We'll probably overlay a picture later on,
Lex Fridman (02:19.660)
but why the hell didn't you dress up, Lee?
Lex Fridman (02:21.720)
No, I'm just kidding.
Alien Debate (02:22.560)
This is me dressed up.
Lex Fridman (02:23.400)
You were saying that you're pink,
Alien Debate (02:25.280)
that your thing is pink.
Lex Fridman (02:26.900)
My thing is black and white, the simplicity of it.
Lex Fridman (02:30.200)
Where's the pink?
Lex Fridman (02:31.140)
When did the pink, when did it hit you
Lex Fridman (02:33.400)
that pink is your color?
Lex Fridman (02:34.240)
I became pink about, I don't know, actually, maybe 2017.
Lex Fridman (02:41.480)
Did you know me when you first?
Lex Fridman (02:42.320)
I think I met you pre pink.
Alien Debate (02:44.040)
Yeah, yeah, so about 2017, I think.
Lex Fridman (02:46.600)
I just decided I was boring
Lex Fridman (02:48.920)
and I needed to make a statement
Lex Fridman (02:50.360)
and red was too bright, so I went pink, salmon pink.
Alien Debate (02:53.840)
Well, I think you were always pink.
Lex Fridman (02:55.320)
You just found yourself in 2017.
Alien Debate (02:59.040)
There's an amazing photo of him
Lex Fridman (03:00.540)
where there's like everybody in their black gown
Lex Fridman (03:02.280)
and he's just wearing the pink pants.
Lex Fridman (03:03.640)
Oh, that was at the Waggonen University.
Alien Debate (03:05.280)
It's totally nuts.
Lex Fridman (03:06.320)
100 year anniversary, they got me to give the plenary
Lex Fridman (03:08.760)
and they didn't find that outfit for me,
Lex Fridman (03:10.800)
so they were all wearing these silly hats and these gowns
Lex Fridman (03:13.120)
and there was me dressed up in pink
Lex Fridman (03:14.360)
looking like a complete idiot.
Alien Debate (03:15.960)
We're definitely gonna have to find that picture
Lex Fridman (03:18.000)
and overlay it, big full screen, slow motion.
Alien Debate (03:22.200)
All right, let's talk about aliens.
Lex Fridman (03:23.680)
We'll find places we disagree and places we agree,
Alien Debate (03:28.160)
life, intelligence, consciousness, universe, all of that.
Lex Fridman (03:31.300)
Let's start with a tweet from Neil deGrasse Tyson
Alien Debate (03:35.520)
stating his skepticism about aliens wanting to visit Earth.
Lex Fridman (03:39.660)
Quote, how egocentric of us to think that space aliens
Alien Debate (03:44.040)
who have mastered interstellar travel across the galaxy
Lex Fridman (03:47.560)
would give, pardon the French,
Alien Debate (03:51.640)
would give a shit about humans on Earth.
Lex Fridman (03:54.880)
So let me ask you, would aliens care about visiting Earth,
Lex Fridman (03:57.980)
observing, communicating with humans?
Lex Fridman (04:00.500)
Let's take a perspective of aliens, maybe Sarah first.
Alien Debate (04:05.080)
Are we interesting in the whole spectrum
Lex Fridman (04:08.400)
of life in the universe?
Alien Debate (04:11.080)
I'm completely biased, at least as far as I think right now
Lex Fridman (04:13.780)
we're the most interesting thing in the universe.
Lex Fridman (04:16.360)
So I would expect based on the intrinsic curiosity
Lex Fridman (04:21.560)
that we have and how much I think that's deeply related
Alien Debate (04:25.040)
to the physics of what we are,
Lex Fridman (04:26.680)
that other intelligent aliens would want to seek out
Alien Debate (04:29.920)
examples of the phenomena they are
Lex Fridman (04:32.280)
to understand themselves better.
Lex Fridman (04:34.460)
And I think that's kind of a natural thing to want to do.
Lex Fridman (04:37.240)
And I don't think there's any kind of judgment
Alien Debate (04:39.400)
on it being a lesser being or not.
Lex Fridman (04:42.040)
It's like saying you have nothing to learn
Alien Debate (04:43.440)
by talking to a baby.
Lex Fridman (04:45.160)
You have lots to learn, probably more than you do
Alien Debate (04:47.040)
talking to somebody that's 90.
Lex Fridman (04:48.360)
So yeah, so I think they absolutely would.
Lex Fridman (04:51.440)
So whatever the phenomena is that is human,
Lex Fridman (04:55.280)
there will be an inkling of the same kind of phenomena
Alien Debate (04:57.680)
within alien species and they will be seeking that same.
Lex Fridman (05:00.800)
I think there's gotta be some features of us
Alien Debate (05:02.440)
that are universal.
Lex Fridman (05:03.600)
And I think the ones that are most interesting,
Lex Fridman (05:06.520)
and I hope I live in an interesting universe,
Lex Fridman (05:08.660)
are the ones that are driven by our curiosity
Lex Fridman (05:13.660)
and the fact that our intelligence allows us to do things
Lex Fridman (05:18.380)
that the universe wouldn't be able to do
Alien Debate (05:19.740)
without things like us existing.
Lex Fridman (05:22.500)
We're gonna define a lot of terms.
Alien Debate (05:23.980)
One of them is interesting.
Lex Fridman (05:25.820)
Yes.
Alien Debate (05:26.660)
That's a very interesting term to try to define.
Lex Fridman (05:29.180)
Ali, what do you think?
Lex Fridman (05:30.420)
Are humans interesting for aliens?
Lex Fridman (05:33.260)
Well, let's take it from our perspective.
Alien Debate (05:34.580)
We want to go find aliens as a species quite desperately.
Lex Fridman (05:37.500)
So if we put the shoe on the other foot,
Alien Debate (05:39.500)
of course we're interesting.
Lex Fridman (05:41.140)
But I'm wondering and assuming
Alien Debate (05:44.180)
that we're at the right technological capabilities
Lex Fridman (05:45.940)
to go searching for aliens, then that's interesting.
Lex Fridman (05:48.940)
So what I mean is,
Lex Fridman (05:50.300)
if there needs to be a massive leap in technology
Alien Debate (05:52.980)
that we don't have,
Lex Fridman (05:55.420)
how will aliens prioritize coming to Earth and other places?
Lex Fridman (05:58.620)
But I do think that they would come and find us
Lex Fridman (06:02.300)
because they'd want to find out about our culture,
Lex Fridman (06:04.740)
what things are universal.
Lex Fridman (06:06.740)
I mean, I'm a chemist.
Lex Fridman (06:07.580)
I would say, well, is the chemistry universal, right?
Lex Fridman (06:09.980)
Are the creatures that we're going to find
Alien Debate (06:11.780)
making all this commotion,
Lex Fridman (06:13.540)
are they made of the same stuff?
Lex Fridman (06:17.220)
What does their science look like?
Lex Fridman (06:20.260)
Are they off planet yet?
Alien Debate (06:22.540)
I guess there's, so I think that Neil deGrasse Tyson
Lex Fridman (06:25.860)
is being slightly pessimistic
Lex Fridman (06:27.380)
and maybe trying to play the tune
Lex Fridman (06:31.780)
that the universe is vast
Lex Fridman (06:33.140)
and it's not worth them coming here.
Lex Fridman (06:35.140)
I don't think that,
Lex Fridman (06:37.340)
but I just worry that maybe we don't have
Lex Fridman (06:39.740)
the ability to talk to them.
Alien Debate (06:40.780)
We don't have the universal translator.
Lex Fridman (06:42.260)
We don't have the right physics,
Lex Fridman (06:43.460)
but sure, they should come.
Lex Fridman (06:45.180)
We are interesting.
Alien Debate (06:46.100)
I want to know if they exist.
Lex Fridman (06:47.460)
It would make it easier if they just came.
Lex Fridman (06:50.620)
So again, I'm going to use your tweets
Lex Fridman (06:54.300)
like it's Shakespeare and analyze it.
Lex Fridman (06:56.100)
So Sarah tweeted,
Lex Fridman (06:58.340)
thinking about aliens, thinking about aliens.
Lex Fridman (07:01.500)
So how much do you think aliens
Lex Fridman (07:04.500)
are thinking about other aliens, including humans?
Lex Fridman (07:07.660)
So you said, we humans want to visit.
Lex Fridman (07:13.180)
Like we're longing to connect with aliens.
Lex Fridman (07:15.260)
Why is that?
Lex Fridman (07:16.100)
Can you introspect that?
Alien Debate (07:16.940)
Is that an obvious thing that we should be,
Lex Fridman (07:18.620)
like what are we hoping to understand
Lex Fridman (07:20.740)
by meeting aliens exactly?
Lex Fridman (07:23.580)
Asking as an introvert, it's like,
Alien Debate (07:25.500)
I ask myself this all the time.
Lex Fridman (07:26.740)
Why go out on a Friday night to meet people?
Lex Fridman (07:30.260)
What are you hoping to find?
Lex Fridman (07:31.100)
I think the curiosity, so when I saw Sarah put that tweet,
Alien Debate (07:33.700)
I think I answered it actually as well,
Lex Fridman (07:35.300)
which was we are thinking about trying to make contact.
Lex Fridman (07:38.900)
So they almost certainly are,
Lex Fridman (07:41.780)
but maybe there's a number of classes.
Alien Debate (07:43.500)
There are those aliens that have not yet made contact
Lex Fridman (07:46.780)
with other aliens like us.
Alien Debate (07:48.980)
Those aliens have made contact with just one other alien
Lex Fridman (07:51.780)
and maybe it's an anticlimax and slime, right?
Lex Fridman (07:55.060)
And aliens have made contact
Lex Fridman (07:56.580)
with not just one set of intelligent species, but several.
Alien Debate (07:59.780)
That must be amazing actually.
Lex Fridman (08:01.140)
Literally there are some place in the universe,
Alien Debate (08:03.380)
there must be one alien civilization.
Lex Fridman (08:05.060)
Let's not make contact with not one,
Lex Fridman (08:07.060)
but two other intelligent civilizations.
Lex Fridman (08:10.620)
So they must be thinking about it.
Alien Debate (08:12.180)
There must be entire degree courses on aliens,
Lex Fridman (08:16.540)
thinking about aliens and universal cultural norms.
Lex Fridman (08:21.540)
Do you think they will survive the meeting?
Lex Fridman (08:24.540)
And by the way, Lee did respond saying,
Alien Debate (08:26.580)
that's all the universe wants.
Lex Fridman (08:28.580)
So Sarah said, thinking about aliens, thinking about aliens.
Alien Debate (08:31.980)
Lee said, that's all the universe wants.
Lex Fridman (08:34.500)
And then Sarah responded, cheeky universe we live in.
Lex Fridman (08:38.740)
So cheeky is a cheeky version of the word interesting,
Lex Fridman (08:42.180)
all of which we'll try to define mathematically.
Alien Debate (08:45.260)
Cheeky might be harder than interesting.
Lex Fridman (08:47.180)
Because there's humor in that too.
Alien Debate (08:48.620)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (08:49.500)
I think there's a mathematical definition of humor,
Lex Fridman (08:51.460)
but we'll talk about that in a bit.
Lex Fridman (08:52.500)
Oh interesting.
Alien Debate (08:53.460)
Yeah, sure there is, yeah.
Lex Fridman (08:54.620)
So if you're a graduate student alien
Alien Debate (08:57.740)
looking at multiple alien civilizations,
Lex Fridman (09:00.780)
do you think they survive the encounters?
Alien Debate (09:03.580)
I think there's a tendency to anthropomorphize
Lex Fridman (09:06.580)
a lot of the discussions about alien life,
Alien Debate (09:08.140)
which is a really big challenge.
Lex Fridman (09:10.140)
So usually when I'm trying to think about these problems,
Alien Debate (09:13.100)
I don't try to think about us as humans,
Lex Fridman (09:16.500)
but us as an example of phenomenon
Alien Debate (09:18.260)
that exists in the universe that we have yet to explain.
Lex Fridman (09:21.340)
And it doesn't seem to be the case
Alien Debate (09:24.460)
that if I think about the features,
Lex Fridman (09:27.620)
I would argue are most universal about that phenomenon,
Alien Debate (09:30.500)
that there's any reason to think
Lex Fridman (09:31.780)
that a first encounter with another lineage
Alien Debate (09:35.020)
or example of life would be antagonistic.
Lex Fridman (09:40.500)
I think, yeah.
Lex Fridman (09:42.700)
And I think there's this kind of assumption,
Lex Fridman (09:46.020)
I mean, going back to Neil deGrasse Tyson's quote,
Alien Debate (09:49.340)
I mean, it kind of bothers me because there's a,
Lex Fridman (09:51.220)
I mean, I'm a physicist,
Lex Fridman (09:52.100)
so I know we have a lot of egos
Lex Fridman (09:53.700)
about how much we can describe the world,
Lex Fridman (09:56.260)
but that there's this like,
Lex Fridman (09:57.700)
because we understand fundamental physics so well,
Alien Debate (09:59.660)
we understand alien life and we can kind of extrapolate,
Lex Fridman (10:02.740)
and I just think that we don't.
Lex Fridman (10:04.620)
And the quest there is really, you know,
Lex Fridman (10:06.780)
really to understand something totally new
Alien Debate (10:09.220)
about the universe, and that thing just happens to be us.
Lex Fridman (10:11.700)
I agree, I agree.
Alien Debate (10:12.660)
There's something else more profound.
Lex Fridman (10:13.900)
I think Neil was just being, again,
Alien Debate (10:15.980)
he's just trying to stir the pot.
Lex Fridman (10:17.900)
I would say from a contingency point of view,
Alien Debate (10:21.380)
I want to know how many ways
Lex Fridman (10:22.700)
does the universe build structures, build memories, right?
Lex Fridman (10:26.380)
And then I want to know if those memories
Lex Fridman (10:29.140)
can interact with each other.
Lex Fridman (10:30.100)
And if you have two different origins of life
Lex Fridman (10:33.660)
and then origins of intelligence,
Lex Fridman (10:34.780)
and then these things become conscious,
Lex Fridman (10:36.740)
surely you want to go and talk to them
Lex Fridman (10:37.940)
and figure out what commonalities you share.
Lex Fridman (10:41.900)
And it might be that we're just unable to conceive
Alien Debate (10:43.980)
of what they're going to look like.
Lex Fridman (10:44.940)
They're just going to be completely different,
Alien Debate (10:46.380)
you know, infrastructure,
Lex Fridman (10:48.500)
but surely we'll want to go and find out a map.
Lex Fridman (10:50.420)
And surely curiosity is a property
Lex Fridman (10:52.420)
that evolution has made on earth.
Lex Fridman (10:55.100)
And I can't see any reason
Lex Fridman (10:57.140)
that it won't happen elsewhere
Alien Debate (10:58.380)
because curiosity probably exists
Lex Fridman (11:00.260)
because we want to find innovations in the environment.
Alien Debate (11:03.700)
We want to use that information to help our technology.
Lex Fridman (11:08.620)
And also curiosity is like planning for the future.
Lex Fridman (11:10.780)
Are they going to fight us?
Lex Fridman (11:12.100)
Are we going to be able to trade with them?
Lex Fridman (11:15.140)
So I think that Neil's just, I don't know,
Lex Fridman (11:17.020)
maybe, you know, I mean, give a shit.
Lex Fridman (11:19.340)
That's really, I think that's really down on earth, right?
Lex Fridman (11:22.620)
How would aliens categorize humans, do you think?
Lex Fridman (11:25.940)
How would we?
Lex Fridman (11:26.780)
So let's put it the other way around.
Alien Debate (11:28.140)
Slime category.
Lex Fridman (11:29.100)
Maybe, no, no, no.
Lex Fridman (11:30.460)
Maybe we could, the thing is a bit odd, right?
Lex Fridman (11:33.260)
Look at Instagram, Twitter,
Alien Debate (11:35.500)
all these people taking selfies.
Lex Fridman (11:36.820)
I mean, does the universe
Alien Debate (11:38.380)
is the ultimate state of consciousness,
Lex Fridman (11:40.740)
thinking beings that take photographs themselves
Lex Fridman (11:42.860)
and upload them to an internet
Lex Fridman (11:44.220)
with other thinking beings looking at each other's photos.
Lex Fridman (11:46.940)
So I think that they will be.
Lex Fridman (11:49.540)
What's wrong with that?
Alien Debate (11:50.980)
I did not say there was anything wrong with it.
Lex Fridman (11:53.540)
It's consciousness manifested at scale.
Alien Debate (11:56.700)
Selfies, Instagram.
Lex Fridman (11:58.420)
It's like the mirror test at scale.
Alien Debate (12:00.060)
Yeah, I do think that curiosity
Lex Fridman (12:02.580)
is really the driving force
Lex Fridman (12:04.220)
for why we have our technology, right?
Lex Fridman (12:05.940)
If we weren't curious, we wouldn't go out, left the cave.
Lex Fridman (12:08.500)
So I think that,
Lex Fridman (12:11.660)
so I think that Neil's got it completely wrong, in fact.
Alien Debate (12:14.300)
Actually, of course they'd want to come here.
Lex Fridman (12:16.500)
It doesn't mean they are coming here.
Alien Debate (12:17.900)
We've seen evidence for that.
Lex Fridman (12:19.460)
I guess we can argue about that, right?
Lex Fridman (12:21.940)
But I think that we want,
Lex Fridman (12:23.820)
I desperately, and I know that Sarah does too,
Lex Fridman (12:26.220)
but I won't speak for you, you're here.
Lex Fridman (12:28.460)
I desperately want to have missions
Alien Debate (12:30.020)
to look for life in the solar system right now.
Lex Fridman (12:32.620)
I want to map life over the solar system.
Lex Fridman (12:34.780)
And then I want to understand how we can go
Lex Fridman (12:36.340)
and find life as quickly as possible at the nearest stars,
Lex Fridman (12:39.900)
and also at the same time do it in the lab,
Lex Fridman (12:41.660)
just to compensate, you know?
Alien Debate (12:44.380)
So, sure.
Lex Fridman (12:45.660)
Yeah, just one more point on this.
Alien Debate (12:47.380)
If you think about sort of what's driven
Lex Fridman (12:49.900)
the most features of our own evolution as a species,
Lex Fridman (12:53.340)
and try to map that to alien species,
Lex Fridman (12:55.060)
I always think like optimism is what's gonna get us furthest.
Lex Fridman (12:57.980)
And so I think a lot of people always think
Lex Fridman (13:00.180)
that it's like war and conflict is gonna be the way
Alien Debate (13:02.660)
that alien species will expand out into the cosmos.
Lex Fridman (13:06.060)
But if you just look at how we're doing it
Lex Fridman (13:08.340)
and how we talk about it,
Lex Fridman (13:09.500)
so is our future in space is always, you know,
Alien Debate (13:12.100)
built from narratives of optimism.
Lex Fridman (13:14.300)
And so it seems to me that if intelligence does get out
Alien Debate (13:18.060)
in the universe, that it's gonna be more optimism
Lex Fridman (13:20.380)
and curiosity driving it than war and conflict,
Alien Debate (13:22.260)
because those things end up crushing you.
Lex Fridman (13:25.540)
So there might be some selective filter.
Alien Debate (13:28.020)
Of course, this is me being an optimist.
Lex Fridman (13:29.460)
I'm a half full kind of person, but.
Alien Debate (13:31.900)
Is it obvious that curiosity, not obvious,
Lex Fridman (13:35.500)
but what do you think?
Alien Debate (13:36.340)
Is curiosity a more powerful force in the universe
Lex Fridman (13:38.860)
than violence and the will to power?
Alien Debate (13:43.260)
So, because you said you framed curiosity as a way
Lex Fridman (13:47.300)
to also plan on how to avoid violence,
Alien Debate (13:50.140)
which is an interesting framing of curiosity.
Lex Fridman (13:52.460)
But I could also argue that violence
Alien Debate (13:55.820)
is a pretty productive way to operate in the world,
Lex Fridman (14:00.500)
which is like, that's one way to protect yourself.
Alien Debate (14:02.620)
The best defense is offense.
Lex Fridman (14:05.860)
I'm not qualified to answer this, but I'll have a go.
Alien Debate (14:07.900)
I think violence, let's not talk about violence.
Lex Fridman (14:10.580)
That's the summary of this podcast.
Alien Debate (14:12.420)
I would, yeah, maybe, I would, let's not call it violence,
Lex Fridman (14:16.620)
but I call it erasure.
Lex Fridman (14:17.820)
So if you think about the way evolution works,
Lex Fridman (14:20.100)
or the way, obviously talk about assembly theory,
Lex Fridman (14:23.560)
but I won't.
Lex Fridman (14:24.400)
So if you say you build,
Lex Fridman (14:26.500)
curiosity allows you to open up avenues, new graphs, right?
Lex Fridman (14:29.140)
So new features you can play.
Alien Debate (14:33.020)
The ability to erase those things allows you to start again
Lex Fridman (14:36.180)
and do some pruning.
Lex Fridman (14:37.500)
So the universe, I think curiosity gets you furthest.
Lex Fridman (14:39.820)
Curiosity gets you rockets that land.
Alien Debate (14:41.740)
It gets you robots that can make drugs.
Lex Fridman (14:43.840)
It gets you poetry and art and communication.
Lex Fridman (14:48.540)
And then, I often think wouldn't it be great in bureaucracy
Lex Fridman (14:52.220)
to have another world war, not literally a world war now,
Alien Debate (14:54.820)
please no world war, but the equivalent
Lex Fridman (14:57.260)
so we get remove all the admin bureaucracy, right?
Alien Debate (14:59.740)
All the admin violence, get rid of it and start again.
Lex Fridman (15:02.080)
Do you know what I mean?
Alien Debate (15:03.240)
Because you get layers and you get redundant systems built.
Lex Fridman (15:06.220)
So actually a reset, let's not call it violence,
Alien Debate (15:09.280)
a reset in some aspects of our culture
Lex Fridman (15:13.980)
and our technology allows us to then build
Alien Debate (15:18.260)
more important things about the,
Lex Fridman (15:19.820)
because how many cookies do I have to click on?
Lex Fridman (15:22.220)
How many extra clicks do I have in the future of my life
Lex Fridman (15:26.860)
that I could remove and a bit of a reset
Alien Debate (15:29.500)
would allow us to start again.
Lex Fridman (15:33.140)
And maybe that's how I suppose our encounter aliens will be.
Alien Debate (15:37.100)
Maybe they will fight with us and say,
Lex Fridman (15:38.380)
oh, we're not as excited by you as we thought.
Alien Debate (15:41.180)
We'll just get rid of you.
Lex Fridman (15:42.580)
So they might want to reset Earth.
Lex Fridman (15:44.100)
Yeah, why not?
Lex Fridman (15:44.940)
To be like, let's see how the evolution runs again.
Alien Debate (15:47.340)
This seems like they've, there's nothing new happening here.
Lex Fridman (15:51.700)
They're observing for a while.
Alien Debate (15:52.980)
This is just not, let's keep it more fun.
Lex Fridman (15:55.900)
Let's start with the fish again.
Alien Debate (15:59.180)
I like how you equated violence to resetting your cookies.
Lex Fridman (16:04.220)
I suppose that's the kind of violence.
Alien Debate (16:06.340)
In this modern world where words are violence,
Lex Fridman (16:08.780)
resetting cookies is the kind of violence.
Alien Debate (16:10.620)
I don't know where that came from.
Lex Fridman (16:11.460)
I'm completely, yeah.
Alien Debate (16:12.280)
That's poetic, really.
Lex Fridman (16:14.260)
Okay, so let's talk about life.
Lex Fridman (16:17.460)
What is life?
Lex Fridman (16:19.300)
What is non life?
Lex Fridman (16:20.660)
What is the line between life and non life?
Lex Fridman (16:23.540)
And maybe at any point,
Alien Debate (16:24.660)
we can pull in ideas of assembly theory.
Lex Fridman (16:27.900)
Like how do we start to try to define life?
Lex Fridman (16:29.980)
And for people listening,
Lex Fridman (16:32.100)
so Sarah identifies as a physicist
Lex Fridman (16:35.340)
and Lee identifies as a chemist.
Lex Fridman (16:37.820)
Of course, they are very interdisciplinary in nature
Lex Fridman (16:41.540)
in general, but so what is life?
Lex Fridman (16:46.860)
Sarah.
Alien Debate (16:49.140)
I love asking that question
Lex Fridman (16:50.420)
because it's so absurdly big.
Alien Debate (16:52.020)
I know, I love it.
Lex Fridman (16:53.980)
It's my absolute favorite question in the whole universe.
Lex Fridman (16:56.940)
So I think I have three ways of describing it right now.
Lex Fridman (17:00.540)
And I like to say all three of them
Alien Debate (17:01.740)
because people latch onto different facets of them.
Lex Fridman (17:03.900)
And so the whole idea of what Lee and I are trying to work on
Alien Debate (17:07.060)
is not to try to define life,
Lex Fridman (17:08.420)
but to try to find a more fundamental theory
Alien Debate (17:10.140)
that explains what the phenomenon we call life.
Lex Fridman (17:12.220)
And then it should explain certain attributes
Lex Fridman (17:14.140)
and you end up having a really different framing
Lex Fridman (17:15.860)
than the way people usually talk.
Lex Fridman (17:17.300)
So the way I talk about it three different ways.
Lex Fridman (17:20.620)
Life is how information structures matter
Alien Debate (17:22.860)
across space and time.
Lex Fridman (17:25.140)
Life is, I don't know, this one's from you actually,
Alien Debate (17:29.820)
simple machines constructing more complex machines.
Lex Fridman (17:32.540)
And the other one is the physics of existence,
Lex Fridman (17:35.860)
so to speak, which is life is the mechanism
Lex Fridman (17:38.740)
the universe has to explore the space of what's possible.
Alien Debate (17:42.500)
That's my favorite.
Lex Fridman (17:43.740)
So can I, yeah, yeah, can I add on to that?
Lex Fridman (17:46.700)
Okay, can you say the physics one again?
Lex Fridman (17:49.380)
Physics of existence.
Alien Debate (17:50.980)
Yeah, the physics of existence.
Lex Fridman (17:52.140)
I don't know what to call it.
Alien Debate (17:53.780)
If you think of all the things that could exist,
Lex Fridman (17:55.620)
only certain things do exist.
Lex Fridman (17:57.180)
And I think life is basically the universe's mechanism
Lex Fridman (18:01.260)
of bringing things into physically existing
Alien Debate (18:03.460)
in the moment now.
Lex Fridman (18:05.500)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (18:06.660)
Yeah, and what's another one?
Lex Fridman (18:08.500)
So we were debating this the other day.
Lex Fridman (18:09.740)
So if you think about a universe that has nothing in it,
Lex Fridman (18:14.420)
that's kind of hard to conceive of, right?
Alien Debate (18:16.100)
Because, and this is where physicists really go wrong.
Lex Fridman (18:18.380)
They think of a universe with nothing in it, they can't.
Lex Fridman (18:20.900)
And you think.
Lex Fridman (18:21.740)
But nonexistence is really hard to think.
Alien Debate (18:22.940)
Nonexistence, yeah.
Lex Fridman (18:23.780)
And then you think of a universe with everything in it,
Alien Debate (18:26.940)
that's really hard.
Lex Fridman (18:28.020)
And you just have this white blob, right?
Alien Debate (18:30.380)
It's just everything.
Lex Fridman (18:31.620)
But the fact we have discrete stuff in the universe,
Alien Debate (18:34.380)
Beyonce planets, so you've got stars, space, planet stuff,
Lex Fridman (18:38.100)
right, the boring stuff, but I would define life
Alien Debate (18:41.900)
or say that life is where there are architectures,
Lex Fridman (18:46.300)
any architectures, and we should stop fixating
Alien Debate (18:48.380)
on what is building the architectures to start with.
Lex Fridman (18:52.340)
And the fact that the universe has discrete things
Lex Fridman (18:55.340)
and it is completely mind blowing.
Lex Fridman (18:57.860)
If you think about it for one second,
Alien Debate (19:01.060)
the fact there's any objects at all,
Lex Fridman (19:03.780)
and there's, because for me, the object is a proxy
Alien Debate (19:07.660)
for a machine that built it,
Lex Fridman (19:10.540)
some information being moved around,
Alien Debate (19:14.860)
actuation, sensing, getting resource,
Lex Fridman (19:18.700)
and building these objects.
Lex Fridman (19:20.220)
So for me, everyone's been obsessing about the machine,
Lex Fridman (19:23.540)
but I'm like, forget the machine, let's see the objects.
Lex Fridman (19:27.420)
And I think in a way that assembly theory,
Lex Fridman (19:30.260)
we realized maybe a few months ago
Alien Debate (19:31.900)
that assembly theory actually does account for the soul
Lex Fridman (19:35.620)
and the objects, not mystically like say,
Alien Debate (19:37.860)
Sheldrake's morphic resonance,
Lex Fridman (19:39.500)
or Leibniz's monadology, seeing souls in things.
Lex Fridman (19:42.940)
But when you see an object, and I've said this before,
Lex Fridman (19:45.700)
but this object is evidence of thought,
Lex Fridman (19:49.260)
and then there's a lineage of those objects.
Lex Fridman (19:51.300)
So I think what is fascinating is that,
Alien Debate (19:54.500)
you put it much more elegantly,
Lex Fridman (19:55.820)
but the barrier between life and non life
Alien Debate (19:58.500)
is accruing enough memories to then actuate.
Lex Fridman (1:00:00.740)
I don't know, but it took a long time
Lex Fridman (1:00:02.620)
so it was invented, that's right.
Lex Fridman (1:00:04.940)
Yeah, I think zero was invented, exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:00:07.820)
So it's not a given that aliens know what zero is.
Lex Fridman (1:00:10.860)
That's a massive assumption.
Alien Debate (1:00:13.540)
It's a useful discovery.
Lex Fridman (1:00:16.020)
You're saying if you break the causal chain
Alien Debate (1:00:18.100)
there might be some other more efficient way of representing.
Lex Fridman (1:00:20.580)
That's why I wanna meet him and ask him.
Alien Debate (1:00:23.100)
For a shortcut.
Lex Fridman (1:00:24.340)
But you won't be able to ask him until.
Lex Fridman (1:00:27.620)
So I interrupted you and I think you're making good point.
Lex Fridman (1:00:29.940)
I was just gonna say, well look.
Alien Debate (1:00:31.100)
Thank you.
Lex Fridman (1:00:32.100)
Sorry.
Alien Debate (1:00:34.220)
Rather than saying.
Lex Fridman (1:00:35.060)
Please internet, tweet at him for the rude interruptions.
Alien Debate (1:00:37.820)
Oh, go ahead, I'm sorry.
Lex Fridman (1:00:38.860)
No, it's okay.
Alien Debate (1:00:40.020)
Maybe it's change.
Lex Fridman (1:00:41.220)
How do we, so, oh, I don't know what it's like
Alien Debate (1:00:44.980)
to be an alien.
Lex Fridman (1:00:46.000)
I would like to know.
Lex Fridman (1:00:47.360)
What is the full spectrum of what aliens
Lex Fridman (1:00:50.380)
might look like to us?
Alien Debate (1:00:53.260)
Now that we've laid this all on the table of like,
Lex Fridman (1:00:57.300)
all right, so there has to be some overlap
Alien Debate (1:00:59.620)
in this causal chain that led to them.
Lex Fridman (1:01:03.740)
What are we looking for?
Lex Fridman (1:01:05.740)
What do you think we should be looking for?
Lex Fridman (1:01:06.980)
So you mentioned mass spec.
Alien Debate (1:01:09.180)
Measuring certain objects that aliens could create
Lex Fridman (1:01:11.900)
or are aliens themselves.
Alien Debate (1:01:15.140)
We show up to a planet or maybe not a planet.
Lex Fridman (1:01:17.620)
Or maybe, what the hell is the basic object
Lex Fridman (1:01:20.420)
we're trying to measure the assembly index of?
Lex Fridman (1:01:23.020)
Let's cut ourselves a break.
Alien Debate (1:01:23.980)
Let's assume that they are metabolized.
Lex Fridman (1:01:27.580)
They've got an energy source.
Lex Fridman (1:01:29.140)
And they're a size that we can recognize.
Lex Fridman (1:01:32.980)
Let's give ourselves a break.
Alien Debate (1:01:34.140)
Because there could be aliens that are so big
Lex Fridman (1:01:36.340)
we won't recognize we're seeing them.
Alien Debate (1:01:38.060)
There might be aliens that are so small
Lex Fridman (1:01:39.360)
we don't yet have the ability to,
Alien Debate (1:01:40.980)
we don't have microscopes that can see far enough away
Lex Fridman (1:01:44.060)
that just wouldn't be able to see them.
Lex Fridman (1:01:45.380)
So what's a good range?
Lex Fridman (1:01:46.500)
So let's just make a range.
Alien Debate (1:01:47.900)
Let's just be very anthropocentric and say,
Lex Fridman (1:01:50.540)
we're gonna look for aliens roughly our size
Lex Fridman (1:01:52.460)
and technology our size.
Lex Fridman (1:01:53.860)
Because we know it's possible on Earth, right?
Alien Debate (1:01:56.460)
I mean, a reasonable thing to do would be
Lex Fridman (1:01:57.660)
to find exoplanets that are in the same zone as Earth
Alien Debate (1:02:01.060)
in terms of heat and stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:02:03.180)
And then say, hey, if there's that same kind of gravity,
Alien Debate (1:02:06.300)
same kind of stuff, we could reasonably assume
Lex Fridman (1:02:09.820)
that alien life there might use a similar kind
Alien Debate (1:02:13.740)
of physical infrastructure.
Lex Fridman (1:02:15.980)
And then we're good.
Lex Fridman (1:02:16.820)
So then your question becomes really relevant.
Lex Fridman (1:02:19.540)
Say, right, let's use vision, sound, touch.
Lex Fridman (1:02:23.260)
And then.
Lex Fridman (1:02:24.100)
So okay, that's really nice.
Lex Fridman (1:02:24.940)
So that if there's a lot of aliens out there,
Lex Fridman (1:02:27.820)
there's a good likelihood if you match to the planet
Alien Debate (1:02:32.500)
that they're going to be in the same spatial
Lex Fridman (1:02:35.460)
and temporal, operating in the same spatial
Lex Fridman (1:02:38.340)
and temporal domain as humans.
Lex Fridman (1:02:40.460)
Okay, within that, what do they look like visually?
Lex Fridman (1:02:47.980)
What do they sound like?
Lex Fridman (1:02:49.660)
What do they, oh god, this sounds creepy.
Alien Debate (1:02:52.020)
Tastes like, what do they, oh, smell like, smell like.
Lex Fridman (1:02:56.460)
That sounds like our clubhouse.
Lex Fridman (1:02:57.540)
We was like, can we have sex with aliens?
Lex Fridman (1:02:59.300)
Which was basically me saying.
Alien Debate (1:03:01.020)
Passionate, passionate love.
Lex Fridman (1:03:01.860)
But it wasn't actually about sex.
Lex Fridman (1:03:02.780)
It was about, is our chemistry compatible, right?
Lex Fridman (1:03:04.900)
Is there some?
Alien Debate (1:03:05.780)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:03:06.620)
Yeah, can we, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:03:09.580)
Are they edible too?
Lex Fridman (1:03:10.820)
They could be very edible.
Alien Debate (1:03:12.180)
They could be delicious.
Lex Fridman (1:03:13.020)
That's why I want to see some aliens, right?
Alien Debate (1:03:14.740)
Because I think, are there, I think evolution,
Lex Fridman (1:03:19.660)
I mean, evolution exploits symmetry, right?
Lex Fridman (1:03:21.540)
Because why generate memory?
Lex Fridman (1:03:23.380)
Why generate storage, the need for storage space
Lex Fridman (1:03:26.020)
when you can use symmetry?
Lex Fridman (1:03:27.660)
So, and symmetry is quite, may be quite effective
Lex Fridman (1:03:30.580)
in allowing you to mechanically design stuff, right?
Lex Fridman (1:03:33.020)
So maybe alien, you could be reasonable to assume
Alien Debate (1:03:36.180)
that aliens could have, they could be bipedal.
Lex Fridman (1:03:39.900)
They could be symmetric in the same way.
Alien Debate (1:03:42.420)
Might have a couple of eyes or a couple of senses.
Lex Fridman (1:03:44.860)
We can make them, perhaps there's this whole zoo
Alien Debate (1:03:47.980)
of different aliens out there.
Lex Fridman (1:03:49.100)
And we'll never get to be able to classify
Alien Debate (1:03:50.740)
some of the weird aliens we can't interact with
Lex Fridman (1:03:52.620)
because they have made such weird stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:03:55.660)
But we are just going to look at,
Lex Fridman (1:03:57.220)
we're going to find aliens that look most like us.
Lex Fridman (1:03:59.140)
Why not?
Lex Fridman (1:04:00.380)
Because those are the first ones we're likely to see.
Alien Debate (1:04:02.260)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:04:03.100)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:04:03.940)
But I think it's really hard to imagine
Lex Fridman (1:04:06.060)
what the space of aliens is because the space is huge.
Alien Debate (1:04:09.420)
Because, you know, like one of the arguments
Lex Fridman (1:04:11.180)
that you can make about why life emerges in chemistry
Alien Debate (1:04:13.260)
is because chemistry is the first scale
Lex Fridman (1:04:16.540)
in terms of like, you know,
Alien Debate (1:04:17.900)
building up objects from elementary objects.
Lex Fridman (1:04:21.380)
That the number of possible things that could exist
Alien Debate (1:04:23.380)
is larger than the universe can possibly make all at once.
Lex Fridman (1:04:25.740)
Right?
Lex Fridman (1:04:26.580)
So imagine you have two planets
Lex Fridman (1:04:29.380)
and they're cooking some geochemistry.
Alien Debate (1:04:31.700)
You know, our planet invented one kind of biochemistry.
Lex Fridman (1:04:34.860)
And presumably as you start building up
Alien Debate (1:04:37.140)
the complexity of the molecules,
Lex Fridman (1:04:38.860)
the chances of the overlap in those trajectories,
Alien Debate (1:04:41.300)
those causal chains being built up is probably very low.
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.900)
And it gets lower and lower as it gets further advanced
Alien Debate (1:04:47.700)
along its evolutionary path.
Lex Fridman (1:04:49.140)
So I think it's very difficult to imagine
Alien Debate (1:04:51.500)
predicting the technologies that aliens are gonna have.
Lex Fridman (1:04:54.560)
I mean, it's so, you're looking at basically
Alien Debate (1:04:57.420)
planets have kind of convergent chemistry,
Lex Fridman (1:04:59.680)
but there's some variability.
Lex Fridman (1:05:00.840)
And then you're looking basically at the outgrowth
Lex Fridman (1:05:02.720)
into the possibility space for chemistry.
Lex Fridman (1:05:04.540)
So do you think we would detect the technology,
Lex Fridman (1:05:07.460)
the objects created by aliens before we detect the aliens?
Alien Debate (1:05:11.540)
Possibly.
Lex Fridman (1:05:12.380)
So when you're talking about measuring assembly index,
Lex Fridman (1:05:15.820)
don't you think we would detect the garbage first?
Lex Fridman (1:05:19.260)
Like at the outskirts of alien civilizations,
Lex Fridman (1:05:21.780)
isn't this just gonna be trash?
Lex Fridman (1:05:26.140)
I think I would come back to Arecibo.
Alien Debate (1:05:28.040)
The Arecibo message sent from the Arecibo telescope
Lex Fridman (1:05:30.380)
built by Drake, I think, and Sagan.
Lex Fridman (1:05:33.500)
How's Arecibo spelled?
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.560)
A R E C I B O.
Alien Debate (1:05:37.100)
Yes, thank you.
Lex Fridman (1:05:37.940)
And there we go, they've got that up there.
Alien Debate (1:05:40.020)
That's the telescope that sent the message
Lex Fridman (1:05:41.900)
that you're talking about.
Lex Fridman (1:05:42.740)
So that message was sent where?
Lex Fridman (1:05:45.540)
It was beamed at a star, a specific star,
Lex Fridman (1:05:48.540)
and it was sent out many years ago.
Lex Fridman (1:05:52.300)
And what they did, so this is why I was pushing on binary,
Alien Debate (1:05:55.160)
it's a binary message.
Lex Fridman (1:05:56.960)
I think it's a semi prime length number of characters.
Lex Fridman (1:05:59.980)
So I think 73 by 23, I think.
Lex Fridman (1:06:03.820)
And it basically represents human bit proton,
Alien Debate (1:06:07.100)
binary, human beings, DNA, male and female.
Lex Fridman (1:06:10.500)
And it's really cool.
Lex Fridman (1:06:12.660)
But I'm just wondering if it could be done
Lex Fridman (1:06:18.520)
not making any,
Alien Debate (1:06:19.860)
cause it made assumptions that aliens speak binary.
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.880)
Why make that assumption?
Lex Fridman (1:06:24.180)
Why not just assume that if the difference between physics,
Lex Fridman (1:06:27.660)
chemistry and biology is the amount of memory
Alien Debate (1:06:29.860)
that's instead that's recordable by the substrates,
Lex Fridman (1:06:33.860)
then surely the universal thing,
Alien Debate (1:06:36.860)
I'm gonna make some sacrilegious statement,
Lex Fridman (1:06:38.780)
which I think is pretty awesome for people to argue with.
Lex Fridman (1:06:42.420)
So this is, we're looking at an image
Lex Fridman (1:06:44.740)
where it's the entirety of the message encoded in binary.
Lex Fridman (1:06:49.660)
And then there's a probably interpretation
Lex Fridman (1:06:52.220)
of different parts of that image.
Alien Debate (1:06:53.820)
There's a person, there's green parts.
Lex Fridman (1:06:57.900)
It looks like for people just listening,
Alien Debate (1:06:59.600)
like a game of Tetris.
Lex Fridman (1:07:01.620)
So it's encoding in minimal ways,
Alien Debate (1:07:03.620)
a bunch of cool information, probably.
Lex Fridman (1:07:05.700)
Representing all of us.
Lex Fridman (1:07:06.780)
So the topic's kind of teaching us how to count
Lex Fridman (1:07:08.940)
and then it all goes all the way down
Alien Debate (1:07:10.040)
teaching you chemistry and then just says,
Lex Fridman (1:07:12.340)
but it makes so many assumptions.
Lex Fridman (1:07:14.020)
And I think if we can actually,
Lex Fridman (1:07:16.080)
so look, I think, I mean, Sarah's much more eloquent
Alien Debate (1:07:19.220)
in expressing this, but I'll have a go
Lex Fridman (1:07:20.500)
and you can correct it if you want,
Alien Debate (1:07:21.900)
which is like one of the things that Sarah has had
Lex Fridman (1:07:25.380)
a profound effect on the way I look at the origin of life.
Lex Fridman (1:07:29.500)
And this is one of the reasons why we're working together
Lex Fridman (1:07:31.580)
because we don't really care about the origin of life.
Alien Debate (1:07:34.180)
We wanna make life, make aliens and find aliens.
Lex Fridman (1:07:37.580)
Make aliens, find aliens.
Alien Debate (1:07:38.840)
I think we might have to make aliens in the lab
Lex Fridman (1:07:40.740)
before we find aliens in the universe, right?
Alien Debate (1:07:42.860)
I think that would be a cool way to do it.
Lex Fridman (1:07:45.460)
So what is it about the universe that creates aliens?
Alien Debate (1:07:48.340)
Well, it's selection through assembly theory,
Lex Fridman (1:07:51.620)
creating memories, because when you create memories,
Alien Debate (1:07:53.620)
you can then command your domain.
Lex Fridman (1:07:57.100)
You can basically do stuff.
Alien Debate (1:07:58.380)
You can command matter.
Lex Fridman (1:08:00.800)
So we need to find a way by understanding what life is
Alien Debate (1:08:03.600)
of how the minimal way to command matter,
Lex Fridman (1:08:05.980)
how that would emerge in the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:08:08.220)
And if we want to communicate,
Lex Fridman (1:08:10.000)
I mean, maybe we don't want
Alien Debate (1:08:11.020)
to necessarily uniformly communicate.
Lex Fridman (1:08:13.660)
What I would do perhaps if I had,
Alien Debate (1:08:15.340)
is I would send out lots of probes away from Earth
Lex Fridman (1:08:18.140)
that have this magic way of communicating with aliens,
Alien Debate (1:08:20.060)
get them quite a far away from Earth, plausibly deniable,
Lex Fridman (1:08:23.540)
and then send out the message
Alien Debate (1:08:25.700)
that would then attract all the aliens,
Lex Fridman (1:08:27.220)
and then basically work out if they were friend or foe
Lex Fridman (1:08:29.620)
and how they wanna hang out.
Lex Fridman (1:08:30.660)
The messages being something has to do with the memories.
Alien Debate (1:08:33.020)
Yes, like the assembly version of Arecibo,
Lex Fridman (1:08:36.820)
so that everyone in the universe
Alien Debate (1:08:38.420)
that has been understands what life is.
Lex Fridman (1:08:40.980)
So aliens need to work out what they are.
Alien Debate (1:08:43.300)
Once they've worked out what they are,
Lex Fridman (1:08:44.900)
they then can work out how to encode what they are,
Lex Fridman (1:08:47.220)
and then they can go out and send messages.
Lex Fridman (1:08:48.660)
It's like the universal, the Rosetta Stone
Alien Debate (1:08:52.820)
for life in the universe is working out
Lex Fridman (1:08:55.940)
how the memories are built.
Alien Debate (1:08:56.940)
I don't know, Sarah, you have any, well,
Lex Fridman (1:09:01.180)
whether you would agree with that.
Alien Debate (1:09:02.880)
No, I wanted to raise a different point,
Lex Fridman (1:09:06.140)
which is about the fact that we can't see the aliens yet
Alien Debate (1:09:09.500)
because we haven't gotten the technology.
Lex Fridman (1:09:11.660)
And presumably we think assembly theory
Alien Debate (1:09:14.060)
is the right way of doing it,
Lex Fridman (1:09:15.140)
but I don't think that we know how to go
Alien Debate (1:09:16.500)
from the kind of data you're describing, Lex,
Lex Fridman (1:09:18.900)
like visual data or smell
Alien Debate (1:09:21.280)
to construct the assembly spaces yet.
Lex Fridman (1:09:23.500)
And in some ways, I think that the problem
Alien Debate (1:09:25.660)
of life detection really is the same problem
Lex Fridman (1:09:28.460)
at the foundations of AI that we don't understand
Lex Fridman (1:09:31.660)
how to get machines to see causal graphs,
Lex Fridman (1:09:35.100)
to see reality in terms of causation.
Lex Fridman (1:09:37.860)
And so I think assembly and AI
Lex Fridman (1:09:40.340)
are gonna intersect in interesting ways, hopefully,
Lex Fridman (1:09:43.660)
but the sort of key point,
Lex Fridman (1:09:46.100)
and I've been trying to make this argument more recently,
Alien Debate (1:09:49.660)
I might write an essay on it,
Lex Fridman (1:09:50.820)
is people talk about the great filter, right?
Lex Fridman (1:09:53.460)
And which is, again, this doomsday thing
Lex Fridman (1:09:55.540)
that people wanna say there's no aliens out there
Alien Debate (1:09:57.820)
because something terrible happened to them.
Lex Fridman (1:10:00.140)
And it matters whether that's in our past or our future
Alien Debate (1:10:03.820)
as to the longevity of our species, presumably,
Lex Fridman (1:10:06.460)
which is why people find it interesting.
Lex Fridman (1:10:07.980)
But I think it's not a physical filter.
Lex Fridman (1:10:10.780)
It's not like things go extinct.
Alien Debate (1:10:11.980)
I think it's literally,
Lex Fridman (1:10:12.800)
we don't have the technology to see them.
Lex Fridman (1:10:15.700)
And you could see that with microscopes.
Lex Fridman (1:10:17.020)
I mean, we didn't know there were microbes on this table
Alien Debate (1:10:18.660)
or tables for thousands of years or telescopes.
Lex Fridman (1:10:21.760)
Like there's so much of the universe we can't see.
Lex Fridman (1:10:23.460)
And then basically what we have done as a species
Lex Fridman (1:10:25.700)
is outsource our physical perceptions to technology,
Alien Debate (1:10:29.280)
building microscopes based on our eyes,
Lex Fridman (1:10:31.180)
and building seismometers based on our sense of feelings,
Alien Debate (1:10:34.920)
like feel earthquakes and things.
Lex Fridman (1:10:36.240)
And AI is basically we're trying to outsource
Alien Debate (1:10:38.120)
what's actually happening in our thinking apparatus
Lex Fridman (1:10:40.560)
into machines now and to technological devices.
Lex Fridman (1:10:43.120)
And maybe that's the key technology
Lex Fridman (1:10:45.100)
that's gonna allow us to see things like us
Lex Fridman (1:10:47.220)
and see the universe in a totally different way.
Lex Fridman (1:10:48.800)
But you kind of mentioned the great filter.
Lex Fridman (1:10:50.240)
Do you think there's a way through technology
Lex Fridman (1:10:52.280)
to stop being able to see stuff?
Lex Fridman (1:10:54.000)
So can you take a step backwards?
Lex Fridman (1:10:55.760)
I think so, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:10:56.600)
Did you imply that with the great, so like?
Lex Fridman (1:10:58.640)
Well, no, I mean, I think there's a great perceptual filter
Alien Debate (1:11:01.080)
in the sense that a example of life evolving on a planet
Lex Fridman (1:11:06.280)
over billions of years has to acquire
Alien Debate (1:11:08.800)
a certain amount of knowledge and technology
Lex Fridman (1:11:11.000)
to actually recognize the phenomena that it is.
Alien Debate (1:11:14.640)
Well, that's the sense I have is,
Lex Fridman (1:11:17.880)
I mean, you talk with physicists, engineers in general,
Alien Debate (1:11:20.640)
there's this kind of idea that we have
Lex Fridman (1:11:23.760)
most of the tools already to hear the signal.
Lex Fridman (1:11:27.960)
But to me, it feels like we don't have any of the tools
Lex Fridman (1:11:31.800)
to see the signal.
Alien Debate (1:11:32.640)
No, we don't know what we're doing, yeah, I agree.
Lex Fridman (1:11:33.680)
That's the biggest, like to hear.
Alien Debate (1:11:35.840)
We don't have the tools to really hear, to see.
Lex Fridman (1:11:37.840)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (1:11:39.200)
Aliens are everywhere.
Lex Fridman (1:11:40.160)
We just don't have the, yeah, well, oh, that's.
Alien Debate (1:11:44.960)
I mean, I got this in part, actually,
Lex Fridman (1:11:46.320)
because you were like, you know,
Alien Debate (1:11:47.460)
last time I was here, he was like, look at the carpet.
Lex Fridman (1:11:49.480)
You know, if you had an alien detector
Alien Debate (1:11:51.160)
where the carpet be aliens.
Lex Fridman (1:11:52.600)
I mean, I think we really don't.
Alien Debate (1:11:54.560)
I think it would be.
Lex Fridman (1:11:56.080)
But the aliens would nevertheless have a high assembly index
Alien Debate (1:11:58.960)
or produce things of high assembly index.
Lex Fridman (1:12:01.240)
And those things of high assembly index,
Alien Debate (1:12:04.720)
you have to have a detector that can recognize
Lex Fridman (1:12:07.120)
high assembly index in all its forms.
Alien Debate (1:12:09.160)
Yeah. Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:12:10.080)
That's it, that's it.
Alien Debate (1:12:10.920)
Take data, construct assembly space.
Lex Fridman (1:12:13.760)
Yeah. Those patterns, basically.
Lex Fridman (1:12:15.240)
So one way to think about high assembly index
Lex Fridman (1:12:17.480)
is interesting patterns of basic ingredients.
Alien Debate (1:12:21.560)
I can give you an example,
Lex Fridman (1:12:23.240)
because I mean, in molecules,
Alien Debate (1:12:24.360)
we've been talking about in objects,
Lex Fridman (1:12:25.480)
but we're also trying to do it in spatial trajectories.
Alien Debate (1:12:29.080)
Like, imagine you're just,
Lex Fridman (1:12:30.980)
like, I always get bothered by the fact that, like,
Alien Debate (1:12:33.660)
when you look at birds flocking,
Lex Fridman (1:12:35.400)
you can describe that with like a simple Boyd's model,
Alien Debate (1:12:37.460)
or like, you know, people use spin glass
Lex Fridman (1:12:38.960)
to describe animal behavior.
Lex Fridman (1:12:40.120)
And those are like really simple physics models.
Lex Fridman (1:12:42.100)
Yet you're looking at a system that you know has agency
Lex Fridman (1:12:46.740)
and there's intelligence in those birds.
Lex Fridman (1:12:48.840)
And basically, like, you can't help but think
Alien Debate (1:12:52.000)
there must be some statistical signatures
Lex Fridman (1:12:53.920)
of the fact that they're,
Alien Debate (1:12:55.720)
that's a group of agents versus, you know, like,
Lex Fridman (1:12:58.120)
I don't know, you know, the physics example,
Alien Debate (1:13:00.200)
maybe like, I don't know, Brownian motion or something.
Lex Fridman (1:13:03.720)
And so what we're trying to do
Alien Debate (1:13:04.640)
is actually apply assembly to trajectory data
Lex Fridman (1:13:06.640)
to try to say there's a minimal amount of causal history
Alien Debate (1:13:09.920)
to build up certain trajectories for observed agents
Lex Fridman (1:13:12.880)
that's like an agency detector for behavior.
Lex Fridman (1:13:15.160)
Do you think it's possible to do some like Boyd's
Lex Fridman (1:13:17.880)
or those kinds of things, like artificial,
Alien Debate (1:13:21.740)
like cellular automata, play with those ideas
Lex Fridman (1:13:25.000)
with assembly, with assembly theory?
Alien Debate (1:13:28.300)
Have you found any useful, really simple mathematical,
Lex Fridman (1:13:34.080)
like, simulation tools that allow you
Lex Fridman (1:13:36.040)
to play with these concepts?
Lex Fridman (1:13:38.040)
So like one, of course, you're doing mass spec
Alien Debate (1:13:40.840)
in this physical space with chemistry,
Lex Fridman (1:13:44.280)
but it just seems, well, I mean,
Alien Debate (1:13:45.760)
computer science person, maybe,
Lex Fridman (1:13:47.360)
it seems easier to just.
Alien Debate (1:13:48.760)
I agree with you.
Lex Fridman (1:13:49.600)
It seems even sexier in terms of tweeting visual information
Alien Debate (1:13:53.320)
on Twitter or Instagram, more importantly,
Lex Fridman (1:13:57.720)
to play like, here's an organism of a low assembly index
Lex Fridman (1:14:01.120)
and here's an organism of a high assembly index
Lex Fridman (1:14:03.560)
and let's watch them create more and more memories
Lex Fridman (1:14:07.320)
and more and more complex objects.
Lex Fridman (1:14:09.300)
And so like, in mathematics,
Alien Debate (1:14:11.040)
you get to observe what that looks like
Lex Fridman (1:14:12.920)
to build up an intuition what assembly index is like.
Alien Debate (1:14:15.760)
We are building a toolkit right now.
Lex Fridman (1:14:17.840)
So I think it's a really good idea,
Lex Fridman (1:14:19.680)
but what we've got to do is I'm kind of still obsessed
Lex Fridman (1:14:22.080)
with the infrastructure required.
Lex Fridman (1:14:24.220)
And one of the reasons why I was pushing on information
Lex Fridman (1:14:27.040)
and mathematics when human beings,
Alien Debate (1:14:29.500)
when human beings, we take a lot of the infrastructure
Lex Fridman (1:14:31.800)
for granted.
Lex Fridman (1:14:33.000)
And I think we have to strip that back a bit
Lex Fridman (1:14:35.120)
for going forward, but you're absolutely right.
Alien Debate (1:14:36.840)
I would agree that I think the fact that we exist
Lex Fridman (1:14:40.520)
in the universe, this is like,
Alien Debate (1:14:42.480)
I can see that lots of people would disagree
Lex Fridman (1:14:44.480)
with the statement, but I don't think Sarah will,
Lex Fridman (1:14:47.080)
but I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:14:48.440)
The fact that objects exist,
Alien Debate (1:14:50.480)
I don't think anyone on earth will disagree
Lex Fridman (1:14:53.500)
that objects can exist elsewhere, right?
Lex Fridman (1:14:55.860)
But they will disagree that life can exist elsewhere.
Lex Fridman (1:14:58.880)
But what perhaps I'm trying to say is that
Alien Debate (1:15:01.200)
the acquisition, the universe's ability to acquire memory
Lex Fridman (1:15:06.680)
is the very first step for building life.
Lex Fridman (1:15:10.120)
And that must be, that's so easy to happen.
Lex Fridman (1:15:14.120)
So therefore alien life is everywhere
Alien Debate (1:15:16.640)
because all alien life is,
Lex Fridman (1:15:18.800)
is those memories being compressed and minimalized
Lex Fridman (1:15:22.120)
and the alien equivalent of the cell working.
Lex Fridman (1:15:24.800)
So I think that we will build new technologies
Alien Debate (1:15:27.800)
to find aliens, but we need to understand what we are first
Lex Fridman (1:15:32.280)
and how we go from physics to chemistry to biology.
Alien Debate (1:15:36.560)
The most interesting thing,
Lex Fridman (1:15:38.640)
as you're saying to these two organisms,
Alien Debate (1:15:40.960)
different assemblies, there's one you get into biology.
Lex Fridman (1:15:43.640)
Biology gets more and more weird,
Alien Debate (1:15:45.000)
more and more contingent.
Lex Fridman (1:15:46.520)
Physics is, chemistry is less weird
Alien Debate (1:15:48.840)
cause the rules of chemistry are smaller
Lex Fridman (1:15:50.200)
than the rules of biology.
Lex Fridman (1:15:51.040)
And then going away to physics where you have a very
Lex Fridman (1:15:56.040)
nicely tangible number of ways of arranging things.
Lex Fridman (1:16:00.280)
And I think assembly theory just helps you appreciate that.
Lex Fridman (1:16:03.880)
And so once we get there,
Alien Debate (1:16:04.800)
my dream is that we are just gonna be able to suddenly,
Lex Fridman (1:16:08.280)
I mean, I'm maybe just being really arrogant here.
Alien Debate (1:16:10.600)
I don't mean to be arrogant.
Lex Fridman (1:16:11.600)
It's just, I've got this hammer called assembly
Lex Fridman (1:16:14.080)
and everything's a nail.
Lex Fridman (1:16:15.400)
But I think that once we crack it,
Alien Debate (1:16:17.400)
we'll be able to use assembly theory plus telescopes
Lex Fridman (1:16:20.120)
to find aliens.
Lex Fridman (1:16:22.360)
Do you have, Sarah, do you have disagreements with Lee
Lex Fridman (1:16:25.680)
on the number of aliens that are out there?
Alien Debate (1:16:28.920)
I do actually, yeah, well.
Lex Fridman (1:16:30.440)
And what they look like.
Lex Fridman (1:16:31.640)
So any of the things we've been talking about,
Lex Fridman (1:16:33.240)
is there nuanced, it's always nice to discover wisdom
Alien Debate (1:16:40.920)
through nuanced disagreement.
Lex Fridman (1:16:43.520)
Yeah, I don't wholly disagree, but I think,
Lex Fridman (1:16:47.360)
but I do think I disagree.
Lex Fridman (1:16:48.640)
It's kind of, there's nuance there.
Lex Fridman (1:16:51.360)
But Lee made it.
Lex Fridman (1:16:52.200)
You can disagree.
Alien Debate (1:16:53.040)
No, it's fine.
Lex Fridman (1:16:54.640)
It is nuanced, right?
Lex Fridman (1:16:55.720)
So you made the point earlier that you think,
Lex Fridman (1:16:59.360)
once we discover what life is,
Alien Debate (1:17:02.000)
we'll see alien life everywhere.
Lex Fridman (1:17:04.400)
And I think I agree on some levels in the sense
Alien Debate (1:17:06.440)
that I think the physics that governs us is universal.
Lex Fridman (1:17:09.160)
But I don't know how far I would go to say,
Alien Debate (1:17:11.360)
to say that we're a likely phenomenon
Lex Fridman (1:17:12.960)
because we don't understand all of the features
Alien Debate (1:17:15.920)
of the transition at the origin of life,
Lex Fridman (1:17:17.680)
which we would just say in assembly,
Alien Debate (1:17:19.720)
as you go from the no memory physics
Lex Fridman (1:17:22.680)
to there's like a critical transition
Alien Debate (1:17:26.120)
around the assembly index
Lex Fridman (1:17:27.160)
where assembliness starts to increase.
Lex Fridman (1:17:28.760)
And that's what we call the evolution of the biosphere
Lex Fridman (1:17:30.280)
and complexification of the biosphere.
Lex Fridman (1:17:32.920)
So there's a principle of increasing assembliness
Lex Fridman (1:17:34.760)
where that goes back to what I was saying
Alien Debate (1:17:35.840)
at the very beginning about the physics of the possible,
Lex Fridman (1:17:38.040)
that the universe basically gets in this mode
Alien Debate (1:17:40.760)
of trying to make as much possibilities as possible.
Lex Fridman (1:17:44.960)
Now, how often that transition happens
Alien Debate (1:17:48.960)
that you get the kind of cascading effect
Lex Fridman (1:17:50.600)
that we get in our biosphere, I think we don't know.
Alien Debate (1:17:53.080)
If we did, we would know the likelihood of life
Lex Fridman (1:17:54.680)
in the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:17:55.520)
And a lot of people wanna say life is common,
Lex Fridman (1:17:57.120)
but I don't think that we can say that yet
Alien Debate (1:17:58.400)
till we have the empirical data,
Lex Fridman (1:17:59.880)
which I think you would agree with.
Lex Fridman (1:18:01.360)
But then there's this other kind of thought experiment I have
Lex Fridman (1:18:04.480)
which I don't like, but I did have it,
Alien Debate (1:18:07.960)
which is if life emerges on one planet
Lex Fridman (1:18:11.800)
and you get this real high density of things
Alien Debate (1:18:13.440)
that can exist on that planet,
Lex Fridman (1:18:14.680)
is it sort of dominating the density of creation
Lex Fridman (1:18:17.880)
that the universe can actually generate?
Lex Fridman (1:18:19.360)
So like if you're thinking about counting entropy, right?
Alien Debate (1:18:21.480)
Like the universe has a certain amount of stuff in it.
Lex Fridman (1:18:23.840)
And then assembly is kind of like an entropic principle.
Alien Debate (1:18:27.920)
It's not entropy.
Lex Fridman (1:18:29.080)
But the idea is that now transformations among stuff
Alien Debate (1:18:33.000)
or the actual physical histories of things
Lex Fridman (1:18:36.200)
now become things that you have to count
Alien Debate (1:18:37.680)
as far as saying that these things exist
Lex Fridman (1:18:40.160)
and we're increasing the number of things that exist.
Lex Fridman (1:18:42.880)
And if you think about that cosmologically,
Lex Fridman (1:18:45.520)
maybe Earth is sucking up all the life potential
Alien Debate (1:18:47.720)
of the whole universe, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:18:49.440)
But I haven't.
Lex Fridman (1:18:50.280)
How's that, can you expand that a little bit?
Lex Fridman (1:18:51.960)
Why can any one geographical region
Lex Fridman (1:18:54.400)
suck up the creative capacity of the universe?
Lex Fridman (1:18:57.640)
Just like, I know it's a ridiculous thought.
Alien Debate (1:19:00.280)
I don't actually agree with it,
Lex Fridman (1:19:01.600)
but it was just a thought experiment.
Alien Debate (1:19:02.440)
I love that you can have thoughts
Lex Fridman (1:19:04.640)
that you don't like and don't agree with,
Lex Fridman (1:19:07.000)
but you have to think through them anyway.
Lex Fridman (1:19:09.040)
The human mind is fascinating.
Alien Debate (1:19:11.960)
Yeah, I think these sort of counterfactual
Lex Fridman (1:19:15.400)
thought experiments are really good
Alien Debate (1:19:16.440)
when you're trying to build new theories
Lex Fridman (1:19:17.640)
because you have to think through all the consequences.
Lex Fridman (1:19:19.960)
And there are people that want to try to account for,
Lex Fridman (1:19:23.480)
say, the degrees of freedom on our planet
Alien Debate (1:19:25.240)
in cosmological inventories of talking about
Lex Fridman (1:19:28.560)
the entropy of the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:19:29.680)
And when we're thinking about cosmological
Lex Fridman (1:19:32.200)
arrow of time and things like that.
Alien Debate (1:19:33.600)
Now, I think those are pretty superficial proposals
Lex Fridman (1:19:35.480)
as they stand now, but assembly would give you
Alien Debate (1:19:37.120)
a way of counting it.
Lex Fridman (1:19:38.320)
And then the question is if there's a certain
Alien Debate (1:19:40.200)
maximal capacity of the universe's speed
Lex Fridman (1:19:43.160)
of generating stuff, which Lee always has this argument
Alien Debate (1:19:45.480)
that assembly is about time.
Lex Fridman (1:19:47.600)
The universe is generating more states.
Alien Debate (1:19:49.280)
Really what it's generating is more assembly possibilities.
Lex Fridman (1:19:52.920)
And then dark energy might be one manifestation of that,
Alien Debate (1:19:56.120)
that the universe is accelerating its expansion
Lex Fridman (1:19:58.280)
because that makes more physical space.
Lex Fridman (1:20:00.080)
And what's happening on our planet is it's accelerating
Lex Fridman (1:20:02.440)
in the expansion of possible things that exist.
Lex Fridman (1:20:05.200)
And maybe the universe just has a maximal rate
Lex Fridman (1:20:07.120)
of what it can do to generate things.
Lex Fridman (1:20:09.360)
And then if there is a maximal rate,
Lex Fridman (1:20:11.080)
maybe only a certain number of planets
Alien Debate (1:20:12.400)
can actually do that.
Lex Fridman (1:20:13.600)
Or there's a trade off about the pace of growth
Alien Debate (1:20:16.160)
on certain planets versus others.
Lex Fridman (1:20:18.080)
I have a million questions there,
Lex Fridman (1:20:19.240)
but do you have thoughts on?
Lex Fridman (1:20:20.840)
Just a quick, yeah, I'll just say something very quick.
Alien Debate (1:20:22.560)
It's a thought experiment.
Lex Fridman (1:20:23.400)
No, it's good, I think I get it.
Alien Debate (1:20:24.320)
I think I get it.
Lex Fridman (1:20:25.160)
So what I want to say is when I mean aliens are everywhere,
Alien Debate (1:20:29.000)
I mean memories are the prerequisite
Lex Fridman (1:20:34.000)
for aliens via selection
Lex Fridman (1:20:36.960)
and then concentration of selection
Lex Fridman (1:20:39.000)
when selection becomes autonomous.
Lex Fridman (1:20:40.320)
So what I would love to do is to build,
Lex Fridman (1:20:42.440)
say a magical telescope that was a memory,
Alien Debate (1:20:45.440)
a magical one, or a real one,
Lex Fridman (1:20:48.040)
that would be a memory detector to see selection.
Lex Fridman (1:20:51.320)
So you could get to exoplanets and say that exoplanet
Lex Fridman (1:20:54.080)
looks like there's lots of selection going on there.
Alien Debate (1:20:56.160)
Maybe there's evolution and maybe there's going to be life.
Lex Fridman (1:20:58.720)
So what I'm trying to say is narrow down
Alien Debate (1:21:00.120)
the regions of space where you say
Lex Fridman (1:21:01.640)
there's definitely evidence of memory as high assembly there
Alien Debate (1:21:05.320)
or not high assembly, because that would be life,
Lex Fridman (1:21:07.000)
but where it's capable of happening.
Lex Fridman (1:21:11.120)
And then that would also help us frame the search for aliens.
Lex Fridman (1:21:14.400)
I don't know how likely it is to make the transition
Alien Debate (1:21:16.920)
to cells and all the other things.
Lex Fridman (1:21:18.840)
I think you're right.
Lex Fridman (1:21:20.200)
But I think that we just need to get more data.
Lex Fridman (1:21:23.360)
Well, I didn't like the thought experiment
Alien Debate (1:21:24.800)
because I don't like the idea
Lex Fridman (1:21:25.960)
that if the universe has a maximal limit
Alien Debate (1:21:27.560)
on the amount it can generate per unit time
Lex Fridman (1:21:29.640)
that our existence is actually precluding the existence
Alien Debate (1:21:31.800)
of other things.
Lex Fridman (1:21:32.640)
Well, I'll just say one thing.
Lex Fridman (1:21:33.480)
But I think that's probably true anyway
Lex Fridman (1:21:34.320)
because of the resource limitations.
Lex Fridman (1:21:35.520)
So I don't like your thought experiment
Lex Fridman (1:21:37.320)
because I think it's wrong.
Alien Debate (1:21:39.280)
Well, no, no, I do like the thought experiment.
Lex Fridman (1:21:41.400)
So what you're trying to say is like,
Alien Debate (1:21:42.320)
there is a chain of events that goes back
Lex Fridman (1:21:44.040)
that's manifestly culminated with life on Earth.
Lex Fridman (1:21:48.120)
And you're not saying that life isn't possible elsewhere.
Lex Fridman (1:21:50.120)
You say that there has been these number of things,
Alien Debate (1:21:52.320)
contingent things that have happened
Lex Fridman (1:21:53.560)
that have allowed life to merge here.
Alien Debate (1:21:56.640)
That doesn't mean that life can't emerge elsewhere,
Lex Fridman (1:21:58.200)
but you're saying that the intersection of events
Lex Fridman (1:22:00.400)
may be concentrated here, right?
Lex Fridman (1:22:04.160)
And I think there's...
Alien Debate (1:22:05.000)
Not exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:22:06.240)
It's more like if you look at,
Alien Debate (1:22:10.720)
say the causal graphs are fundamental,
Lex Fridman (1:22:12.200)
maybe space is an emergent property,
Alien Debate (1:22:14.080)
which is consistent with some proposals on quantum gravity,
Lex Fridman (1:22:16.680)
but also how we talk about things in assembly theory.
Alien Debate (1:22:18.960)
Then the universe is causal graphs generating
Lex Fridman (1:22:22.200)
more structure in causal graphs, right?
Lex Fridman (1:22:24.200)
So this is how the universe is unfolding.
Lex Fridman (1:22:26.160)
And maybe there's a cap on the rate of generation.
Alien Debate (1:22:30.040)
Like there's only so much stuff
Lex Fridman (1:22:31.640)
that gets made per update of the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:22:34.600)
And then if there's a lot of stuff being made
Lex Fridman (1:22:36.360)
in a particular region that happens
Alien Debate (1:22:38.480)
to look the same locally, spatially,
Lex Fridman (1:22:40.920)
that's an after effect of the fact
Alien Debate (1:22:43.280)
that the whole causal graph is updating.
Lex Fridman (1:22:45.360)
Like it's...
Alien Debate (1:22:47.600)
Yeah, I don't know that.
Lex Fridman (1:22:49.240)
I think that that doesn't work.
Alien Debate (1:22:51.000)
I don't think it works either,
Lex Fridman (1:22:51.920)
but I don't have a good argument in my mind about.
Lex Fridman (1:22:53.720)
But I do like the idea of the capacity that universe,
Lex Fridman (1:22:55.960)
cause you've got the number of states.
Alien Debate (1:22:57.600)
Yeah, we can come back to it.
Lex Fridman (1:22:59.320)
Let me ask real quick.
Alien Debate (1:23:00.360)
Like why does different like local pockets
Lex Fridman (1:23:04.680)
of the universe start remembering stuff?
Lex Fridman (1:23:07.400)
How does memory emerge exactly?
Lex Fridman (1:23:10.480)
So at the origin of the universe, it was very forgetful.
Alien Debate (1:23:16.080)
That's when the physicists were happiest.
Lex Fridman (1:23:17.680)
It was low memory objects,
Alien Debate (1:23:20.880)
which is like ultra low memory objects,
Lex Fridman (1:23:23.880)
which is what the definition of stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:23:26.520)
Okay, so how does memory emerge?
Lex Fridman (1:23:29.080)
How does the temporal stickiness of objects emerge?
Alien Debate (1:23:38.240)
I'm gonna take a very chemocentric point of view
Lex Fridman (1:23:42.000)
because I can't imagine any other way of doing it.
Alien Debate (1:23:44.000)
You could think of other ways maybe.
Lex Fridman (1:23:47.440)
But I would say heterogeneity in matter
Alien Debate (1:23:52.120)
is where the memory...
Lex Fridman (1:23:53.400)
So you must have enough different ways
Alien Debate (1:23:55.560)
of rearranging matter for there to be a memory.
Lex Fridman (1:23:58.560)
So what that means,
Alien Debate (1:23:59.400)
if you've got particles colliding in a box,
Lex Fridman (1:24:01.080)
let's just take some elements in a box.
Alien Debate (1:24:06.920)
Those elements can combine in a combinatorial set of ways.
Lex Fridman (1:24:10.320)
So there's a combinatorial explosion
Alien Debate (1:24:11.840)
of the number of molecules or minerals or solid objects,
Lex Fridman (1:24:15.320)
bonds being made.
Alien Debate (1:24:17.000)
Because there's such a large number,
Lex Fridman (1:24:19.360)
the population of different objects that are possible,
Alien Debate (1:24:22.280)
this goes back to assembly theory
Lex Fridman (1:24:23.800)
where assembly theory, there's four types of universes.
Lex Fridman (1:24:27.480)
So you've got basically, and this is what one was up earlier
Lex Fridman (1:24:30.840)
where one universe where you've just got
Alien Debate (1:24:33.520)
everything is possible.
Lex Fridman (1:24:34.480)
So you can take all the atoms
Lex Fridman (1:24:35.600)
and combine them and make everything.
Lex Fridman (1:24:37.480)
Then you've got basically what is the assembly combinatorial
Alien Debate (1:24:42.360)
where you basically have to accrue information in steps.
Lex Fridman (1:24:46.000)
Then you've got assembly observed,
Lex Fridman (1:24:49.240)
and then you've got the object assembly going back.
Lex Fridman (1:24:51.520)
So what I'm trying to say is like,
Alien Debate (1:24:53.640)
if you can take atoms and make bonds,
Lex Fridman (1:24:55.400)
let's say you take a nitrogen atom and add it
Alien Debate (1:24:57.440)
to a carbon atom, you find an amino acid,
Lex Fridman (1:24:59.600)
then you add another carbon atom on
Alien Debate (1:25:01.000)
in a particular configuration,
Lex Fridman (1:25:02.160)
then another one, all different molecules.
Alien Debate (1:25:04.280)
They all represent different histories.
Lex Fridman (1:25:07.720)
So I would say for me right now,
Alien Debate (1:25:10.200)
the most simple route into life seems to be
Lex Fridman (1:25:13.160)
through recording memories and chemistry.
Lex Fridman (1:25:16.080)
But that doesn't mean there can't be other ways
Lex Fridman (1:25:18.200)
and can't be other emergent effects.
Lex Fridman (1:25:20.680)
But I think if you can make bonds
Lex Fridman (1:25:22.520)
and lots of different bonds,
Lex Fridman (1:25:24.240)
and those molecules can have a causal effect on the future.
Lex Fridman (1:25:29.440)
So imagine a box of atoms,
Lex Fridman (1:25:32.520)
and then you combine those atoms in some way.
Lex Fridman (1:25:35.000)
So you make molecule A from load of atoms,
Lex Fridman (1:25:40.200)
and then molecule A can go back to the box
Lex Fridman (1:25:43.160)
and influence the box.
Alien Debate (1:25:45.920)
Then you make A prime or AB or ABC.
Lex Fridman (1:25:49.720)
And that process keeps going,
Lex Fridman (1:25:51.160)
and that's where the memories come from,
Lex Fridman (1:25:53.240)
is that heterogeneity in the universe from bonding.
Alien Debate (1:25:57.160)
I don't know if that makes any sense.
Lex Fridman (1:25:58.000)
And it's beginning to flourish at the chemistry level.
Alien Debate (1:26:04.280)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:26:05.120)
So the physicists have no, like not enough.
Alien Debate (1:26:09.160)
Yeah, I mean.
Lex Fridman (1:26:11.000)
They're like desperately begging
Alien Debate (1:26:13.040)
for more freedom and heterogeneous components to play with.
Lex Fridman (1:26:20.720)
Yeah, that's exactly it.
Lex Fridman (1:26:23.120)
What do you think about that, Sarah?
Lex Fridman (1:26:24.760)
I mentioned already, I think it's significant
Alien Debate (1:26:26.800)
that whatever physics governs life
Lex Fridman (1:26:28.560)
emerges actually in chemistry.
Alien Debate (1:26:30.120)
It's not relevant at the subatomic scale
Lex Fridman (1:26:32.880)
or even at the atomic scale.
Alien Debate (1:26:34.920)
It's in, well, atomic scale because chemistry.
Lex Fridman (1:26:37.960)
But like when you get into this combinatorial diversity
Alien Debate (1:26:40.880)
that you get from combining things on the periodic table,
Lex Fridman (1:26:44.400)
that's when selection actually matters
Alien Debate (1:26:47.600)
or the fact that some things can exist
Lex Fridman (1:26:49.000)
and others can't exist actually starts to matter.
Lex Fridman (1:26:52.080)
So I think of it like you don't study gravity
Lex Fridman (1:26:55.840)
inside the atomic nucleus.
Alien Debate (1:26:57.120)
You study it in terms of large scale structure
Lex Fridman (1:26:59.000)
of the universe or black holes or things like that.
Lex Fridman (1:27:01.320)
And whatever we're talking about as physics of information
Lex Fridman (1:27:04.320)
or physics of assembly becomes relevant
Alien Debate (1:27:06.160)
at a certain scale of reality.
Lex Fridman (1:27:08.040)
And the transition that you're talking about,
Alien Debate (1:27:11.080)
I would think of as just when you get a sufficient density
Lex Fridman (1:27:15.120)
in terms of the assembly space
Alien Debate (1:27:16.840)
of like the relationship of the overlap
Lex Fridman (1:27:18.560)
and the assembly space,
Alien Debate (1:27:20.680)
which is like a feature of common memory,
Lex Fridman (1:27:23.200)
there is this transition to assembly dominated physics,
Alien Debate (1:27:27.560)
whatever that is.
Lex Fridman (1:27:29.000)
Oh, like when we're talking about,
Lex Fridman (1:27:30.480)
and we're trying to map out exactly
Lex Fridman (1:27:31.920)
what that transition looks like.
Alien Debate (1:27:33.120)
We're pretty sure of some of its features,
Lex Fridman (1:27:36.240)
but we haven't done all of the...
Lex Fridman (1:27:37.720)
Do you think if you were there in the early universe,
Lex Fridman (1:27:39.560)
you would have been able to predict
Lex Fridman (1:27:41.080)
the emergence of chemistry and biology?
Lex Fridman (1:27:43.200)
And I ask that because at this stage as humans,
Lex Fridman (1:27:46.880)
do you think we can possibly predict the length of memory
Lex Fridman (1:27:51.280)
that might be able to be formed later on
Lex Fridman (1:27:55.640)
in this pocket of the universe?
Lex Fridman (1:27:56.920)
Like how complex is, what is the ceiling of assembly?
Alien Debate (1:28:02.880)
I think as much time as you have in the past
Lex Fridman (1:28:04.920)
is how much you can predict in the future.
Alien Debate (1:28:06.800)
Because it's actually physical in the system
Lex Fridman (1:28:09.400)
and you have to have enough time
Alien Debate (1:28:10.840)
for features of that structure to exist.
Lex Fridman (1:28:15.840)
Wait, let me push back on that.
Alien Debate (1:28:17.360)
Isn't there somewhere in the universe
Lex Fridman (1:28:19.920)
that's like a shortest path that's been,
Lex Fridman (1:28:21.900)
that stretches all the way to the beginning?
Lex Fridman (1:28:23.920)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:28:24.760)
That's building some giant monster?
Lex Fridman (1:28:26.720)
Maybe, yeah.
Alien Debate (1:28:27.720)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:28:28.560)
So you can't predict.
Alien Debate (1:28:29.400)
The universe has as much memory
Lex Fridman (1:28:30.560)
as the largest assembly object in the universe.
Alien Debate (1:28:32.520)
Yeah. Right.
Lex Fridman (1:28:33.360)
But so you can't predict.
Alien Debate (1:28:35.320)
You can't predict any deeper than that, no.
Lex Fridman (1:28:37.480)
Right.
Lex Fridman (1:28:38.320)
So like that, I guess what I'm saying is,
Lex Fridman (1:28:40.800)
like what intuition do you have about complexity
Lex Fridman (1:28:43.560)
living in the world that you'd have today?
Lex Fridman (1:28:46.280)
Right, because you just, you can,
Lex Fridman (1:28:49.040)
I mean I guess how long does it get more fun?
Lex Fridman (1:28:54.040)
Like isn't there gonna be at some point,
Alien Debate (1:28:55.880)
because there's a heat death in the universe,
Lex Fridman (1:28:57.960)
isn't there going to be a point of the most,
Alien Debate (1:29:01.760)
of the highest assembly of object,
Lex Fridman (1:29:04.320)
with the highest probability being generated?
Alien Debate (1:29:07.080)
When is the universe gonna be the most fun,
Lex Fridman (1:29:08.560)
and can we freeze ourselves and then live then?
Alien Debate (1:29:10.160)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:29:11.000)
And will you know when you're having the most fun
Lex Fridman (1:29:14.280)
that this is the best time, you're in your prime?
Lex Fridman (1:29:16.800)
Are you going to do what everyone does,
Alien Debate (1:29:18.080)
which is deny that you're in your prime,
Lex Fridman (1:29:19.920)
and the best years are still ahead of you?
Alien Debate (1:29:21.840)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:29:23.160)
What option do you have?
Alien Debate (1:29:26.520)
I don't, I mean the problem is there's lots of,
Lex Fridman (1:29:29.760)
lots of really interesting features here.
Alien Debate (1:29:31.360)
I just wanna mention one thing that might be,
Lex Fridman (1:29:33.600)
is I do think assembly theory applies all the way back
Alien Debate (1:29:36.160)
to subatomic particles.
Lex Fridman (1:29:37.800)
And I also think that cosmological selection
Alien Debate (1:29:40.360)
might've been actually, there might've been,
Lex Fridman (1:29:42.720)
I would say it's a really boring bit,
Lex Fridman (1:29:43.840)
but it's really important for a cosmologist
Lex Fridman (1:29:45.960)
that universes have gone through.
Lex Fridman (1:29:47.600)
Was it Lee Smolin who proposed this?
Lex Fridman (1:29:49.400)
Maybe that there is this,
Alien Debate (1:29:50.760)
that basically a universe evolves,
Lex Fridman (1:29:52.200)
you've got the wrong constants, we'll start again.
Lex Fridman (1:29:54.920)
And the most productive constants
Lex Fridman (1:29:56.280)
where you can allow particles to form in a certain way,
Alien Debate (1:29:59.120)
propagate to the next universe, and we go again.
Lex Fridman (1:30:01.160)
So actually selection goes all the way back,
Lex Fridman (1:30:03.200)
and there's this cycle of universes.
Lex Fridman (1:30:04.720)
And now this universe has been selected
Alien Debate (1:30:06.560)
because life can occur, and it carries on.
Lex Fridman (1:30:10.400)
But I've really butchered that.
Alien Debate (1:30:12.480)
There is a much more.
Lex Fridman (1:30:13.320)
So this is some aspect where through the selection process
Alien Debate (1:30:17.480)
there's parameters that are being fine tuned,
Lex Fridman (1:30:19.320)
and we happen to be living in one
Alien Debate (1:30:20.680)
where there's some level of fine tuning.
Lex Fridman (1:30:22.840)
Is there, given that, can you steel man the case
Lex Fridman (1:30:27.560)
that we humans are alone in the universe?
Lex Fridman (1:30:31.280)
We are the highest assembly index object in the universe.
Alien Debate (1:30:34.960)
Yeah, I can, I guess.
Lex Fridman (1:30:36.160)
Sad though.
Alien Debate (1:30:37.280)
I mean, so from a.
Lex Fridman (1:30:38.120)
Is it possible?
Alien Debate (1:30:39.200)
Yes, it's possible.
Lex Fridman (1:30:41.440)
Let's assume.
Alien Debate (1:30:43.320)
Well, we know.
Lex Fridman (1:30:45.240)
I mean, it's possible.
Lex Fridman (1:30:47.360)
So let me, so okay, so there is a particular
Lex Fridman (1:30:50.880)
set of elements on Earth in a particular ratio,
Lex Fridman (1:30:54.920)
and the right gravitational constant,
Lex Fridman (1:30:57.360)
and the right viscosity, you know,
Alien Debate (1:30:59.720)
of stuff being able to move around,
Lex Fridman (1:31:01.800)
the right distance from our sun,
Alien Debate (1:31:04.280)
right number of events where we have a moon,
Lex Fridman (1:31:07.720)
the Earth is rotating.
Alien Debate (1:31:10.720)
The late heavy bombardment produced a lot of,
Lex Fridman (1:31:14.080)
brought in the right stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:31:16.040)
And Mars was cooking up, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:31:19.920)
the right molecules first.
Lex Fridman (1:31:21.360)
So it was habitable before Earth.
Lex Fridman (1:31:23.280)
It was actually doing the combinatorial search.
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.920)
And before Mars kind of became uninhabitable,
Lex Fridman (1:31:29.600)
it seeded Earth with the right molecular replicators.
Lex Fridman (1:31:34.720)
And there was just the right stuff on Earth,
Lex Fridman (1:31:36.360)
and that's how the miracle of life occurred.
Alien Debate (1:31:40.680)
Although I find I'm very uncomfortable with that
Lex Fridman (1:31:43.440)
because actually, because life came so quickly
Alien Debate (1:31:48.240)
in the Earth's past.
Lex Fridman (1:31:50.680)
But that doesn't mean that life is easy elsewhere.
Alien Debate (1:31:55.560)
It just might mean that,
Lex Fridman (1:31:57.880)
because chemistry is actually not a long term thing.
Alien Debate (1:32:00.160)
Chemistry can happen quickly.
Lex Fridman (1:32:01.280)
So maybe going on with the steel manning of the argument
Alien Debate (1:32:04.200)
to say actually, the fact that life emerged quickly
Lex Fridman (1:32:06.960)
doesn't mean that life is easy.
Alien Debate (1:32:08.360)
It just means that the chemistry was right on Earth,
Lex Fridman (1:32:11.720)
and Earth is very special.
Lex Fridman (1:32:13.760)
And that's why there's no life
Lex Fridman (1:32:15.160)
anywhere else in the universe.
Alien Debate (1:32:17.000)
Yeah, so Sarah mentioned this kind of cascading thing.
Lex Fridman (1:32:21.640)
So what if that's the reason we're lucky,
Alien Debate (1:32:24.920)
is that we got to have a rare cascading of,
Lex Fridman (1:32:29.600)
like an accelerating cascading effect
Alien Debate (1:32:31.920)
in terms of the complexity of things.
Lex Fridman (1:32:34.480)
So like, maybe most of the universe
Alien Debate (1:32:36.600)
is trying to get sticky with the memory,
Lex Fridman (1:32:39.720)
and it's not able to really form it.
Lex Fridman (1:32:41.360)
And then we got really lucky in that.
Lex Fridman (1:32:43.040)
And it has nothing,
Alien Debate (1:32:44.560)
like there's a lot of Earth like conditions, let's say,
Lex Fridman (1:32:47.400)
but it's just you really, really have to get lucky on this.
Lex Fridman (1:32:51.640)
But I'm doing experiments right now.
Lex Fridman (1:32:54.160)
In fact, experiments that Sarah and I are working on,
Alien Debate (1:32:56.560)
because we have some joint funding for this,
Lex Fridman (1:32:58.360)
where we're seeing that the universe
Alien Debate (1:33:00.040)
can get sticky really quickly.
Lex Fridman (1:33:01.440)
Now, of course, we're being very anthropocentric,
Alien Debate (1:33:04.440)
we're using laboratory tools, we're using theory,
Lex Fridman (1:33:06.480)
but actually, the phenomena of selection,
Alien Debate (1:33:10.400)
the process of developing heterogeneity,
Lex Fridman (1:33:14.120)
we can do in the lab.
Alien Debate (1:33:15.080)
We're just seeing the very first hints of it.
Lex Fridman (1:33:17.640)
And wouldn't it be great if we can start to pin down
Alien Debate (1:33:22.520)
a bit more precisely becoming good Bayesianists for this,
Lex Fridman (1:33:27.680)
for the origin of life and the emergence of life,
Alien Debate (1:33:30.200)
to finding out what kind of chemistries
Lex Fridman (1:33:31.960)
we really need to look for.
Lex Fridman (1:33:34.560)
And I'm becoming increasingly confident
Lex Fridman (1:33:36.080)
we'll be able to do that in the next few years.
Alien Debate (1:33:37.840)
Make life in the lab or make some selection in the lab
Lex Fridman (1:33:41.400)
from inorganic stuff, from sand, from rocks,
Alien Debate (1:33:44.160)
from dead stuff, from moon.
Lex Fridman (1:33:45.760)
Wouldn't it be great to get stuff from the moon,
Alien Debate (1:33:48.040)
put it in our origin of life experiment,
Lex Fridman (1:33:51.160)
and make moon life?
Lex Fridman (1:33:53.080)
And restrict ourselves to interesting self replicating
Lex Fridman (1:33:56.000)
stuff that we find on the moon.
Alien Debate (1:33:58.480)
Sarah, what do you think about this approach
Lex Fridman (1:34:00.680)
of engineering life in order to understand life?
Lex Fridman (1:34:03.680)
So building life in the machine.
Lex Fridman (1:34:05.800)
Yeah, so, I mean, Lee and I are trying right now
Alien Debate (1:34:09.160)
to build a vision for a large institute
Lex Fridman (1:34:14.800)
or experimental program, basically, to do this problem.
Lex Fridman (1:34:17.640)
But I think of it as like, we need to simulate a planet.
Lex Fridman (1:34:21.000)
So like the Large Hadron Collider was supposed
Alien Debate (1:34:23.400)
to be simulating conditions just after the Big Bang.
Lex Fridman (1:34:26.280)
Lee's built a lot of technology in his lab
Alien Debate (1:34:27.960)
to do these kind of selection engines.
Lex Fridman (1:34:30.000)
But the question you're asking is,
Lex Fridman (1:34:33.000)
how many experiments do you need to run?
Lex Fridman (1:34:34.920)
What volume of chemical space do you need to explore
Lex Fridman (1:34:37.640)
before you actually see an event?
Lex Fridman (1:34:40.640)
And I like to make an analogy
Alien Debate (1:34:41.880)
to one of my favorite particle physics experiments,
Lex Fridman (1:34:43.680)
which is Super Kamiakande that's looking
Alien Debate (1:34:45.280)
for the decay of the proton.
Lex Fridman (1:34:46.640)
So this is something that we predicted theoretically,
Lex Fridman (1:34:49.080)
but we've never observed in our universe.
Lex Fridman (1:34:51.200)
And basically what they're doing is every time
Alien Debate (1:34:53.320)
they don't see a proton decay event,
Lex Fridman (1:34:55.360)
they have a longer bound on the lifetime of a proton.
Lex Fridman (1:34:57.760)
So imagine we built an experiment with the idea in mind
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.720)
of trying to simulate planetary conditions,
Alien Debate (1:35:03.600)
physically simulate.
Lex Fridman (1:35:04.480)
You can't simulate origin life in a computer.
Alien Debate (1:35:06.320)
You have to do it in an experiment.
Lex Fridman (1:35:08.400)
Simulate enough planetary conditions
Alien Debate (1:35:10.880)
to explore the space of what's possible
Lex Fridman (1:35:12.800)
and bound the probability for an origin life event.
Alien Debate (1:35:15.040)
Even if you're not observing it,
Lex Fridman (1:35:16.200)
you can talk about the probability.
Lex Fridman (1:35:17.520)
But we, hopefully, life is not exponentially rare
Lex Fridman (1:35:23.280)
and we would then be able to evolve
Alien Debate (1:35:27.200)
in an automated system alien life in the lab.
Lex Fridman (1:35:31.760)
And if we can do that, then we understand the physics
Alien Debate (1:35:34.240)
as well as we understand what we can do
Lex Fridman (1:35:35.880)
in particle accelerators.
Lex Fridman (1:35:37.480)
So keep expanding physically the simulation,
Lex Fridman (1:35:40.640)
the physical simulation, until something happens.
Alien Debate (1:35:44.560)
Yeah, or just build a big enough volume
Lex Fridman (1:35:46.540)
of chemical experiments and evolve them.
Lex Fridman (1:35:48.600)
So if you say volume, you mean like literally volume?
Lex Fridman (1:35:50.840)
I mean physical volume in terms of space,
Lex Fridman (1:35:53.280)
but I actually mean volume in terms
Lex Fridman (1:35:54.720)
of the combinatorial space of chemistry.
Lex Fridman (1:35:57.480)
So like.
Lex Fridman (1:35:58.300)
How do you nicely control the combinatorial exploration,
Alien Debate (1:36:01.640)
the search space, such that it's always like
Lex Fridman (1:36:05.520)
you keep grabbing the low hanging fruit?
Lex Fridman (1:36:08.040)
Yeah, how do you build a search engine for chemistry?
Lex Fridman (1:36:10.520)
It's like for aliens. I think you explained it really well.
Alien Debate (1:36:11.620)
We should carry on doing this.
Lex Fridman (1:36:12.460)
I should pretend the physics, be the physicist,
Alien Debate (1:36:14.400)
you be the chemist.
Lex Fridman (1:36:15.240)
So the way to do it is I will always play a joke.
Alien Debate (1:36:18.800)
Cause I like writing grants to ask for money
Lex Fridman (1:36:23.800)
to do cool stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:36:24.760)
But years ago I started wanting to build.
Lex Fridman (1:36:29.080)
So I actually wanted the weather.
Lex Fridman (1:36:30.740)
So I built this robot in my lab called the computer,
Lex Fridman (1:36:32.880)
which is this robot you can program to do chemistry.
Alien Debate (1:36:36.660)
Now it's a pro.
Lex Fridman (1:36:37.520)
I made a programming language for the computer
Lex Fridman (1:36:39.640)
and made it operate chemical equipment.
Lex Fridman (1:36:43.620)
Originally I wrote grants to say,
Alien Debate (1:36:46.060)
Hey, I want to make an origin of life system.
Lex Fridman (1:36:48.980)
And no one would give me any money for this.
Alien Debate (1:36:51.740)
They said, what this is ridiculous.
Lex Fridman (1:36:53.540)
Why are you wanting to make, oh, it's really hard.
Alien Debate (1:36:55.220)
It takes forever.
Lex Fridman (1:36:56.140)
You're not a very good origin of life chemist anyway.
Lex Fridman (1:36:58.380)
Why would we give you any money?
Lex Fridman (1:37:00.140)
And so I turned it around and said, can you,
Alien Debate (1:37:02.340)
can instead, can you give me money to make robots,
Lex Fridman (1:37:05.580)
to make molecules are interesting.
Lex Fridman (1:37:07.400)
And everyone went, yeah, okay, you can do that.
Lex Fridman (1:37:09.540)
And that's, so actually the funny thing is the computer
Alien Debate (1:37:13.540)
project, which I have in my lab, which is very briefly,
Lex Fridman (1:37:18.260)
it's just basically, it's like literally an automated
Alien Debate (1:37:20.300)
test tube.
Lex Fridman (1:37:21.140)
And we've made a programming language for the test tube,
Alien Debate (1:37:22.960)
which is cool, has come as literally came from this.
Lex Fridman (1:37:28.700)
I went to my lab one day.
Lex Fridman (1:37:29.720)
So I want to make a search engine to get origin of life
Lex Fridman (1:37:32.140)
because they don't have a planet.
Lex Fridman (1:37:33.580)
And I thought about doing in a microfluidic format.
Lex Fridman (1:37:36.220)
So microfluidic is very nano, very small channels
Alien Debate (1:37:39.580)
in device where you can basically have all the pipes
Lex Fridman (1:37:41.660)
lit dump produced by lithography.
Lex Fridman (1:37:43.940)
And you can have a chamber, maybe say between say 10
Lex Fridman (1:37:46.700)
and a hundred microns in volume.
Lex Fridman (1:37:48.420)
And we slot them all together like Lego,
Lex Fridman (1:37:50.580)
and we can make an origin of life system.
Lex Fridman (1:37:52.860)
And I could never get it to work.
Lex Fridman (1:37:55.380)
And I realized I had to make, do chemistry at the kind of
Alien Debate (1:37:59.340)
test tube level and what you want to be able to do.
Lex Fridman (1:38:03.140)
Yeah, it goes back to that tweet in 1981.
Alien Debate (1:38:06.420)
1981, the computer, we're looking at a tweet from Lee.
Lex Fridman (1:38:10.220)
In 1981, the computer was a distant dream in,
Alien Debate (1:38:13.700)
oh wow, this is the scientist looking back.
Lex Fridman (1:38:15.980)
It is the young boy who dreamed.
Alien Debate (1:38:19.260)
In 2018, it was realized, spelled in a British way,
Lex Fridman (1:38:23.500)
realized, which is the wrong way.
Alien Debate (1:38:25.660)
Yeah, I'm starting with Z, but not.
Lex Fridman (1:38:27.900)
So now there's a system that does the physical
Alien Debate (1:38:30.480)
manifestation or whatever the programming language,
Lex Fridman (1:38:34.460)
the spec tells you to do.
Alien Debate (1:38:37.140)
Yeah, well in 1981, I got my first computer, ZX81.
Lex Fridman (1:38:40.580)
What was the computer?
Alien Debate (1:38:41.700)
ZX81.
Lex Fridman (1:38:42.540)
ZX81.
Alien Debate (1:38:44.180)
Sinclair ZX81.
Lex Fridman (1:38:46.060)
It was, and I got a chemistry set.
Lex Fridman (1:38:49.220)
And I liked the chemistry set and I liked the computer
Lex Fridman (1:38:53.420)
and I just wanted to put them together.
Alien Debate (1:38:54.980)
I thought, wouldn't it be cool if I could just use
Lex Fridman (1:38:56.580)
the computer to control the chemistry set.
Lex Fridman (1:38:58.860)
And obviously that was insane.
Lex Fridman (1:39:00.780)
And I was like, you know, eight years old, right?
Alien Debate (1:39:04.340)
Nine years old, going on nine years old.
Lex Fridman (1:39:06.100)
And then I invented the computer
Alien Debate (1:39:12.500)
just because I wanted to build this origin of life grid.
Lex Fridman (1:39:15.780)
Which is like literally a billion test tubes
Alien Debate (1:39:17.940)
connected together in real time and real space,
Lex Fridman (1:39:20.880)
basically throwing a chemical dice.
Alien Debate (1:39:23.380)
Throw dice, throw dice, throw dice.
Lex Fridman (1:39:24.860)
You're gonna get lucky.
Lex Fridman (1:39:26.120)
And that's what we, I think Sarah and I
Lex Fridman (1:39:28.300)
have been thinking very deeply about.
Alien Debate (1:39:30.580)
Because, you know, there's more money being spent
Lex Fridman (1:39:32.940)
on the origin of the gravity
Lex Fridman (1:39:37.060)
or looking at the Higgs boson than the origin of life, right?
Lex Fridman (1:39:39.580)
And the origin of life is the, I think the biggest question
Alien Debate (1:39:43.740)
or not the biggest question, it is a big question.
Lex Fridman (1:39:46.260)
Let's put it that way.
Alien Debate (1:39:47.100)
It is the biggest question.
Lex Fridman (1:39:48.100)
You're okay saying that.
Alien Debate (1:39:49.100)
Okay, all right.
Lex Fridman (1:39:50.740)
Isn't it possible once you figure out the origin of life
Alien Debate (1:39:52.940)
that that's not going to solve,
Lex Fridman (1:39:55.940)
that's not actually gonna solve
Lex Fridman (1:39:58.020)
the question of what is life?
Lex Fridman (1:39:59.700)
Because you're kind of putting a lot of.
Alien Debate (1:40:02.780)
Yeah, I think they're the same problem.
Lex Fridman (1:40:04.600)
But you're putting, is it possible
Alien Debate (1:40:06.660)
that you're putting too many,
Lex Fridman (1:40:09.940)
too much bets into this origin part?
Alien Debate (1:40:12.020)
Maybe the origin thing isn't,
Lex Fridman (1:40:14.060)
isn't there always a turtle underneath the turtle?
Lex Fridman (1:40:16.460)
Isn't there a stack of turtles?
Lex Fridman (1:40:17.740)
Because then if you create it in the lab,
Alien Debate (1:40:19.600)
maybe you need some other stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:40:21.740)
Well, let's not think about the origin.
Alien Debate (1:40:23.180)
Like in the lab, there's still memory.
Lex Fridman (1:40:27.100)
Yeah, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:40:28.180)
Right?
Lex Fridman (1:40:29.020)
So the experiment is already the product of evolution.
Alien Debate (1:40:31.660)
Right, in some maybe really deep way,
Lex Fridman (1:40:33.900)
not an obvious way, in some very deep way.
Lex Fridman (1:40:36.060)
So maybe the haters are always going to be like,
Lex Fridman (1:40:39.560)
well, you have to reconstruct the fold.
Alien Debate (1:40:42.140)
You have to build a new script.
Lex Fridman (1:40:42.980)
Fortunately for us, the haters are not aware
Alien Debate (1:40:44.620)
of that argument.
Lex Fridman (1:40:46.860)
Well, no, I know, I just.
Alien Debate (1:40:48.260)
We're the one making that argument usually, but yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:40:51.100)
I just think that if we create life in the lab,
Alien Debate (1:40:54.420)
it's not obvious that you'll get
Lex Fridman (1:40:56.540)
to the deep, deep understanding of necessarily,
Lex Fridman (1:41:00.700)
what is the line between life and non life?
Lex Fridman (1:41:03.100)
No, I think, so there's so much here.
Alien Debate (1:41:05.020)
I'm just like playing devil.
Lex Fridman (1:41:06.340)
So much here, but let me play devil's advocate
Lex Fridman (1:41:08.580)
back in a previous conversation, right?
Lex Fridman (1:41:10.460)
And say, yeah, I will.
Lex Fridman (1:41:14.400)
Why not?
Lex Fridman (1:41:15.240)
Why not?
Alien Debate (1:41:16.060)
We've got time.
Lex Fridman (1:41:16.900)
Yeah, let's go.
Alien Debate (1:41:17.740)
Cellular automata.
Lex Fridman (1:41:18.560)
Cellular automata, these very, very simple things
Alien Debate (1:41:21.980)
where you color squares black or white
Lex Fridman (1:41:24.740)
and implement rules and play them in time.
Lex Fridman (1:41:26.620)
And you can get these very, very complex patterns coming out.
Lex Fridman (1:41:30.580)
You know, there's nice rules.
Alien Debate (1:41:31.780)
There are Turing complete rules and I would argue
Lex Fridman (1:41:36.860)
that cellular automata don't really exist on their own.
Alien Debate (1:41:41.580)
They have to exist in a computing device.
Lex Fridman (1:41:45.040)
If that, well, that's computing devices,
Alien Debate (1:41:46.380)
a piece of paper and abstraction,
Lex Fridman (1:41:47.540)
a mathematician drawing a grid or a framework.
Alien Debate (1:41:52.540)
Now, so I would argue CAs are beautiful things,
Lex Fridman (1:41:56.960)
simple, going complex, but the complexity is all borrowed
Alien Debate (1:41:59.960)
from the lithography, the numbers.
Lex Fridman (1:42:03.480)
Right, now let's take that same argument
Alien Debate (1:42:05.160)
with the chemistry experiment origin of life.
Lex Fridman (1:42:11.040)
What you need to be able to do is go,
Lex Fridman (1:42:12.480)
and I'm inspired to do this,
Lex Fridman (1:42:13.720)
to go out and look for CAs occur in nature.
Alien Debate (1:42:17.700)
You know, let's kind of, let's find some CAs
Lex Fridman (1:42:21.840)
that just emerge in our universe and.
Alien Debate (1:42:24.800)
For people just, sorry to interrupt,
Lex Fridman (1:42:26.080)
for people just listening and in general,
Alien Debate (1:42:29.280)
I think what we're looking at is a cellular automata
Lex Fridman (1:42:33.480)
where again, as Lee described,
Alien Debate (1:42:35.080)
there is just binary black or white squares
Lex Fridman (1:42:38.360)
and they only have local information
Lex Fridman (1:42:40.200)
and they're born and they die.
Lex Fridman (1:42:42.640)
And you would think nothing interesting would emerge,
Lex Fridman (1:42:45.340)
but actually what we're looking at is something
Lex Fridman (1:42:47.360)
that I believe is called glider guns
Alien Debate (1:42:49.360)
or a glider gun, which is moving objects
Lex Fridman (1:42:54.580)
in this multi cell space that look like they're organisms
Alien Debate (1:42:58.660)
that have much more information,
Lex Fridman (1:43:01.200)
that have much more complexity
Alien Debate (1:43:03.780)
than the individual building components.
Lex Fridman (1:43:05.940)
In fact, look like they have a long term memory
Alien Debate (1:43:09.860)
while the individual components don't seem like
Lex Fridman (1:43:12.300)
they have any memory at all, which is fascinating.
Alien Debate (1:43:15.100)
The argument here is that has to exist
Lex Fridman (1:43:17.940)
on all this layer of infrastructure, right?
Lex Fridman (1:43:20.140)
And though it looks simple.
Lex Fridman (1:43:21.620)
And then what I would make, the argument I would make
Alien Debate (1:43:23.260)
if I were you, say, well, I think CAs are really simple
Lex Fridman (1:43:26.220)
and everywhere, is say, show me how they emerge
Alien Debate (1:43:28.700)
in a substrate.
Lex Fridman (1:43:29.580)
Now this goes to the origin of life, machine.
Alien Debate (1:43:32.620)
I don't think we want to do the origin of life,
Lex Fridman (1:43:34.980)
just any origin is good.
Lex Fridman (1:43:36.540)
So we do, so we literally have our sand shaker,
Lex Fridman (1:43:39.260)
shake the sand like massive grid of chemistry experiments,
Alien Debate (1:43:42.220)
shaking sand, shaking whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:43:45.260)
And then because we know what we've put in,
Lex Fridman (1:43:47.360)
so we know how we've cheated and the same way with CA,
Lex Fridman (1:43:49.380)
we know how we've cheated,
Alien Debate (1:43:50.220)
we know the number of operations needed,
Lex Fridman (1:43:52.300)
we know how big a grid we want to get this.
Alien Debate (1:43:54.580)
If we could then say, okay,
Lex Fridman (1:43:56.900)
how can we generate this recipe in the lab
Lex Fridman (1:44:01.460)
and make a life form?
Lex Fridman (1:44:03.240)
What contingency did we need to put in?
Lex Fridman (1:44:06.180)
And we're upfront about how we cheated, okay?
Lex Fridman (1:44:09.380)
Say, oh, you had to shake it, it was a periodic,
Alien Debate (1:44:12.180)
planet rotates, it's tried, comes in and out.
Lex Fridman (1:44:15.780)
So, and then we can start to basically say,
Lex Fridman (1:44:17.700)
okay, how difficult is it for these features to be found?
Lex Fridman (1:44:23.180)
And then we can look for extra planets and other features.
Lex Fridman (1:44:25.300)
So I think Sarah is absolutely right.
Lex Fridman (1:44:27.460)
We want to explain to people we're cheating.
Alien Debate (1:44:29.340)
In fact, we have to cheat.
Lex Fridman (1:44:30.660)
No one has given, I'm good at writing grants,
Alien Debate (1:44:32.660)
well, I used to be, I'm not very good right now,
Lex Fridman (1:44:34.060)
I keep getting rejected,
Lex Fridman (1:44:35.260)
but writing a grant for a planet in 100 million years,
Lex Fridman (1:44:38.020)
no grant fund there is going to give me that,
Lex Fridman (1:44:39.860)
but maybe money to make a kind of a grid,
Lex Fridman (1:44:42.740)
a computer grid, origin of life computer grid.
Alien Debate (1:44:45.940)
In physical space.
Lex Fridman (1:44:46.860)
In physical space, and just do it.
Lex Fridman (1:44:49.180)
So Sarah said something which is,
Lex Fridman (1:44:51.180)
you can't simulate the origin of life in a computer,
Lex Fridman (1:44:56.320)
so like in simulation, why not?
Lex Fridman (1:44:59.580)
What are your, you said it very confidently,
Lex Fridman (1:45:02.380)
so is it possible and why would it be very difficult?
Lex Fridman (1:45:07.060)
Like what's your intuition there?
Alien Debate (1:45:08.880)
I think it's very difficult right now
Lex Fridman (1:45:12.120)
because we don't know the physics,
Lex Fridman (1:45:13.140)
but if you go based on principles of assembly theory
Lex Fridman (1:45:15.220)
and you think every molecule is actually
Alien Debate (1:45:17.340)
a very large causal graph, not just the molecule,
Lex Fridman (1:45:20.100)
then you have to simulate all the features
Alien Debate (1:45:21.560)
of those causal graphs,
Lex Fridman (1:45:22.580)
and I think it becomes computationally intractable.
Alien Debate (1:45:24.820)
You might as well just build the experiment.
Lex Fridman (1:45:26.900)
Because you have, in the physical space,
Alien Debate (1:45:28.660)
you have all the objects with all the memories.
Lex Fridman (1:45:31.660)
Yes.
Alien Debate (1:45:32.500)
In the computer, you would have to copy them
Lex Fridman (1:45:35.400)
or reconstruct them.
Alien Debate (1:45:36.240)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:45:37.060)
Yeah, that's a beautifully put,
Lex Fridman (1:45:38.620)
and I would say that lots of people,
Lex Fridman (1:45:41.700)
you just don't have enough resources.
Alien Debate (1:45:44.980)
It's easier to actually do the physical experiment
Lex Fridman (1:45:47.940)
because we are literally,
Alien Debate (1:45:49.820)
I would view the physical experiment
Lex Fridman (1:45:51.380)
almost like a computational experiment.
Alien Debate (1:45:53.540)
We're just outsourcing, it's just basically,
Lex Fridman (1:45:55.060)
we're just outsourcing all the matrix algebra.
Lex Fridman (1:45:57.700)
And on your point about the experiment
Lex Fridman (1:46:00.180)
being also an example of life,
Alien Debate (1:46:03.940)
it's almost like you want to design,
Lex Fridman (1:46:05.340)
it's like all of us are lineages
Alien Debate (1:46:08.420)
of propagating information across time,
Lex Fridman (1:46:10.300)
and so everything we do becomes part of life
Alien Debate (1:46:12.300)
because it's part of that causal chain.
Lex Fridman (1:46:14.180)
So it's like you want to try to pinch off
Alien Debate (1:46:15.900)
as much as you can of the information
Lex Fridman (1:46:17.740)
from your causal chain that goes into the experiment,
Lex Fridman (1:46:20.220)
but you can't pinch off all of it
Lex Fridman (1:46:21.980)
to move it to a different timeline.
Alien Debate (1:46:23.700)
It's always going to be part of your timeline.
Lex Fridman (1:46:25.300)
But at least if you can control
Lex Fridman (1:46:26.360)
how much information you put in,
Lex Fridman (1:46:27.460)
you can try to see how much does that particular trajectory
Alien Debate (1:46:30.540)
you've set up start generating its own assembly.
Lex Fridman (1:46:33.940)
So you know where it starts,
Lex Fridman (1:46:36.100)
and then you want to try to see it take off on its own
Lex Fridman (1:46:38.700)
when you try to pinch it off as much as possible.
Alien Debate (1:46:42.140)
Got it.
Lex Fridman (1:46:43.700)
Quick pause, bathroom break.
Alien Debate (1:46:45.260)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:46:46.100)
All right, cool.
Lex Fridman (1:46:47.580)
And now we're back.
Lex Fridman (1:46:49.540)
All right.
Alien Debate (1:46:50.940)
We talked about the early days of the universe
Lex Fridman (1:46:53.580)
when there was just stuff and no memory,
Alien Debate (1:46:55.940)
not even causality.
Lex Fridman (1:46:57.260)
I think Lee at least implied
Alien Debate (1:46:58.580)
that causality is immersion somehow.
Lex Fridman (1:47:00.580)
We could discuss this.
Lex Fridman (1:47:01.940)
What happened before this all originated?
Lex Fridman (1:47:06.940)
What's outside the universe?
Alien Debate (1:47:10.660)
Divided by zero.
Lex Fridman (1:47:12.140)
Okay, so it's not relevant, not understandable.
Lex Fridman (1:47:16.380)
Is it useful to even ask the question?
Lex Fridman (1:47:18.580)
No.
Lex Fridman (1:47:19.420)
Just because it's so hard?
Lex Fridman (1:47:22.220)
No, it's not hard.
Alien Debate (1:47:23.380)
It's just not a question.
Lex Fridman (1:47:24.860)
If I can't do an experiment or even think of an experiment,
Alien Debate (1:47:27.300)
the question doesn't exist.
Lex Fridman (1:47:29.620)
Well, no, you can't think of a lot of experiments,
Alien Debate (1:47:32.360)
no offense.
Lex Fridman (1:47:33.200)
What I mean is I can't.
Alien Debate (1:47:35.060)
Your causality graph is like,
Lex Fridman (1:47:36.860)
this is what we're talking about.
Alien Debate (1:47:38.980)
It's like there is limits to your ability
Lex Fridman (1:47:43.980)
to construct experiments.
Alien Debate (1:47:45.700)
I agree, but I was trying to be facetious
Lex Fridman (1:47:48.300)
and I'm trying to make a point
Alien Debate (1:47:49.300)
because I think that if there is a causal bottleneck
Lex Fridman (1:47:56.660)
through which information can't propagate in principle,
Alien Debate (1:48:00.140)
then it's very hard to think of an experiment,
Lex Fridman (1:48:03.940)
even in principle, even one that's beyond
Lex Fridman (1:48:05.460)
my mediocre intellect, right?
Lex Fridman (1:48:08.620)
Which is fine.
Alien Debate (1:48:09.460)
I'm happy to accept that.
Lex Fridman (1:48:10.900)
But this is one of the things I actually do think
Alien Debate (1:48:12.860)
there was something before the Big Bang
Lex Fridman (1:48:14.860)
because I would say that I think the Big Bang
Alien Debate (1:48:17.580)
just couldn't occur and create time.
Lex Fridman (1:48:19.540)
Time created the Big Bang.
Lex Fridman (1:48:21.240)
So there was time before the Big Bang.
Lex Fridman (1:48:23.420)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (1:48:24.260)
There was no space, but there was time.
Lex Fridman (1:48:25.420)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (1:48:26.740)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:48:27.700)
But I mean, I'm just making that stuff up
Alien Debate (1:48:29.620)
just to make all the physicists happy,
Lex Fridman (1:48:31.020)
but I think it's...
Lex Fridman (1:48:32.580)
Do you think that would make them happy
Lex Fridman (1:48:33.860)
because they would be quite upset, actually.
Lex Fridman (1:48:35.780)
And why would they be upset?
Lex Fridman (1:48:37.100)
Because they would say that time can't exist
Alien Debate (1:48:40.780)
before the Big Bang.
Lex Fridman (1:48:41.620)
Yeah, I mean, this goes back to an argument
Alien Debate (1:48:43.540)
that you might not want to have the argument here.
Lex Fridman (1:48:46.220)
I was talking to Sarah earlier today
Alien Debate (1:48:48.500)
about an argument we had about time a long time ago.
Lex Fridman (1:48:51.380)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (1:48:52.220)
A long time in time.
Lex Fridman (1:48:53.040)
And what I would, it's like, I think there is this thing
Alien Debate (1:48:55.680)
called time or state creation.
Lex Fridman (1:48:57.260)
The universe is creating states and it's outside of space,
Lex Fridman (1:49:00.980)
but they create space.
Lex Fridman (1:49:02.180)
So what I mean is you can imagine there are states
Alien Debate (1:49:04.180)
being created all the time.
Lex Fridman (1:49:05.860)
And there is this thing called time.
Alien Debate (1:49:08.380)
Time is a clock, which you can use to measure
Lex Fridman (1:49:11.100)
when things happen, but that doesn't mean,
Alien Debate (1:49:13.980)
because you can't measure something,
Lex Fridman (1:49:15.200)
that states aren't being created.
Lex Fridman (1:49:17.220)
And so you might locally refer to the Big Bang
Lex Fridman (1:49:22.240)
and the Big Bang occurred at some point
Alien Debate (1:49:25.780)
when those states were there.
Lex Fridman (1:49:27.480)
Probably there had to be enough states
Alien Debate (1:49:28.880)
for the Big Bang to occur.
Lex Fridman (1:49:30.740)
And then, but I think that there is something wrong
Alien Debate (1:49:34.580)
with our conception of how the universe was created
Lex Fridman (1:49:37.020)
and the Big Bang because we don't really get time.
Alien Debate (1:49:40.820)
Because again, I don't want to become boring
Lex Fridman (1:49:44.140)
and sound like a broken record, but time is a real thing.
Lex Fridman (1:49:48.980)
And until I can really explain that more elegantly,
Lex Fridman (1:49:52.740)
I'm just gonna get into more trouble.
Alien Debate (1:49:54.260)
Well, we're gonna talk about time
Lex Fridman (1:49:55.860)
because time is a useful measuring device for experiments,
Lex Fridman (1:49:59.420)
but also time is an ideal, okay.
Lex Fridman (1:50:02.180)
But let me first ask Sarah, what do you think?
Alien Debate (1:50:05.460)
Is it a useful question to ask what happened
Lex Fridman (1:50:07.860)
before the Big Bang?
Lex Fridman (1:50:08.860)
Is it a useful question to ask what's outside the universe?
Lex Fridman (1:50:14.940)
So I would think about it as the Big Bang
Alien Debate (1:50:17.660)
is an event that we reconstructed
Lex Fridman (1:50:19.620)
as probably happening in the past of our universe
Alien Debate (1:50:21.900)
based on current observational data.
Lex Fridman (1:50:24.220)
And so the way I like to think about it
Alien Debate (1:50:25.940)
is we exist locally in something called the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:50:33.020)
So, and going back to like the physics of existence,
Alien Debate (1:50:35.880)
we exist locally in the space of all things that could exist
Lex Fridman (1:50:39.140)
and we can infer certain properties of the structure
Alien Debate (1:50:42.300)
of where we exist locally.
Lex Fridman (1:50:43.560)
And one of the properties that we've inferred in the past
Alien Debate (1:50:46.020)
is that there is a thing we call the Big Bang.
Lex Fridman (1:50:50.820)
There's some signatures of our local environment
Alien Debate (1:50:52.940)
that indicate that there was a very low information event
Lex Fridman (1:50:58.740)
that started our universe.
Alien Debate (1:50:59.920)
I think that's actually just an artifact
Lex Fridman (1:51:02.040)
of the structure of the assembly space
Alien Debate (1:51:05.120)
that when you start losing all the memory in the objects,
Lex Fridman (1:51:10.220)
it looks like what we call a Big Bang.
Lex Fridman (1:51:13.320)
So I think it makes sense to talk about
Lex Fridman (1:51:14.880)
where you are locally.
Alien Debate (1:51:16.300)
I think it makes sense to talk about
Lex Fridman (1:51:18.220)
counterfactual possibilities,
Lex Fridman (1:51:20.260)
what could exist outside the universe
Lex Fridman (1:51:22.100)
in the sense that they become part of our reasoning
Lex Fridman (1:51:24.780)
and therefore part of our causal chain
Lex Fridman (1:51:26.380)
of things that we can do.
Lex Fridman (1:51:28.500)
So like the multiverse in my mind exists,
Lex Fridman (1:51:31.700)
but it doesn't exist as a multiverse
Alien Debate (1:51:33.360)
of possible universes.
Lex Fridman (1:51:34.540)
It exists as an idea in our minds
Alien Debate (1:51:36.260)
that allows us to reason about how physics works
Lex Fridman (1:51:38.380)
and then to do physics differently
Alien Debate (1:51:39.560)
because we reason about it that way.
Lex Fridman (1:51:42.100)
So I always like to recenter it on things exist,
Lex Fridman (1:51:47.220)
but they don't always exist like we think they exist.
Lex Fridman (1:51:50.460)
So when we're thinking about things outside the universe,
Alien Debate (1:51:53.100)
they absolutely exist because we're thinking about them,
Lex Fridman (1:51:55.380)
but they don't look like the projections in our minds.
Alien Debate (1:51:59.780)
They're something else.
Lex Fridman (1:52:00.620)
And something you said just gave an idea
Alien Debate (1:52:02.100)
to go back to your question.
Lex Fridman (1:52:04.620)
If there was, I mean, if something caused the Big Bang,
Alien Debate (1:52:09.740)
if there was some memory or some artifact of that,
Lex Fridman (1:52:12.180)
then of course, to answer your question,
Alien Debate (1:52:13.780)
it's worth going back to that
Lex Fridman (1:52:15.260)
because that would imply there is something
Alien Debate (1:52:17.460)
beyond that barrier, that filter.
Lex Fridman (1:52:19.660)
And that's what you were saying, I guess, right?
Alien Debate (1:52:21.780)
I'm agnostic to what exists outside the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:52:23.820)
I just don't think that.
Alien Debate (1:52:24.860)
I think the most interesting things for us to be doing
Lex Fridman (1:52:26.900)
are finding explanations that allow us to do more,
Alien Debate (1:52:31.020)
like that optimism.
Lex Fridman (1:52:32.620)
So I tend to draw the boundary on questions I ask
Alien Debate (1:52:35.540)
as being scientific ones because I find
Lex Fridman (1:52:38.100)
that that's where the most creative potential is
Alien Debate (1:52:40.660)
to impact the future trajectory
Lex Fridman (1:52:42.660)
of what we're doing on this planet.
Alien Debate (1:52:43.940)
It's an interesting thing about the Big Bang
Lex Fridman (1:52:45.540)
is basically from our current perspective
Alien Debate (1:52:48.700)
of what we're able to detect,
Lex Fridman (1:52:50.820)
it's the time when things were forgotten.
Alien Debate (1:52:52.980)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:52:54.220)
It's the time to reset from our limited perspective.
Lex Fridman (1:52:58.500)
And so the question is, is it useful to ever study
Lex Fridman (1:53:01.860)
the thing that was forgotten?
Alien Debate (1:53:05.100)
Or should we focus just on the memories
Lex Fridman (1:53:07.500)
that are still there?
Alien Debate (1:53:08.340)
Well, the point I was trying to make about the experiment
Lex Fridman (1:53:10.140)
is I was trying to say both things.
Lex Fridman (1:53:11.780)
And I think perhaps yes, from the portfolio point of view,
Lex Fridman (1:53:14.180)
if you could then imagine what was forgotten
Lex Fridman (1:53:17.580)
and then work forwards,
Lex Fridman (1:53:19.180)
you will have different consequences.
Lex Fridman (1:53:20.900)
So then it becomes testable.
Lex Fridman (1:53:22.660)
So as long as we can find tests,
Alien Debate (1:53:24.700)
then it's definitely worth thinking about.
Lex Fridman (1:53:26.420)
What I don't like is when physicists say
Lex Fridman (1:53:28.380)
what happened before the Big Bang
Lex Fridman (1:53:29.740)
and before, before, before,
Alien Debate (1:53:31.220)
without giving me any credible conjecture
Lex Fridman (1:53:34.620)
about how would we know the difference?
Lex Fridman (1:53:38.260)
But the way you framed it is quite nice.
Lex Fridman (1:53:39.700)
I like that.
Lex Fridman (1:53:40.540)
It's like, what have we forgotten?
Lex Fridman (1:53:43.540)
Is there room for God in assembly theory?
Lex Fridman (1:53:47.700)
Who's God?
Lex Fridman (1:53:49.620)
I like arguments for a necessary being better than God.
Alien Debate (1:53:52.740)
Well, I think I said it earlier.
Lex Fridman (1:53:53.580)
What's a necessary being?
Lex Fridman (1:53:54.420)
What's a necessary?
Lex Fridman (1:53:55.260)
Like something that has to exist.
Alien Debate (1:53:58.340)
Oh, so you like, I mean, you like the shortest path.
Lex Fridman (1:54:01.140)
Like does God need?
Alien Debate (1:54:02.220)
No, no, no.
Lex Fridman (1:54:03.060)
I mean, well, you can go back to like Thomas Aquinas
Lex Fridman (1:54:05.540)
and arguments for the existence of God.
Lex Fridman (1:54:08.740)
But I think most of the interesting theological arguments
Alien Debate (1:54:11.860)
are always about whether something has to exist
Lex Fridman (1:54:14.900)
or there was a first thing that had to exist.
Lex Fridman (1:54:17.140)
But I think there's a lot of logical loopholes
Lex Fridman (1:54:19.020)
in those kind of arguments.
Alien Debate (1:54:19.940)
Well, so God here, meaning the machine
Lex Fridman (1:54:24.140)
that creates, that generates the stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:54:29.340)
But God, so what I was trying to say earlier is that.
Lex Fridman (1:54:31.500)
Isn't that just the universe though?
Alien Debate (1:54:32.660)
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:54:33.500)
Well, yeah, well, but there's a difference between,
Alien Debate (1:54:36.580)
I sort of imagine like a black box, like a machine.
Lex Fridman (1:54:40.420)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (1:54:41.260)
I mean, I would be more comfortable calling that God
Lex Fridman (1:54:44.420)
because it's a machine.
Alien Debate (1:54:45.260)
You go into a room and there's a thing with a button.
Lex Fridman (1:54:47.660)
Yeah, I don't like the great programmer in the sky version.
Alien Debate (1:54:50.460)
Yeah, but if it's more kind of like,
Lex Fridman (1:54:54.420)
I don't like to think of, if you look at a cellular automata,
Alien Debate (1:54:59.820)
if it's the cells and the rules,
Lex Fridman (1:55:03.020)
that doesn't feel like God
Alien Debate (1:55:04.440)
that generates a bunch of stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:55:06.220)
But if there's a machine like that does,
Alien Debate (1:55:10.400)
that runs the cellular automata and set the rules,
Lex Fridman (1:55:13.680)
then that feels like God.
Alien Debate (1:55:15.860)
That sort of, in terms of terminology.
Lex Fridman (1:55:19.220)
So I wonder if there's like a machine
Alien Debate (1:55:21.060)
that's required to generate this universe.
Lex Fridman (1:55:23.260)
That's very sort of important for running this in the lab.
Lex Fridman (1:55:26.820)
So as I said earlier, I think I said this earlier,
Lex Fridman (1:55:29.420)
that I can't remember the phrase, but something like,
Lex Fridman (1:55:32.060)
I mean, does God exist in our universe?
Lex Fridman (1:55:34.060)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:55:35.220)
Where does God exist?
Lex Fridman (1:55:36.980)
God at least exists in abstraction in our minds,
Alien Debate (1:55:40.980)
particularly of people who have religious faith
Lex Fridman (1:55:44.100)
they believe in.
Lex Fridman (1:55:45.140)
But let's then take, but you're talking a little bit more
Lex Fridman (1:55:47.500)
about generics, say, well,
Lex Fridman (1:55:49.140)
is there a mechanism beyond the universe you're calling God?
Lex Fridman (1:55:51.900)
I would say God did not exist at the beginning,
Lex Fridman (1:55:55.920)
but he or she does now.
Lex Fridman (1:55:59.780)
Because I'm saying the mechanism.
Alien Debate (1:56:00.620)
Well, you don't know that he didn't exist in the beginning.
Lex Fridman (1:56:03.460)
So like this could be us in our minds trying to,
Alien Debate (1:56:07.900)
like just listening to gravitational waves,
Lex Fridman (1:56:10.960)
detecting gravitational waves.
Alien Debate (1:56:12.260)
It's the same thing.
Lex Fridman (1:56:13.100)
It's us trying to go back further and further
Alien Debate (1:56:16.900)
into our memories to try to understand the machines
Lex Fridman (1:56:19.900)
that make up, that make up us.
Lex Fridman (1:56:23.260)
And so it's possible that we're trying to grasp
Lex Fridman (1:56:27.100)
at possible kind of what kind of machines could create.
Alien Debate (1:56:32.100)
There's always a tweet.
Lex Fridman (1:56:33.980)
There's always a tweet.
Alien Debate (1:56:36.540)
If the universe is a computer, then God must have built it
Lex Fridman (1:56:39.180)
because computers need creators.
Alien Debate (1:56:41.140)
There you go.
Lex Fridman (1:56:43.180)
And then Joshe Bach replied,
Alien Debate (1:56:46.380)
since there's something rather than nothing,
Lex Fridman (1:56:48.620)
perhaps existence is the default.
Alien Debate (1:56:52.340)
If existence is the default, then many computers exist.
Lex Fridman (1:56:56.340)
Creator gods are necessary computers,
Alien Debate (1:56:59.020)
unnecessarily computers too.
Lex Fridman (1:57:00.740)
I'm very confused by that, but that's an interesting idea
Alien Debate (1:57:03.180)
that existence is the default versus nonexistence.
Lex Fridman (1:57:05.780)
I agree with that, but the rest is not.
Lex Fridman (1:57:07.620)
And then Lee responds,
Lex Fridman (1:57:08.620)
perhaps this reasoning is incomplete.
Alien Debate (1:57:11.820)
That's how scientists talk trash each other
Lex Fridman (1:57:14.580)
on Twitter apparently.
Lex Fridman (1:57:16.060)
Which part don't you agree with?
Lex Fridman (1:57:18.700)
When he said if existence is default,
Alien Debate (1:57:20.620)
then many computers exist,
Lex Fridman (1:57:22.100)
this comes back to the inventor and discovery argument.
Alien Debate (1:57:26.300)
I would say the universe at the beginning wasn't capable
Lex Fridman (1:57:29.740)
of computation because there wasn't enough technology,
Alien Debate (1:57:33.340)
enough states.
Lex Fridman (1:57:34.820)
So what you're saying is if God is a mechanism,
Lex Fridman (1:57:38.520)
so I might actually agree,
Lex Fridman (1:57:40.620)
but then the thing is lots of people see God
Alien Debate (1:57:43.500)
as more than a mechanism.
Lex Fridman (1:57:44.540)
For me, God could be the causal graph in assembly theory
Alien Debate (1:57:47.760)
that creates all the stuff that the memories we know.
Lex Fridman (1:57:50.020)
And the fact that we can even relate to each other
Alien Debate (1:57:52.740)
is because we have the same, we share that heritage.
Lex Fridman (1:57:54.840)
And why we love each other
Alien Debate (1:57:56.820)
or we like to see God in each other
Lex Fridman (1:57:58.700)
is it's just we know we have a shared existence.
Lex Fridman (1:58:04.740)
So if the God is the mechanism
Lex Fridman (1:58:06.540)
that created this whole thing,
Alien Debate (1:58:08.500)
I think a lot of people see God in a religious sense
Lex Fridman (1:58:12.140)
as that mechanism also being able to communicate
Alien Debate (1:58:15.980)
with the objects it creates.
Lex Fridman (1:58:18.020)
And if it's just the mechanism,
Alien Debate (1:58:19.620)
we won't be able to communicate with the objects it creates.
Lex Fridman (1:58:23.540)
It can only create.
Alien Debate (1:58:24.580)
You can't interact with the...
Lex Fridman (1:58:29.060)
Well, there's versions of God that create the universe
Lex Fridman (1:58:30.780)
and then left.
Lex Fridman (1:58:33.620)
Yeah, like spark.
Alien Debate (1:58:35.340)
For some religions.
Lex Fridman (1:58:36.180)
The first spark, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:58:37.820)
But I think I liked your analogy
Lex Fridman (1:58:40.060)
of the machine and the rules, right?
Lex Fridman (1:58:42.300)
But I think part of the problem is,
Lex Fridman (1:58:47.420)
I mean, we have this conception
Alien Debate (1:58:48.620)
that we can disentangle the rules
Lex Fridman (1:58:50.500)
from the physical substrate, right?
Lex Fridman (1:58:51.860)
And that's the whole thing about software and hardware
Lex Fridman (1:58:53.920)
being separate or the way Newton wrote his laws
Alien Debate (1:58:56.140)
that there was some,
Lex Fridman (1:58:57.220)
like they exist outside the universe.
Alien Debate (1:58:58.620)
They're not actually a feature of the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:59:00.060)
They don't have to emerge out of the universe itself.
Lex Fridman (1:59:03.100)
So I think if you merge your two views,
Lex Fridman (1:59:06.500)
then it gets back to the God is the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:59:08.620)
And then I think the deeper question
Lex Fridman (1:59:10.220)
is why does it seem like there's meaning and purpose?
Lex Fridman (1:59:12.900)
And if I think about the features of the universe
Lex Fridman (1:59:16.320)
that give it the most meaning and purpose,
Alien Debate (1:59:17.880)
those are what we would call
Lex Fridman (1:59:19.380)
the living components of the universe.
Lex Fridman (1:59:21.100)
So if you wanted to say God is a physically real thing,
Lex Fridman (1:59:24.180)
which you were saying
Alien Debate (1:59:25.220)
is like an emergent property of our minds,
Lex Fridman (1:59:26.740)
but I would just say the way the universe
Alien Debate (1:59:30.020)
creates meaning and purpose,
Lex Fridman (1:59:31.420)
there is really a physics there.
Alien Debate (1:59:32.860)
It's not like a illusory thing.
Lex Fridman (1:59:35.020)
And that is just what the physics of life is.
Alien Debate (1:59:39.140)
Is it possible that we've forgotten
Lex Fridman (1:59:41.780)
much of the mechanisms that created the universe?
Lex Fridman (1:59:45.660)
So like, so basically, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:59:48.580)
whatever, if God is that mechanism,
Alien Debate (1:59:50.740)
we just leave parts of that behind.
Lex Fridman (1:59:52.340)
Well, but the universe is constantly generating itself.
Lex Fridman (1:59:54.700)
So if God is that mechanism,
Lex Fridman (1:59:56.000)
it would be that that would still be active today.
Alien Debate (1:59:58.340)
I don't, like, I'm agnostic,
Lex Fridman (20:01.540)
So what that means is there are contingency,
Alien Debate (20:04.860)
there are things that happen in the universe get trapped,
Lex Fridman (20:06.740)
these memories then have a causal effect on the future.
Lex Fridman (20:10.140)
And then when you get those concentrated in a machine,
Lex Fridman (20:12.540)
and you're actually able in real time,
Alien Debate (20:14.260)
able to integrate the past, the present with the future,
Lex Fridman (20:19.260)
and do stuff, that's when you are most alive.
Alien Debate (20:22.620)
You being the machine.
Lex Fridman (20:23.820)
Yes.
Alien Debate (20:24.660)
Wait a minute, why is the object,
Lex Fridman (20:26.980)
so one of the ways to define life,
Alien Debate (20:29.380)
that Sarah said, is simple machines
Lex Fridman (20:31.700)
creating complex machines.
Lex Fridman (20:34.180)
So there's a million questions there.
Lex Fridman (20:37.340)
So how the hell does a simple machine
Lex Fridman (20:39.540)
create a complex machine?
Lex Fridman (20:41.260)
By mutation.
Lex Fridman (20:42.860)
So this is what we were talking about at the beginning,
Lex Fridman (20:44.260)
is you have the minimum replicator, so a molecule.
Lex Fridman (20:46.180)
So this is what I was trying to convince Sarah
Lex Fridman (20:47.740)
of the mechanism get there years ago, I think,
Lex Fridman (20:49.780)
but then you've been building on it and saying,
Lex Fridman (20:52.580)
you have a molecule that can copy itself,
Lex Fridman (20:55.780)
but then there has to be some variability,
Lex Fridman (20:58.300)
otherwise it's not gonna get more functional.
Lex Fridman (21:00.340)
So you need to add bits on.
Lex Fridman (21:02.180)
So you have a minimum molecule that can copy itself,
Lex Fridman (21:04.700)
but then it can add bits on,
Lex Fridman (21:05.820)
and that can be copied as well,
Lex Fridman (21:07.140)
and those add ons can give you additional function,
Lex Fridman (21:12.500)
to be able to acquire more stuff to exist.
Lex Fridman (21:15.780)
So existence is weird,
Lex Fridman (21:18.260)
but the fact that there is existence is why there is life,
Lex Fridman (21:21.180)
and that's why I realized a few days ago
Lex Fridman (21:23.660)
that there must be, that's why alien life
Alien Debate (21:25.420)
must be everywhere, because there is existence.
Lex Fridman (21:28.780)
Is there a conservation of cheeky stuff happening?
Lex Fridman (21:33.700)
So how can you keep injecting more complex things?
Lex Fridman (21:38.860)
Doesn't the machine that creates the object
Lex Fridman (21:41.300)
need to be as or more powerful than the things it creates?
Lex Fridman (21:48.420)
So how can you get complexity from simplicity?
Lex Fridman (21:51.740)
So the way you get complexity from simplicity
Lex Fridman (21:54.860)
is that you, I'm just making this up,
Lex Fridman (21:57.660)
but this is kind of my notion,
Lex Fridman (21:59.020)
and you have a large volume of stuff,
Lex Fridman (22:00.420)
so you're able to get seeds, if you like,
Lex Fridman (22:03.420)
random cues from the environment.
Lex Fridman (22:05.660)
So you just use those objects
Lex Fridman (22:07.460)
to basically write on your tape, ones and zeros, whatever.
Lex Fridman (22:11.740)
And that is necessarily rich, complex, okay?
Lex Fridman (22:17.700)
But it has a low assembliness,
Lex Fridman (22:19.660)
but even though it has a high assembly number,
Lex Fridman (22:21.380)
we can talk about that.
Lex Fridman (22:22.580)
But then when you start to then integrate
Lex Fridman (22:24.300)
that all into a smaller volume, as over time,
Lex Fridman (22:28.700)
and you become more autonomous,
Lex Fridman (22:31.220)
you then make the transition.
Alien Debate (22:33.020)
I don't know what you think about that.
Lex Fridman (22:34.740)
I think the easiest way to think about it is actually,
Alien Debate (22:38.900)
which I know is a concept you hate, but I also hate,
Lex Fridman (22:40.900)
which is entropy, but people are more familiar with entropy
Alien Debate (22:43.220)
than what we talk about in assembly theory.
Lex Fridman (22:45.380)
And also the idea that, like, say physics as we know it
Alien Debate (22:50.020)
involves objects that don't exist across time,
Lex Fridman (22:52.740)
or as we would say, low memory objects.
Lex Fridman (22:55.660)
So one of the key distinctions that is...
Lex Fridman (22:58.380)
Low memory objects.
Alien Debate (22:59.700)
Yeah, so physics is all...
Lex Fridman (23:01.220)
Physicists are low memory objects.
Alien Debate (23:02.660)
Low memory objects.
Lex Fridman (23:05.020)
Physicists are creators of low memory objects
Alien Debate (23:08.060)
or manipulators of low memory objects.
Lex Fridman (23:10.220)
Absolutely.
Alien Debate (23:11.060)
It's a very nice way of putting it.
Lex Fridman (23:13.180)
Okay, sorry, go ahead.
Alien Debate (23:14.020)
Yeah, no, it's okay.
Lex Fridman (23:14.860)
Sorry to keep interrupting.
Alien Debate (23:15.700)
No, no, no, it's fine.
Lex Fridman (23:16.780)
I like it too, it's very funny.
Lex Fridman (23:18.820)
But I think it's a good way of phrasing it
Lex Fridman (23:20.380)
because I think this kind of idea we have
Alien Debate (23:22.260)
in assembly theory is that, you know,
Lex Fridman (23:25.420)
physics as we know it has basically removed time
Alien Debate (23:27.580)
as being a physical observable of an object.
Lex Fridman (23:31.340)
And the argument I would make is that
Alien Debate (23:33.580)
when you look at things like water bottles or us,
Lex Fridman (23:36.100)
we're actually things that exist
Alien Debate (23:38.340)
that have a large extent in time.
Lex Fridman (23:40.940)
So we actually have a physical size and time,
Lex Fridman (23:44.380)
and we measure that with something called
Lex Fridman (23:46.540)
the assembly index in molecules,
Lex Fridman (23:49.460)
but presumably everyone should have sort of a,
Lex Fridman (23:53.220)
do you want to explain what assembly?
Lex Fridman (23:54.940)
Yeah, let's, you know what?
Lex Fridman (23:56.380)
Let's step back and start at the beginning.
Lex Fridman (23:59.500)
What is assembly theory?
Lex Fridman (24:01.020)
Lee sent me some slides.
Alien Debate (24:02.140)
There's a big sexy paper coming out probably.
Lex Fridman (24:05.940)
Maybe, I don't know.
Alien Debate (24:07.420)
We've almost finished it.
Lex Fridman (24:10.180)
Almost, almost finished it.
Alien Debate (24:11.500)
That's also a summary of science.
Lex Fridman (24:13.540)
We're almost done.
Alien Debate (24:14.740)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (24:15.580)
Well, no, no, we're almost done.
Alien Debate (24:16.420)
It's the history of science.
Lex Fridman (24:17.580)
We are ready to start an interesting discussion
Alien Debate (24:20.460)
with our peers.
Lex Fridman (24:21.820)
Right.
Alien Debate (24:22.660)
You're the machine that created the object,
Lex Fridman (24:24.260)
and we'll see what the object takes us.
Lex Fridman (24:26.220)
All right, so what is assembly theory?
Lex Fridman (24:29.020)
Yeah, well, I think the easiest way
Alien Debate (24:30.780)
for people to understand it is to think about
Lex Fridman (24:33.780)
assembly and molecules,
Alien Debate (24:35.020)
although the theory is very general.
Lex Fridman (24:36.540)
It doesn't just apply to molecules.
Lex Fridman (24:38.140)
And this was really Lee's insight,
Lex Fridman (24:39.460)
so it's kind of funny that I'm explaining it, but.
Alien Debate (24:42.260)
I'll mark you.
Lex Fridman (24:43.300)
Okay, all right, I'm ready, I'm ready.
Alien Debate (24:45.620)
You have to tell me where I get the check marks minus,
Lex Fridman (24:47.460)
but.
Alien Debate (24:48.300)
It's your theory as well.
Lex Fridman (24:49.140)
Yeah, I know.
Lex Fridman (24:49.980)
But imagine a molecule,
Lex Fridman (24:51.740)
and then you can break the molecule apart
Alien Debate (24:54.380)
into elementary building blocks.
Lex Fridman (24:55.820)
They happen to be bonds.
Lex Fridman (24:57.100)
And then you can think of all the ways,
Lex Fridman (24:58.660)
for molecular assembly theory,
Alien Debate (24:59.900)
you can think of all the ways
Lex Fridman (25:00.820)
of building up the original molecule.
Lex Fridman (25:02.380)
So there's all these paths that you can assemble it.
Lex Fridman (25:04.980)
And the sort of rules of assembly is
Alien Debate (25:06.740)
you can use pieces that have been generated already.
Lex Fridman (25:09.460)
So it has this kind of recursive property to it.
Lex Fridman (25:11.900)
And so that's where kind of memory
Lex Fridman (25:13.580)
comes into assembly theory.
Lex Fridman (25:15.100)
And then the assembly index is
Lex Fridman (25:17.740)
the shortest path in that space.
Lex Fridman (25:19.460)
So it's supposed to be the minimal amount of history
Lex Fridman (25:21.820)
that the universe has to undergo
Alien Debate (25:23.300)
in order to assemble that particular object.
Lex Fridman (25:25.580)
And the reason that this is significant is
Alien Debate (25:27.900)
we figured out how to measure that
Lex Fridman (25:30.580)
with a mass spec in the lab.
Lex Fridman (25:33.300)
And we had this conjecture
Lex Fridman (25:35.340)
that if that minimal number of steps
Alien Debate (25:36.940)
was sufficiently large,
Lex Fridman (25:38.540)
it would indicate that you required a machine
Alien Debate (25:40.500)
or a system that had information
Lex Fridman (25:41.740)
about how to assemble that specific object
Alien Debate (25:43.380)
because the combinatorial space of possibilities
Lex Fridman (25:45.180)
is getting exponentially large
Alien Debate (25:47.340)
as the assembly index is increasing.
Lex Fridman (25:49.100)
So it's just, sorry to interrupt,
Lex Fridman (25:50.860)
so that means there's a sufficiently high assembly index
Lex Fridman (25:55.820)
that if observed in an object
Alien Debate (25:59.660)
is an indicator that something lifelike created it
Lex Fridman (26:04.460)
or is the object itself lifelike?
Alien Debate (26:07.500)
Both.
Lex Fridman (26:08.540)
But you might want to make the distinction
Alien Debate (26:10.100)
that a water bottle is not life,
Lex Fridman (26:12.580)
but it would still be a signature
Alien Debate (26:14.660)
that you were in that domain of physics
Lex Fridman (26:16.660)
and that I might be alive.
Lex Fridman (26:19.900)
So there will be potentially a lot of arguments
Lex Fridman (26:22.140)
about where the line, at which assembly index
Alien Debate (26:26.820)
does interesting stuff start to happen.
Lex Fridman (26:28.860)
The point is we can make all the arguments,
Lex Fridman (26:30.620)
but it should be experimentally observable
Lex Fridman (26:32.260)
and Lee can talk more about that part of it.
Lex Fridman (26:34.220)
But the point I want to make about it is
Lex Fridman (26:36.620)
there was always this intuition that I had
Alien Debate (26:39.180)
that there should be some complexity threshold
Lex Fridman (26:41.260)
in the universe above which you would start to say
Alien Debate (26:44.060)
whatever physics governs life actually becomes operative.
Lex Fridman (26:46.900)
And I think about it a little bit
Alien Debate (26:48.140)
like we have Planck's constant,
Lex Fridman (26:50.460)
and we have the fine structure constant.
Lex Fridman (26:52.420)
And then this sort of assembly threshold
Lex Fridman (26:54.700)
is basically another sort of potentially constant of nature.
Alien Debate (26:59.940)
It might depend on the specific features of the system,
Lex Fridman (27:02.420)
but which we debate about sometimes.
Lex Fridman (27:04.580)
But then when you're past that,
Lex Fridman (27:07.780)
you have to have some other explanation
Alien Debate (27:10.140)
than the current explanations we have in physics,
Lex Fridman (27:11.700)
because now you're in high memory.
Alien Debate (27:15.140)
The things actually require time for them to exist
Lex Fridman (27:18.460)
and time becomes a physical variable.
Alien Debate (27:20.260)
The path to the creation of the object is the memory.
Lex Fridman (27:23.780)
So you need to consider that.
Alien Debate (27:25.780)
Yeah, but the point is that's a feature of the object.
Lex Fridman (27:29.540)
So when I think of all the things in this room,
Alien Debate (27:34.580)
we see the projection of them as a water bottle,
Lex Fridman (27:37.580)
but assembly theory would say that this is a causal graph
Alien Debate (27:39.940)
of all the ways the universe can create this thing.
Lex Fridman (27:41.820)
That's what it is as an object.
Lex Fridman (27:43.460)
And we're all interacting, a causal graph.
Lex Fridman (27:45.620)
And most of the creativity in the biosphere
Alien Debate (27:47.460)
is because a lot of the objects that exist now
Lex Fridman (27:50.020)
are huge in their structure across time.
Alien Debate (27:52.660)
Four billion years of evolution to get to us.
Lex Fridman (27:55.420)
Is it possible to look at me
Lex Fridman (27:57.580)
and infer the history that led to me?
Lex Fridman (28:01.500)
If you, you as an individual might be hard.
Alien Debate (28:04.940)
You as a representative of a population of objects
Lex Fridman (28:09.180)
that have high assembly
Alien Debate (28:10.220)
with similar causal history and structure
Lex Fridman (28:12.340)
that you can communicate with, i.e. other humans,
Alien Debate (28:14.740)
you can infer a lot probably.
Lex Fridman (28:15.820)
Yeah, also with them.
Alien Debate (28:17.020)
Which we do genomically even.
Lex Fridman (28:18.380)
I mean, it's not like,
Alien Debate (28:19.580)
we have a lot of information in us,
Lex Fridman (28:21.060)
we can reconstruct histories from.
Alien Debate (28:23.100)
Assembly is saying something slightly deeper.
Lex Fridman (28:24.660)
Yeah, one thing to add.
Alien Debate (28:25.540)
I mean, it's not just about the object,
Lex Fridman (28:26.980)
but the objects occur
Lex Fridman (28:28.140)
and not just objects with high assembly number,
Lex Fridman (28:30.260)
because you can have random things
Alien Debate (28:32.180)
that have a high assembly number,
Lex Fridman (28:33.020)
but they must have,
Alien Debate (28:34.260)
there must be a number of identical copies.
Lex Fridman (28:36.500)
So you know you're getting away from the random,
Alien Debate (28:38.940)
because you could take a snapshot.
Lex Fridman (28:40.180)
This is why, it's not I hate entropy,
Alien Debate (28:42.140)
I love entropy when used correctly,
Lex Fridman (28:44.420)
but it's about the problem of entropy,
Alien Debate (28:46.140)
you have to have a labeler.
Lex Fridman (28:47.740)
And so you can label the beginning and the end,
Alien Debate (28:50.700)
the start and the finish, you know,
Lex Fridman (28:52.340)
where what you can do in assembly is say,
Alien Debate (28:53.820)
oh, I have a number of objects in abundance.
Lex Fridman (28:56.460)
They all have these features.
Lex Fridman (28:58.100)
And then you can infer.
Lex Fridman (28:59.980)
And one of the things that we debated a lot,
Alien Debate (29:01.860)
particularly during lockdown,
Lex Fridman (29:02.940)
because I almost went insane trying to crush the,
Alien Debate (29:05.500)
produce the assembly equation.
Lex Fridman (29:06.860)
So we came up with the assembly equation.
Alien Debate (29:08.460)
I had, just imagine this.
Lex Fridman (29:09.980)
So you have a string where,
Alien Debate (29:13.860)
actually it makes me sick trying to remember it.
Lex Fridman (29:16.060)
It was so, it did my head in for a long time.
Alien Debate (29:18.580)
Yeah, because I couldn't,
Lex Fridman (29:21.700)
so if you just have a string of say words,
Alien Debate (29:23.900)
say, you know, a series of words, series of letters.
Lex Fridman (29:27.060)
So you just have A, A, A, B, B, B, C, C, C, D, D, D.
Lex Fridman (29:29.940)
And you find that object and you just have four A's,
Lex Fridman (29:32.500)
four B's, four C's, four D's together, boom.
Alien Debate (29:35.340)
Then, and that you measured that.
Lex Fridman (29:38.060)
So you physically measured that string of letters.
Alien Debate (29:40.700)
Then what you could do is you can infer sub graphs
Lex Fridman (29:44.260)
of maybe the four A's, the four B's,
Alien Debate (29:46.740)
the four C's and the four C's,
Lex Fridman (29:47.780)
but you don't see them in the real world.
Alien Debate (29:50.060)
You just infer them.
Lex Fridman (29:51.300)
And I really got stuck with that
Alien Debate (29:53.860)
because there's a problem to try and work out
Lex Fridman (29:55.740)
what's the difference between a long,
Alien Debate (29:57.700)
you know, a physical object
Lex Fridman (29:59.660)
and this assembly space of the objects
Lex Fridman (2:00:00.260)
but if I recall the things I believe in God
Lex Fridman (2:00:05.100)
in the way that some people talk about God,
Alien Debate (2:00:07.620)
I would say that God is, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:00:09.940)
like in the universe now, it's not an absent thing.
Lex Fridman (2:00:16.260)
So I think there's a mislabeling here
Lex Fridman (2:00:18.020)
because you're, I mean, I mean, I'm a professional idiot,
Alien Debate (2:00:25.060)
actually, but, but, um.
Lex Fridman (2:00:27.660)
You should put that on your CV.
Alien Debate (2:00:29.220)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:00:30.060)
Professionally, not recreationally or amateur,
Lex Fridman (2:00:33.820)
but professionally, you're paid for it.
Lex Fridman (2:00:36.300)
I would say if you were talking about God,
Alien Debate (2:00:38.300)
I mean, again, I'm way out, way out of my depth here,
Lex Fridman (2:00:40.260)
and I almost feel uncomfortable.
Alien Debate (2:00:41.620)
Yeah, but I feel quite uncomfortable articulating,
Lex Fridman (2:00:43.820)
but I'll try.
Alien Debate (2:00:45.020)
For me, a lot of people that think of God as a consciousness
Lex Fridman (2:00:47.700)
and a reasoning entity that actually has causal power,
Lex Fridman (2:00:52.540)
and you're, and so you're, it's like,
Lex Fridman (2:00:56.220)
then you're saying like gravity could be God
Alien Debate (2:00:57.860)
or time could be God.
Lex Fridman (2:00:58.820)
I mean, I think for me, for my conception of time
Alien Debate (2:01:02.820)
is probably as fundamental as God
Lex Fridman (2:01:04.620)
because it gave rise to human intelligence and consciousness
Alien Debate (2:01:07.700)
in which we can have this abstract notion of God.
Lex Fridman (2:01:12.060)
So I think that you're maybe talking about God
Alien Debate (2:01:15.420)
in a very mechanistic, kind of unsophisticated sense,
Lex Fridman (2:01:19.580)
whereas other people say that God is more sophisticated
Lex Fridman (2:01:21.740)
and got all this, you know, feelings and love
Lex Fridman (2:01:23.620)
and, you know, and this abstracting ability.
Lex Fridman (2:01:27.060)
So is that what, or do you mean that?
Lex Fridman (2:01:29.660)
Do you mean God as in this conscious entity
Lex Fridman (2:01:32.420)
that decided to flick the universe into existence?
Lex Fridman (2:01:36.100)
Well, one of the features that God would have
Alien Debate (2:01:40.540)
is the ability to flick the universe into existence.
Lex Fridman (2:01:46.740)
I, you know, like Windows 95,
Alien Debate (2:01:49.180)
I don't know if God is Windows 95 or Windows XP
Lex Fridman (2:01:52.140)
or Windows 10, I don't know the full feature set.
Lex Fridman (2:01:55.620)
So at the very least, you have to flick the universe
Lex Fridman (2:01:58.580)
into existence, and then other features might include
Alien Debate (2:02:03.220)
ability to interact with that universe in interesting ways,
Lex Fridman (2:02:07.640)
and then how do you interact with the universe
Lex Fridman (2:02:11.020)
in interesting ways?
Lex Fridman (2:02:11.860)
You have to be able to speak the language
Alien Debate (2:02:13.300)
of its different components.
Lex Fridman (2:02:15.140)
So in order to interact with humans,
Alien Debate (2:02:17.620)
you have to know how to act humanlike.
Lex Fridman (2:02:24.260)
So I don't know, but it seems like
Alien Debate (2:02:31.420)
whatever mechanism created the universe
Lex Fridman (2:02:33.660)
might want to also generate local pockets of mechanisms
Alien Debate (2:02:40.780)
that can interact with that.
Lex Fridman (2:02:42.500)
Like inject.
Lex Fridman (2:02:44.380)
Like God was lonely?
Lex Fridman (2:02:46.660)
Yeah, I mean, it could be just a teenager
Lex Fridman (2:02:49.180)
and another just playing a video game.
Lex Fridman (2:02:51.740)
Yeah, maybe.
Alien Debate (2:02:52.580)
Well, I was gonna say, I mean, I don't,
Lex Fridman (2:02:54.460)
so this is referring to our origin of life engine.
Alien Debate (2:02:57.700)
It's like, I don't believe in God,
Lex Fridman (2:02:59.160)
but that doesn't mean I don't wanna be one.
Alien Debate (2:03:01.580)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:03:02.420)
I don't wanna make a universe and make a life form,
Lex Fridman (2:03:04.420)
but that may be rude to people who have
Lex Fridman (2:03:07.420)
dear religious beliefs.
Lex Fridman (2:03:08.580)
What I mean by that is if we are able to create
Lex Fridman (2:03:13.500)
an entirely new life form, different chemistry,
Lex Fridman (2:03:16.460)
different culture, what does it make us?
Lex Fridman (2:03:20.980)
By that definition, it makes us gods, right?
Alien Debate (2:03:23.260)
Well, there is.
Lex Fridman (2:03:24.100)
I mean, like when you have children,
Alien Debate (2:03:24.940)
you're like one of the magical things of that
Lex Fridman (2:03:28.140)
is you're kind of mini gods.
Alien Debate (2:03:29.620)
I mean, first of all, from a child's perspective,
Lex Fridman (2:03:32.940)
parents are gods for quite a while.
Lex Fridman (2:03:34.900)
And then, I mean, in the positive sense,
Lex Fridman (2:03:38.720)
there's a magic to that.
Alien Debate (2:03:39.560)
That's why I love robotics,
Lex Fridman (2:03:41.220)
is you instill life into something,
Lex Fridman (2:03:43.380)
and that makes you feel godlike in a sort of positive way.
Lex Fridman (2:03:50.340)
Being a creator is a positive feeling.
Alien Debate (2:03:51.620)
Creator, yeah, exactly, on a small scale.
Lex Fridman (2:03:54.280)
And then God would be a creator
Alien Debate (2:03:57.060)
at the largest possible scale, I suppose.
Lex Fridman (2:03:59.700)
Okay, you mentioned offline the Assembletron.
Alien Debate (2:04:05.260)
Assembletron.
Lex Fridman (2:04:06.100)
Assembletron.
Alien Debate (2:04:07.140)
Yep.
Lex Fridman (2:04:08.220)
What's an Assembletron?
Alien Debate (2:04:09.460)
This is an early idea of something you're thinking about.
Lex Fridman (2:04:12.900)
So Sarah's team, well, I think Sarah's team
Alien Debate (2:04:15.580)
are interested in using AI to understand life.
Lex Fridman (2:04:19.420)
My team is, and I'm wondering if we could apply
Alien Debate (2:04:23.560)
the principles of assembly theory,
Lex Fridman (2:04:25.420)
that is the causal structure that you get
Alien Debate (2:04:28.420)
with assembly theory, and hybridize it,
Lex Fridman (2:04:30.940)
and make a new type of neuron, if you like.
Alien Debate (2:04:34.740)
I mean, there are causal neural networks out there,
Lex Fridman (2:04:37.940)
but they are not quite the architecture
Alien Debate (2:04:40.580)
of what I would like.
Lex Fridman (2:04:41.940)
I would like to associate memory bits with,
Alien Debate (2:04:45.820)
basically, I'd like to make a,
Lex Fridman (2:04:47.580)
rather than having an ASIC for neural networks,
Lex Fridman (2:04:50.380)
I wanna make an ASIC for assembly networks, right?
Lex Fridman (2:04:54.720)
And.
Lex Fridman (2:04:56.100)
So can you say that again?
Lex Fridman (2:04:57.100)
Assembly networks.
Lex Fridman (2:05:00.660)
So what is a thing with an input and an output,
Lex Fridman (2:05:05.460)
and it's like a neural network type of thing,
Lex Fridman (2:05:07.500)
what does it do exactly?
Lex Fridman (2:05:08.340)
What's the input, what's the output?
Lex Fridman (2:05:09.720)
So in this case, so if you're talking about
Lex Fridman (2:05:11.980)
a general neural network, I mean,
Alien Debate (2:05:13.540)
in general neural network, you can train it
Lex Fridman (2:05:15.700)
on any sort of data, right, depending on the framework,
Alien Debate (2:05:20.260)
whether it's like text, or image data, or whatnot.
Lex Fridman (2:05:25.940)
And that's fine, but there's no causal structure
Alien Debate (2:05:30.100)
associated with that data.
Lex Fridman (2:05:31.340)
Now just imagine, rather than, you know,
Alien Debate (2:05:33.880)
let's say we're gonna classify a difference
Lex Fridman (2:05:35.100)
between cat and dog, right?
Alien Debate (2:05:36.100)
Classic cat and dog neural network.
Lex Fridman (2:05:38.040)
What about if the system understood the assembly space,
Alien Debate (2:05:42.340)
it created the cat and the dog,
Lex Fridman (2:05:44.980)
and rather than guessing what was happening,
Lex Fridman (2:05:47.920)
and training on those images,
Lex Fridman (2:05:49.420)
and not understanding those features,
Alien Debate (2:05:53.860)
you almost like, you could imagine doing a,
Lex Fridman (2:05:56.620)
going back a step and doing, and training,
Alien Debate (2:05:59.300)
going back a step and doing the training,
Lex Fridman (2:06:01.020)
going back a step, back a step, back a step,
Lex Fridman (2:06:02.860)
and I wonder if that is actually the origin of intelligence,
Lex Fridman (2:06:06.620)
or how we'll crack intelligence.
Alien Debate (2:06:08.900)
Because we need to, because we'll create
Lex Fridman (2:06:11.820)
the entire graph of events, and be able to kind of
Alien Debate (2:06:17.340)
look at cause and effect across those graphs.
Lex Fridman (2:06:19.140)
I'm explaining it really badly,
Lex Fridman (2:06:20.420)
but it's a gene of an idea, and I'm guessing
Lex Fridman (2:06:23.700)
very smart, very rich people in AI are already doing this.
Alien Debate (2:06:28.860)
Trying to not generate cats and dogs,
Lex Fridman (2:06:31.480)
but trying to generate things of high assembly index.
Alien Debate (2:06:35.060)
Yeah, and I think, and also using causal graphs
Lex Fridman (2:06:39.340)
in neural networks, and machine learning, and deep learning,
Alien Debate (2:06:42.820)
maybe building a new architecture.
Lex Fridman (2:06:44.300)
I'm just wondering, is there something
Alien Debate (2:06:45.960)
we can get out of assembly theory
Lex Fridman (2:06:47.100)
that allows us to rebuild current machine learning
Lex Fridman (2:06:49.940)
architectures to give causation more cheaply?
Lex Fridman (2:06:54.940)
I mean, I don't know if that's what you,
Alien Debate (2:06:56.540)
we've been inventing this for a little while,
Lex Fridman (2:06:58.240)
but we're trying to finish the theory paper first
Alien Debate (2:07:00.500)
before we do anything else.
Lex Fridman (2:07:01.580)
Yeah, you also wanna have, say, goal directed behavior
Alien Debate (2:07:05.420)
in neural networks, then assembly theory
Lex Fridman (2:07:07.340)
is a good framework for doing that.
Alien Debate (2:07:08.580)
Daniel's been thinking about that a lot.
Lex Fridman (2:07:10.500)
And I think it's a really interesting idea
Alien Debate (2:07:12.300)
that you can map concepts from how neural networks learn
Lex Fridman (2:07:16.180)
to thinking about goal directed behavior
Alien Debate (2:07:18.780)
as a learning process.
Lex Fridman (2:07:20.020)
That you're learning a specific goal.
Alien Debate (2:07:21.300)
The universe is learning a goal
Lex Fridman (2:07:22.580)
when it generates a particular structure,
Lex Fridman (2:07:24.180)
and that you can map that physical structure
Lex Fridman (2:07:25.980)
in a neural network.
Lex Fridman (2:07:29.100)
What's the goal?
Lex Fridman (2:07:31.780)
Well, in a neural network, you're designing the goal.
Alien Debate (2:07:34.180)
In biology, I mean, people are not supposed to use
Lex Fridman (2:07:39.420)
teleological language in biology, which is ridiculous,
Alien Debate (2:07:41.780)
but, because goals are real things.
Lex Fridman (2:07:45.140)
They're just post selected.
Lex Fridman (2:07:47.300)
So you can talk about goals after the fact.
Lex Fridman (2:07:51.060)
Once a goal emerges in the universe,
Alien Debate (2:07:52.740)
that physical entity has a goal.
Lex Fridman (2:07:54.740)
But Lee and I came up with a test for,
Alien Debate (2:07:57.600)
like a Turing test for goal directed behavior
Lex Fridman (2:08:00.380)
based on the idea of assembly.
Alien Debate (2:08:01.940)
We have to formalize it still,
Lex Fridman (2:08:03.000)
but I would like to write a paper on it.
Lex Fridman (2:08:04.540)
But the basic idea is if you had two systems
Lex Fridman (2:08:09.140)
that were completely equivalent,
Alien Debate (2:08:11.080)
you know, like in the instantaneous,
Lex Fridman (2:08:14.400)
like physical experimental setup.
Lex Fridman (2:08:16.080)
So Lee has to figure out how to do this.
Lex Fridman (2:08:18.280)
But there was something that would be different
Alien Debate (2:08:19.980)
in their future.
Lex Fridman (2:08:21.720)
And there was a symmetry breaking you observe
Alien Debate (2:08:23.520)
in the present based on that possibility
Lex Fridman (2:08:25.320)
of that future outcome.
Alien Debate (2:08:26.560)
Then you could say that that system
Lex Fridman (2:08:28.240)
had some representation of some kind of goal in mind
Alien Debate (2:08:31.000)
about what it wanted to do in the future.
Lex Fridman (2:08:33.080)
And I, so goals are interesting
Alien Debate (2:08:35.820)
because they don't exist as instantaneous things.
Lex Fridman (2:08:38.840)
They exist across time,
Alien Debate (2:08:40.040)
which is one of the reasons that assembly theories
Lex Fridman (2:08:42.720)
may be more naturally able to account
Alien Debate (2:08:45.880)
for the existence of goals.
Lex Fridman (2:08:48.220)
So goals are, they only exist in time,
Alien Debate (2:08:52.280)
or they manifest themselves in time
Lex Fridman (2:08:55.160)
through, you said, symmetry breaking.
Lex Fridman (2:08:58.660)
So it's almost like, imagine,
Lex Fridman (2:09:01.840)
like if representations in your mind are real, right?
Lex Fridman (2:09:05.560)
And you can imagine future possibilities,
Lex Fridman (2:09:08.120)
but imagine everything else is physically equivalent.
Lex Fridman (2:09:11.080)
And the only thing that you actually change
Lex Fridman (2:09:13.160)
your decision based on is what you model
Alien Debate (2:09:15.480)
as being the future outcome.
Lex Fridman (2:09:17.200)
Then somehow that representation in your mind
Alien Debate (2:09:20.200)
of the future outcome becomes causal
Lex Fridman (2:09:21.680)
to what you're doing now.
Lex Fridman (2:09:22.520)
So there's kind of like retro causal effect,
Lex Fridman (2:09:24.520)
but it's not actually retro causal.
Alien Debate (2:09:25.960)
It's just that your assembly space
Lex Fridman (2:09:28.560)
is actually includes those possibilities
Alien Debate (2:09:31.680)
as part of the structure.
Lex Fridman (2:09:32.640)
It's just, you're not observing all the features
Alien Debate (2:09:34.160)
of the assembly space in the current moment.
Lex Fridman (2:09:36.080)
Or the possibilities exist, but they don't become a goal
Alien Debate (2:09:40.560)
until they're realized.
Lex Fridman (2:09:42.120)
So one of the features of assembly space
Alien Debate (2:09:44.140)
that's super interesting,
Lex Fridman (2:09:45.560)
and it's easier to envision with like Legos, for example,
Alien Debate (2:09:48.960)
is if you're thinking about an assembly space,
Lex Fridman (2:09:50.800)
you can't observe the entire assembly space
Alien Debate (2:09:52.880)
in any instant in time.
Lex Fridman (2:09:54.020)
So if you imagine a stack of Legos,
Lex Fridman (2:09:55.800)
and you wanna look at the assembly space of a stack of Legos,
Lex Fridman (2:09:58.740)
you have to break the Legos apart,
Lex Fridman (2:10:00.600)
and then you look at all the possible ways
Lex Fridman (2:10:03.200)
of building up the original object.
Lex Fridman (2:10:05.560)
So now you have in your mind
Lex Fridman (2:10:06.880)
the goal of building that object,
Lex Fridman (2:10:08.480)
and you have all the possible ways of doing it.
Lex Fridman (2:10:10.720)
And those are actual physical features of that object,
Lex Fridman (2:10:13.120)
but that object doesn't always exist.
Lex Fridman (2:10:14.800)
What exists is the possibility of generating it.
Lex Fridman (2:10:17.600)
And the possibilities are always infinite.
Lex Fridman (2:10:20.460)
Well, for that particular object,
Alien Debate (2:10:22.760)
like it has a well defined assembly space.
Lex Fridman (2:10:25.280)
And I guess what I'm saying is that object
Alien Debate (2:10:27.220)
is the assembly space,
Lex Fridman (2:10:28.840)
but you actually have to unpack that object across time
Alien Debate (2:10:31.760)
to view that feature of it.
Lex Fridman (2:10:33.280)
It's only an observable across time.
Alien Debate (2:10:35.160)
The term goal is such a important
Lex Fridman (2:10:39.360)
and difficult to explain concept, right?
Alien Debate (2:10:41.960)
Because what you want is a way is like,
Lex Fridman (2:10:44.580)
I think only conscious beings can have conscious goals.
Alien Debate (2:10:49.240)
Everything else is doing selection.
Lex Fridman (2:10:51.600)
And but selection does invent goals.
Lex Fridman (2:10:53.560)
And in a way that the way that biology reinterprets the past
Lex Fridman (2:10:58.560)
in the present is kind of helped you to understand
Lex Fridman (2:11:03.520)
there was a goal in the past now, right?
Lex Fridman (2:11:05.400)
It's kind of like goals only exist back in time.
Lex Fridman (2:11:09.280)
So first of all, only conscious beings
Lex Fridman (2:11:14.400)
can have conscious goals.
Alien Debate (2:11:17.280)
I'm not even gonna touch that one.
Lex Fridman (2:11:19.200)
Why?
Alien Debate (2:11:21.720)
Go for it, come on.
Lex Fridman (2:11:23.320)
The line between conscious goals
Lex Fridman (2:11:25.200)
and non conscious goals, exactly.
Lex Fridman (2:11:28.880)
And also maybe just on top of that,
Alien Debate (2:11:31.080)
you said a Turing test for goal directed behavior.
Lex Fridman (2:11:33.960)
What does a Turing test potentially look like?
Lex Fridman (2:11:39.100)
So if you've got two objects, we were thinking about this.
Lex Fridman (2:11:40.920)
So we actually got some funding
Alien Debate (2:11:42.800)
to work to go on two teams.
Lex Fridman (2:11:43.840)
So I'm trying to do, and part of this
Alien Debate (2:11:46.200)
is I'm trying to do a bit of theory
Lex Fridman (2:11:47.720)
and Sarah is teaching me a bit of theory
Lex Fridman (2:11:49.560)
and Sarah is trying to design experiments
Lex Fridman (2:11:51.520)
and I'm teaching experiments.
Alien Debate (2:11:52.360)
Cause I think it's really good for us to have that.
Lex Fridman (2:11:53.760)
So say, when would a, so that's good.
Alien Debate (2:11:58.540)
I like this, I'm sure we're using Dan Dennett essay.
Lex Fridman (2:12:02.040)
Yeah, and I can explain why we wouldn't want to call it
Alien Debate (2:12:04.040)
a Turing test after, but Dan Dennett.
Lex Fridman (2:12:05.840)
So Dan Dennett wrote this really nice essay
Alien Debate (2:12:07.840)
about herding cats and freewill inflation.
Lex Fridman (2:12:12.720)
The title is so brilliant.
Lex Fridman (2:12:14.040)
That's the actual title?
Lex Fridman (2:12:14.880)
That's the title, yeah.
Alien Debate (2:12:15.700)
Herding cats and freewill inflation.
Lex Fridman (2:12:18.120)
Yeah, something like that.
Alien Debate (2:12:19.040)
I mean, it's not, maybe not.
Lex Fridman (2:12:20.320)
And so.
Alien Debate (2:12:21.160)
No, I think that's right.
Lex Fridman (2:12:22.000)
So if you've got a, let's imagine you've got two objects
Lex Fridman (2:12:23.880)
on a hillside, okay?
Lex Fridman (2:12:26.040)
And it just happens to be a snowy hill
Lex Fridman (2:12:28.160)
and let's just say you see an object
Lex Fridman (2:12:29.640)
get rolling down the hill.
Alien Debate (2:12:31.480)
Or you, and the rock rolls down the hill
Lex Fridman (2:12:34.680)
but the start goes to the end.
Lex Fridman (2:12:36.720)
How do you know that object's had a goal?
Lex Fridman (2:12:38.000)
Now you unveil the object
Lex Fridman (2:12:39.560)
and you'll see it's actually a skier.
Lex Fridman (2:12:41.780)
And the skier starts at the top and goes down the bottom.
Alien Debate (2:12:44.320)
Great.
Lex Fridman (2:12:45.640)
Then you look at the rock.
Alien Debate (2:12:46.700)
Rock rolls down the hill and goes to the bottom.
Lex Fridman (2:12:48.680)
How can you tell the difference between the two?
Alien Debate (2:12:51.240)
So, and what Dan says is like, well, this is clear.
Lex Fridman (2:12:54.200)
The skier's in control.
Lex Fridman (2:12:56.340)
And because they're adjusting the trajectory,
Lex Fridman (2:12:58.840)
so there's some updating going on.
Alien Debate (2:13:00.600)
Then the only way you could really do that
Lex Fridman (2:13:01.800)
is if you put the skier back to the top of the hill again,
Alien Debate (2:13:04.240)
they would tend to start roughly in the same space
Lex Fridman (2:13:06.140)
and probably take all that complex set of trajectories
Lex Fridman (2:13:09.760)
and end up pretty much at the same finish point, right?
Lex Fridman (2:13:12.000)
With plus or minus a few meters.
Alien Debate (2:13:13.420)
Whereas if it was just a random rock
Lex Fridman (2:13:15.400)
going down to a random trajectory, that wouldn't happen.
Lex Fridman (2:13:18.000)
And so what Sarah and I were kind of doing
Lex Fridman (2:13:20.320)
when we were writing this grant,
Alien Debate (2:13:21.560)
we were like, we need to somehow instantiate the skier
Lex Fridman (2:13:25.560)
and the rock in an experiment.
Lex Fridman (2:13:27.760)
And then say, okay, when does the object,
Lex Fridman (2:13:31.040)
so for an object to have a goal, it has to have an update.
Alien Debate (2:13:34.320)
It has to have some sensing and some kind of,
Lex Fridman (2:13:36.560)
you know, inbuilt actuation to respond to the environment.
Lex Fridman (2:13:41.440)
And then we just have to iterate on that.
Lex Fridman (2:13:44.120)
And maybe Sarah, you can then fill in the Turing test part.
Alien Debate (2:13:47.120)
Well, yeah, I guess the motivation for me
Lex Fridman (2:13:49.080)
was slightly different.
Lex Fridman (2:13:50.000)
So I get really frustrated about conversations
Lex Fridman (2:13:52.220)
about consciousness as most people do.
Alien Debate (2:13:54.580)
You know, a lot of people are,
Lex Fridman (2:13:56.080)
which is not necessarily related to free will directly
Alien Debate (2:13:59.080)
or to this goal directed behavior.
Lex Fridman (2:14:01.040)
But I think there's a whole set of bundled
Lex Fridman (2:14:03.080)
and related topics here.
Lex Fridman (2:14:04.680)
But I think for me, I was, you know,
Alien Debate (2:14:07.000)
everybody's always interested in explaining
Lex Fridman (2:14:09.360)
intrinsic experience and quantifying intrinsic experience.
Lex Fridman (2:14:12.220)
And there's all sorts of problems with that
Lex Fridman (2:14:14.800)
because you can never actually be another physical system.
Lex Fridman (2:14:17.320)
So you can't know what it's like
Lex Fridman (2:14:18.200)
to be another physical system.
Lex Fridman (2:14:20.400)
So I always thought there must be some way
Lex Fridman (2:14:21.760)
of getting at this problem about
Alien Debate (2:14:23.620)
if an agent or an entity is conscious
Lex Fridman (2:14:26.200)
or at least has internal representations
Lex Fridman (2:14:28.840)
and those are real physical things,
Lex Fridman (2:14:30.920)
that it must have causal consequences.
Lex Fridman (2:14:34.600)
So the way I would ask the question of consciousness
Lex Fridman (2:14:38.200)
is not, you know, what is it like intrinsically?
Lex Fridman (2:14:40.820)
But if things have intrinsic experience,
Lex Fridman (2:14:43.680)
is there any observable difference from the outside
Alien Debate (2:14:45.700)
about the kind of causation
Lex Fridman (2:14:47.800)
that that physical system would enact in?
Lex Fridman (2:14:50.200)
And for me, the most interesting thing that humans do
Lex Fridman (2:14:52.800)
is have imagination.
Lex Fridman (2:14:53.840)
So like we can imagine rockets centuries
Lex Fridman (2:14:56.200)
before we build them.
Alien Debate (2:14:57.360)
They've become real physical things
Lex Fridman (2:14:59.040)
because we imagine them.
Lex Fridman (2:15:00.680)
And people might disentangle that from conscious experience,
Lex Fridman (2:15:02.880)
but I think a lot of the sort of imagination we do
Alien Debate (2:15:04.780)
is actually a conscious process.
Lex Fridman (2:15:06.960)
So then this becomes a question of
Alien Debate (2:15:09.820)
if I were observing systems and I said,
Lex Fridman (2:15:12.280)
one had an internal representation,
Alien Debate (2:15:15.200)
which is slightly different
Lex Fridman (2:15:16.220)
than a conscious experience, obviously.
Lex Fridman (2:15:17.780)
So I'm entangling some concepts,
Lex Fridman (2:15:19.240)
but it's a loose set of thought experiments.
Alien Debate (2:15:22.260)
Then how, and I set them up
Lex Fridman (2:15:24.840)
in a physically equivalent situation.
Alien Debate (2:15:28.380)
Would it be the case that
Lex Fridman (2:15:30.240)
there would be experimental observables associated with it?
Lex Fridman (2:15:34.800)
And that became the idea of trying to actually
Lex Fridman (2:15:38.280)
measure for internal representation and conscious.
Lex Fridman (2:15:40.120)
So Turing basically didn't wanna do that.
Lex Fridman (2:15:42.400)
You just wanted the machine that could emulate
Lex Fridman (2:15:44.520)
and trick you into having the behavior,
Lex Fridman (2:15:46.000)
but never dealt with the internal experience
Alien Debate (2:15:48.580)
because he didn't know how to do that.
Lex Fridman (2:15:51.040)
And I guess I was wondering,
Alien Debate (2:15:53.080)
is there a way to set up the experiment
Lex Fridman (2:15:55.240)
where you could actually test for that?
Alien Debate (2:15:57.600)
For imagination that led to the thing.
Lex Fridman (2:16:00.840)
That there was something internal going on,
Alien Debate (2:16:02.760)
some kind of inner world, as people say,
Lex Fridman (2:16:06.360)
or you could say, it actually is an agent,
Alien Debate (2:16:09.920)
it's making decisions, it has an internal representation.
Lex Fridman (2:16:13.800)
And whether you say that's experience or not
Alien Debate (2:16:15.660)
is a different thing, but at least the feature
Lex Fridman (2:16:18.160)
that there's some abstraction it's doing
Alien Debate (2:16:20.400)
that's not obvious from looking at the physical substrates.
Lex Fridman (2:16:23.240)
Do you think it's possible to do that kind of thing?
Alien Debate (2:16:25.200)
One of the compelling things about the Turing test
Lex Fridman (2:16:27.980)
is that defining intelligence,
Alien Debate (2:16:30.360)
defining any complicated concept
Lex Fridman (2:16:32.640)
as a thing like observing it from the surface
Lex Fridman (2:16:37.840)
and not caring about what's going on deep inside
Lex Fridman (2:16:40.480)
because how do you know?
Alien Debate (2:16:42.640)
That's the point.
Lex Fridman (2:16:43.680)
So the idea is exactly that.
Lex Fridman (2:16:45.000)
So what we're trying to do,
Lex Fridman (2:16:46.440)
the Turing test for goal directedness
Alien Debate (2:16:47.800)
is literally take some objects
Lex Fridman (2:16:50.520)
that clearly don't have any internal representation,
Alien Debate (2:16:52.360)
grains of sand blowing on the beach or something,
Lex Fridman (2:16:55.840)
and I don't know, a crab wandering around on the beach
Lex Fridman (2:16:59.400)
and then generating an experiment
Lex Fridman (2:17:00.760)
where literally the experiment generates an entity
Alien Debate (2:17:04.320)
that literally has no internal representation to sand,
Lex Fridman (2:17:07.800)
these are oil droplets actually,
Lex Fridman (2:17:08.940)
what we've got in mind, a robot that makes oil droplets.
Lex Fridman (2:17:11.640)
But then what we wanna try and do
Alien Debate (2:17:13.280)
is train the oil droplets to be like crabs,
Lex Fridman (2:17:16.120)
give them an internal representation,
Alien Debate (2:17:18.120)
give them the ability to integrate information
Lex Fridman (2:17:21.640)
from the environment so they remember the past,
Alien Debate (2:17:27.040)
are in the present, and can imagine a future.
Lex Fridman (2:17:31.080)
And in a very limited way, their kind of game engine,
Alien Debate (2:17:33.600)
their limited simulation of the world
Lex Fridman (2:17:36.280)
allows them to then make a decision.
Alien Debate (2:17:38.320)
They're objects across time.
Lex Fridman (2:17:40.320)
So then you would run a bunch of crabs
Lex Fridman (2:17:43.040)
like over and over and over and over?
Lex Fridman (2:17:44.600)
How many crabs, Lee?
Lex Fridman (2:17:45.960)
How many, is there, what's,
Lex Fridman (2:17:47.480)
because you have to have a large number of crabs,
Lex Fridman (2:17:49.320)
what does your theory say, is there a mathematical?
Lex Fridman (2:17:52.560)
We're working on it, I mean, this is literally.
Alien Debate (2:17:54.160)
Limit, crab limit.
Lex Fridman (2:17:55.800)
There's literally a.
Alien Debate (2:17:57.040)
Excellent.
Lex Fridman (2:17:57.880)
There's literally a.
Lex Fridman (2:17:58.720)
What's the herding cats have to do?
Lex Fridman (2:17:59.960)
Oh, that's random, wait, what's cats,
Alien Debate (2:18:02.480)
in the title by Daniel Dennett,
Lex Fridman (2:18:04.520)
Herding Cats and the Free Will Inflation.
Alien Debate (2:18:06.720)
So, I love this.
Lex Fridman (2:18:07.680)
What does herding cats mean,
Lex Fridman (2:18:08.920)
what does free will inflation mean?
Lex Fridman (2:18:10.800)
So this, I love this essay,
Alien Debate (2:18:13.080)
because it explained to me
Lex Fridman (2:18:14.440)
how I can live in a deterministic universe,
Lex Fridman (2:18:18.640)
but have, not free will, but have freedom.
Lex Fridman (2:18:24.200)
And also it helped me explain
Alien Debate (2:18:26.640)
that time needed to be a real thing in this universe.
Lex Fridman (2:18:30.920)
So what basically Dan was saying here is like,
Lex Fridman (2:18:33.840)
how do you, how do these cats appear
Lex Fridman (2:18:35.800)
to just do what they want, right?
Lex Fridman (2:18:38.440)
And if you live in a deterministic universe,
Lex Fridman (2:18:41.240)
why do the cats do these things?
Lex Fridman (2:18:43.280)
You know, aren't they just, isn't it all obvious?
Lex Fridman (2:18:46.280)
And how does free will inflate the universe?
Lex Fridman (2:18:48.720)
And for me, I mean, probably I love the essay
Lex Fridman (2:18:51.560)
because my interpretation of the essay
Alien Debate (2:18:53.800)
in assembly theory makes complete sense.
Lex Fridman (2:18:57.520)
Because you need an expanding universe
Alien Debate (2:19:00.600)
in assembly theory to create novelty
Lex Fridman (2:19:04.720)
that you search for,
Alien Debate (2:19:07.240)
that then when you find something interesting
Lex Fridman (2:19:09.080)
and you keep doing it because it's cool
Lex Fridman (2:19:10.840)
and it gives you an advantage,
Lex Fridman (2:19:13.280)
then it appears in the past to be a goal.
Lex Fridman (2:19:15.480)
So what does, in assembly theory,
Lex Fridman (2:19:17.200)
the expansion of the universe look like?
Lex Fridman (2:19:20.720)
What are we talking about?
Lex Fridman (2:19:22.280)
Why does the expansion of the universe
Lex Fridman (2:19:26.520)
give you more possibilities of novelty and cool stuff?
Lex Fridman (2:19:30.440)
So for me, I don't think about the universe
Alien Debate (2:19:32.280)
in terms of big bang and space.
Lex Fridman (2:19:34.160)
I think about it in terms of the big memory expansion.
Alien Debate (2:19:37.800)
That you have one, you only have the ability
Lex Fridman (2:19:39.360)
to store one bit of information,
Lex Fridman (2:19:41.400)
so then you can't do very much.
Lex Fridman (2:19:43.000)
So what the universe has been doing since forever,
Alien Debate (2:19:46.640)
it's been creating more,
Lex Fridman (2:19:49.000)
it's been increasing the size of its RAM, okay?
Lex Fridman (2:19:53.280)
So it's like one megabyte, two megabyte,
Lex Fridman (2:19:55.400)
three megabyte, four megabytes, all the way up.
Lex Fridman (2:19:57.520)
And so the more RAM you have,
Lex Fridman (2:20:00.720)
the more you can remember about the past,
Alien Debate (2:20:04.280)
which allows you to do cooler things in the future.
Lex Fridman (2:20:07.120)
So if you can remember how to launch a rocket,
Alien Debate (2:20:09.680)
then you might be able to imagine how to land a rocket,
Lex Fridman (2:20:12.680)
and then relaunch, reland, and carry on.
Lex Fridman (2:20:15.040)
And so you're able to expand the space
Lex Fridman (2:20:19.800)
and remember the past.
Lex Fridman (2:20:21.080)
And so that's why I think it's very important.
Lex Fridman (2:20:23.720)
But not a perfect memory.
Alien Debate (2:20:25.320)
It's an interesting question,
Lex Fridman (2:20:27.000)
whether there's some forgetting that happens
Alien Debate (2:20:28.880)
that might increase.
Lex Fridman (2:20:30.480)
Is the expansion of the forgetting, at some point,
Lex Fridman (2:20:34.200)
accelerate faster than the remembering?
Lex Fridman (2:20:37.120)
I think that that's a very important thing
Alien Debate (2:20:38.960)
that probably intelligence does,
Lex Fridman (2:20:40.800)
and we're gonna learn in machine learning about,
Alien Debate (2:20:42.360)
because you want machine learning right now,
Lex Fridman (2:20:44.400)
or artificial intelligence right now,
Alien Debate (2:20:45.720)
doesn't have memory right,
Lex Fridman (2:20:47.280)
but you want the ability to,
Alien Debate (2:20:49.120)
or not for, if you want to get to human like consciousness,
Lex Fridman (2:20:52.760)
you need to have the ability, I suppose, to remember stuff
Lex Fridman (2:20:55.400)
and then to selectively forget stuff
Lex Fridman (2:20:57.040)
so you can re remember it and compress it.
Alien Debate (2:20:59.520)
Arguably, the way that we come up with new physical laws.
Lex Fridman (2:21:02.160)
I think that there is a great deal to be gained
Alien Debate (2:21:12.520)
from having the ability to remember things,
Lex Fridman (2:21:15.960)
but then when you forget them,
Alien Debate (2:21:18.000)
you can then have a,
Lex Fridman (2:21:18.960)
you can basically do the simulation again
Lex Fridman (2:21:20.800)
and work out if you get to that compressed representation.
Lex Fridman (2:21:23.920)
So that's in cycles.
Lex Fridman (2:21:25.280)
So cycles of remembering and forgetting
Lex Fridman (2:21:29.560)
are probably important,
Lex Fridman (2:21:31.080)
but there shouldn't be excuse to have a universe
Lex Fridman (2:21:33.640)
with no memory in it.
Alien Debate (2:21:34.480)
The universe is gonna remember that it forgot,
Lex Fridman (2:21:37.120)
but just not tell you.
Alien Debate (2:21:40.300)
I'm looking at this paper
Lex Fridman (2:21:42.260)
and it's talking about a puppet controlling a puppet
Alien Debate (2:21:44.760)
controlling a puppet controlling a puppet controlling
Lex Fridman (2:21:46.960)
a puppet controlling a puppet,
Alien Debate (2:21:48.200)
conceptually easy to understand,
Lex Fridman (2:21:49.480)
but physically impossible,
Alien Debate (2:21:50.640)
as physically impossible as predicting a fair coin toss.
Lex Fridman (2:21:53.600)
I don't know what he's talking about,
Lex Fridman (2:21:54.960)
but there's pictures of puppets controlling puppets.
Lex Fridman (2:21:58.600)
Let me ask you,
Alien Debate (2:21:59.640)
there's a few things I wanna ask,
Lex Fridman (2:22:01.760)
but we brought up time quite a bit.
Alien Debate (2:22:04.600)
You guys tweet about time quite a bit.
Lex Fridman (2:22:08.920)
What is time in all of this?
Alien Debate (2:22:10.760)
We kind of mentioned it a bunch.
Lex Fridman (2:22:13.440)
Is it not important at all in terms of,
Lex Fridman (2:22:15.840)
is it just a word?
Lex Fridman (2:22:16.880)
Should we be talking about causality mostly?
Lex Fridman (2:22:18.840)
Like Sarah, what do you think?
Lex Fridman (2:22:20.360)
Is, we've talked about like memories.
Alien Debate (2:22:24.160)
Is that the fundamental thing
Lex Fridman (2:22:25.440)
that we should be thinking about?
Lex Fridman (2:22:26.560)
And time is just a useful measurement device or something
Lex Fridman (2:22:29.680)
like that.
Lex Fridman (2:22:30.580)
Well, there's different concepts of time, right?
Lex Fridman (2:22:32.360)
So I think in assembly theory,
Alien Debate (2:22:33.720)
when we're talking about time,
Lex Fridman (2:22:34.560)
we're talking about the ordering of things.
Lex Fridman (2:22:36.200)
So that's the causal graph part.
Lex Fridman (2:22:38.280)
And so then the fundamental structure of the universe
Alien Debate (2:22:40.720)
is that there is a certain ordering
Lex Fridman (2:22:42.840)
and certain things can't happen till other things happen.
Lex Fridman (2:22:44.660)
But usually when we colloquially talk about time,
Lex Fridman (2:22:48.600)
we're talking about the flow of time.
Lex Fridman (2:22:51.440)
And I guess Lee and I were actually debating
Lex Fridman (2:22:52.960)
about this this morning.
Lex Fridman (2:22:53.920)
So in talking on it, walking on the river here,
Lex Fridman (2:22:56.680)
which is a very lovely spot for talking about time,
Lex Fridman (2:23:00.080)
but that when the universe is updating,
Lex Fridman (2:23:02.540)
it's transitioning between things that exist now
Lex Fridman (2:23:05.840)
and things that exist now.
Lex Fridman (2:23:09.140)
That's really the flow of time.
Lex Fridman (2:23:11.720)
So you have to separate out those concepts at bare minimum.
Lex Fridman (2:23:15.700)
And then there's also an arrow of time
Alien Debate (2:23:17.880)
that people talk about in physics,
Lex Fridman (2:23:19.360)
which is that time doesn't appear to have a directionality
Lex Fridman (2:23:21.960)
in fundamental physics, but it does to us, right?
Lex Fridman (2:23:25.200)
Like we can't go backwards in time.
Lex Fridman (2:23:26.840)
And usually that would be explained in physics
Lex Fridman (2:23:29.260)
in terms of, well, there's a cosmological arrow of time,
Lex Fridman (2:23:32.160)
but there's also the thermodynamic arrow of time
Lex Fridman (2:23:33.880)
of increasing entropy.
Lex Fridman (2:23:36.000)
But what we would say in assembly theory
Lex Fridman (2:23:37.840)
is that there is a clear directionality.
Alien Debate (2:23:39.320)
The universe only runs in one direction,
Lex Fridman (2:23:40.960)
which is why some things, it's easy to make,
Alien Debate (2:23:42.840)
if the universe runs in one direction,
Lex Fridman (2:23:45.440)
it's easy to make processes look reversible.
Alien Debate (2:23:47.600)
For example, if they have no memory,
Lex Fridman (2:23:49.580)
they're easy to run forward and backwards,
Alien Debate (2:23:51.040)
which is why the laws of physics that we have now
Lex Fridman (2:23:52.960)
look the way they do, because they involve objects
Alien Debate (2:23:55.640)
that have no memory.
Lex Fridman (2:23:56.600)
But when you get to things like us,
Alien Debate (2:23:58.320)
it becomes very clear that the universe
Lex Fridman (2:23:59.840)
has a directionality associated to it.
Lex Fridman (2:24:01.480)
So it's not reversible at all.
Lex Fridman (2:24:03.120)
It's the no man ever steps in the same river.
Alien Debate (2:24:06.400)
I just have to bring that out
Lex Fridman (2:24:07.400)
because you walked on the river.
Alien Debate (2:24:08.400)
No man ever steps in the same river twice
Lex Fridman (2:24:11.160)
before he's not the same river and he's not the same man.
Lex Fridman (2:24:14.360)
So it's not reversible, any of the same.
Lex Fridman (2:24:16.840)
No, but reversibility is an emergent property, right?
Lex Fridman (2:24:19.520)
So we think of the reversibility laws as being fundamental
Lex Fridman (2:24:22.160)
and the irreversibility as being emergent.
Lex Fridman (2:24:23.960)
But I think what we would say from how we think about it,
Lex Fridman (2:24:26.880)
and it certainly seems to be the case
Alien Debate (2:24:28.640)
for our perception of time,
Lex Fridman (2:24:29.680)
but also what's happening in biological evolution,
Alien Debate (2:24:33.380)
you can make things reversible,
Lex Fridman (2:24:35.400)
but it requires work to do it.
Lex Fridman (2:24:37.280)
And it requires certain machines
Lex Fridman (2:24:39.000)
to run it forward and backward.
Lex Fridman (2:24:40.520)
And Chiara Marletto is working some interesting ideas
Lex Fridman (2:24:42.840)
on constructor theory related to that,
Alien Debate (2:24:44.720)
which is a totally different set of ideas.
Lex Fridman (2:24:46.400)
You can travel back in time sometimes.
Alien Debate (2:24:49.680)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:24:52.520)
You can't travel actually back in time,
Lex Fridman (2:24:54.160)
but you could reconstruct things
Lex Fridman (2:24:56.360)
that have existed in the past.
Alien Debate (2:24:58.000)
You're always moving forward in time,
Lex Fridman (2:24:59.400)
but you can cycle through.
Alien Debate (2:25:01.240)
Like, I mean, I can...
Lex Fridman (2:25:02.080)
Can I clarify what you just said?
Alien Debate (2:25:02.900)
Yeah, yeah, go for it.
Lex Fridman (2:25:03.740)
Quickly, you travel forward in time to travel back.
Alien Debate (2:25:06.260)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:25:07.460)
Thank you, that really clarified it.
Lex Fridman (2:25:09.720)
What Sarah's saying is you don't go back in time,
Lex Fridman (2:25:12.480)
you recreate what happened in the past in the future
Lex Fridman (2:25:14.840)
and inspect it again.
Lex Fridman (2:25:15.880)
So in that local pocket of time,
Alien Debate (2:25:17.400)
it's as if you travel back in time.
Lex Fridman (2:25:19.160)
So I don't...
Lex Fridman (2:25:20.360)
How is that not traveling back in time?
Lex Fridman (2:25:22.280)
Because you're not going back
Alien Debate (2:25:23.120)
to your same self back in time.
Lex Fridman (2:25:24.860)
You're creating that in the future.
Lex Fridman (2:25:27.280)
But everything else is the same as it was in the past.
Lex Fridman (2:25:29.580)
No, no, no, no, it's not in registry.
Alien Debate (2:25:32.800)
I mean, it goes back to the big question I'm saying.
Lex Fridman (2:25:35.180)
I mean, this is something I was trying to look up today
Alien Debate (2:25:38.480)
when we first had this discussion
Lex Fridman (2:25:40.400)
and I was talking to Sarah on Skype and said,
Alien Debate (2:25:42.240)
by the way, time is the fundamental thing in the universe.
Lex Fridman (2:25:45.920)
She almost hung up on me.
Alien Debate (2:25:47.440)
Right, but you can even...
Lex Fridman (2:25:48.600)
I mean, if you wanna make an analogy to computation,
Lex Fridman (2:25:51.040)
and I think Charles Bennett actually has a paper on this
Lex Fridman (2:25:52.920)
like about reversible computation
Lex Fridman (2:25:55.100)
and reversible Turing machines.
Lex Fridman (2:25:57.000)
In order to make it reversible,
Alien Debate (2:25:58.160)
you have to store memory to run the process backwards.
Lex Fridman (2:26:01.240)
So time is always running forward in that
Alien Debate (2:26:04.560)
because you have to write the memory.
Lex Fridman (2:26:05.400)
You can't erase the memory.
Alien Debate (2:26:06.640)
You can erase the memory,
Lex Fridman (2:26:08.120)
but the point when you go back to zero, right?
Lex Fridman (2:26:11.300)
But the whole point is that in order to have a process
Lex Fridman (2:26:15.320)
that even runs in both directions,
Alien Debate (2:26:17.400)
you have to start talking about memory
Lex Fridman (2:26:19.080)
to store the information to run it backwards.
Alien Debate (2:26:21.740)
I got it.
Lex Fridman (2:26:22.580)
So you can't really then...
Alien Debate (2:26:24.640)
You can't have it exactly how it was in the past.
Lex Fridman (2:26:27.080)
Yeah, exactly.
Alien Debate (2:26:27.920)
You have extra stuff, extra baggage always.
Lex Fridman (2:26:30.960)
Okay.
Alien Debate (2:26:31.800)
A really important thing that I want to say on this,
Lex Fridman (2:26:33.400)
I think if I try and get it right,
Alien Debate (2:26:34.240)
I have to say that if you can think
Lex Fridman (2:26:36.480)
that the universe is expanding
Alien Debate (2:26:38.280)
in terms of the number of boxes
Lex Fridman (2:26:41.400)
that it has to store states, right?
Lex Fridman (2:26:44.960)
And this is where the directionality of the universe
Lex Fridman (2:26:47.240)
comes from, everything comes from.
Alien Debate (2:26:48.960)
You could erase what's in those boxes,
Lex Fridman (2:26:51.140)
but the fact you've now got so many boxes at time now
Alien Debate (2:26:54.240)
in this present, there's more of those boxes
Lex Fridman (2:26:56.640)
than there were in the past.
Alien Debate (2:26:57.840)
See, but the boxes aren't physical boxes.
Lex Fridman (2:27:00.820)
They're not space or time.
Lex Fridman (2:27:03.440)
Why is the number of boxes always expanding?
Lex Fridman (2:27:05.720)
It's very hard to imagine this
Alien Debate (2:27:07.840)
because we live in space.
Lex Fridman (2:27:09.640)
So what I'm saying, which is I think probably correct,
Alien Debate (2:27:14.400)
is that we just, let's just imagine for a second,
Lex Fridman (2:27:17.800)
there is a nonlocal situation,
Lex Fridman (2:27:20.560)
but there are these things called states
Lex Fridman (2:27:23.420)
and that the universe irrespective
Alien Debate (2:27:26.960)
of whether you measure anything,
Lex Fridman (2:27:28.920)
there is a universal, let's call it a clock
Alien Debate (2:27:31.520)
or a state creator.
Lex Fridman (2:27:33.440)
Maybe we can call it, that's why maybe you can call it God,
Lex Fridman (2:27:36.480)
but let's call it a state creator
Lex Fridman (2:27:37.920)
where the universe is expanding
Alien Debate (2:27:39.540)
in the number of states it has.
Lex Fridman (2:27:41.600)
Why are you saying it's expanding though?
Lex Fridman (2:27:43.280)
Is that obvious that it's expanding?
Lex Fridman (2:27:44.680)
It's obvious because that's where the,
Alien Debate (2:27:46.360)
because we, we.
Lex Fridman (2:27:49.080)
That's a source of novelty.
Alien Debate (2:27:50.300)
It's a source of novelty
Lex Fridman (2:27:51.860)
and it also explains why the universe is not predictable.
Lex Fridman (2:27:56.000)
How do you know it's not predictable?
Lex Fridman (2:27:57.680)
I just like interrupting you.
Alien Debate (2:27:59.160)
Sorry, it's fun, because you're struggling.
Lex Fridman (2:28:01.480)
I'm struggling because I'm trying to be
Alien Debate (2:28:03.680)
as concrete as possible and not sound like I'm insane.
Lex Fridman (2:28:06.720)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:28:07.680)
And I'm not insane.
Lex Fridman (2:28:08.640)
It's obvious because you,
Alien Debate (2:28:13.480)
I'm a chemist.
Lex Fridman (2:28:14.320)
So as a chemist, I grew into the world
Alien Debate (2:28:17.320)
understanding irreversibility.
Lex Fridman (2:28:19.440)
Irreversibility is all I knew.
Lex Fridman (2:28:22.000)
And when people start telling me
Lex Fridman (2:28:24.600)
the universe is actually reversible, it's a magic trick.
Alien Debate (2:28:27.320)
We can use time to do it.
Lex Fridman (2:28:28.560)
So what I mean is that the second law
Alien Debate (2:28:32.680)
is really the magical.
Lex Fridman (2:28:38.640)
But why does it need to be magical?
Alien Debate (2:28:40.000)
The universe is just asymmetric.
Lex Fridman (2:28:41.560)
All I'm saying is the universe is asymmetric
Alien Debate (2:28:43.680)
in the state production and we can erase those states,
Lex Fridman (2:28:48.040)
but we just have more computational power.
Lex Fridman (2:28:50.440)
So what I'm saying is that the universe's
Lex Fridman (2:28:53.520)
deterministic horizon,
Alien Debate (2:28:55.640)
this is one of the reasons we can't live in a simulation,
Lex Fridman (2:28:57.460)
by the way, you can't live in a simulation.
Alien Debate (2:29:01.120)
The irreversibility.
Lex Fridman (2:29:02.800)
Yeah, yeah, so basically every time
Alien Debate (2:29:04.080)
you try and simulate the universe,
Lex Fridman (2:29:06.120)
in this, you know, I live in a simulation,
Alien Debate (2:29:07.600)
the universe is expanded in states.
Lex Fridman (2:29:09.160)
You're like, oh damn it,
Alien Debate (2:29:10.000)
I need to make my computer bigger again.
Lex Fridman (2:29:11.320)
And every time you try and contain the universe
Alien Debate (2:29:13.480)
in the computation,
Lex Fridman (2:29:14.620)
because it's got bigger in number of states.
Lex Fridman (2:29:16.680)
And so I'm saying the fact the universe has novelty in it
Lex Fridman (2:29:21.360)
is going to turn out experimentally to be proof
Alien Debate (2:29:25.280)
that time, as I've labeled it, is fundamental
Lex Fridman (2:29:30.240)
and exists as a physical thing that creates space.
Alien Debate (2:29:34.960)
Okay, so if you can prove that novelty
Lex Fridman (2:29:37.720)
is always being created,
Alien Debate (2:29:39.640)
you're saying that it's possible to also then prove
Lex Fridman (2:29:41.920)
that it's always expanding in the state space.
Alien Debate (2:29:45.520)
Those are things that have to be proven.
Lex Fridman (2:29:48.200)
That's what we're working on experiments for, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:29:50.000)
And you're trying to, like by looking at the sliver
Lex Fridman (2:29:52.680)
of reality, show that there's always novelty being generated.
Alien Debate (2:29:56.400)
Yeah, because if we go live in a universe
Lex Fridman (2:29:59.160)
that conventional physicists would live in,
Alien Debate (2:30:01.760)
it's a big lookup table of stuff and everything exists.
Lex Fridman (2:30:05.000)
I want to prove that that book doesn't exist,
Alien Debate (2:30:10.080)
it's continuously being added pages on.
Lex Fridman (2:30:12.320)
So all I'm saying, if the universe is a book,
Alien Debate (2:30:14.540)
we started, the universe at the beginning only had no pages
Lex Fridman (2:30:17.600)
and had one page, another page, another page.
Alien Debate (2:30:19.940)
Whereas a physicist would now say all the pages exist
Lex Fridman (2:30:22.360)
and we could in principle access them.
Alien Debate (2:30:24.680)
I'm saying that is fundamentally incorrect.
Lex Fridman (2:30:27.160)
Do you know what's written in this book?
Alien Debate (2:30:29.240)
The free will question.
Lex Fridman (2:30:32.200)
Is there room for free will in this view
Alien Debate (2:30:38.440)
of the universe is generating novelty
Lex Fridman (2:30:40.680)
and getting greater and greater assembly structures built?
Alien Debate (2:30:45.740)
Sarah.
Lex Fridman (2:30:46.840)
Yes.
Alien Debate (2:30:48.160)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (2:30:49.000)
Done.
Alien Debate (2:30:49.920)
Next question.
Lex Fridman (2:30:51.040)
Why, what's the source of free will in this?
Alien Debate (2:30:53.120)
Well, I think it depends on what you mean by free will, but.
Lex Fridman (2:30:58.320)
Yeah, well, please, there's a lot.
Alien Debate (2:31:00.640)
I think what I'm interested in
Lex Fridman (2:31:02.500)
as far as the phenomena of free will is,
Lex Fridman (2:31:06.720)
do we have individual autonomy and agency?
Lex Fridman (2:31:10.560)
And when I do things, is it really me
Lex Fridman (2:31:13.580)
or is it my atoms that did it?
Lex Fridman (2:31:16.520)
And that's the part that's interesting to me.
Alien Debate (2:31:19.200)
I guess there's also the determinism versus randomness part.
Lex Fridman (2:31:23.160)
But the way I think about it is like each of us
Alien Debate (2:31:25.620)
are like a thread or like an assembly space
Lex Fridman (2:31:30.140)
through this giant possibility space.
Lex Fridman (2:31:33.640)
And it's like we're moving on our own trajectory
Lex Fridman (2:31:37.080)
through that space and that is defined by our history.
Lex Fridman (2:31:39.640)
So we're sort of causally contingent on our past,
Lex Fridman (2:31:42.640)
but also because of the sort of intersection
Alien Debate (2:31:46.680)
of novelty generation, it's not completely predetermined
Lex Fridman (2:31:50.800)
by the past.
Lex Fridman (2:31:52.160)
And so then you have the causal control
Lex Fridman (2:31:55.840)
of the determinism part that you are your causal history
Lex Fridman (2:31:59.480)
and there's some determinism from that past,
Lex Fridman (2:32:01.580)
but there's also room for creativity.
Lex Fridman (2:32:04.480)
And I think it's actually necessary
Lex Fridman (2:32:06.760)
that something like free will exists
Alien Debate (2:32:08.780)
if the universe is gonna be as creative as possible.
Lex Fridman (2:32:11.420)
Because if I were all intelligent being,
Alien Debate (2:32:16.400)
inventing a universe, and I wanted it to have
Lex Fridman (2:32:19.960)
maximum number of interesting things happen,
Alien Debate (2:32:22.520)
again, we should come up with the metric of interesting,
Lex Fridman (2:32:25.560)
but generating, yes, I know,
Alien Debate (2:32:28.100)
generating maximal possibilities,
Lex Fridman (2:32:31.840)
then I would want the agents to have free will
Alien Debate (2:32:33.780)
because it means that they're more individual,
Lex Fridman (2:32:38.300)
like each entity actually is a different causal force
Alien Debate (2:32:41.860)
in the universe.
Lex Fridman (2:32:43.400)
And it's intrinsic and local property of that system.
Lex Fridman (2:32:46.620)
There's a greater number of distributed agents?
Lex Fridman (2:32:50.480)
Like are you always creating more and more individuality?
Alien Debate (2:32:54.540)
Kind of.
Lex Fridman (2:32:56.040)
I would say you're creating more causal power, but.
Lex Fridman (2:32:59.000)
So causal power, the word consciousness,
Lex Fridman (2:33:01.680)
is the causal power somehow correlated with consciousness?
Alien Debate (2:33:05.200)
I mean, that's why I have this conception
Lex Fridman (2:33:07.200)
of consciousness being related to imagination,
Alien Debate (2:33:09.120)
because the more that we can imagine can happen
Lex Fridman (2:33:11.320)
and the more counterfactual possibilities you have in mind,
Alien Debate (2:33:14.760)
the more you can actually implement.
Lex Fridman (2:33:16.280)
And somehow free will is also at the intersection
Alien Debate (2:33:18.200)
of the counterfactual becoming the actual.
Lex Fridman (2:33:21.440)
So can you elaborate on that a little bit,
Lex Fridman (2:33:23.660)
that consciousness is imagination?
Lex Fridman (2:33:25.800)
I don't know exactly how to articulate it,
Lex Fridman (2:33:27.600)
and I'm sure people will aim at certain things I'm saying,
Lex Fridman (2:33:31.360)
but I think the language is really imprecise,
Lex Fridman (2:33:33.120)
so I'm not the best way to.
Lex Fridman (2:33:35.440)
It's really interesting, like what is imagination
Lex Fridman (2:33:37.600)
and what role does it play in the human experience,
Lex Fridman (2:33:42.920)
in the experience of any agent?
Alien Debate (2:33:44.520)
Yes, I love imagination.
Lex Fridman (2:33:46.360)
I think it's like the most amazing thing we do.
Lex Fridman (2:33:49.480)
But I guess one way I would think about it is,
Lex Fridman (2:33:51.420)
we talked about the transition to life
Alien Debate (2:33:52.880)
being the universe acquiring memory,
Lex Fridman (2:33:55.000)
and life does something really interesting.
Alien Debate (2:33:56.680)
You just think about biology generally.
Lex Fridman (2:33:58.660)
It remembers states of the past to adapt
Alien Debate (2:34:00.620)
to things that happen in the future.
Lex Fridman (2:34:01.960)
So the longer life has evolved on this planet,
Alien Debate (2:34:04.760)
the deeper that past is, the more memory we have,
Lex Fridman (2:34:06.600)
the more kinds of organisms and things.
Lex Fridman (2:34:08.760)
But what human level intelligence has done
Lex Fridman (2:34:11.540)
is quite different.
Alien Debate (2:34:12.700)
It's not just that we remember states
Lex Fridman (2:34:14.640)
that the universe has existed in before,
Alien Debate (2:34:16.920)
it's that we can imagine ones that have never existed,
Lex Fridman (2:34:19.640)
and we can actually make them come into existence.
Lex Fridman (2:34:22.560)
And I think that's the most unique feature
Lex Fridman (2:34:25.240)
about the transition to whatever we are
Alien Debate (2:34:27.520)
from what life on this planet has been doing
Lex Fridman (2:34:30.300)
for the last four billion years.
Lex Fridman (2:34:32.000)
And I think it's deeply related to the phenomenon
Lex Fridman (2:34:33.760)
we call consciousness.
Alien Debate (2:34:34.880)
Yeah, I was gonna, I mean, just agree with that.
Lex Fridman (2:34:36.280)
I think that consciousness is the ability
Alien Debate (2:34:38.300)
to generate those counterfactuals.
Lex Fridman (2:34:40.400)
Now, whether you can say, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:34:41.560)
are there degrees of consciousness?
Lex Fridman (2:34:43.080)
I mean, I'm sorry, panpsychist,
Lex Fridman (2:34:47.740)
but electrons don't have counterfactuals,
Lex Fridman (2:34:49.960)
although they do have some kind of,
Alien Debate (2:34:51.480)
they are able to search a space and pathways.
Lex Fridman (2:34:53.440)
But I think that there is a very concrete,
Alien Debate (2:34:58.140)
or concrete, there's a very specific property
Lex Fridman (2:35:01.640)
that humans have, and I don't know if it's unique to humans.
Lex Fridman (2:35:05.100)
I mean, maybe dogs can do it, and birds can do it, right?
Lex Fridman (2:35:09.000)
And where they are basically solving a problem,
Alien Debate (2:35:11.700)
because consciousness was invented,
Lex Fridman (2:35:13.700)
or this abstraction was invented by evolution
Alien Debate (2:35:16.360)
for a specific reason.
Lex Fridman (2:35:19.280)
And so look, one of the reasons why I came to the conclusion
Alien Debate (2:35:23.080)
that time was fundamental was actually because
Lex Fridman (2:35:26.360)
Sarah and I had a completely different.
Alien Debate (2:35:30.240)
The most heated debate on Skype chat ever.
Lex Fridman (2:35:32.520)
No, no, no, we had to, I was like.
Alien Debate (2:35:34.200)
Stop it.
Lex Fridman (2:35:35.040)
No, no, it goes back to the free will thing.
Lex Fridman (2:35:37.600)
So I think that, although I've changed my view a bit,
Lex Fridman (2:35:40.600)
because there's some really interesting physicists
Alien Debate (2:35:42.480)
out there who talks about how the measurement problem
Lex Fridman (2:35:45.840)
in Newtonian space, but I don't want to go there just now,
Alien Debate (2:35:49.280)
because I think I'll mess it up.
Lex Fridman (2:35:50.400)
But briefly, I could not see how the universe,
Lex Fridman (2:35:54.760)
how we can have free will.
Lex Fridman (2:35:56.040)
And I mean, this is really boring,
Alien Debate (2:35:57.120)
because this is like, this is a well trodden path,
Lex Fridman (2:35:59.480)
but I mean, not so boring.
Alien Debate (2:36:01.800)
I suppose it's kind of, we just want to be precise.
Lex Fridman (2:36:04.160)
If the universe is deterministic,
Lex Fridman (2:36:05.920)
how can we have free will, right?
Lex Fridman (2:36:07.960)
So Sarah's a physicist.
Alien Debate (2:36:11.080)
I think she, not believe, can show that most of the laws
Lex Fridman (2:36:15.360)
we have are deterministic to some degree.
Alien Debate (2:36:17.840)
Quantum mechanics onto Newtonian stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:36:20.280)
And yet there's Sarah telling me she believes in free will.
Lex Fridman (2:36:22.360)
And I'm like, your belief system's broken here, right?
Lex Fridman (2:36:26.840)
Because you're demanding free will
Alien Debate (2:36:29.720)
in a deterministic universe.
Lex Fridman (2:36:32.160)
And then I realized that I agreed with her
Alien Debate (2:36:36.400)
that I do think that free will is a thing
Lex Fridman (2:36:39.240)
because we are able to search for novelty.
Lex Fridman (2:36:41.440)
And then that's where I came to the conclusion
Lex Fridman (2:36:43.120)
that time, the universe is expanding in terms of novelty.
Lex Fridman (2:36:46.400)
And it goes back to that Dan Dennett essay
Lex Fridman (2:36:48.400)
that we're talking about, the free will inflation.
Alien Debate (2:36:51.200)
Free will, so you have, so the past,
Lex Fridman (2:36:55.600)
it did not exist in the past.
Alien Debate (2:36:56.840)
The past exists in the present.
Lex Fridman (2:36:58.760)
What I mean is like, you are the, there was no past.
Alien Debate (2:37:01.640)
There is only present.
Lex Fridman (2:37:03.600)
So that means you are the sum total.
Alien Debate (2:37:05.200)
Everything that's occurs in the past
Lex Fridman (2:37:06.840)
is manifestly here in the present.
Lex Fridman (2:37:09.680)
And then you have this little echo state
Lex Fridman (2:37:12.640)
in your consciousness because you're able to,
Alien Debate (2:37:14.760)
you're able to imagine something without actualization.
Lex Fridman (2:37:18.240)
But the fact you imagine it, that occurs in electrons
Lex Fridman (2:37:20.800)
and potassium ion flows in your neural network
Lex Fridman (2:37:23.720)
in your brain.
Alien Debate (2:37:24.680)
Maybe consciousness is just the present.
Lex Fridman (2:37:27.280)
So somehow you imagine that, and then by imagining,
Alien Debate (2:37:31.560)
oh, that's good, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:37:33.280)
I'm gonna make a robot to do this thing and program it.
Lex Fridman (2:37:36.280)
And then you physically then go and do it.
Lex Fridman (2:37:39.040)
So that then changes the future, sorry.
Lex Fridman (2:37:42.080)
What's imagination?
Lex Fridman (2:37:44.120)
Does it require the past?
Lex Fridman (2:37:46.000)
Does it require the future?
Lex Fridman (2:37:47.680)
Does it require memory?
Lex Fridman (2:37:48.880)
Does it?
Lex Fridman (2:37:49.720)
It's imagination.
Lex Fridman (2:37:51.320)
Does it only exist in the moment?
Lex Fridman (2:37:53.080)
So imagination is, well, yeah, probably
Alien Debate (2:37:57.120)
it's an instantaneous readout of what's going on.
Lex Fridman (2:37:59.200)
You can maybe, your subconscious brain
Alien Debate (2:38:01.320)
has been generating all the bits for it,
Lex Fridman (2:38:03.640)
but no, imagination occurs when you,
Alien Debate (2:38:07.400)
in your game engine, you remember the past
Lex Fridman (2:38:10.000)
and you integrate sensory to the present
Lex Fridman (2:38:11.680)
and you try and work out what you want to do in the future.
Lex Fridman (2:38:14.200)
And then you go and make that happen.
Lex Fridman (2:38:16.080)
So the imagination is this, it's like, imagine,
Lex Fridman (2:38:19.200)
asking what imagination is about, asking what surfing is.
Alien Debate (2:38:22.160)
You can see, you can surfboard, surfer, wave coming in.
Lex Fridman (2:38:26.240)
When you're on that wave and you're surfing,
Alien Debate (2:38:28.480)
that's where the imagination is.
Lex Fridman (2:38:31.320)
I think imagination is just accessing things
Alien Debate (2:38:34.160)
that aren't the present moment in the present moment.
Lex Fridman (2:38:36.120)
So like I'm sitting here and I'm looking at the table
Lex Fridman (2:38:38.800)
and I can imagine the river and things or whatever it was.
Lex Fridman (2:38:43.280)
And so it seems to be that it's like,
Alien Debate (2:38:45.680)
it's our ability to access things that aren't present.
Lex Fridman (2:38:50.600)
So conjure up worlds, some of them might be akin
Alien Debate (2:38:53.880)
to something that happened to you recently.
Lex Fridman (2:38:57.320)
Right, but they don't have to be things
Alien Debate (2:38:58.960)
that actually happened in your past.
Lex Fridman (2:39:00.680)
And I think this gets back to assembly theory.
Alien Debate (2:39:02.520)
Like the way I would think about imagination
Lex Fridman (2:39:04.920)
from an assembly theoretic standpoint
Alien Debate (2:39:06.600)
is I'm a giant causal graph and I exist in a present moment
Lex Fridman (2:39:11.920)
as a particular configuration of Sarah.
Lex Fridman (2:39:15.320)
But there's a lot of, I carry a lot of evolutionary baggage.
Lex Fridman (2:39:18.640)
I have that whole causal history
Lex Fridman (2:39:20.000)
and I can access parts of it.
Lex Fridman (2:39:22.360)
Now, when you talk about getting to something
Alien Debate (2:39:24.240)
as complex as us, having as large assembly space as us,
Lex Fridman (2:39:27.080)
there's ways of, like, there's a lot of things
Alien Debate (2:39:29.680)
in that causal graph that have ever actually never existed
Lex Fridman (2:39:33.560)
in the past history of the universe
Alien Debate (2:39:35.440)
because like the universe got big enough
Lex Fridman (2:39:36.680)
to contain the three of us in this room in time,
Lex Fridman (2:39:40.920)
but not all the features of each one of us individually
Lex Fridman (2:39:45.520)
have come into existence as physical objects
Alien Debate (2:39:48.880)
we would recognize as individual objects.
Lex Fridman (2:39:50.440)
This goes back to your point
Alien Debate (2:39:51.280)
that we actually have to explain
Lex Fridman (2:39:52.440)
why things actually even look like objects
Lex Fridman (2:39:56.120)
and aren't just a smear of mass.
Lex Fridman (2:40:00.800)
And just on the free will and physics thing,
Alien Debate (2:40:03.320)
when you were talking, I was, I just wanna bring this up
Lex Fridman (2:40:05.280)
because I think it's a really interesting viewpoint
Alien Debate (2:40:06.680)
that Nicholas Jisen has that, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:40:09.840)
like we wanna use the laws of physics
Lex Fridman (2:40:11.320)
and then say you can't have free will.
Lex Fridman (2:40:12.640)
And his point is you have to have free will
Alien Debate (2:40:15.080)
in order to even choose to set up an experiment
Lex Fridman (2:40:17.120)
to test the laws of physics.
Lex Fridman (2:40:18.160)
So in some sense, free will should be more fundamental
Lex Fridman (2:40:20.720)
than physics is because to even do science,
Alien Debate (2:40:23.320)
there's some assumption that the agents have free will.
Lex Fridman (2:40:28.320)
And I always thought it was really perplexing
Alien Debate (2:40:30.080)
that, you know, physics wants to remove agency
Lex Fridman (2:40:33.960)
because the idea that I could do an experiment here
Alien Debate (2:40:35.960)
on this part of earth and then I can move somewhere else
Lex Fridman (2:40:38.160)
and prepare an identically, you know,
Alien Debate (2:40:39.880)
identically prepared experiment, run an experiment again,
Lex Fridman (2:40:43.040)
seems to imply something about the structure of our universe
Alien Debate (2:40:45.680)
that is not encoded in the laws
Lex Fridman (2:40:47.200)
that we're testing in those experiments.
Lex Fridman (2:40:49.800)
So this kind of dream of physics
Lex Fridman (2:40:51.400)
that you can do multiple experiments, different locations
Lex Fridman (2:40:53.600)
and then validate each other,
Lex Fridman (2:40:55.760)
you're saying that's an illusion?
Alien Debate (2:40:59.160)
No, I'm saying that requires decision making
Lex Fridman (2:41:01.840)
and free will to be a real thing, I think.
Alien Debate (2:41:04.120)
Like I think the fact that we can do science
Lex Fridman (2:41:06.200)
is not arbitrary.
Lex Fridman (2:41:08.000)
And I think people, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:41:09.880)
the standard canon in physics would be,
Alien Debate (2:41:11.680)
well, you could trace all of that back
Lex Fridman (2:41:12.920)
to the initial condition of the universe,
Lex Fridman (2:41:14.240)
but the whole point of science is
Lex Fridman (2:41:16.040)
I can imagine doing the experiment and I can do it
Lex Fridman (2:41:18.360)
and then I can do it again and again and again
Lex Fridman (2:41:19.720)
all over the planet.
Alien Debate (2:41:20.640)
To you, imagination is somehow fundamentally
Lex Fridman (2:41:23.000)
generative of novelty.
Alien Debate (2:41:25.120)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (2:41:25.960)
So it's not like the universe could have predicted
Alien Debate (2:41:27.600)
the things you imagined.
Lex Fridman (2:41:28.880)
Imagination, so coming back to novelty,
Alien Debate (2:41:31.240)
I think novelty can exist outside of imagination,
Lex Fridman (2:41:33.480)
but it supercharges it, it's another transition, I think.
Alien Debate (2:41:36.320)
I mean, I would say,
Lex Fridman (2:41:37.640)
I mean, this may be a boring statement,
Lex Fridman (2:41:39.040)
but I would say the fact that, sorry?
Lex Fridman (2:41:40.760)
I'm not sure, these are hard questions.
Alien Debate (2:41:42.680)
Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that objects exist
Lex Fridman (2:41:45.000)
is yet another proof that time is fundamental
Lex Fridman (2:41:48.440)
and novelty exists, right?
Lex Fridman (2:41:50.480)
Because I think, again, if you ask a physicist
Alien Debate (2:41:53.000)
to write down in their infinite Bible of the universe,
Lex Fridman (2:41:55.600)
let's call it the Bible, the Mac, you know.
Alien Debate (2:41:58.200)
The book.
Lex Fridman (2:41:59.040)
Yeah, well, I mean, the mathematical universe,
Alien Debate (2:42:01.600)
whether you're Max Tegmark or Sean Carroll
Lex Fridman (2:42:03.880)
or Frank Wilczek.
Lex Fridman (2:42:08.440)
Or Stephen Wolfram, okay?
Lex Fridman (2:42:11.320)
I like that book.
Alien Debate (2:42:12.160)
Yeah, I love it too.
Lex Fridman (2:42:13.360)
It's lots of pretty pictures.
Alien Debate (2:42:15.080)
It's really interesting that they cope with the enormity
Lex Fridman (2:42:18.240)
of the universe by saying,
Lex Fridman (2:42:19.320)
well, it's all there, mathematics, it all exists, right?
Lex Fridman (2:42:22.080)
And I would say that that's why I'm excited
Alien Debate (2:42:25.360)
about the future of the universe
Lex Fridman (2:42:26.480)
because although it is somehow dependent upon the past,
Alien Debate (2:42:31.400)
it is not constrained just by the past,
Lex Fridman (2:42:36.760)
which is kind of mad.
Alien Debate (2:42:38.680)
Yeah, that's what free will is.
Lex Fridman (2:42:40.880)
It's not constrained by the past.
Alien Debate (2:42:42.520)
It's dependent on the past.
Lex Fridman (2:42:44.400)
This moment, it's not just dependent,
Alien Debate (2:42:46.440)
this moment is the past,
Lex Fridman (2:42:48.240)
and yet it has the capacity
Alien Debate (2:42:49.600)
to generate a totally unpredictable future.
Lex Fridman (2:42:52.960)
I mean, the other thing I would say
Lex Fridman (2:42:54.040)
that's super important for human beings, right?
Lex Fridman (2:42:56.360)
Human beings have actually very little causal control
Alien Debate (2:42:59.200)
in the future.
Lex Fridman (2:43:00.680)
I realized this the other week.
Alien Debate (2:43:02.280)
Oh, the immediate future immediately.
Lex Fridman (2:43:03.440)
Yeah, yeah, so what happened,
Lex Fridman (2:43:04.920)
so this is what I think it is.
Lex Fridman (2:43:06.220)
The way, by reinterpreting your past,
Alien Debate (2:43:09.160)
I mean, talk about from a kind of cognitive,
Lex Fridman (2:43:11.320)
psychological cognitive point of view,
Alien Debate (2:43:13.060)
by reinterpreting your past in your current mind,
Lex Fridman (2:43:17.880)
you could actually help you shape your future again.
Lex Fridman (2:43:21.280)
So you have much more freedom to interpret your past,
Lex Fridman (2:43:25.280)
to act in the present, to change your future,
Alien Debate (2:43:28.220)
than you do to change your future.
Lex Fridman (2:43:29.560)
It may sound weird, so I'm saying to everybody,
Alien Debate (2:43:31.720)
imagine your past, think about your past,
Lex Fridman (2:43:33.820)
reinterpret your past in the nicest way you can,
Alien Debate (2:43:37.520)
then imagine what you can do next,
Lex Fridman (2:43:39.400)
or imagine your past in a more negative way
Lex Fridman (2:43:41.240)
and what you do next,
Lex Fridman (2:43:42.060)
and look at those two counterfactuals, they're different.
Alien Debate (2:43:45.160)
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Lex Fridman (2:43:46.000)
I mean, Daniel Kahneman talks about this
Alien Debate (2:43:47.120)
that most of our life is lived in our memories.
Lex Fridman (2:43:49.600)
It's interesting, because you can essentially,
Alien Debate (2:43:51.560)
in imagination, choose the life you live.
Lex Fridman (2:43:53.880)
So maybe free will exists in imagination.
Alien Debate (2:43:57.560)
Choices are made in your imagination,
Lex Fridman (2:44:00.400)
and that results in you basically able to control
Lex Fridman (2:44:03.640)
how the future unrolls, because you're like,
Lex Fridman (2:44:06.920)
imagining, like reinterpreting constantly
Alien Debate (2:44:10.160)
the things that happen to you.
Lex Fridman (2:44:11.440)
Exactly, so if you want to increase
Alien Debate (2:44:13.680)
your amount of free will, those people that have,
Lex Fridman (2:44:16.400)
I don't think everyone has equal amounts of agency,
Alien Debate (2:44:18.720)
because of our sad constraints,
Lex Fridman (2:44:22.480)
where they're happenstance, health, economic,
Lex Fridman (2:44:26.580)
born in a certain place, right?
Lex Fridman (2:44:29.280)
But those of us that have the ability to go back
Lex Fridman (2:44:33.080)
and reinterpret our past and use that to change the future
Lex Fridman (2:44:38.040)
are the ones that exert most agency in the present,
Lex Fridman (2:44:42.040)
and I want to achieve higher degrees of agency
Lex Fridman (2:44:47.200)
and enable everyone else to do that as well,
Alien Debate (2:44:49.280)
to have more fun in the universe.
Lex Fridman (2:44:51.960)
Then we'll hit that peak, the maximum fun point.
Alien Debate (2:44:54.400)
I don't think there's ever gonna be a maximum,
Lex Fridman (2:44:56.520)
I think the wonderful thing about the future
Alien Debate (2:44:58.800)
is there's always gonna be more fun.
Lex Fridman (2:45:00.420)
Yeah, you, I think, again, going back to Twitter,
Alien Debate (2:45:04.720)
I think you, Lee, tweeted something
Lex Fridman (2:45:06.920)
about being a life maximalist,
Alien Debate (2:45:08.520)
that you want to maximize the number of life,
Lex Fridman (2:45:10.880)
the amount of life in the universe, so,
Lex Fridman (2:45:13.560)
and that's the more general version of that goal,
Lex Fridman (2:45:18.480)
is to maximize the amount of fun in the universe,
Alien Debate (2:45:20.440)
because life is a subset of fun, there are all kinds of,
Lex Fridman (2:45:23.080)
I suppose they're either correlated or exactly equal,
Alien Debate (2:45:25.960)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (2:45:27.000)
Anyway, speaking of fun,
Alien Debate (2:45:28.760)
let me ask you about alien sightings.
Lex Fridman (2:45:32.260)
So there's been quite a bit of UFO sightings
Lex Fridman (2:45:34.320)
and all that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:45:36.160)
What do you think would be the first time
Alien Debate (2:45:41.540)
when humans sight aliens, see aliens,
Lex Fridman (2:45:45.220)
in a sort of unquestionable way?
Alien Debate (2:45:49.360)
This extremely strong and arguable way
Lex Fridman (2:45:54.240)
we've made contact with aliens.
Lex Fridman (2:45:56.980)
Sarah, what would it look like?
Lex Fridman (2:45:59.040)
Obviously, the space of possibilities is huge here,
Lex Fridman (2:46:03.080)
but if you were to kind of look into the future,
Lex Fridman (2:46:06.240)
what would that look like?
Alien Debate (2:46:07.200)
Would it be inklings of UFOs here and there
Lex Fridman (2:46:10.280)
that slowly unravel a mystery?
Lex Fridman (2:46:13.600)
Or would it be like an obvious, overwhelming signal?
Lex Fridman (2:46:19.000)
So I think we have an obsession
Alien Debate (2:46:20.800)
with making contact with events.
Lex Fridman (2:46:23.120)
So what do I mean by that is,
Alien Debate (2:46:26.520)
like people have a UFO sighting, they make contact.
Lex Fridman (2:46:29.080)
And I always think, you know,
Alien Debate (2:46:32.480)
what's interesting to me about the UFO narratives right now
Lex Fridman (2:46:36.680)
is not that I have a disbelief
Alien Debate (2:46:38.160)
about what people are experiencing or feeling,
Lex Fridman (2:46:40.640)
but like the discussion right now
Alien Debate (2:46:42.240)
is sort of at the level of modern mythology.
Lex Fridman (2:46:45.160)
Aliens are our mythos in modern culture.
Lex Fridman (2:46:48.720)
And when you treat it like that,
Lex Fridman (2:46:50.460)
then I wanna think about when do things
Alien Debate (2:46:54.180)
that we traditionally only regularize through mythology
Lex Fridman (2:46:57.960)
actually become things that become standard knowledge?
Alien Debate (2:47:00.240)
So, you know, like it used to be, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:47:02.800)
variations in the climate were described
Alien Debate (2:47:04.560)
by some kind of gods or something.
Lex Fridman (2:47:05.840)
And now it's like, you know,
Alien Debate (2:47:06.840)
our technology picks up an anomaly
Lex Fridman (2:47:08.560)
or someone sees something, we say it's aliens.
Lex Fridman (2:47:11.160)
And I think the real thing is it's not contact with events,
Lex Fridman (2:47:15.160)
but like first contact is actually contact
Alien Debate (2:47:17.240)
with knowledge of the phenomenon or the explanation.
Lex Fridman (2:47:19.960)
And so this is very subtle and very abstract,
Lex Fridman (2:47:23.060)
but when does it become something
Lex Fridman (2:47:25.040)
that we actually understand what it is
Lex Fridman (2:47:27.240)
that we're talking about?
Lex Fridman (2:47:28.280)
That's first contact.
Alien Debate (2:47:29.400)
It's not.
Lex Fridman (2:47:30.240)
Would you make the myth,
Alien Debate (2:47:31.400)
would you give credit to the myth,
Lex Fridman (2:47:33.120)
the mythology as first contact?
Alien Debate (2:47:35.760)
Cause you might.
Lex Fridman (2:47:36.600)
I think, yes.
Alien Debate (2:47:37.420)
I think it's the rudimentary
Lex Fridman (2:47:38.480)
that we have some understanding that there's a phenomenon
Alien Debate (2:47:40.800)
that we have to understand and regularize.
Lex Fridman (2:47:42.920)
So I think.
Alien Debate (2:47:43.760)
Right, to understand that there is weather.
Lex Fridman (2:47:45.280)
Yes.
Alien Debate (2:47:46.120)
You have to construct a pathology around that weather.
Lex Fridman (2:47:47.760)
Yes, yes.
Alien Debate (2:47:48.600)
It's something that's controllable.
Lex Fridman (2:47:50.800)
Right.
Alien Debate (2:47:51.640)
I see mythology basically as like baby knowledge.
Lex Fridman (2:47:54.940)
Right, right.
Alien Debate (2:47:56.380)
It could be that, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:47:57.980)
although there's lots of alien sight,
Lex Fridman (2:48:01.060)
so called alien sightings, right?
Lex Fridman (2:48:03.180)
So there is a number of things you can do.
Alien Debate (2:48:04.380)
You could just dismiss them and say they're not true.
Lex Fridman (2:48:06.020)
They're kind of made up.
Lex Fridman (2:48:07.460)
Or you say, well, there's something interesting here, right?
Lex Fridman (2:48:09.740)
We keep seeing a commonality, right?
Alien Debate (2:48:11.660)
We see the same phenomenon again and again and again.
Lex Fridman (2:48:14.300)
Also, there's this interesting thing
Alien Debate (2:48:15.460)
about human imagination.
Lex Fridman (2:48:17.320)
Even if they are, let's not say made up,
Lex Fridman (2:48:20.040)
but misappropriated kind of other inputs,
Lex Fridman (2:48:23.760)
the fact that human consciousness
Alien Debate (2:48:25.640)
is capable of imagining a contact with aliens.
Lex Fridman (2:48:29.260)
Does that not tell us about something
Alien Debate (2:48:30.660)
about where we are in our position,
Lex Fridman (2:48:32.100)
in our culture, in our technology?
Alien Debate (2:48:33.980)
It tells us about where in time we are.
Lex Fridman (2:48:35.380)
Could it be that we're making contact with,
Alien Debate (2:48:37.940)
let's say that, so let's say,
Lex Fridman (2:48:39.860)
let's take the most miserable version.
Alien Debate (2:48:41.500)
There are no aliens in the universe.
Lex Fridman (2:48:42.660)
Life is only on Earth.
Alien Debate (2:48:44.640)
That then, the interpretation of that
Lex Fridman (2:48:46.220)
is we're desperate to kind of understand
Lex Fridman (2:48:48.140)
why we're the only life in the universe, right?
Lex Fridman (2:48:50.520)
The other one is the other most extreme
Alien Debate (2:48:51.860)
is that aliens are visiting all the time.
Lex Fridman (2:48:53.380)
We're just not able to capture them coherently,
Alien Debate (2:48:57.100)
or there's a big conspiracy and there's Area 51
Lex Fridman (2:48:59.940)
and there are lizards everywhere and there's that.
Alien Debate (2:49:04.060)
Or I'm kind of in favor of the idea
Lex Fridman (2:49:06.180)
that maybe humanity is waking up to the idea
Alien Debate (2:49:08.380)
that we aren't alone in the universe
Lex Fridman (2:49:09.740)
and we're just running the simulation
Lex Fridman (2:49:12.100)
and we're seeing some evidence.
Lex Fridman (2:49:14.660)
We don't know what life is yet.
Alien Debate (2:49:17.020)
We do have some anomalies out there.
Lex Fridman (2:49:19.740)
We can't explain everything.
Lex Fridman (2:49:21.240)
And over time, you know, we will start to unpack that.
Lex Fridman (2:49:28.560)
One very plausible thing we might do,
Alien Debate (2:49:30.920)
which might be boring for the average alien observer
Lex Fridman (2:49:35.920)
or believes that aliens are,
Alien Debate (2:49:37.400)
as in intelligent aliens are visiting Earth,
Lex Fridman (2:49:39.640)
it could be that we might go to the outer solar system
Lex Fridman (2:49:42.680)
and find a new type of life
Lex Fridman (2:49:44.400)
that has completely new chemistry,
Alien Debate (2:49:46.600)
bring these cells back to Earth,
Lex Fridman (2:49:48.560)
where you could say in my hand,
Alien Debate (2:49:49.880)
on Earth, here's RNA, DNA, and proteins,
Lex Fridman (2:49:52.840)
and look, cells self replicate.
Alien Debate (2:49:54.900)
From Titan, we got this new set of molecules,
Lex Fridman (2:49:57.440)
new set of cells, and we feed it stuff and it grows.
Alien Debate (2:50:01.340)
That for me, if we were able to do that,
Lex Fridman (2:50:04.000)
which would be like the most,
Alien Debate (2:50:07.560)
that would be my UFO sign.
Lex Fridman (2:50:09.120)
That's a good test.
Lex Fridman (2:50:10.000)
So you feed it and it grows.
Lex Fridman (2:50:12.560)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (2:50:13.400)
We've made, so not until you know how to feed the thing,
Lex Fridman (2:50:18.680)
it grows somehow.
Alien Debate (2:50:22.680)
We can make a comic book, you know,
Lex Fridman (2:50:23.800)
the tiger that came for tea, the alien that came for tea.
Lex Fridman (2:50:26.400)
What would you say is between the two of you
Lex Fridman (2:50:30.760)
is the biggest disagreement about alien life out there?
Alien Debate (2:50:35.880)
Is it from the basic framework of thinking about
Lex Fridman (2:50:39.160)
what is life to maybe what aliens look like
Lex Fridman (2:50:41.960)
to alien civilizations, to UFO sightings?
Lex Fridman (2:50:45.840)
What would you think?
Lex Fridman (2:50:47.360)
So I would say the biggest one is that
Lex Fridman (2:50:50.040)
the emergence of life does not have to be,
Alien Debate (2:50:55.040)
that it can't just happen once on the planet,
Lex Fridman (2:50:57.480)
that it could be two or more life forms
Alien Debate (2:50:59.480)
present on the planet at once.
Lex Fridman (2:51:01.360)
And I think Sarah doesn't agree with that.
Alien Debate (2:51:03.520)
I think that's like logically inconsistent.
Lex Fridman (2:51:07.680)
That's really polite.
Alien Debate (2:51:08.600)
You're saying it's nonsense.
Lex Fridman (2:51:10.560)
Because you think that, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:51:11.400)
So likely is that, so the idea that,
Lex Fridman (2:51:12.880)
what does it look like?
Alien Debate (2:51:14.720)
Let's imagine two alien civilizations
Lex Fridman (2:51:18.160)
coexisting on a planet.
Lex Fridman (2:51:19.480)
What's that look like exactly?
Lex Fridman (2:51:21.240)
So I would say, I think I've got to get around your argument.
Alien Debate (2:51:26.240)
Yeah, let's say that on this planet,
Lex Fridman (2:51:28.480)
there's just like, there's lots of available chemistry
Lex Fridman (2:51:31.760)
and one life form gets some emerges based on carbon
Lex Fridman (2:51:35.600)
and interacts and there's an ecosystem based on carbon.
Lex Fridman (2:51:38.720)
And there's an orthogonal, and so it's planetary phenomena,
Lex Fridman (2:51:43.440)
which is what you, I think, right?
Lex Fridman (2:51:45.200)
But there's also one that carries on silicon.
Lex Fridman (2:51:47.600)
And because there's enough energy and there's enough stuff,
Alien Debate (2:51:52.140)
that these life forms might not actually
Lex Fridman (2:51:54.360)
necessarily compete evolutionarily.
Alien Debate (2:51:58.000)
Yeah, but they would have to not interact at all
Lex Fridman (2:51:59.880)
because they're going to be co constructing
Alien Debate (2:52:01.480)
each other's causal chains.
Lex Fridman (2:52:02.720)
I think that's what you just got me, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:52:04.000)
So there's no overlap in terms of their causal chains
Lex Fridman (2:52:09.200)
or a very limited overlap.
Alien Debate (2:52:10.240)
Yeah, so I think the only way I can get away with that
Lex Fridman (2:52:12.080)
is to say, right, life can emerge on a planet underneath.
Alien Debate (2:52:15.400)
And, okay.
Lex Fridman (2:52:16.240)
The lizard people under the crust of the earth.
Alien Debate (2:52:18.680)
I think, I think, I think we, let's go to,
Lex Fridman (2:52:21.200)
I think, but look, as you can see, we disagree.
Alien Debate (2:52:24.400)
So, and I think Sarah actually has convinced me
Lex Fridman (2:52:27.020)
because of the life is a planetary,
Alien Debate (2:52:30.240)
the emergence of life is a planetary phenomena.
Lex Fridman (2:52:32.260)
And actually, because of the way evolution selection works,
Alien Debate (2:52:36.880)
then nothing occurs in isolation.
Lex Fridman (2:52:38.180)
The causal chains interact.
Lex Fridman (2:52:39.360)
So there is a common, there's a consensus model
Lex Fridman (2:52:41.640)
for life on the earth.
Lex Fridman (2:52:42.560)
But you don't think you can place aliens from elsewhere
Lex Fridman (2:52:47.160)
onto the, can't you just place multiple alien civilizations
Lex Fridman (2:52:51.480)
on one planet?
Lex Fridman (2:52:52.320)
Right, but I think, so you can take two origin life events
Alien Debate (2:52:56.840)
that were independent and co mingle them.
Lex Fridman (2:52:59.080)
But I don't think when you're talking about, when you,
Alien Debate (2:53:03.920)
when you look at the interaction of that structure,
Lex Fridman (2:53:06.040)
it's like the same idea as like an experiment
Lex Fridman (2:53:10.100)
being an example of life, right?
Lex Fridman (2:53:11.520)
That's a really abstract and subtle concept.
Lex Fridman (2:53:13.760)
And I guess what I'm saying is life is information
Lex Fridman (2:53:16.920)
propagating through matter.
Lex Fridman (2:53:18.240)
So once you start having things interacting,
Lex Fridman (2:53:21.200)
they in some sense co mingle and they become part
Alien Debate (2:53:24.200)
of the same chain.
Lex Fridman (2:53:27.000)
So the co mingling starts quickly, proceeds,
Alien Debate (2:53:30.680)
we proceed to co mingle quickly.
Lex Fridman (2:53:32.360)
Right, right, so you could say, so the question is then,
Alien Debate (2:53:36.560)
the more interesting question is,
Lex Fridman (2:53:37.920)
are there two distinct origins events?
Lex Fridman (2:53:39.840)
And I still think that there's reasons that
Lex Fridman (2:53:41.840)
on a single planet, you would have one origins event
Alien Debate (2:53:44.700)
because of the timescales of cycling of geochemistry
Lex Fridman (2:53:49.000)
on a planet and also the fact that I don't think
Alien Debate (2:53:51.140)
that the origin of life happens in a pool
Lex Fridman (2:53:53.320)
and like radiates outward through evolutionary processes.
Alien Debate (2:53:56.060)
I think it's a multi scale phenomenon happens
Lex Fridman (2:53:58.160)
at the level of individual molecules interacting,
Alien Debate (2:54:00.520)
collections of molecules interacting
Lex Fridman (2:54:02.120)
and entire planetary scale cycles.
Lex Fridman (2:54:04.160)
So life as we know it has always been multi scale
Lex Fridman (2:54:07.960)
and there's brilliant examples of individual mutations
Lex Fridman (2:54:11.600)
at the genome level changing global climate, right?
Lex Fridman (2:54:14.380)
So there's a tight coupling between things that happen
Alien Debate (2:54:17.920)
at the largest scale, our planetary scale
Lex Fridman (2:54:21.840)
and the smallest scale that life mediates.
Lex Fridman (2:54:24.200)
But it still might be difficult within something
Lex Fridman (2:54:26.720)
you would call as a single alien civilization.
Alien Debate (2:54:29.720)
You know, there's species and stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:54:31.920)
And they might not be able to communicate.
Lex Fridman (2:54:34.320)
But you're asking about life, not species, right?
Lex Fridman (2:54:36.880)
What's the difference between one living civilization?
Alien Debate (2:54:43.080)
This is almost like a category question.
Lex Fridman (2:54:45.960)
Versus species, because it can be very different.
Alien Debate (2:54:50.520)
Because there's like literally islands
Lex Fridman (2:54:53.200)
that you can evolve different kinds of turtles and stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:54:55.680)
And they can.
Lex Fridman (2:54:57.120)
So I guess what I'm saying is weird.
Alien Debate (2:54:59.240)
If you look at the structure
Lex Fridman (2:55:00.520)
of two interacting living things, populations,
Lex Fridman (2:55:05.440)
and you look in their past
Lex Fridman (2:55:07.000)
and they have independent origins for their causal chain,
Alien Debate (2:55:10.160)
then you would say one was alien.
Lex Fridman (2:55:12.080)
You know, they have different independent origins events.
Lex Fridman (2:55:14.920)
But if you look at their future
Lex Fridman (2:55:15.960)
by virtue of the fact they're interacting,
Alien Debate (2:55:18.200)
their causal chains have become commingled.
Lex Fridman (2:55:20.160)
So then in the future, they are not independent.
Lex Fridman (2:55:26.240)
So that's why you would even define them as alien.
Lex Fridman (2:55:28.480)
So the structure across time is two examples of life
Alien Debate (2:55:32.520)
become one example of life
Lex Fridman (2:55:33.720)
because life is the entire structure across time.
Alien Debate (2:55:36.320)
Right, but there could be a lot of variation within.
Lex Fridman (2:55:39.320)
Yeah, so the question we're all interested in
Alien Debate (2:55:41.160)
is how many independent origins
Lex Fridman (2:55:44.240)
of a complexifying causal chain are there in the universe?
Lex Fridman (2:55:48.920)
See, but the idea of origin is easy for you to define?
Lex Fridman (2:55:55.160)
Because like, when the species split
Alien Debate (2:55:58.760)
in the evolutionary process,
Lex Fridman (2:56:00.640)
and you get like a dolphin versus a human
Lex Fridman (2:56:06.280)
or a Neanderthal versus Homo sapiens, isn't there?
Lex Fridman (2:56:10.520)
Let me make a distinction here quickly.
Lex Fridman (2:56:12.880)
So I think, sorry to interrupt.
Lex Fridman (2:56:16.160)
What we're saying, I mean, Sarah won that argument
Alien Debate (2:56:20.080)
because I think she's right,
Lex Fridman (2:56:21.200)
that once the causal chains interact and going forward,
Lex Fridman (2:56:24.400)
so we're talking about a number of things.
Lex Fridman (2:56:25.800)
Let's go all the way back before origin of life.
Alien Debate (2:56:27.720)
Origin of life.
Lex Fridman (2:56:28.600)
On Earth.
Alien Debate (2:56:29.440)
On Earth.
Lex Fridman (2:56:30.360)
Chemistry emerges, so there's all these,
Alien Debate (2:56:32.640)
I would say there's probably mechanistically,
Lex Fridman (2:56:35.400)
the chemistry is desperately trying to find any way
Alien Debate (2:56:37.040)
to get replicators.
Lex Fridman (2:56:38.440)
The ribosome kind of was really rubbish at the beginning
Lex Fridman (2:56:41.600)
and they just competed, competed, competed,
Lex Fridman (2:56:42.920)
and you got better and better ribosome.
Alien Debate (2:56:44.040)
Suddenly that was a technology.
Lex Fridman (2:56:46.280)
The ribosome is the technology that, boom,
Alien Debate (2:56:48.880)
allowed evolution to start.
Lex Fridman (2:56:51.520)
So what I was trying to, why I interrupted you,
Alien Debate (2:56:53.960)
is say that once evolution has started
Lex Fridman (2:56:55.960)
using that technology, then you can speciate.
Lex Fridman (2:57:00.240)
And I was trying to, and I think what Sarah said
Lex Fridman (2:57:03.160)
was, convinced me of, because I was like, no,
Alien Debate (2:57:05.560)
we're gonna have lots of different chemistry,
Lex Fridman (2:57:06.840)
shadow biosphere on Earth, and she's like, no, no, no.
Alien Debate (2:57:09.600)
You have to have this, you have to get to this
Lex Fridman (2:57:11.960)
minimum evolutionary machine.
Lex Fridman (2:57:16.280)
And then when that occurs, speciation occurs.
Lex Fridman (2:57:18.440)
Exactly what it's like, dolphins, humans,
Alien Debate (2:57:21.360)
everything on Earth.
Lex Fridman (2:57:23.560)
But when you're looking at aliens or alien life,
Alien Debate (2:57:27.240)
there's not gonna be two different types of chemistry
Lex Fridman (2:57:28.800)
because they compete and interact and cooperate
Alien Debate (2:57:31.720)
because the causal chains overlap.
Lex Fridman (2:57:33.200)
One might kill the other, one might combine with the other,
Lex Fridman (2:57:35.480)
and then you go on and then you have this average.
Lex Fridman (2:57:40.000)
And sure, there might be respeciation.
Alien Debate (2:57:42.000)
It might have two types of emerging chemistry.
Lex Fridman (2:57:44.520)
It almost looks like the origin of life on Earth
Alien Debate (2:57:46.760)
required two different prelife forms,
Lex Fridman (2:57:50.120)
the peptide world and the RNA world.
Alien Debate (2:57:52.380)
Somehow they got together, and by combining,
Lex Fridman (2:57:55.600)
you got the ribosome.
Lex Fridman (2:57:56.720)
And that was the minimum competent entity for evolution.
Lex Fridman (2:58:00.200)
And would all alien civilizations
Lex Fridman (2:58:03.060)
have an evolutionary process on a planet?
Lex Fridman (2:58:06.800)
So it's almost the definition of life.
Alien Debate (2:58:10.480)
To create all those memories, you have to have something.
Lex Fridman (2:58:14.120)
Things have to change in time.
Lex Fridman (2:58:15.800)
But there has to be selection.
Lex Fridman (2:58:19.620)
That's like an efficient, there's no other way to do it.
Alien Debate (2:58:22.200)
No, well, never say never, because soon as I say that.
Lex Fridman (2:58:25.000)
That's the part that depresses me, though,
Alien Debate (2:58:26.760)
going back to the earlier discussion on violence
Lex Fridman (2:58:29.920)
and things, and I don't know where,
Alien Debate (2:58:32.400)
somebody was tweeting about this recently,
Lex Fridman (2:58:34.020)
but how much death had to die.
Alien Debate (2:58:37.360)
Maybe it was you.
Lex Fridman (2:58:38.420)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (2:58:39.260)
Ah, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:58:40.080)
So, yeah, sorry.
Alien Debate (2:58:41.720)
We're talking about life.
Lex Fridman (2:58:43.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:58:44.300)
And I guess a lot of murder had to occur.
Lex Fridman (2:58:48.480)
Right, so selection means things had to be weeded out,
Alien Debate (2:58:51.720)
right, so.
Lex Fridman (2:58:52.680)
Well, we can celebrate that.
Alien Debate (2:58:53.920)
Death makes way for a tulip.
Lex Fridman (2:58:55.400)
Yeah, I mean, and also one of the most interesting features
Alien Debate (2:58:58.860)
of major extinction events in the history of our planet
Lex Fridman (2:59:01.760)
is how much novelty emerged immediately after, right?
Alien Debate (2:59:05.960)
So, and of course, a lot of people make arguments
Lex Fridman (2:59:08.300)
we wouldn't be here if the dinosaurs didn't go extinct.
Alien Debate (2:59:10.780)
So, in some ways, we can attribute our existence
Lex Fridman (2:59:15.600)
to all of that.
Lex Fridman (2:59:16.640)
But I guess I was just wondering and sort of like,
Lex Fridman (2:59:19.320)
if I was gonna build a universe myself
Lex Fridman (2:59:22.720)
in the most optimistic way, would I retain that feature?
Lex Fridman (2:59:25.040)
But it does seem to be a universe.
Alien Debate (2:59:25.880)
I think you have to.
Lex Fridman (2:59:26.840)
I mean, I think we're probably being
Alien Debate (2:59:28.960)
over anthropomorphizing.
Lex Fridman (2:59:31.320)
I remember watching the blue,
Alien Debate (2:59:32.880)
I think it was the blue planet,
Lex Fridman (2:59:33.880)
David Attenborough was showing these seals
Lex Fridman (2:59:35.320)
and because of climate change,
Lex Fridman (2:59:36.520)
some seals were falling off a cliff.
Lex Fridman (2:59:38.640)
And how tragic that was.
Lex Fridman (2:59:39.560)
I was like, I'm saying my son, that's pretty cool.
Alien Debate (2:59:43.040)
Look at those ones down there.
Lex Fridman (2:59:44.360)
They've obviously got some kind of mutations,
Alien Debate (2:59:46.180)
some and they're not doing that Darth thing.
Lex Fridman (2:59:48.040)
And so that poor gene will be weeded out.
Alien Debate (2:59:51.320)
Of course, at the individual level, it looks tragic.
Lex Fridman (2:59:54.800)
And of course, as human beings have the ability
Alien Debate (2:59:56.320)
to abstract and we empathize,
Lex Fridman (2:59:57.920)
we don't wanna cause suffering on other human beings
Alien Debate (30:01.460)
that we realized the best way to put that is infer in time.
Lex Fridman (30:05.780)
So although we can't infer your entire history,
Alien Debate (30:08.140)
we know at some point the four A's were made,
Lex Fridman (30:10.460)
the four B's was made, the four C's were made,
Alien Debate (30:12.580)
the four D's were made and they all got added together.
Lex Fridman (30:15.500)
And that's one really interesting thing
Alien Debate (30:17.620)
that's come out of the theory,
Lex Fridman (30:19.060)
but the killer when we knew we were going beyond
Alien Debate (30:24.140)
beyond standard complexity theories,
Lex Fridman (30:26.380)
but incredibly successful is that we realized
Alien Debate (30:29.940)
we could start to measure these things
Lex Fridman (30:31.460)
for real across domains.
Lex Fridman (30:33.420)
So the assembly index is actually an intrinsic property
Lex Fridman (30:36.660)
of all stuff that you can break into components,
Alien Debate (30:41.700)
particularly molecules are good
Lex Fridman (30:42.980)
because you can break them up
Alien Debate (30:44.300)
into smaller molecules, into atoms.
Lex Fridman (30:47.220)
The challenge will be making that more general
Alien Debate (30:49.900)
across all the domains,
Lex Fridman (30:50.740)
but we're working on it right now
Lex Fridman (30:51.820)
and I think the theory will do that.
Lex Fridman (30:53.020)
So components, domains,
Lex Fridman (30:54.780)
so you're talking about basically measuring
Lex Fridman (30:58.140)
the complexity of an object in what,
Alien Debate (31:00.940)
biology, chemistry, physics,
Lex Fridman (31:03.260)
that's what you mean by domains.
Alien Debate (31:05.860)
Complexity of tests.
Lex Fridman (31:06.700)
Sociology. Complexity of computers.
Alien Debate (31:08.140)
Complexity of memes, you know.
Lex Fridman (31:10.220)
Memes? Yep.
Lex Fridman (31:11.660)
What is that, ideas?
Lex Fridman (31:13.260)
Yeah, I mean, so one of the.
Alien Debate (31:15.220)
Ideas are objects in assembly theory.
Lex Fridman (31:16.980)
Yeah. They are.
Alien Debate (31:17.820)
They're physical things.
Lex Fridman (31:18.980)
They're just features of the causal graph.
Alien Debate (31:20.340)
I mean, the fact that I can talk to you right now
Lex Fridman (31:22.140)
is because we're exchanging structure
Alien Debate (31:23.780)
of our assembly space.
Lex Fridman (31:27.220)
So conversation is the exchanging structures
Alien Debate (31:32.220)
in assembly space.
Lex Fridman (31:33.180)
What is assembly space?
Alien Debate (31:34.940)
When I started working on origins of life,
Lex Fridman (31:36.620)
I was writing about something called top down causation,
Alien Debate (31:39.580)
which a lot of like philosophers are interested in
Lex Fridman (31:42.140)
and people that worry about the mind body problem.
Lex Fridman (31:44.020)
But the whole idea is, you know,
Lex Fridman (31:45.900)
if we have, you know, the microscopic world of physics
Alien Debate (31:49.700)
is causally complete,
Lex Fridman (31:50.900)
it seems like there's no room for higher level causes
Alien Debate (31:53.300)
like our thoughts to actually have any impact on the world.
Lex Fridman (31:56.380)
And that didn't, that seems problematic
Alien Debate (31:59.140)
when you get to studying life and mind
Lex Fridman (32:01.300)
because it does seem that quote unquote,
Alien Debate (32:03.420)
emergent properties do matter to matter.
Lex Fridman (32:08.820)
And then there's this other sort of paradoxical situation
Alien Debate (32:10.980)
where information looks like it's disembodied.
Lex Fridman (32:12.940)
So we talk about information,
Alien Debate (32:14.260)
like it can just move from any physical system
Lex Fridman (32:16.180)
to any other physical system.
Lex Fridman (32:17.500)
And it doesn't require,
Lex Fridman (32:20.300)
like you don't have to specify anything about the substrate
Alien Debate (32:22.580)
to talk about information.
Lex Fridman (32:24.180)
And then there's also the way we talk about mathematics
Lex Fridman (32:27.260)
is also disembodied, right?
Lex Fridman (32:28.660)
Like the platonic world of forms
Lex Fridman (32:31.020)
and I think all of those things are hinging
Lex Fridman (32:34.940)
that we really don't know how to think about abstractions
Alien Debate (32:37.100)
as physical things.
Lex Fridman (32:39.580)
And really, I think what assembly theory is pointing to
Alien Debate (32:43.900)
is what we're missing there is the dimension of time.
Lex Fridman (32:46.940)
And if you actually look at an object
Alien Debate (32:48.900)
being extended across time,
Lex Fridman (32:51.100)
what we call information and the things that look abstract
Alien Debate (32:54.220)
are things that are entangled
Lex Fridman (32:55.580)
in the histories of those objects.
Alien Debate (32:57.340)
They're features of the overlapping assembly space.
Lex Fridman (32:59.900)
So they look abstract because they're not
Alien Debate (33:02.540)
part of the current structure,
Lex Fridman (33:05.260)
but they're part of the structure
Alien Debate (33:06.580)
if you thought about it as like the philosophical concept
Lex Fridman (33:09.060)
of a hyperobject, an object that's too big in time
Alien Debate (33:11.620)
for us to actually to resolve.
Lex Fridman (33:13.740)
And so I think information is physical.
Alien Debate (33:15.860)
It's just physical in time, not in space.
Lex Fridman (33:18.940)
Too hyperobject, too difficult for us to resolve.
Lex Fridman (33:22.140)
So we're supposed to think about of life
Lex Fridman (33:26.060)
as this thing that stretches through time
Lex Fridman (33:28.140)
and there's a causation chain that led to that thing.
Lex Fridman (33:32.220)
And then you're trying to measure something
Alien Debate (33:34.380)
with the assembly index about properties of that.
Lex Fridman (33:36.900)
The assembly index is the ordering,
Alien Debate (33:39.340)
like you could think of it as like a partial ordering
Lex Fridman (33:41.780)
of all the things that can happen.
Lex Fridman (33:43.740)
So in thermodynamics, we coarse grain things
Lex Fridman (33:46.780)
by temperature and pressure.
Alien Debate (33:48.100)
In assembly theory, we coarse grain
Lex Fridman (33:50.460)
by the number of copies of an object
Lex Fridman (33:52.260)
and the assembly index, which is basically,
Lex Fridman (33:53.980)
if you think of the space of all possible things,
Alien Debate (33:56.180)
it's like a depth of how far you've gone into that space
Lex Fridman (33:58.340)
and how much time was required to get there.
Alien Debate (34:00.220)
In the shortest possible version.
Lex Fridman (34:02.140)
The shortest possible version.
Lex Fridman (34:03.780)
Not average, because can't you just 3D?
Lex Fridman (34:07.500)
You're gonna kill me with that question.
Lex Fridman (34:09.620)
Not 3D, can't you always 3D print the thing?
Lex Fridman (34:13.580)
Let's like stab him in the heart.
Alien Debate (34:14.820)
No, because I had such a fight.
Lex Fridman (34:16.460)
So Sarah's team and my team are writing this paper
Alien Debate (34:18.740)
at the moment and.
Lex Fridman (34:20.140)
It's so funny.
Alien Debate (34:21.340)
I think we kind of share the, at the beginning,
Lex Fridman (34:23.020)
you were like, no, that's not right.
Alien Debate (34:23.980)
Oh yeah, that's right.
Lex Fridman (34:24.820)
And we're doing this for a bit.
Lex Fridman (34:25.900)
And then the problem is when you build a theory
Lex Fridman (34:27.860)
and build the intuition,
Alien Debate (34:29.340)
there's some certain features, right,
Lex Fridman (34:31.700)
of the theory that almost felt like
Alien Debate (34:34.260)
I was being religious about saying,
Lex Fridman (34:35.500)
right, you have to do this.
Alien Debate (34:37.020)
A good assembly theorist does this, does this, does this.
Lex Fridman (34:40.380)
And Sarah's postdoc, Daniel, and my postdoc, Abhishek,
Lex Fridman (34:44.460)
and they were both.
Lex Fridman (34:45.300)
They're both brilliant.
Alien Debate (34:46.140)
They're brilliant, but they were like,
Lex Fridman (34:47.860)
no, we don't buy that.
Lex Fridman (34:49.500)
And I was like, it is, they were like,
Lex Fridman (34:52.380)
well, Lee, actually, I thought you were the first
Alien Debate (34:55.180)
to say that, you know, you can't,
Lex Fridman (34:56.620)
if you can't explain it, it doesn't,
Lex Fridman (34:58.060)
and you can't do an experiment that doesn't exist.
Lex Fridman (35:00.140)
And that saved me.
Lex Fridman (35:00.980)
And I said to Abhishek,
Lex Fridman (35:01.980)
Abhishek's my postdoc in Glasgow,
Alien Debate (35:03.420)
Daniel is Sarah's postdoc in ASU.
Lex Fridman (35:06.220)
I was like, I have the experimental data.
Lex Fridman (35:08.980)
So when I basically take the molecules
Lex Fridman (35:11.060)
and chop them up in the mass spec,
Alien Debate (35:12.820)
the assembly number is never the average.
Lex Fridman (35:14.460)
It's always the shortest.
Alien Debate (35:15.740)
It's an intrinsic property.
Lex Fridman (35:16.860)
And then the penny drop for Abhishek said, okay.
Lex Fridman (35:19.180)
So I had these things that we had to believe
Lex Fridman (35:22.180)
to start with or to trust,
Lex Fridman (35:23.340)
and then we'd done the math and it comes out.
Lex Fridman (35:24.780)
And they now have the shortest path, actually.
Alien Debate (35:26.940)
It's up, it explains why the shortest path.
Lex Fridman (35:29.140)
Here's why the shortest path is important, not the average.
Alien Debate (35:32.700)
The shortest path needs you to identify
Lex Fridman (35:34.740)
when the universe has basically got a memory,
Alien Debate (35:37.100)
not an average.
Lex Fridman (35:38.060)
So what you want to be able to do is to say,
Lex Fridman (35:40.260)
what is the minimum number of features
Lex Fridman (35:43.780)
that I want to be able to see in the universe?
Alien Debate (35:45.500)
When I find those features,
Lex Fridman (35:46.780)
I know the universe has had a coherent memory
Lex Fridman (35:50.820)
and is basically alive.
Lex Fridman (35:53.460)
And so that gives you the lower bound.
Lex Fridman (35:56.980)
So that's like, of course there's going to be other paths.
Lex Fridman (35:59.540)
We can be more ridiculous, right?
Alien Debate (36:01.140)
We can have other parts, but it's just the minimum.
Lex Fridman (36:03.460)
So probabilistically at the beginning,
Alien Debate (36:06.100)
because assembly theory was built
Lex Fridman (36:07.940)
as a measure for biosignatures, I needed to go there.
Lex Fridman (36:11.900)
And then I realized it was intrinsic.
Lex Fridman (36:13.780)
And then Sarah realized it was intrinsic
Lex Fridman (36:15.740)
and these hyperobjects were coming.
Lex Fridman (36:16.940)
And we were kind of fusing that notions together.
Lex Fridman (36:19.820)
And then the team were like, yeah,
Lex Fridman (36:21.340)
but if I have enough energy and I have enough resources,
Alien Debate (36:25.780)
I might not take the shortest path.
Lex Fridman (36:27.060)
I might go a bit longer.
Alien Debate (36:28.020)
I might take a really long path
Lex Fridman (36:30.020)
because it allows me then to do something else.
Lex Fridman (36:33.180)
So what you can do is, let's say
Lex Fridman (36:34.300)
I've got two different objects, A and B,
Lex Fridman (36:37.420)
and they both have different shortest paths to get them.
Lex Fridman (36:40.380)
But then if you want to make A and B together,
Alien Debate (36:43.860)
they will have a compromise.
Lex Fridman (36:44.940)
So in the joint assembly space, that might be an average,
Lex Fridman (36:48.620)
but actually it's the shortest way
Lex Fridman (36:50.220)
you can make both A and B
Alien Debate (36:52.300)
with a minimum amount of resource in time.
Lex Fridman (36:54.700)
So suddenly you then layer these things up.
Lex Fridman (36:56.860)
And so the average becomes not important,
Lex Fridman (36:59.780)
but as you literally overlap those sets,
Alien Debate (37:03.740)
you get a new shortest path.
Lex Fridman (37:05.340)
And so what we realized time and time again
Alien Debate (37:07.220)
when we're doing the math,
Lex Fridman (37:08.060)
the shortest path is intrinsic, is fundamental,
Lex Fridman (37:11.260)
and is measurable, which is kind of mind blowing.
Lex Fridman (37:14.300)
So what we're talking about, some basic ingredients,
Alien Debate (37:17.380)
maybe we'll talk about that, what those basic ingredients
Lex Fridman (37:20.580)
could be and how many steps, when you say shortest path,
Lex Fridman (37:23.860)
how many steps it takes to turn those basic ingredients
Lex Fridman (37:28.340)
into the final meal.
Lex Fridman (37:32.180)
So how to make a, what's the shortest way to make a pizza?
Lex Fridman (37:35.660)
Or a pie.
Alien Debate (37:36.500)
Or a pie.
Lex Fridman (37:37.340)
An apple pie.
Alien Debate (37:38.180)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (37:39.020)
And a pizza and a pie together.
Alien Debate (37:40.340)
Or a scratch.
Lex Fridman (37:41.780)
So there's a lot of ways.
Alien Debate (37:44.980)
There's the shortest way,
Lex Fridman (37:46.180)
and then you take the full spectrum of ways
Lex Fridman (37:48.940)
and there's probably an average duration
Lex Fridman (37:53.300)
for a noob to make an apple pie.
Lex Fridman (37:56.380)
Is the average interesting still?
Lex Fridman (37:58.340)
If you measure the average length of the path
Alien Debate (38:01.980)
to assemble a thing, does that tell you something
Lex Fridman (38:05.100)
about the way nature usually does it?
Alien Debate (38:08.620)
Versus something fundamental about the object,
Lex Fridman (38:13.900)
which I think is what you're aiming at
Alien Debate (38:15.460)
with the assembly index.
Lex Fridman (38:16.420)
Yeah, I mean, look, we all have to quantify things.
Alien Debate (38:19.420)
The minimum path gives you the lower bounds.
Lex Fridman (38:21.140)
You know you're detecting something.
Alien Debate (38:22.340)
You know you're inferring something.
Lex Fridman (38:24.060)
The average tells you about really how the objects
Alien Debate (38:26.900)
are existing in the ecosystem or the technology.
Lex Fridman (38:30.980)
And there has to be more paths explored
Alien Debate (38:34.780)
because then you can happen upon other memories
Lex Fridman (38:39.980)
and then condense them down.
Alien Debate (38:41.500)
I'm not making too much sense, but if you look and say,
Lex Fridman (38:44.020)
let's just say, I mean, maybe we're gonna get
Lex Fridman (38:45.700)
to alien civilizations later, right?
Lex Fridman (38:47.260)
But I would argue very strongly
Alien Debate (38:49.540)
that alien civilization A and alien civilization B,
Lex Fridman (38:54.180)
they're different assembly spaces.
Lex Fridman (38:55.660)
So they're kind of gonna be a bit messed up
Lex Fridman (38:57.140)
if they happen to come one another,
Alien Debate (38:59.060)
only when they find some joint overlap in their technology,
Lex Fridman (39:02.340)
because if aliens come to us and they don't share
Alien Debate (39:05.020)
any of the causal graph we've showed,
Lex Fridman (39:06.620)
but hopefully they share the periodic table
Lex Fridman (39:09.220)
and bonds and things,
Lex Fridman (39:11.460)
that we're gonna have to really think about the language
Alien Debate (39:14.060)
to talk to us aliens by inferring,
Lex Fridman (39:16.860)
by using assembly theory to infer their language,
Alien Debate (39:21.700)
their technology, and other bits and bobs.
Lex Fridman (39:23.780)
And the shortest path will help you do that quickly.
Alien Debate (39:26.140)
All right, so all aliens in this causality graphs
Lex Fridman (39:29.540)
have a common ancestor in the...
Alien Debate (39:32.220)
If the building blocks are the same,
Lex Fridman (39:33.980)
which means they live in the same universe as us.
Lex Fridman (39:35.700)
So this is the assumption.
Lex Fridman (39:36.540)
It depends on how far back in time you go, though.
Lex Fridman (39:38.580)
But the universe has all the same building blocks.
Lex Fridman (39:42.060)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (39:42.900)
And we have to assume that.
Lex Fridman (39:45.740)
So at least there's not different classes
Lex Fridman (39:49.340)
of causality graphs, right?
Lex Fridman (39:53.060)
No.
Alien Debate (39:53.900)
The universe doesn't just say like,
Lex Fridman (39:55.420)
here you get the red causality graph,
Lex Fridman (39:58.420)
and you get the blue one.
Lex Fridman (39:59.420)
These basic ingredients,
Lex Fridman (3:00:00.040)
and we should retain that.
Lex Fridman (3:00:01.520)
But we shouldn't look back in time
Lex Fridman (3:00:03.400)
and say, how many butterflies had to die?
Lex Fridman (3:00:08.480)
I remember making this,
Lex Fridman (3:00:10.000)
how many, if you think about the caterpillar
Lex Fridman (3:00:13.280)
become the chrysalis and then the butterfly getting out,
Lex Fridman (3:00:16.120)
how many, if that suffering, we call it suffering,
Lex Fridman (3:00:18.820)
if that process of pruning had not occurred,
Alien Debate (3:00:21.740)
we have no butterflies.
Lex Fridman (3:00:22.940)
So none of the butterfly beauty in the world
Alien Debate (3:00:25.360)
without all that pruning.
Lex Fridman (3:00:26.720)
So pruning is required,
Lex Fridman (3:00:28.880)
but we shouldn't anthropomorphize
Lex Fridman (3:00:30.280)
and feel sorry for the biological entities,
Alien Debate (3:00:33.600)
because that seems to be a backwards way of looking at it.
Lex Fridman (3:00:36.920)
What we should do is project forward
Lex Fridman (3:00:38.880)
and maybe think about what values we have across our species
Lex Fridman (3:00:42.600)
and our ecosystem and our fellow human beings.
Alien Debate (3:00:45.080)
You know, now that we know that animals suffer
Lex Fridman (3:00:47.840)
at some level, think about humane farming.
Alien Debate (3:00:51.320)
When we find that plants can, in fact,
Lex Fridman (3:00:53.160)
are conscious and can think and have pain,
Alien Debate (3:00:55.200)
then we'll do humane gardening.
Lex Fridman (3:00:58.520)
Until that point, we won't do it, right?
Alien Debate (3:01:01.160)
I like this.
Lex Fridman (3:01:03.120)
Famous chemist endorses the majestic nature of murder.
Alien Debate (3:01:07.400)
That's the title.
Lex Fridman (3:01:10.680)
I didn't say that, but any case.
Alien Debate (3:01:12.080)
Well, I just inserted it.
Lex Fridman (3:01:13.880)
I have a hard time with it, though.
Alien Debate (3:01:14.960)
I think the way you put it is kind of...
Lex Fridman (3:01:17.720)
But it's the reality of, it is beautiful.
Alien Debate (3:01:23.160)
You know, there's an Instagram account
Lex Fridman (3:01:24.520)
called natureismetal,
Lex Fridman (3:01:25.820)
and I keep following it and unfollowing it
Lex Fridman (3:01:29.260)
because I can't handle it for prolonged periods of time.
Alien Debate (3:01:32.060)
We evolve together, you die alone.
Lex Fridman (3:01:34.520)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (3:01:35.360)
We evolve together, but you die alone.
Lex Fridman (3:01:38.420)
We live alone, too.
Alien Debate (3:01:39.700)
It's the Gatsby thing.
Lex Fridman (3:01:40.820)
I don't know.
Alien Debate (3:01:41.820)
We evolve together.
Lex Fridman (3:01:42.900)
Where's the together?
Alien Debate (3:01:43.800)
The together is the murder and the sex, sex and murder.
Lex Fridman (3:01:48.080)
My romantic vision of it is to try to make me happy, Sarah,
Alien Debate (3:01:50.540)
instead of sad Sarah.
Lex Fridman (3:01:52.700)
I talk in third person when I think very abstractly.
Alien Debate (3:01:54.540)
Sorry, is, you know, like this whole,
Lex Fridman (3:01:58.700)
like certain things can coexist,
Lex Fridman (3:02:01.140)
so the universe is trying to maximize existence,
Lex Fridman (3:02:02.900)
but there's some things
Alien Debate (3:02:03.740)
that just aren't the most productive trajectory together,
Lex Fridman (3:02:09.260)
but it doesn't mean that they don't exist
Alien Debate (3:02:10.700)
on another timeline or another chain somewhere else.
Lex Fridman (3:02:14.180)
Like, and maybe you would call that, like,
Alien Debate (3:02:16.660)
then some kind of multiverse or things,
Lex Fridman (3:02:18.260)
but what am I saying?
Alien Debate (3:02:20.740)
I think you can't.
Lex Fridman (3:02:21.580)
I just, you can't go down a level.
Alien Debate (3:02:22.900)
I'm just making stuff up.
Lex Fridman (3:02:23.740)
No, you're not.
Alien Debate (3:02:24.580)
It makes me feel better.
Lex Fridman (3:02:25.400)
I don't understand.
Lex Fridman (3:02:26.740)
Is it logical?
Lex Fridman (3:02:27.980)
And we need, we need.
Alien Debate (3:02:28.820)
No, I know, I know.
Lex Fridman (3:02:29.660)
Yeah, if you look at bacteria, if you look at virus,
Alien Debate (3:02:31.620)
I mean, just the number of organisms that are constantly,
Lex Fridman (3:02:34.980)
like looking at bacteria, they're just dying nonstop.
Alien Debate (3:02:37.460)
It's like a slaughter.
Lex Fridman (3:02:38.580)
Right, right.
Alien Debate (3:02:39.540)
Well, and this goes back to the conversation about God.
Lex Fridman (3:02:41.100)
I mean, like, there's the whole thing about, like,
Lex Fridman (3:02:42.300)
why is the universe unable to suffering?
Lex Fridman (3:02:44.300)
Individuals don't exist, right?
Alien Debate (3:02:46.220)
Individuals, so for this, I think,
Lex Fridman (3:02:48.300)
if you think about life as an entity on Earth, right?
Alien Debate (3:02:51.740)
Let's just, let's just go back a second.
Lex Fridman (3:02:53.740)
I mean, I like to, I'll be ludicrous for a second.
Alien Debate (3:02:55.700)
I don't exist.
Lex Fridman (3:02:56.540)
You don't exist, right?
Lex Fridman (3:02:58.900)
But you, but the actions you do,
Lex Fridman (3:03:00.740)
the product of evolution exists, right?
Alien Debate (3:03:02.540)
The objects you create exist quantitatively
Lex Fridman (3:03:06.100)
in the real world.
Alien Debate (3:03:07.460)
If you then understand life on Earth or alien life
Lex Fridman (3:03:10.260)
or any life in the universe as this integrated entity
Alien Debate (3:03:13.660)
where you need, you need cells in your body to die.
Lex Fridman (3:03:16.020)
Otherwise you'd just get really big
Lex Fridman (3:03:18.940)
and you wouldn't be able to walk around, right?
Lex Fridman (3:03:20.740)
So, you know, you do.
Alien Debate (3:03:22.900)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:03:24.900)
So, so I think.
Alien Debate (3:03:27.340)
It's the patterns that persist, not the physical things.
Lex Fridman (3:03:29.340)
And of course, we, you know, we have, we have,
Alien Debate (3:03:31.780)
we place immense values on fellow human beings
Lex Fridman (3:03:34.340)
and I'm, majestic professor does like
Alien Debate (3:03:37.620)
other individual human beings.
Lex Fridman (3:03:39.180)
Now you're talking in third person too.
Lex Fridman (3:03:40.740)
I know, it happens, right?
Lex Fridman (3:03:41.780)
So death, would you say, I mean,
Alien Debate (3:03:43.620)
because you said evolution is a fundamental part of life.
Lex Fridman (3:03:48.060)
So death is a fundamental part of life.
Alien Debate (3:03:49.940)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:03:51.860)
It might, right now, it might not be in the future.
Alien Debate (3:03:54.220)
We might hack some aspects of death
Lex Fridman (3:03:56.780)
because, and we'll evolve in different ways.
Lex Fridman (3:03:58.580)
But isn't there, I think Sarah mentioned
Lex Fridman (3:04:00.660)
like this life density.
Lex Fridman (3:04:04.300)
Is it, can't that become a problem?
Lex Fridman (3:04:06.100)
Like too much, too much bureaucracy,
Alien Debate (3:04:09.420)
too much baggage builds up.
Lex Fridman (3:04:11.260)
Like you need to keep erasing stuff.
Alien Debate (3:04:13.780)
I think it's okay that we dissipate.
Lex Fridman (3:04:15.460)
Like, I don't think of it like, like, I mean.
Alien Debate (3:04:16.940)
Dissipate, yes.
Lex Fridman (3:04:18.140)
No, but I mean, like, like we're so fixated
Alien Debate (3:04:20.500)
on ourselves as individuals and agents.
Lex Fridman (3:04:22.980)
And we were talking about this last night,
Alien Debate (3:04:24.300)
actually over dinner, but like,
Lex Fridman (3:04:27.300)
you know, an individual persists
Alien Debate (3:04:28.460)
for a certain amount of time,
Lex Fridman (3:04:30.140)
but what you want to do,
Alien Debate (3:04:31.340)
like if you're really concerned with immortality
Lex Fridman (3:04:33.420)
is not to live indefinitely as an individual,
Lex Fridman (3:04:36.060)
but maximize your causal impact.
Lex Fridman (3:04:37.740)
So like, what are the traces of you that are left?
Lex Fridman (3:04:40.580)
And you're still a real, I always think of Einstein,
Lex Fridman (3:04:43.740)
like for a period of time, he was a real physical thing
Alien Debate (3:04:47.500)
we would identify as a human.
Lex Fridman (3:04:48.780)
And now we just see echoes of that human
Alien Debate (3:04:50.700)
in all of the ways that we talk about his,
Lex Fridman (3:04:53.060)
you know, causal impact are frankly great
Alien Debate (3:04:54.980)
is another great example.
Lex Fridman (3:04:56.100)
How many Easter eggs could you leave in the future?
Alien Debate (3:04:58.220)
It's like, oh, I got you.
Lex Fridman (3:04:59.900)
So I guess the question is,
Lex Fridman (3:05:01.420)
how much do you want to control the localization
Lex Fridman (3:05:04.300)
of certain features of say a prop,
Alien Debate (3:05:08.300)
a packet of propagating information we might call person
Lex Fridman (3:05:11.500)
and keep them localized
Lex Fridman (3:05:12.620)
to one individual physical structure?
Lex Fridman (3:05:14.420)
Or do you want to, you know,
Alien Debate (3:05:15.780)
is there a time when that just becomes a dissipated feature
Lex Fridman (3:05:18.620)
of the society that it once existed in?
Lex Fridman (3:05:22.020)
And I'm okay with the dissipated feature
Lex Fridman (3:05:23.380)
because I just think that makes more room
Alien Debate (3:05:25.680)
for more creativity in the future.
Lex Fridman (3:05:28.180)
So you mentioned engineering life in the lab.
Alien Debate (3:05:32.420)
Let me take you to computer science world.
Lex Fridman (3:05:35.860)
What about robots?
Lex Fridman (3:05:38.000)
So is it possible to engineer,
Lex Fridman (3:05:42.540)
so you're really talking about like engineering life
Alien Debate (3:05:47.780)
at the chemistry level,
Lex Fridman (3:05:49.900)
but do you think it's possible to engineer a life
Lex Fridman (3:05:53.500)
at the like humanoid level, at the dog level?
Lex Fridman (3:05:57.940)
Like, or is that, like at which level can we instill
Lex Fridman (3:06:01.160)
the magic of life into inanimate stuff?
Lex Fridman (3:06:05.380)
No, I think you could do it at every level.
Alien Debate (3:06:07.220)
I just think that we're particularly interested
Lex Fridman (3:06:09.060)
in chemistry because it's the origin of life transition
Alien Debate (3:06:14.540)
that presumably, or at least that's how I feel about it,
Lex Fridman (3:06:16.540)
it's going to give you the most interesting
Alien Debate (3:06:20.260)
or deepest insights into the physics.
Lex Fridman (3:06:22.640)
But presumably everything that we do and build
Alien Debate (3:06:25.780)
is an example of life.
Lex Fridman (3:06:26.780)
And the question is just how much do you want to take
Alien Debate (3:06:29.180)
from things that we have now and put them into,
Lex Fridman (3:06:31.840)
like examples of life and copy them into machines?
Alien Debate (3:06:35.340)
I saw that there was this tweet again.
Lex Fridman (3:06:38.740)
I think you were at the Mars conference
Lex Fridman (3:06:40.100)
and you were hanging out with a humanoid robot.
Lex Fridman (3:06:41.940)
Yes, that was a fun time.
Alien Debate (3:06:43.860)
Making lots of new friends at Mars 2020.
Lex Fridman (3:06:46.820)
Did you guys color match ahead of time with the robot
Lex Fridman (3:06:49.700)
or did that accidentally happen?
Lex Fridman (3:06:52.060)
Accidentally, I went up and I wanted to say hi.
Lex Fridman (3:06:54.260)
Torpoise, would that be the correct name for the color?
Lex Fridman (3:06:57.300)
I think so.
Alien Debate (3:06:58.300)
We didn't color coordinate our outfits.
Lex Fridman (3:07:00.780)
Well, you didn't, maybe the robot did.
Alien Debate (3:07:02.740)
The robot probably did, much more stylish.
Lex Fridman (3:07:05.260)
So for people who are just listening,
Alien Debate (3:07:06.580)
there's a picture of Sarah standing next
Lex Fridman (3:07:09.740)
to a humanoid robot.
Alien Debate (3:07:10.980)
I guess you like them with a small head and perfect vision.
Lex Fridman (3:07:14.860)
Actually, no, I just.
Lex Fridman (3:07:16.580)
What did they perfectly, there's a LIDAR.
Lex Fridman (3:07:19.620)
No, I mean, I think I was just deeply interested
Alien Debate (3:07:21.820)
because.
Lex Fridman (3:07:22.660)
What was, sorry to interrupt, was it manual control?
Lex Fridman (3:07:25.020)
Was it actually stabilizing itself?
Lex Fridman (3:07:27.340)
Oh no, it was walking around.
Alien Debate (3:07:29.020)
Oh, nice.
Lex Fridman (3:07:29.900)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (3:07:30.740)
Nice.
Lex Fridman (3:07:31.560)
It was pretty impressive.
Alien Debate (3:07:32.580)
I mean, actually there's some videos online
Lex Fridman (3:07:34.380)
of Jeff Bezos walking with one of those
Alien Debate (3:07:36.100)
across the lawn nearby there.
Lex Fridman (3:07:38.420)
This is great.
Alien Debate (3:07:39.260)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:07:41.340)
So.
Alien Debate (3:07:42.180)
I wasn't invited.
Lex Fridman (3:07:47.100)
Yeah, but there you go.
Lex Fridman (3:07:50.620)
See?
Lex Fridman (3:07:51.940)
That's incredible, isn't it?
Alien Debate (3:07:53.180)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:07:54.020)
See, you look at the walking robot.
Lex Fridman (3:07:55.980)
Where did the idea for walking come from?
Lex Fridman (3:07:57.780)
It was invented by evolution, right?
Lex Fridman (3:07:59.940)
And us as human beings, able to conceptualize and design
Lex Fridman (3:08:02.620)
and engineer the causal change.
Lex Fridman (3:08:04.300)
So that robot is evidence of life.
Lex Fridman (3:08:07.100)
And so I think what's going to happen is there's the,
Alien Debate (3:08:11.140)
we want to find where the spark comes from mechanistically.
Lex Fridman (3:08:14.620)
How can you literally go from sand to cells?
Lex Fridman (3:08:17.780)
So that's the first transition that I think,
Lex Fridman (3:08:19.780)
there are a number of problems we want to do.
Alien Debate (3:08:21.420)
Make life in the lab.
Lex Fridman (3:08:23.540)
Great.
Alien Debate (3:08:24.380)
Then we want to make life in the lab
Lex Fridman (3:08:25.380)
and want to suddenly start to make intelligent life
Alien Debate (3:08:28.220)
or life that can solve, start to solve abstract problems.
Lex Fridman (3:08:31.500)
And then we want to make life that is conscious.
Lex Fridman (3:08:35.260)
Okay?
Lex Fridman (3:08:36.100)
In that order?
Alien Debate (3:08:36.980)
I think it has to happen in that order.
Lex Fridman (3:08:39.420)
Getting towards this artificial general intelligence.
Alien Debate (3:08:41.620)
I think that artificial general intelligence
Lex Fridman (3:08:44.260)
can't exist in a vacuum.
Alien Debate (3:08:45.900)
It has to have a causal change
Lex Fridman (3:08:47.020)
all the way back to Luca, right?
Alien Debate (3:08:48.900)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:08:49.740)
And so the question I think,
Alien Debate (3:08:50.900)
I really like the question is to say,
Lex Fridman (3:08:52.900)
what are we, how is,
Lex Fridman (3:08:55.940)
how is our pursuit of more and more lifelike?
Lex Fridman (3:08:59.180)
I know you want to, you like your robots.
Alien Debate (3:09:00.980)
You want to project into them.
Lex Fridman (3:09:02.020)
You want to interact with them.
Alien Debate (3:09:03.660)
I think you would want,
Lex Fridman (3:09:05.420)
if you have a robot dog and the robot dog
Alien Debate (3:09:07.140)
does everything expected of a normal dog
Lex Fridman (3:09:08.500)
and you can't tell the difference,
Alien Debate (3:09:10.020)
you're not really going to ask the question anymore.
Lex Fridman (3:09:11.740)
If it's a real dog or not,
Alien Debate (3:09:12.900)
or you've got a personality, you're interacting with it.
Lex Fridman (3:09:15.980)
And so I think what would be interesting
Alien Debate (3:09:17.460)
would be to kind of understand
Lex Fridman (3:09:20.260)
the computational architecture, how that evolves.
Alien Debate (3:09:22.500)
Cause you could then, you know,
Lex Fridman (3:09:23.700)
teleport the personality from one object to the other
Lex Fridman (3:09:26.540)
and say, right, does it act the same?
Lex Fridman (3:09:28.500)
And I think that as we go along,
Alien Debate (3:09:31.260)
we're going to get better and better
Lex Fridman (3:09:32.860)
at integrating our consciousness into machines.
Alien Debate (3:09:38.100)
Well, let me ask you that question just to link on it.
Lex Fridman (3:09:42.380)
I would, I would call that a living conscious thing
Alien Debate (3:09:45.540)
potentially, I as a human allegedly,
Lex Fridman (3:09:48.900)
but would you, as a person trying to define life,
Lex Fridman (3:09:53.660)
if you pass the Turing test, are you a life form?
Lex Fridman (3:09:56.900)
One of the reasons I walked up to the robot
Lex Fridman (3:09:58.580)
was because I wanted to meet the robot, right?
Lex Fridman (3:10:02.900)
So I, it felt like I was,
Lex Fridman (3:10:07.100)
and I abase a lot of my interaction with reality
Lex Fridman (3:10:10.140)
on emotion and feeling,
Lex Fridman (3:10:11.260)
but like how do you feel about an interaction?
Lex Fridman (3:10:13.700)
And I always love your point about like,
Alien Debate (3:10:14.980)
is it enough to have that shared experience
Lex Fridman (3:10:16.660)
with a robot, right?
Lex Fridman (3:10:17.500)
So walking up to it,
Lex Fridman (3:10:19.020)
does it feel like you're interacting with a living thing?
Lex Fridman (3:10:20.940)
And it did to an extent, but in some degrees,
Lex Fridman (3:10:24.340)
it feels like you're interacting with a baby living thing.
Lex Fridman (3:10:26.900)
So I think our relationship with technology
Lex Fridman (3:10:29.300)
and particularly robots we build is really interesting
Alien Debate (3:10:31.380)
because basically they exist as objects in our future
Lex Fridman (3:10:35.460)
in some sense, like we're a much older evolutionary lineage
Alien Debate (3:10:38.860)
than robots are, but we're all part of the same causal chain
Lex Fridman (3:10:42.380)
and presumably, you know, they're kind of in their infancy.
Lex Fridman (3:10:47.340)
So it's almost like you're looking at the future of life
Lex Fridman (3:10:49.860)
when you're looking at them,
Lex Fridman (3:10:50.820)
but it hasn't really become life in a full manifestation
Lex Fridman (3:10:56.060)
of whatever it is that they're gonna become.
Alien Debate (3:10:59.700)
And, you know, the example of the walking robot
Lex Fridman (3:11:03.580)
was super interesting, but they also had a dolphin
Alien Debate (3:11:05.980)
that they put in the pool at the cocktail party at Mars,
Lex Fridman (3:11:08.460)
and it looked just like a real dolphin swimming in the pool.
Alien Debate (3:11:11.420)
And, you know, it's in this kind of uncanny valley
Lex Fridman (3:11:14.780)
because, and I was having this conversation
Alien Debate (3:11:17.180)
with a gentleman named Mutu who was super perceptive,
Lex Fridman (3:11:21.180)
but he was basically saying like,
Alien Debate (3:11:22.540)
it made him feel really uncomfortable.
Lex Fridman (3:11:25.780)
And I think.
Alien Debate (3:11:26.620)
The dolphin.
Lex Fridman (3:11:27.460)
Yeah, and I think a lot of people would have that response.
Lex Fridman (3:11:29.540)
And I guess my point about it is it is kind of interesting
Lex Fridman (3:11:32.820)
because you're basically trying to make a thing
Alien Debate (3:11:34.740)
that you think is nonliving mimic a living thing.
Lex Fridman (3:11:38.340)
And so the thought experiment I would wanna run in that case
Alien Debate (3:11:40.860)
is imagine we replaced every living thing on earth
Lex Fridman (3:11:44.420)
with a robot equivalent, like all the dolphins and things.
Lex Fridman (3:11:47.100)
And in some sense, then you're making,
Lex Fridman (3:11:48.740)
if you think that the robots aren't experiencing reality,
Alien Debate (3:11:51.500)
for example, in the way that
Lex Fridman (3:11:52.980)
a biologically evolved thing would,
Alien Debate (3:11:54.940)
you're basically making the philosophical zombie argument
Lex Fridman (3:11:58.620)
become real and basically building reality into a simulation
Alien Debate (3:12:03.740)
because you've made everything quote unquote fake
Lex Fridman (3:12:06.460)
in some sense.
Alien Debate (3:12:07.300)
You've replaced everything with a physical simulation of it.
Lex Fridman (3:12:10.900)
So as opposed to being excited by the possibility
Alien Debate (3:12:15.020)
of creating something new,
Lex Fridman (3:12:17.860)
you're terrified of humans being replaced.
Alien Debate (3:12:22.420)
I was just trying to run like what would be
Lex Fridman (3:12:23.700)
the absolute thought experiment.
Lex Fridman (3:12:26.180)
But I don't think that scenario would actually play out.
Lex Fridman (3:12:29.460)
I guess what I think is weird for why we feel
Alien Debate (3:12:32.700)
this kind of uncanny valley interacting
Lex Fridman (3:12:34.260)
with something like the robot dolphin
Alien Debate (3:12:36.420)
is we're looking at an object we know is kind of
Lex Fridman (3:12:38.300)
in the future in the sense of like
Alien Debate (3:12:40.100)
if everything's ordered in time,
Lex Fridman (3:12:41.900)
but it's borrowing from a structure
Alien Debate (3:12:43.440)
that we have common history with,
Lex Fridman (3:12:45.260)
and it's basically copying in a kind of superficial way
Alien Debate (3:12:48.240)
things from one part of the causal chain to another.
Lex Fridman (3:12:52.100)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (3:12:53.260)
Well, that's a video of...
Lex Fridman (3:12:56.020)
Everybody believed it was real.
Alien Debate (3:12:57.640)
They look so real.
Lex Fridman (3:13:00.560)
And obviously the technology was developed for movies, so.
Alien Debate (3:13:04.300)
Well, I think we're confusing our emotional response
Lex Fridman (3:13:06.620)
and understanding the causal chain
Lex Fridman (3:13:08.100)
of how we got there, right?
Lex Fridman (3:13:09.620)
Because the philosophical dot zombie argument
Alien Debate (3:13:11.900)
thinks about objects just appearing, right,
Lex Fridman (3:13:15.060)
that you're facsimile in some way,
Alien Debate (3:13:16.620)
whereas there is the causal, the chain of events
Lex Fridman (3:13:19.420)
that caused the dolphin to be built went for a human being.
Alien Debate (3:13:22.340)
Yeah, would a philosophical zombie
Lex Fridman (3:13:23.740)
still have a high assembly index?
Alien Debate (3:13:25.620)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:13:26.900)
Because it can't be, philosophical zombies can't,
Alien Debate (3:13:29.740)
like Boltzmann brains, just can't appear out of nowhere.
Lex Fridman (3:13:33.260)
Well, I guess my question would be in that scenario
Alien Debate (3:13:35.180)
where you built all the robots
Lex Fridman (3:13:36.020)
and replaced everything on Earth with robots,
Alien Debate (3:13:37.500)
would the biosphere be as creative
Lex Fridman (3:13:39.400)
under that scenario or not?
Alien Debate (3:13:40.900)
Yeah, that's a good question.
Lex Fridman (3:13:42.460)
Are there quantitative differences
Lex Fridman (3:13:44.380)
you would notice over time?
Lex Fridman (3:13:45.700)
And it's not obvious either way, right?
Alien Debate (3:13:47.340)
It's not obvious right now,
Lex Fridman (3:13:48.460)
because we don't really, we don't understand,
Alien Debate (3:13:50.780)
we haven't built into machines how we work.
Lex Fridman (3:13:53.220)
So that's, I think, one of the big missing things
Lex Fridman (3:13:56.540)
that we're both looking for, right?
Lex Fridman (3:13:59.100)
This is a robot, it's a cute robot.
Lex Fridman (3:14:01.100)
But the point, Sarah, is that the biosphere
Lex Fridman (3:14:03.180)
won't be as creative if you did it right now.
Alien Debate (3:14:05.660)
No, of course, I think that's why people don't like it.
Lex Fridman (3:14:07.820)
But in the future, we will be able to solve the problem
Alien Debate (3:14:12.740)
of origin of life, intelligence, and consciousness
Lex Fridman (3:14:19.380)
because they exist in physical substrates.
Alien Debate (3:14:21.180)
We just don't understand enough
Lex Fridman (3:14:22.620)
about the material substrate and the causal chain.
Lex Fridman (3:14:26.300)
But I'm very confident we will get to an AGI,
Lex Fridman (3:14:29.180)
but it won't be what people think.
Alien Debate (3:14:30.220)
It won't be, solution won't be a, we'll get fooled a lot.
Lex Fridman (3:14:34.040)
And so GPT3 is getting better at fooling us
Lex Fridman (3:14:36.480)
and GPT153 might really fool us,
Lex Fridman (3:14:39.900)
but it won't have the magic we're looking for.
Alien Debate (3:14:42.700)
It won't be a creative,
Lex Fridman (3:14:45.140)
but it will help us understand the differences between.
Lex Fridman (3:14:48.700)
Really though, because isn't that what love is, being fooled?
Lex Fridman (3:14:54.880)
Like what, why are you not giving much value
Alien Debate (3:14:57.540)
to the emotional connection with objects,
Lex Fridman (3:15:00.000)
with robots, with humans?
Alien Debate (3:15:01.860)
Emotion is a thing which happens
Lex Fridman (3:15:03.660)
when your expectation function is dashed
Lex Fridman (3:15:09.220)
and something else happens, right?
Lex Fridman (3:15:11.660)
I mean, that's what emotion is.
Lex Fridman (3:15:13.460)
Is that what love is too?
Lex Fridman (3:15:14.740)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (3:15:15.900)
You were expecting one thing and something else happened.
Lex Fridman (3:15:18.780)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (3:15:19.600)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (3:15:20.440)
I don't think that's true either.
Lex Fridman (3:15:21.500)
Well, what is it then?
Lex Fridman (3:15:22.340)
I think, no, emotion, look, I'm sorry, emotion is that,
Lex Fridman (3:15:25.140)
but there's no more.
Lex Fridman (3:15:25.980)
No, I think love is just fulfilling your purpose.
Alien Debate (3:15:28.340)
No, but, okay, I mean, look, look.
Lex Fridman (3:15:30.100)
Like whatever that means.
Alien Debate (3:15:30.940)
That's the opposite of what's gonna happen.
Lex Fridman (3:15:31.780)
I mean, really?
Alien Debate (3:15:32.600)
So, okay.
Lex Fridman (3:15:33.440)
I think the happiest is like when you're doing.
Alien Debate (3:15:34.280)
All right, all right, all right.
Lex Fridman (3:15:35.120)
Let me go back.
Alien Debate (3:15:35.940)
If you want me to define.
Lex Fridman (3:15:36.780)
Follow your bliss.
Alien Debate (3:15:37.620)
Let me define love quickly.
Lex Fridman (3:15:38.940)
Okay, go for it.
Lex Fridman (3:15:39.940)
In terms of assembly space, right?
Lex Fridman (3:15:42.060)
Okay?
Alien Debate (3:15:42.900)
Excellent.
Lex Fridman (3:15:43.720)
I didn't think I'd be doing this today.
Alien Debate (3:15:45.140)
I can't wait till Assembly Theory 101 is taught
Lex Fridman (3:15:47.620)
and the second lecture is Assembly Theory of Love.
Alien Debate (3:15:49.980)
No, no, but look, actually, but look, but.
Lex Fridman (3:15:53.620)
It's being surprised.
Alien Debate (3:15:54.580)
The expectation is being broken.
Lex Fridman (3:15:56.180)
I'm just, I'm not.
Alien Debate (3:15:57.020)
No, go for it.
Lex Fridman (3:15:57.860)
I wanna hear you.
Alien Debate (3:15:58.700)
I'm not an emotional being, but I would say,
Lex Fridman (3:16:00.780)
so let's talk, so we'll talk about emotion a bit,
Lex Fridman (3:16:02.780)
but love is more complex.
Lex Fridman (3:16:03.980)
Love is a very complex set of emotions together
Lex Fridman (3:16:06.380)
and logical stuff, but if you've got this thing,
Lex Fridman (3:16:09.540)
this person that's on this causal chain
Alien Debate (3:16:11.700)
that has this empathy for this other thing,
Lex Fridman (3:16:14.860)
love is being able to project ahead in your assembly space
Lex Fridman (3:16:18.260)
and work out what you're,
Lex Fridman (3:16:20.100)
the person you're in love with has a need for
Lex Fridman (3:16:22.620)
and to do that for them without selflessly, right?
Lex Fridman (3:16:26.620)
Cause you can project ahead what they're gonna need
Lex Fridman (3:16:28.260)
and they are there and maybe you can see
Lex Fridman (3:16:30.060)
someone who's gonna fall over
Lex Fridman (3:16:31.540)
and you catch them before they fall over
Lex Fridman (3:16:33.020)
or maybe you can anticipate that someone's gonna be hungry
Lex Fridman (3:16:35.540)
and without helping you, you just help them.
Lex Fridman (3:16:38.100)
That's what love is.
Alien Debate (3:16:38.940)
That just sounds like empathy.
Lex Fridman (3:16:40.300)
But it's more complex than that, right?
Alien Debate (3:16:42.020)
It's more complex.
Lex Fridman (3:16:42.940)
It's more about not just empathy, it's understanding.
Alien Debate (3:16:46.100)
It's about kind of sharing that experience.
Lex Fridman (3:16:48.580)
That's an expression of love though.
Alien Debate (3:16:49.580)
That's not what it's like to feel love.
Lex Fridman (3:16:51.220)
Like feeling love is like,
Alien Debate (3:16:53.180)
I think it's like when you're aligned with things
Lex Fridman (3:16:55.740)
that you feel like are your purpose
Alien Debate (3:16:58.620)
or your reason for existing.
Lex Fridman (3:17:00.540)
So if you have those feelings towards a robot,
Lex Fridman (3:17:05.300)
why is that robot?
Lex Fridman (3:17:06.260)
I mean, cause you said like the AGI,
Alien Debate (3:17:09.220)
we'll build an AGI,
Lex Fridman (3:17:10.340)
but there'll be a fundamental difference in AGI.
Alien Debate (3:17:12.860)
I don't think we'll build it.
Lex Fridman (3:17:13.700)
It's gonna emerge from our technology.
Alien Debate (3:17:15.180)
I think you guys all argue the same thing.
Lex Fridman (3:17:17.020)
I just said that GPT,
Alien Debate (3:17:18.860)
we do not correctly capture the causal chain that we have.
Lex Fridman (3:17:23.260)
Within GPT.
Alien Debate (3:17:24.700)
Yeah, within AI.
Lex Fridman (3:17:25.540)
But don't you think it captures,
Alien Debate (3:17:27.300)
because GPT3 is fundamentally trained
Lex Fridman (3:17:30.220)
on a corpus of knowledge,
Alien Debate (3:17:34.540)
like the internet.
Lex Fridman (3:17:35.900)
Don't you think it gets better and better and better
Alien Debate (3:17:38.580)
at capturing the memory of all the...
Lex Fridman (3:17:39.980)
It will be better at fooling you.
Lex Fridman (3:17:42.060)
And at some point you won't care.
Lex Fridman (3:17:44.420)
But when it comes to,
Alien Debate (3:17:46.100)
my guess, this is a quick,
Lex Fridman (3:17:47.260)
this is what I was getting to right before we got,
Alien Debate (3:17:49.260)
I got in the love trap.
Lex Fridman (3:17:51.340)
Love trap, yeah.
Alien Debate (3:17:52.180)
It was like Lee Cronin in the love trap.
Lex Fridman (3:17:57.180)
Sounds like a good fan name.
Alien Debate (3:17:58.860)
SAD, okay, SAD, assembly space of SAD.
Lex Fridman (3:18:01.700)
No, is that, so sure.
Lex Fridman (3:18:04.380)
But I think there are other features
Lex Fridman (3:18:06.380)
that allow that we pull on innovation
Alien Debate (3:18:09.100)
that allow us to do more than what we just see in GPT3.
Lex Fridman (3:18:12.580)
So if you're being fooled there.
Lex Fridman (3:18:14.300)
So I think what I mean is human beings have this ability
Lex Fridman (3:18:16.820)
to be surprising and creative.
Alien Debate (3:18:19.220)
Whereas is it Dali, this thing,
Lex Fridman (3:18:22.100)
or if you take GPT3 is not gonna create a new verb.
Alien Debate (3:18:27.100)
Shakespeare created new verbs.
Lex Fridman (3:18:30.220)
You're like, wow.
Lex Fridman (3:18:31.740)
And that required Shakespeare to think outside of language
Lex Fridman (3:18:35.260)
in a different domain.
Lex Fridman (3:18:36.580)
So I think having that connections across multiple domains
Lex Fridman (3:18:39.900)
is what you need for AGI.
Alien Debate (3:18:41.260)
Yeah, but I don't know if you need,
Lex Fridman (3:18:44.340)
I don't know if there's any limitations to GPT
Lex Fridman (3:18:48.380)
and not being able to be across domain.
Lex Fridman (3:18:51.660)
The number one problem is,
Alien Debate (3:18:53.460)
it's instantiated in a resource limited substrate
Lex Fridman (3:18:56.460)
and that we don't, in silicon.
Alien Debate (3:19:00.820)
The architectures used for training, for learning
Lex Fridman (3:19:03.100)
is about fooling, it's not about understanding.
Lex Fridman (3:19:06.900)
And I think that there is some understanding that we have
Lex Fridman (3:19:10.860)
that is not yet symbolically representable.
Alien Debate (3:19:13.740)
Language, learning language and using language
Lex Fridman (3:19:17.020)
seems to be fundamentally about fooling, not understanding.
Lex Fridman (3:19:22.020)
Why do you use language exactly?
Lex Fridman (3:19:23.900)
I might disagree with that quite fundamentally actually,
Lex Fridman (3:19:27.540)
but I'm not sure I understand
Lex Fridman (3:19:30.100)
how I make a coherent argument for that.
Lex Fridman (3:19:32.020)
But my feeling is that there is comprehension in reality
Lex Fridman (3:19:39.900)
in our consciousness below language.
Lex Fridman (3:19:42.900)
And we use those for language,
Lex Fridman (3:19:45.620)
for all sorts of expressions.
Lex Fridman (3:19:46.940)
And we don't yet understand that there's a gap.
Lex Fridman (3:19:49.020)
We will get there, but I'm saying,
Alien Debate (3:19:51.100)
wouldn't it be interesting, it's a bit like saying,
Lex Fridman (3:19:52.940)
could I facsimile you or Sarah into a new human being?
Lex Fridman (3:19:57.940)
And let's just say, I could copy all your atoms
Lex Fridman (3:20:00.420)
and the positions of all your atoms and electrons
Alien Debate (3:20:02.900)
into this other person, they would be you.
Lex Fridman (3:20:05.940)
The answer is no.
Lex Fridman (3:20:07.220)
And it's quite easy to show using assembly theory
Lex Fridman (3:20:10.020)
because actually the feature space that you have,
Alien Debate (3:20:12.260)
that graph, the only way to copy you
Lex Fridman (3:20:14.820)
is to create you on that graph.
Lex Fridman (3:20:16.780)
So everything that's happened to you in your past,
Lex Fridman (3:20:18.660)
we have to have a faithful record for.
Alien Debate (3:20:20.220)
If you want another copy of Lex,
Lex Fridman (3:20:21.580)
you have to do the exact thing.
Alien Debate (3:20:22.500)
Want another copy of Sarah, want another copy of Lee.
Lex Fridman (3:20:24.660)
The exact past has to be replicated.
Alien Debate (3:20:27.340)
Let me push back on that a little bit.
Lex Fridman (3:20:28.780)
That's maybe from an assembly theory perspective,
Lex Fridman (3:20:31.300)
but I don't think it's that difficult
Lex Fridman (3:20:34.580)
to recreate a version of me, like a clone,
Alien Debate (3:20:37.480)
that would make everybody exactly equally as happy.
Lex Fridman (3:20:43.380)
They wouldn't care which one.
Lex Fridman (3:20:44.660)
And there's two of me and then they get to pick which one
Lex Fridman (3:20:49.020)
and they'll kill either one, they'll be fine.
Alien Debate (3:20:50.900)
As long as they're forced to kill.
Lex Fridman (3:20:52.340)
They'll be fine.
Lex Fridman (3:20:53.180)
But here's what will happen is,
Lex Fridman (3:20:54.020)
let's say we make artificial Lex
Lex Fridman (3:20:56.180)
and it was like, wow, so cool.
Lex Fridman (3:20:57.300)
It looks the same interact.
Alien Debate (3:20:58.720)
Then there'll be this battle of like,
Lex Fridman (3:20:59.980)
right, we're going to tell the difference.
Alien Debate (3:21:01.260)
We're going to basically keep nudging Lex
Lex Fridman (3:21:04.540)
and artificial Lex until we get novelty from one
Lex Fridman (3:21:09.260)
and we'll kill the other one.
Lex Fridman (3:21:10.620)
And I think, thank God.
Alien Debate (3:21:12.260)
We're not, novelty is a fuzzy concept.
Lex Fridman (3:21:14.540)
That's the whole problem of novelty.
Lex Fridman (3:21:16.380)
So I will define novelty, it's not fuzzy.
Lex Fridman (3:21:18.820)
Novelty is the ability for you to create architectures
Alien Debate (3:21:26.120)
that are, or create an architecture.
Lex Fridman (3:21:28.680)
So let's say you've got a corpus of architectures known.
Alien Debate (3:21:30.740)
You can write down, you've got some distance measure.
Lex Fridman (3:21:32.940)
And then I create a new one and the distance measure
Lex Fridman (3:21:35.780)
so far away from what you'd expected.
Lex Fridman (3:21:38.940)
There's no linear algebra going to get there.
Alien Debate (3:21:40.420)
It's like, that is creativity.
Lex Fridman (3:21:43.940)
And we don't know how to do that yet on any level.
Alien Debate (3:21:47.500)
Well, I was also thinking about like your argument
Lex Fridman (3:21:49.100)
about free will, like you wouldn't be able to know
Alien Debate (3:21:51.460)
it was, it doesn't work instantaneously.
Lex Fridman (3:21:53.600)
It's not like a micro level thing,
Lex Fridman (3:21:55.460)
but more a macro level thing over the scale of trajectories
Lex Fridman (3:21:58.060)
or longer term decisions.
Lex Fridman (3:21:59.220)
So if you think that the novelty manifests
Lex Fridman (3:22:02.440)
over those longer timescales,
Alien Debate (3:22:03.940)
it might be the two Lexes diverge quite a bit
Lex Fridman (3:22:08.960)
over certain timescales of their behavior.
Lex Fridman (3:22:11.740)
But nobody would notice the difference.
Lex Fridman (3:22:15.140)
They might not.
Lex Fridman (3:22:16.900)
And the universe, the earth won't notice the difference.
Lex Fridman (3:22:20.100)
The universe won't notice the difference.
Alien Debate (3:22:20.940)
The universe would notice the difference.
Lex Fridman (3:22:22.580)
No, the universe doesn't know about its novelty
Alien Debate (3:22:24.920)
that's being generated.
Lex Fridman (3:22:25.760)
That's the whole point of novelty.
Lex Fridman (3:22:27.740)
Yeah, but this is what selection is, right?
Lex Fridman (3:22:29.260)
It's like taking nearly equivalent ones
Lex Fridman (3:22:31.860)
and then deciding like the universe selects, right?
Lex Fridman (3:22:34.780)
So whatever selection is,
Alien Debate (3:22:36.240)
select some things to persist in time.
Lex Fridman (3:22:38.140)
Yeah, it's gonna select the artificial one
Alien Debate (3:22:40.420)
just because it likes that one better.
Lex Fridman (3:22:42.140)
Well, you're mixing up two arguments here.
Lex Fridman (3:22:43.720)
So look, let's go back a second.
Lex Fridman (3:22:45.060)
What are you basing this argument on, Lex?
Alien Debate (3:22:47.260)
I'm just saying that I kind of don't think,
Lex Fridman (3:22:50.340)
cause at least said that it's not possible.
Alien Debate (3:22:53.700)
Like if you copy every single molecule in a person's body,
Lex Fridman (3:22:59.260)
that's not going to be the same person.
Alien Debate (3:23:01.760)
That they won't have the same assembly index.
Lex Fridman (3:23:05.300)
It won't be the same person.
Lex Fridman (3:23:07.220)
And I just don't, I think copying, you can compress.
Lex Fridman (3:23:09.900)
Not only do I disagree with that,
Alien Debate (3:23:11.920)
I just, I think you can even compress a person down
Lex Fridman (3:23:15.440)
to some where you can fool the universe.
Alien Debate (3:23:17.920)
I'm saying, let me restate it.
Lex Fridman (3:23:19.840)
It is not possible to copy somebody on,
Alien Debate (3:23:23.960)
because you, unless you copy the causal history.
Lex Fridman (3:23:27.000)
Also, you can't have two identical.
Alien Debate (3:23:29.280)
I mean, actually I really like the idea
Lex Fridman (3:23:30.800)
that everything in the universe is unique.
Lex Fridman (3:23:32.040)
So even if like there were two Lex's.
Lex Fridman (3:23:33.760)
I know you like that idea
Alien Debate (3:23:35.000)
cause you're human and you think you're unique.
Lex Fridman (3:23:37.000)
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman (3:23:37.840)
But also I can make a logical argument for it
Lex Fridman (3:23:39.560)
that even if we could copy all of your molecules
Lex Fridman (3:23:42.280)
and all their positions, the other you would be there.
Lex Fridman (3:23:44.560)
And you have a different position in space.
Lex Fridman (3:23:47.480)
And the other thing.
Lex Fridman (3:23:48.300)
You're distinguishable.
Alien Debate (3:23:49.140)
Yeah, the other thing I was gonna add.
Lex Fridman (3:23:49.960)
How unique are you?
Alien Debate (3:23:51.040)
Just by the position in space really.
Lex Fridman (3:23:53.000)
Sure, but then how much does that light translation
Lex Fridman (3:23:55.960)
of Lex sitting there affect the future?
Lex Fridman (3:23:58.920)
I see, but wait a minute.
Alien Debate (3:24:02.320)
Is part of the definition of something being interesting
Lex Fridman (3:24:05.580)
is how much it affects the future?
Alien Debate (3:24:07.880)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (3:24:08.720)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (3:24:09.560)
But let me come back.
Lex Fridman (3:24:10.380)
Don't you agree?
Lex Fridman (3:24:11.220)
Do you disagree?
Lex Fridman (3:24:12.060)
But let me come back one point quickly
Alien Debate (3:24:12.880)
that you were making.
Lex Fridman (3:24:13.720)
Sure, I think I probably agree, yes.
Lex Fridman (3:24:15.680)
There's two Lex's, right?
Lex Fridman (3:24:16.600)
There's a robot Lex that you just basically,
Alien Debate (3:24:18.560)
it is a charade.
Lex Fridman (3:24:21.080)
It's a facsimile.
Alien Debate (3:24:22.700)
It's just coded to emulate you.
Lex Fridman (3:24:27.640)
Are you robot Lex?
Lex Fridman (3:24:28.840)
I wouldn't know, right?
Lex Fridman (3:24:30.040)
Let's get that.
Lex Fridman (3:24:30.860)
But let's get that.
Lex Fridman (3:24:31.700)
That's the point.
Alien Debate (3:24:32.540)
It's a very important point here
Lex Fridman (3:24:33.360)
because he's ducking and diving between this eye.
Lex Fridman (3:24:35.440)
So if I facsimile you into a robot,
Lex Fridman (3:24:38.680)
then your robot might be,
Alien Debate (3:24:41.840)
would be a representation of you now,
Lex Fridman (3:24:43.280)
but fundamentally be boring
Alien Debate (3:24:44.340)
because you go and have other ideas.
Lex Fridman (3:24:45.640)
If, however, you built an architecture
Alien Debate (3:24:47.740)
that itself is capable of generating novelty,
Lex Fridman (3:24:50.120)
you would diverge in your causal chain
Lex Fridman (3:24:52.040)
and you'd both be equally interesting to interact with.
Lex Fridman (3:24:54.960)
We don't know that mechanism.
Alien Debate (3:24:56.360)
All I'm trying to say is we don't yet know that mechanism.
Lex Fridman (3:24:58.540)
We do not know the mechanism that generates novelty.
Lex Fridman (3:25:01.200)
And at the moment in our AIs, we are emulating,
Lex Fridman (3:25:05.280)
we are not generating.
Lex Fridman (3:25:07.280)
You don't think we're sneaking up on that?
Lex Fridman (3:25:09.000)
No, no, there is no ghost in the machine.
Lex Fridman (3:25:13.640)
And I want there to be one.
Lex Fridman (3:25:15.200)
I want the same thing you want.
Alien Debate (3:25:16.440)
Sorry, I was.
Lex Fridman (3:25:17.260)
I know you want that as a human
Alien Debate (3:25:18.360)
because everything you just said
Lex Fridman (3:25:20.760)
makes you feel more special.
Alien Debate (3:25:22.240)
I want to be, no, no, no, screw my specialness.
Lex Fridman (3:25:24.440)
I just want to be surprised.
Alien Debate (3:25:26.100)
If I.
Lex Fridman (3:25:26.940)
You don't think a robot can surprise you.
Alien Debate (3:25:28.280)
If I, if you can produce an algorithm
Lex Fridman (3:25:30.600)
instantiated in a robot to surprise me,
Alien Debate (3:25:32.760)
I will, I will, I will, I will,
Lex Fridman (3:25:35.360)
I will have one of those robots, it'll be brilliant.
Lex Fridman (3:25:37.520)
But they won't, it won't surprise me.
Lex Fridman (3:25:39.920)
But why, why is it a problem
Lex Fridman (3:25:41.560)
to think that humans are special?
Lex Fridman (3:25:44.360)
Maybe it's not the special, you're right.
Alien Debate (3:25:45.880)
It's the better than.
Lex Fridman (3:25:47.800)
Yes.
Alien Debate (3:25:48.640)
Because then you start to not recognize
Lex Fridman (3:25:51.460)
the magic in other life forms
Alien Debate (3:25:53.320)
that you either have created or you have observed.
Lex Fridman (3:25:56.320)
Because I just think there is magic
Alien Debate (3:25:58.160)
in legged robots moving about.
Lex Fridman (3:26:01.720)
And they are full of surprises.
Alien Debate (3:26:03.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:26:04.220)
So this is.
Lex Fridman (3:26:05.060)
And functionality.
Lex Fridman (3:26:06.000)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:26:07.040)
So I'm a little.
Lex Fridman (3:26:09.560)
I know why you like cellular automata, right?
Lex Fridman (3:26:11.640)
But the specialness in your robot
Lex Fridman (3:26:14.480)
comes from the roboticist that built it.
Alien Debate (3:26:19.240)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:26:20.080)
It's part of the lineage.
Alien Debate (3:26:21.120)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:26:21.960)
And so that's fine.
Alien Debate (3:26:22.780)
I'm happy with that.
Lex Fridman (3:26:23.620)
That's what I felt like looking at the standing robot
Alien Debate (3:26:25.280)
was I was looking at four billion years of evolution.
Lex Fridman (3:26:27.160)
Yeah. Right.
Alien Debate (3:26:28.000)
If it wasn't.
Lex Fridman (3:26:28.840)
So I think I'm happy.
Alien Debate (3:26:29.760)
I mean, I'm happy we're gonna coexist.
Lex Fridman (3:26:31.800)
I'm just saying you're gonna get more excitement.
Alien Debate (3:26:33.560)
There's something missing
Lex Fridman (3:26:34.400)
in our understanding of intelligence.
Alien Debate (3:26:36.000)
Intelligence isn't just training.
Lex Fridman (3:26:39.400)
The way the neural network is conceived right now is great
Lex Fridman (3:26:41.560)
and it's lovely and it'll be better
Lex Fridman (3:26:43.040)
and we will argue forever.
Lex Fridman (3:26:44.080)
But you want to know, wouldn't it be great if I said,
Lex Fridman (3:26:47.440)
look, I know how to invent an architecture
Lex Fridman (3:26:49.620)
and I can give it a soul.
Lex Fridman (3:26:51.520)
And what I mean by a soul is some,
Alien Debate (3:26:54.400)
I know for real that there is internal reference.
Lex Fridman (3:26:58.800)
Soon as I not fake internal reference.
Lex Fridman (3:27:00.960)
And if we could generate that mechanism
Lex Fridman (3:27:02.600)
for internal reference, that's why our goal direct.
Alien Debate (3:27:04.680)
That's why you have to develop a test for goal directness.
Lex Fridman (3:27:07.200)
Get that goal directness.
Alien Debate (3:27:08.240)
You would love that robot more than the one
Lex Fridman (3:27:09.840)
that's just made to look like it does
Alien Debate (3:27:12.960)
because you'll have more fun with it
Lex Fridman (3:27:14.280)
because you better generate search, other problems,
Alien Debate (3:27:17.840)
get to more novelty.
Lex Fridman (3:27:18.680)
Hell, you'd be able to fall in love with that robot for real,
Lex Fridman (3:27:21.440)
but not the one that's faking it.
Lex Fridman (3:27:24.620)
What about fake it till you make it?
Alien Debate (3:27:26.600)
Well, I think a lot of people fall in love with fake humans.
Lex Fridman (3:27:33.680)
It's nice to fall in love with something
Alien Debate (3:27:36.760)
that's full of novelty, yes.
Lex Fridman (3:27:38.720)
I could imagine all kinds of robots
Alien Debate (3:27:41.540)
that I would want to have a close relationship with.
Lex Fridman (3:27:44.280)
And I don't mean like sexual, I mean like intimacy.
Lex Fridman (3:27:47.320)
But I just don't think that novelty generation
Lex Fridman (3:27:52.380)
is such a special.
Alien Debate (3:27:53.680)
Okay, there's like mathematical novelty
Lex Fridman (3:27:57.960)
or something like that,
Lex Fridman (3:27:58.800)
and then there's just humans being surprised.
Lex Fridman (3:28:00.760)
I think we're easily surprised.
Alien Debate (3:28:02.720)
That's fine, but that's that.
Lex Fridman (3:28:04.040)
But you don't think that's a good definition of novelty?
Alien Debate (3:28:05.760)
No, that's good.
Lex Fridman (3:28:06.600)
I'm happy to be surprised,
Lex Fridman (3:28:09.760)
but not globally surprised because someone else,
Lex Fridman (3:28:11.880)
but I really want, I was wondering why I'm a scientist.
Alien Debate (3:28:14.360)
I really want to be the first to be surprised about something
Lex Fridman (3:28:18.480)
and the first thing in the universe
Alien Debate (3:28:21.040)
to create that novelty
Lex Fridman (3:28:22.400)
and to know for sure that that novelty
Alien Debate (3:28:24.000)
has never occurred anywhere else.
Lex Fridman (3:28:26.120)
That's a real buzz, right?
Lex Fridman (3:28:27.520)
Is there a way to really know that?
Lex Fridman (3:28:29.400)
You have to have a really big lookup table.
Alien Debate (3:28:31.480)
Right.
Lex Fridman (3:28:32.320)
Yeah, you're never going to be know for sure, right?
Alien Debate (3:28:34.000)
That's one of the hard things about being
Lex Fridman (3:28:36.760)
a scientist searching for this type of novelty.
Alien Debate (3:28:38.840)
Maybe that's why mathematics, mathematicians love discovery,
Lex Fridman (3:28:43.400)
but actually they are creating.
Lex Fridman (3:28:44.820)
And then when they create a new mathematical structure
Lex Fridman (3:28:48.860)
that they can then, you can write code to work out
Alien Debate (3:28:52.160)
whether that structure exists before that.
Lex Fridman (3:28:54.840)
That's almost why I would love to have been a mathematician
Alien Debate (3:28:57.240)
from that regard to invent new math
Lex Fridman (3:28:59.700)
that really I know pretty much for sure
Alien Debate (3:29:02.200)
does not exist anywhere else in the universe
Lex Fridman (3:29:04.480)
because it's so contingent.
Alien Debate (3:29:05.840)
Right, but this gets into like you said a few times
Lex Fridman (3:29:08.600)
that I still really don't understand
Lex Fridman (3:29:09.800)
how you actually plan to do this,
Lex Fridman (3:29:11.500)
to build an experiment that detects
Lex Fridman (3:29:13.500)
how the universe is generating novelty
Lex Fridman (3:29:14.960)
or that time is the mechanism.
Lex Fridman (3:29:16.760)
So the problem that we all have,
Lex Fridman (3:29:18.860)
which I think is what Lex is pushing against
Alien Debate (3:29:20.600)
is if I build the experiment,
Lex Fridman (3:29:23.140)
you don't know what you put into it.
Lex Fridman (3:29:24.840)
So you don't know what, like if you,
Lex Fridman (3:29:27.200)
unless you can quantify everything you put in,
Alien Debate (3:29:29.280)
all of your agency, all the boundary conditions,
Lex Fridman (3:29:31.720)
you don't know if you somehow biased it in some way.
Lex Fridman (3:29:36.020)
So is the novelty actually intrinsic to that experiment
Lex Fridman (3:29:38.600)
or to that robot, or is it something you gave it,
Lex Fridman (3:29:40.920)
but you didn't realize you gave it?
Lex Fridman (3:29:41.760)
It's gonna be, it's gonna asymptote towards that, right?
Alien Debate (3:29:44.360)
You're never gonna know for sure,
Lex Fridman (3:29:45.740)
but you can start to take out,
Alien Debate (3:29:47.280)
you can use good Bayesian approaches
Lex Fridman (3:29:50.040)
and just keep updating and updating and updating
Alien Debate (3:29:52.360)
until you point to one sense of purpose.
Lex Fridman (3:29:54.200)
So you wanna bound on how much novelty generation
Alien Debate (3:29:56.720)
it could be, got it.
Lex Fridman (3:29:59.000)
So the ability to generate novelty
Alien Debate (3:30:01.080)
is correlated with high assembly index,
Lex Fridman (3:30:03.640)
with assembly index?
Alien Debate (3:30:04.600)
Yeah, and yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:30:07.720)
Cause the space of possibilities is bigger.
Lex Fridman (3:30:11.440)
So that's the key.
Lex Fridman (3:30:14.480)
This could be a good, so I have a running joke
Alien Debate (3:30:17.040)
of like why Lex is single.
Lex Fridman (3:30:18.480)
This could be a good part four.
Lex Fridman (3:30:22.400)
So what you're looking for in a robot partner
Lex Fridman (3:30:26.360)
is ability to generate novelty.
Lex Fridman (3:30:33.520)
And that's, I suppose you would say
Lex Fridman (3:30:35.240)
it's a good definition of intelligence too.
Alien Debate (3:30:40.580)
Boy, is novelty a fuzzy concept.
Lex Fridman (3:30:45.580)
Is creativity better?
Alien Debate (3:30:47.940)
Yeah, I mean, that's all pretty fuzzy.
Lex Fridman (3:30:50.620)
It's kind of the same.
Alien Debate (3:30:52.340)
Maybe that's why aliens haven't come yet
Lex Fridman (3:30:54.340)
is cause we're not creating enough novelty.
Alien Debate (3:30:55.980)
Like there's some kind of a hierarchy
Lex Fridman (3:30:58.100)
of novelty in the universe.
Lex Fridman (3:30:59.420)
Well, I think novelty is like things surprise you, right?
Lex Fridman (3:31:02.060)
So it's a very passive thing,
Lex Fridman (3:31:03.380)
but I guess what I meant by saying creativity
Lex Fridman (3:31:05.660)
is I think it's much more active.
Alien Debate (3:31:06.740)
Like you think there's like a mechanism
Lex Fridman (3:31:09.020)
of like the things that exist are generating the creativity.
Alien Debate (3:31:11.660)
Novelty seems to be there's some spontaneousness
Lex Fridman (3:31:14.140)
and it's completely decoupled from the things that exist.
Alien Debate (3:31:16.980)
No, I understand.
Lex Fridman (3:31:17.820)
I think creativity is the mechanism
Lex Fridman (3:31:22.020)
and novelty is the observable.
Lex Fridman (3:31:23.860)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (3:31:24.900)
Novelty could just be surprising.
Lex Fridman (3:31:26.660)
Your model of the world was broken
Lex Fridman (3:31:29.140)
and not necessarily in a positive way.
Lex Fridman (3:31:31.260)
That's surprise.
Lex Fridman (3:31:32.100)
So there's three things now.
Lex Fridman (3:31:32.940)
Let's go back.
Alien Debate (3:31:33.780)
It's cool.
Lex Fridman (3:31:34.600)
All right, let's go.
Alien Debate (3:31:35.440)
You got surprise, which is basically,
Lex Fridman (3:31:37.140)
I mean, I'm surprised all the time
Alien Debate (3:31:38.900)
cause I don't read very much.
Lex Fridman (3:31:39.900)
I'm pretty dumb.
Alien Debate (3:31:40.740)
I was like, oh wow, this is,
Lex Fridman (3:31:42.060)
I often used to invent new scientific, you know, ideas.
Lex Fridman (3:31:44.620)
And I was really surprised by that.
Lex Fridman (3:31:46.380)
And then I went and looked in literature properly
Lex Fridman (3:31:47.540)
and it's there.
Lex Fridman (3:31:48.380)
So surprise, that's to the extent
Alien Debate (3:31:50.260)
that you don't have full information.
Lex Fridman (3:31:53.300)
Creativity, the act of pushing on that kind of
Alien Debate (3:31:57.820)
on the causal structure and novelty,
Lex Fridman (3:32:01.540)
which is measuring that degree, right?
Alien Debate (3:32:04.580)
So, and I think that's pretty well defined in that regard.
Lex Fridman (3:32:07.540)
So you want your robot, I mean,
Lex Fridman (3:32:09.340)
and in the end, this is what I'm saying,
Lex Fridman (3:32:10.740)
and in the end, that's why actually the way the internet
Lex Fridman (3:32:13.620)
and the printing press share some,
Lex Fridman (3:32:16.620)
I actually think creativity has dropped a bit
Alien Debate (3:32:18.700)
since the internet because everyone's just, you know,
Lex Fridman (3:32:21.620)
just regurgitating stuff.
Lex Fridman (3:32:23.020)
But of course, now it's beginning to accelerate again
Lex Fridman (3:32:26.140)
cause everyone's using this tool to be creative
Lex Fridman (3:32:28.820)
and boom, it's exploding.
Lex Fridman (3:32:31.260)
I think that's what happens
Alien Debate (3:32:32.320)
when you create these new technologies.
Lex Fridman (3:32:34.620)
That's really helpful.
Alien Debate (3:32:35.980)
There's a difference between novelty and surprise.
Lex Fridman (3:32:38.260)
Okay, I think I was thinking about surprise.
Alien Debate (3:32:40.980)
If you give me a toy that surprises me for a bit,
Lex Fridman (3:32:43.100)
it'd be great.
Alien Debate (3:32:43.940)
A robot that surprises me, you know.
Lex Fridman (3:32:45.740)
An experiment that surprises you.
Alien Debate (3:32:46.900)
Yeah, I mean, that's why I love doing experiments
Lex Fridman (3:32:48.580)
cause I'm, I can't.
Alien Debate (3:32:49.540)
It's still exciting.
Lex Fridman (3:32:50.660)
Yeah. Surprise is exciting.
Alien Debate (3:32:51.980)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:32:53.060)
Even negative surprise,
Alien Debate (3:32:54.220)
like some people love drama in relationships.
Lex Fridman (3:32:56.460)
Like, it's like, why the hell, why'd you do this?
Alien Debate (3:33:01.380)
That could be exciting too.
Lex Fridman (3:33:02.620)
I could imagine companies selling updates
Alien Debate (3:33:04.420)
to their companion robots
Lex Fridman (3:33:05.980)
that just basically generate negative surprise
Alien Debate (3:33:08.260)
just to spice things up a bit.
Lex Fridman (3:33:10.020)
Yeah, it's the push and pull.
Alien Debate (3:33:11.580)
That's one of the components of love.
Lex Fridman (3:33:13.980)
As you said, love is a complicated thing.
Alien Debate (3:33:16.580)
Oh, beauty.
Lex Fridman (3:33:17.700)
I wanted to mention this cause you also tweeted,
Alien Debate (3:33:19.900)
I think this was Sarah.
Lex Fridman (3:33:21.240)
No, it might've been Lee.
Alien Debate (3:33:22.220)
I don't remember.
Lex Fridman (3:33:23.180)
But it was a survey published in Nature
Alien Debate (3:33:25.020)
showing that scientists find.
Lex Fridman (3:33:26.660)
That was me, yeah.
Alien Debate (3:33:27.540)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:33:28.940)
Anyway, there's a plot.
Alien Debate (3:33:31.020)
This is published in Nature
Lex Fridman (3:33:33.320)
of what scientists find beautiful in their work
Lex Fridman (3:33:36.780)
and it separates biologists and physicists.
Lex Fridman (3:33:39.260)
It'd be nice if you showed the full plot.
Lex Fridman (3:33:41.780)
And there's simplicity, elegance, hidden order,
Lex Fridman (3:33:45.540)
inner logic of systems, symmetry, complexity, harmony,
Lex Fridman (3:33:48.340)
and so on.
Lex Fridman (3:33:49.580)
Is there any interesting things that stand out to you?
Alien Debate (3:33:53.100)
I think the fact that biologists like complexity
Lex Fridman (3:33:56.020)
and pleasing colors.
Lex Fridman (3:33:59.260)
Oh, there's pleasing colors on there?
Lex Fridman (3:34:00.440)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alien Debate (3:34:01.280)
Or shapes.
Lex Fridman (3:34:02.120)
Or shapes.
Alien Debate (3:34:02.940)
Pleasing colors or shapes.
Lex Fridman (3:34:03.780)
And then physicists obviously love simplicity
Alien Debate (3:34:06.100)
above all else.
Lex Fridman (3:34:06.920)
Simplicity and elegance.
Alien Debate (3:34:07.760)
Simplicity, elegance.
Lex Fridman (3:34:09.140)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (3:34:09.980)
They love symmetry.
Lex Fridman (3:34:11.180)
And then biologists love complexity.
Alien Debate (3:34:14.640)
And, well, they just love a little bit less.
Lex Fridman (3:34:17.840)
They love everything a little bit less,
Lex Fridman (3:34:19.420)
but complexity a little bit more.
Lex Fridman (3:34:21.020)
A little bit more.
Alien Debate (3:34:22.340)
That's so interesting.
Lex Fridman (3:34:23.220)
And pleasing colors or shapes.
Lex Fridman (3:34:25.220)
Do you think it's a useful,
Lex Fridman (3:34:26.220)
I forget what your tweet was
Alien Debate (3:34:27.540)
that this is missing some of the something.
Lex Fridman (3:34:29.220)
Oh, no, I think it's because I think about
Lex Fridman (3:34:31.860)
how explanations become causal to our future.
Lex Fridman (3:34:36.460)
So I have this whole philosophy
Alien Debate (3:34:39.060)
that the theories we build
Lex Fridman (3:34:42.300)
and the way we describe reality
Alien Debate (3:34:44.380)
should have the largest breadth of possibilities
Lex Fridman (3:34:49.380)
for the future of what we can accomplish.
Lex Fridman (3:34:52.760)
So in some sense, it's not like Occam's razor.
Lex Fridman (3:34:55.840)
It's not for simplicity.
Alien Debate (3:34:56.920)
It's for optimism or the kind of future you can build.
Lex Fridman (3:35:00.060)
And so I think you have to think this way
Alien Debate (3:35:03.620)
when you're thinking about life and alien life,
Lex Fridman (3:35:05.800)
because ultimately we're trying to build,
Alien Debate (3:35:07.780)
I mean, science is just basically
Lex Fridman (3:35:09.220)
our narratives about reality.
Lex Fridman (3:35:10.980)
And now you're building a narrative
Lex Fridman (3:35:12.180)
that is what we are as physical systems.
Alien Debate (3:35:14.260)
It seems to me it needs to be as positive as possible
Lex Fridman (3:35:16.300)
because it's basically gonna shape
Alien Debate (3:35:18.300)
the future trajectory where we're going.
Lex Fridman (3:35:20.020)
And we don't use that as a heuristic in theory building
Alien Debate (3:35:22.460)
because we think theories
Lex Fridman (3:35:25.700)
are about predicting features of the world,
Alien Debate (3:35:27.500)
not causing them.
Lex Fridman (3:35:28.820)
But if you look at the history of all of the development
Alien Debate (3:35:30.660)
of human thought, it's caused the things that happen next.
Lex Fridman (3:35:33.020)
So it's not just about looking at the world
Lex Fridman (3:35:35.460)
and observing it.
Lex Fridman (3:35:36.340)
It's about actually that feedback loop that's missing.
Lex Fridman (3:35:41.220)
And it's not in any of those categories.
Lex Fridman (3:35:46.060)
What do you think is the most beautiful idea
Alien Debate (3:35:50.900)
in the physics of life, in the chemistry of life,
Lex Fridman (3:35:54.780)
in this, through all your exploration
Alien Debate (3:35:57.420)
with assembly theory, what is the thing
Lex Fridman (3:36:03.840)
that made you step back and say this idea is beautiful
Lex Fridman (3:36:09.340)
or potentially beautiful?
Lex Fridman (3:36:11.700)
For me, it's that the universe is a creative place.
Alien Debate (3:36:14.360)
I guess I want to think, and whether it's true or not,
Lex Fridman (3:36:18.060)
is that we are special in some way
Lex Fridman (3:36:20.800)
and it's not like an arbitrary added on epiphenomenon
Lex Fridman (3:36:24.940)
or ad hoc feature of the universe that we exist,
Lex Fridman (3:36:26.840)
but it's something deep and intrinsic
Lex Fridman (3:36:28.580)
to the structure of reality.
Lex Fridman (3:36:31.100)
And to me, the most beautiful ideas that come out of that
Lex Fridman (3:36:33.220)
is that the reason we exist is for the universe
Alien Debate (3:36:37.380)
to generate more things and to think about itself
Lex Fridman (3:36:40.420)
and use that as a mechanism for creating more stuff.
Alien Debate (3:36:47.060)
That's for me.
Lex Fridman (3:36:48.660)
So like the life that this, however common it is,
Alien Debate (3:36:53.660)
is an intrinsic part, is a fundamental part
Lex Fridman (3:36:57.500)
of this universe, at least, that we live in.
Alien Debate (3:36:59.940)
I think so.
Lex Fridman (3:37:00.780)
I mean, it's always interesting to me
Alien Debate (3:37:02.020)
because we have theories of quantum mechanics and gravity
Lex Fridman (3:37:06.460)
and they're supposed to be like
Alien Debate (3:37:07.620)
our most fundamental theories right now.
Lex Fridman (3:37:09.700)
And they describe things like the interaction
Alien Debate (3:37:12.060)
of massive bodies or the way that charges accelerate
Lex Fridman (3:37:15.380)
or all these kind of features.
Lex Fridman (3:37:17.300)
And they're these really deep theories
Lex Fridman (3:37:19.620)
and they tell us a lot about how reality works,
Lex Fridman (3:37:21.340)
but they're completely agnostic to our existence.
Lex Fridman (3:37:24.060)
And I can't help but think that whatever describes us
Alien Debate (3:37:26.820)
has to be even deeper than that.
Lex Fridman (3:37:29.420)
And I think incorporating memory, I guess,
Alien Debate (3:37:33.860)
causality, whatever the term you want to use
Lex Fridman (3:37:35.860)
into the physics view of the world might be.
Alien Debate (3:37:38.660)
That's the easiest way to do it.
Lex Fridman (3:37:40.700)
It's the cleanest, so here we go again
Alien Debate (3:37:42.660)
with the physicist, I'm a physicist.
Lex Fridman (3:37:44.260)
The cleanest, I was gonna say the simplest,
Alien Debate (3:37:45.980)
most elegant way of resolving all of the kind of ways
Lex Fridman (3:37:49.100)
that we have these paradoxes associated with life
Alien Debate (3:37:53.060)
when you, it's not that life is not,
Lex Fridman (3:37:56.500)
current physics is not incompatible with life,
Lex Fridman (3:37:59.260)
but it doesn't explain life.
Lex Fridman (3:38:00.660)
And then you want to know where are the explanatory gaps
Lex Fridman (3:38:04.260)
and this idea that we have an assembly
Lex Fridman (3:38:06.340)
that time is fundamental and objects actually
Alien Debate (3:38:10.020)
are extended in time and have physical extent in time
Lex Fridman (3:38:12.940)
is the cleanest way of resolving
Alien Debate (3:38:14.180)
a lot of the explanatory gaps.
Lex Fridman (3:38:16.540)
So I've been, I struggled with assembly theory
Alien Debate (3:38:20.060)
for many years, because I could see this gap.
Lex Fridman (3:38:24.220)
And I think when I first met Sarah
Lex Fridman (3:38:26.700)
and we realized we were kind of talking
Lex Fridman (3:38:30.660)
about the same problem, but we were,
Alien Debate (3:38:32.740)
we understood another language.
Lex Fridman (3:38:34.620)
It was quite hilarious actually,
Alien Debate (3:38:35.900)
because it's like, I have no idea what you're talking about,
Lex Fridman (3:38:37.820)
but I think it sounds right.
Lex Fridman (3:38:40.140)
So for me, the most beautiful thing about assembly theory
Lex Fridman (3:38:42.660)
is I realized the assembly theory explains
Lex Fridman (3:38:45.620)
why the universe, why life is the universe
Lex Fridman (3:38:47.540)
developing a memory, but not only that poetically,
Alien Debate (3:38:51.380)
I could actually go and measure it.
Lex Fridman (3:38:53.460)
And I was like, holy shit, we would just,
Alien Debate (3:38:56.580)
we physically measured this thing,
Lex Fridman (3:38:59.180)
this abstract thing, and we could measure it.
Lex Fridman (3:39:01.860)
And not only could we measure it,
Lex Fridman (3:39:03.620)
but we can then start to quantify the causal consequences.
Alien Debate (3:39:08.500)
Because, I mean, I think as a kind of inventing this
Lex Fridman (3:39:13.500)
together with Sarah and her team, I thought
Alien Debate (3:39:17.300)
there was a quite a high chance that,
Lex Fridman (3:39:19.700)
we're doing science, there's such a high probability
Alien Debate (3:39:22.220)
we're wrong on this.
Lex Fridman (3:39:25.300)
And I remember kind of trying to go to hard physicists,
Alien Debate (3:39:31.300)
mathematicians, complexity theorists,
Lex Fridman (3:39:34.100)
and everyone just kind of giving me
Alien Debate (3:39:36.400)
such a hard time about it.
Lex Fridman (3:39:38.660)
And so, this is kind of, you've just done this,
Alien Debate (3:39:40.860)
you've just done that, you've just recapitulated
Lex Fridman (3:39:43.980)
an old theory.
Lex Fridman (3:39:45.620)
And I was unable, I lacked the language to really explain,
Lex Fridman (3:39:49.780)
and I had to, it was a real struggle.
Lex Fridman (3:39:52.140)
So this realization that life, what life does
Lex Fridman (3:39:55.940)
that physics cannot understand, or chemistry,
Alien Debate (3:39:58.840)
is the universe develops a memory
Lex Fridman (3:40:00.780)
that's causally actionable, and then we can measure it,
Lex Fridman (3:40:04.780)
but it isn't just a one thing,
Lex Fridman (3:40:07.180)
there is this intrinsic property
Alien Debate (3:40:08.620)
of all the objects in the universe.
Lex Fridman (3:40:09.740)
Like I've said before, but me holding up this water bottle,
Alien Debate (3:40:13.260)
it isn't any other water bottle,
Lex Fridman (3:40:14.500)
but it is a sum total of all the water bottles
Lex Fridman (3:40:16.300)
that have existed, right?
Lex Fridman (3:40:18.920)
And will likely change the future of water bottles
Lex Fridman (3:40:22.700)
and for other objects.
Lex Fridman (3:40:23.580)
So it's this kind of, so for me,
Alien Debate (3:40:26.580)
assembly theory explains the soul in stuff.
Lex Fridman (3:40:31.460)
The monology.
Lex Fridman (3:40:32.700)
But it is the monology, it's not like
Lex Fridman (3:40:34.740)
Sheldrake's morphic resonance,
Alien Debate (3:40:36.300)
where we have this kind of wooey thing
Lex Fridman (3:40:37.940)
permeating the universe, it is the interaction
Alien Debate (3:40:40.900)
of objects of other objects.
Lex Fridman (3:40:42.540)
And some objects have more instantaneous causal power,
Alien Debate (3:40:46.500)
that's life, living things, and some objects
Lex Fridman (3:40:51.060)
are the instantaneous output of that causal power,
Alien Debate (3:40:54.260)
dead objects, but they're part of the lineage.
Lex Fridman (3:40:56.260)
And that for me is fascinating and really beautiful.
Lex Fridman (3:40:58.980)
And I think that even if we're determined
Lex Fridman (3:41:01.220)
to be totally wrong, I think it will help us,
Alien Debate (3:41:04.940)
help hopefully understand what life is
Lex Fridman (3:41:07.420)
and go into tech life elsewhere and make life in the lab.
Lex Fridman (3:41:10.300)
How does that make you feel, by the way?
Lex Fridman (3:41:11.740)
Does it make you feel less special,
Alien Debate (3:41:13.600)
that you're so deeply integrated,
Lex Fridman (3:41:16.100)
interconnected to the lineage?
Alien Debate (3:41:18.180)
I mean, okay, on one level, I just wanted in my life
Lex Fridman (3:41:20.460)
as a scientist, I wanted to have an interesting idea
Alien Debate (3:41:23.020)
just once or an original idea.
Lex Fridman (3:41:25.540)
I mean, it was like, you know, so I think that was cool
Alien Debate (3:41:29.680)
that we had this idea and we were playing with it.
Lex Fridman (3:41:31.580)
And I think also that I kind of, I mean,
Alien Debate (3:41:34.740)
it took me ages to realize that Sarah had also had
Lex Fridman (3:41:37.540)
the same kind of form, coming towards the same formulation
Alien Debate (3:41:40.300)
just from a completely different point because I,
Lex Fridman (3:41:43.980)
but no, it makes me feel special.
Lex Fridman (3:41:45.340)
And it also makes me feel connected to the universe.
Lex Fridman (3:41:47.020)
It also makes me feel not just humble about, you know,
Alien Debate (3:41:50.980)
being a living object in the universe,
Lex Fridman (3:41:53.540)
but the fact that it makes me really optimistic
Alien Debate (3:41:55.660)
about what the universe is gonna do in the future
Lex Fridman (3:41:58.180)
because we're not just isolated phenomena, we are connected.
Alien Debate (3:42:02.780)
I will be able to have, you know, one of my small objectives
Lex Fridman (3:42:06.140)
in life is to change the future of the universe
Alien Debate (3:42:08.740)
in some profound way, just by existing.
Lex Fridman (3:42:12.340)
Yeah, that's not ambitious at all.
Alien Debate (3:42:14.360)
Uh.
Lex Fridman (3:42:19.200)
I think it's also good because it makes me feel less lonely
Alien Debate (3:42:21.980)
because I just realized I'm not like,
Lex Fridman (3:42:23.340)
I mean, I'm a unique assembly structure,
Lex Fridman (3:42:24.940)
but I have so much overlap with the other entities
Lex Fridman (3:42:27.100)
I interact with that we're not completely individual, right?
Lex Fridman (3:42:31.500)
And yet your existence does have a huge amount of impact
Lex Fridman (3:42:37.340)
on how this whole thing unrolls on the future of the world.
Alien Debate (3:42:41.420)
As individuals, that's, yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:42:43.540)
But I was gonna say. Local packets of agency.
Alien Debate (3:42:45.860)
I think we all have a profound impact on the future,
Lex Fridman (3:42:48.340)
some more than others, right?
Alien Debate (3:42:49.460)
All human beings, all life.
Lex Fridman (3:42:50.900)
And I mean, that's why I think it's a privilege
Alien Debate (3:42:53.900)
in a way for, you know, to say,
Lex Fridman (3:42:55.500)
to assert some degree of ego and agency,
Alien Debate (3:42:59.100)
you know, I'm gonna make a computer
Lex Fridman (3:43:00.460)
or make an origin life machine or we can do this thing.
Lex Fridman (3:43:02.740)
But actually it's just like, you know,
Lex Fridman (3:43:04.100)
my life's probably living, if there is a God
Alien Debate (3:43:07.060)
or there's a soul in everything,
Lex Fridman (3:43:08.660)
it's really laughing at us going,
Alien Debate (3:43:10.380)
I fool these guys by giving them ego.
Lex Fridman (3:43:12.420)
So they strive for this stuff and look what it does
Alien Debate (3:43:14.500)
for the assembly space of the universe.
Lex Fridman (3:43:17.900)
And there's always a possibility
Alien Debate (3:43:18.940)
that science can't answer all of it.
Lex Fridman (3:43:20.380)
So that part's challenging for me.
Alien Debate (3:43:23.340)
There might be a limit to this thing.
Lex Fridman (3:43:27.000)
Let me ask you a bunch of ridiculous questions
Lex Fridman (3:43:29.660)
and I demand relatively short answers.
Lex Fridman (3:43:34.140)
Lee, what's the scariest thing you've ever done?
Lex Fridman (3:43:40.980)
Or what's a scary thing that pops to mind?
Lex Fridman (3:43:45.020)
Giving seminars in front of other scientists.
Alien Debate (3:43:48.500)
That's, yeah, that is terrifying.
Lex Fridman (3:43:50.940)
I could, if I had more time,
Alien Debate (3:43:54.300)
I would ask you about the most embarrassing,
Lex Fridman (3:43:56.180)
but we'll spare you.
Lex Fridman (3:43:57.460)
What about you Sarah, scariest thing?
Lex Fridman (3:44:01.500)
Up there, some of the scary things you've done.
Alien Debate (3:44:05.880)
Actually the scariest for me was deciding
Lex Fridman (3:44:08.260)
I wanted to get divorced
Alien Debate (3:44:09.220)
because it was like a totally radical like.
Lex Fridman (3:44:11.900)
Life transformation.
Alien Debate (3:44:12.740)
Yeah, because we had been married for a really long time.
Lex Fridman (3:44:16.100)
And I think it was just so much like,
Alien Debate (3:44:18.280)
I realized like so much of my individual agency
Lex Fridman (3:44:21.240)
I didn't realize I had before.
Lex Fridman (3:44:22.380)
And that was just really like scary, like empowering scary,
Lex Fridman (3:44:24.920)
but like terrifying.
Alien Debate (3:44:25.900)
Like you were living in a kind of one way
Lex Fridman (3:44:28.660)
for your whole life.
Lex Fridman (3:44:29.500)
And then you realized your life could be a different way.
Lex Fridman (3:44:31.460)
And.
Alien Debate (3:44:32.300)
Yeah, there's a between humans.
Lex Fridman (3:44:33.780)
I mean, that's the beautiful thing about love
Alien Debate (3:44:36.900)
is the connection you have,
Lex Fridman (3:44:38.260)
but it's also becomes a dependency and breaking that.
Alien Debate (3:44:41.040)
Whether it's a mentor, what's your parents,
Lex Fridman (3:44:43.040)
your close friends.
Alien Debate (3:44:43.880)
It's almost like waking up.
Lex Fridman (3:44:44.900)
Like just there's a different reality.
Alien Debate (3:44:46.820)
Yeah, that was scary.
Lex Fridman (3:44:48.040)
Reinventing yourself.
Alien Debate (3:44:49.680)
Okay, if you could, Lee,
Lex Fridman (3:44:51.860)
maybe I'll actually we'll alternate.
Alien Debate (3:44:54.020)
Sarah, if you could be someone else for a day,
Lex Fridman (3:44:56.660)
someone alive today,
Alien Debate (3:44:57.940)
you haven't met yet, haven't met yet.
Lex Fridman (3:45:00.720)
Or maybe you could do one who you've met.
Lex Fridman (3:45:02.620)
Who would it be?
Lex Fridman (3:45:03.940)
Kim Kardashian.
Alien Debate (3:45:06.020)
No joke.
Lex Fridman (3:45:07.460)
The woman's brilliant.
Alien Debate (3:45:08.420)
I would just like to experience,
Lex Fridman (3:45:09.660)
like I just, I think she's got such an interesting
Lex Fridman (3:45:14.020)
and very deep understanding of social reality.
Lex Fridman (3:45:16.660)
But you also said you have appreciation
Alien Debate (3:45:19.220)
of love for fashion.
Lex Fridman (3:45:20.340)
I do.
Lex Fridman (3:45:21.340)
But that's actually the same.
Lex Fridman (3:45:22.900)
Like I just think it's really interesting
Alien Debate (3:45:24.380)
because we live in a social reality
Lex Fridman (3:45:25.620)
which is completely artificially constructed.
Lex Fridman (3:45:27.860)
And some people are really genius about moving through that.
Lex Fridman (3:45:30.220)
And I think she's particularly good at it.
Alien Debate (3:45:31.620)
I wonder if she's good at understanding or if she's just.
Lex Fridman (3:45:33.940)
I think it's very deeply intrinsic to her.
Lex Fridman (3:45:35.620)
So I don't know if she has much.
Lex Fridman (3:45:36.460)
She's like surfing a wave.
Lex Fridman (3:45:37.700)
How much cognitive awareness she has of it
Lex Fridman (3:45:39.500)
or how strategic it is.
Lex Fridman (3:45:40.500)
But I think it's deeply fascinating.
Lex Fridman (3:45:42.160)
So I guess that's the first one that comes to mind.
Lex Fridman (3:45:44.740)
What about you, Lee?
Lex Fridman (3:45:45.660)
If you could be somebody for a day.
Alien Debate (3:45:47.820)
Don't say Yoshua Bach.
Lex Fridman (3:45:49.940)
Don't say Kim Kardashian.
Alien Debate (3:45:51.700)
Let's do it off the table.
Lex Fridman (3:45:53.020)
Off the table.
Alien Debate (3:45:53.980)
No, I was gonna say I would like to be a,
Lex Fridman (3:45:57.220)
does it have to be here today?
Alien Debate (3:45:58.100)
I was gonna say I'd like to be the latest arm processor.
Lex Fridman (3:46:04.900)
Interesting.
Alien Debate (3:46:06.300)
I would like to be the latest arm processor.
Lex Fridman (3:46:07.740)
I'd like to understand.
Alien Debate (3:46:09.980)
I would like to know what it feel like to basically.
Lex Fridman (3:46:14.180)
You like being objects.
Alien Debate (3:46:15.180)
I like being objects.
Lex Fridman (3:46:16.020)
I've always obsessed with being objects
Alien Debate (3:46:17.460)
ever since I was a kid.
Lex Fridman (3:46:18.460)
What's the best part of being an arm processor for a day?
Alien Debate (3:46:21.180)
I mean, I'd like to understand how I access my memory,
Lex Fridman (3:46:23.460)
what it anticipates coming next in clock cycles.
Lex Fridman (3:46:25.900)
What about how it feels like?
Lex Fridman (3:46:27.620)
Yeah, I wanna know how it feels like to be.
Alien Debate (3:46:30.260)
To be useful.
Lex Fridman (3:46:33.020)
Thanks for that.
Alien Debate (3:46:37.420)
All right, if, Lee, if everyone on Earth disappeared
Lex Fridman (3:46:42.300)
and it was just you left, what would your days look like?
Lex Fridman (3:46:45.980)
What would you do?
Lex Fridman (3:46:46.820)
Nobody else left to impress.
Alien Debate (3:46:48.820)
Nobody, no, probably can't really do any real science
Lex Fridman (3:46:52.300)
at scale.
Lex Fridman (3:46:53.380)
What would you do with your remaining days?
Lex Fridman (3:46:55.700)
Get every possible tool I could
Lex Fridman (3:46:59.140)
and put it in my workshop and just make stuff.
Lex Fridman (3:47:01.980)
As, so try to make stuff.
Alien Debate (3:47:04.060)
Just try and make stuff.
Lex Fridman (3:47:05.180)
Make companions.
Alien Debate (3:47:06.020)
I'm pretty much making companions probably, yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:47:08.660)
So in the physical space.
Alien Debate (3:47:09.900)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:47:11.420)
What about you, Sarah?
Lex Fridman (3:47:12.300)
What would you, when you're just left alone on Earth,
Lex Fridman (3:47:15.180)
you're the last person.
Lex Fridman (3:47:16.020)
Are there animals in this scenario?
Lex Fridman (3:47:17.980)
No living beings.
Lex Fridman (3:47:19.340)
No plants?
Lex Fridman (3:47:21.020)
No plants.
Alien Debate (3:47:23.340)
Oh, interesting.
Lex Fridman (3:47:24.180)
I was gonna say, I would just,
Alien Debate (3:47:25.220)
I would try to walk the entire planet,
Lex Fridman (3:47:26.820)
at least all the landmass.
Alien Debate (3:47:28.900)
Well, that's true.
Lex Fridman (3:47:29.980)
So you probably don't know if there's stuff.
Alien Debate (3:47:33.860)
You could be searching for plants or other humans
Lex Fridman (3:47:36.500)
or other animals. And what would I eat?
Alien Debate (3:47:40.980)
You just have daily just allotment.
Lex Fridman (3:47:44.860)
I would just walk all the time, I think.
Alien Debate (3:47:46.020)
Of Soylent.
Lex Fridman (3:47:46.900)
I don't know why.
Alien Debate (3:47:47.860)
Just walk.
Lex Fridman (3:47:48.700)
That's just what came to mind.
Alien Debate (3:47:49.540)
You're the explorer.
Lex Fridman (3:47:50.380)
I would just walk.
Lex Fridman (3:47:51.420)
And I guess I would make a goal of covering
Lex Fridman (3:47:53.020)
all of the entire Earth.
Lex Fridman (3:47:54.740)
Because what else are you gonna do with your time?
Lex Fridman (3:47:56.380)
What's an item on your bucket list, Sarah,
Lex Fridman (3:47:58.860)
that you haven't done yet, but you hope to do?
Lex Fridman (3:48:02.780)
Skydiving.
Alien Debate (3:48:04.180)
Travel to space.
Lex Fridman (3:48:08.460)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (3:48:10.100)
You know what's funny with my bucket list?
Lex Fridman (3:48:11.700)
I only know it was on my bucket list once I check it off.
Alien Debate (3:48:14.300)
Once you check it off.
Lex Fridman (3:48:15.180)
So your bucket list is like a fog.
Alien Debate (3:48:17.060)
It's like a mystery almost by doing it.
Lex Fridman (3:48:20.020)
Yeah, so it's very subconsciously driven.
Lex Fridman (3:48:22.740)
So it's in your subconscious in there.
Lex Fridman (3:48:24.700)
I think so.
Alien Debate (3:48:25.540)
You're bringing it to the surface.
Lex Fridman (3:48:26.460)
I think most of the steering of our agency
Alien Debate (3:48:28.020)
is in our subconscious anyway,
Lex Fridman (3:48:29.140)
so I just kind of go with the flow.
Lex Fridman (3:48:30.340)
But I guess, no, seriously.
Lex Fridman (3:48:33.340)
Yeah, no, I get it.
Alien Debate (3:48:35.060)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (3:48:35.900)
I guess, but I would like to go on a submarine,
Alien Debate (3:48:37.180)
like to the bottom of the ocean.
Lex Fridman (3:48:38.020)
I think that'd be really cool.
Alien Debate (3:48:38.980)
To the bottom of the ocean.
Lex Fridman (3:48:40.340)
Are you captivated by the mystery of the ocean?
Alien Debate (3:48:42.500)
Like how little you know.
Lex Fridman (3:48:43.340)
I am, yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:48:44.180)
Yeah, what about you, Lee?
Lex Fridman (3:48:47.700)
What item on your bucket list?
Alien Debate (3:48:50.420)
I don't have a bucket list, but I've just made one.
Lex Fridman (3:48:51.940)
I would love to take a computer to the moon or Mars
Lex Fridman (3:48:55.660)
and make drugs off world.
Lex Fridman (3:48:57.500)
Be the first chemist to make drugs off world.
Alien Debate (3:49:00.740)
The first drug manufacturer in space.
Lex Fridman (3:49:02.620)
Yeah, why not?
Alien Debate (3:49:03.700)
Drugs in space.
Lex Fridman (3:49:04.540)
Do they have to be somehow like be able to habitate,
Lex Fridman (3:49:07.020)
like be able to survive on that particular space?
Lex Fridman (3:49:10.600)
Or like what's the connection between being on Mars
Lex Fridman (3:49:13.420)
and doing many things?
Lex Fridman (3:49:14.260)
I just would like to be there.
Alien Debate (3:49:15.100)
I would like to take the ability to have command
Lex Fridman (3:49:18.900)
and control over chemicals programmatically off earth
Alien Debate (3:49:22.500)
to somewhere else in the universe.
Lex Fridman (3:49:24.180)
That just seems like you like difficulty
Alien Debate (3:49:26.140)
engineering problems.
Lex Fridman (3:49:28.740)
Before I die, if I can do that, that's great.
Lex Fridman (3:49:29.940)
Would you travel to space if you could?
Lex Fridman (3:49:32.180)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Alien Debate (3:49:33.020)
I'd love to go into space, but not just to be a tourist.
Lex Fridman (3:49:35.820)
I wanna take scientific experiment in space
Lex Fridman (3:49:38.460)
and do a thing in space that's never been done before.
Lex Fridman (3:49:41.140)
That's a real possibility.
Alien Debate (3:49:42.940)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:49:44.340)
So that's why there's no point in listening
Alien Debate (3:49:46.420)
things I can't do, yeah.
Lex Fridman (3:49:48.980)
All right, what small act of kindness
Lex Fridman (3:49:52.500)
were you once shown that you will never forget?
Lex Fridman (3:49:56.220)
Small act of kindness, not big.
Alien Debate (3:49:59.500)
Somebody was just kind to you.
Lex Fridman (3:50:01.020)
Somebody did something sweet.
Alien Debate (3:50:03.300)
When I was a PhD student, someone helped me out
Lex Fridman (3:50:08.300)
with just, basically, I needed a computer.
Alien Debate (3:50:13.540)
I needed some power, computation power,
Lex Fridman (3:50:15.420)
and someone took pity on me and helped me.
Alien Debate (3:50:18.340)
I was really touched.
Lex Fridman (3:50:19.180)
They didn't have to.
Lex Fridman (3:50:20.180)
And they were actually quite, they were a disabled scientist
Lex Fridman (3:50:23.020)
and they had other things to do
Alien Debate (3:50:24.180)
rather than help some random PhD student.
Lex Fridman (3:50:26.340)
Gave me access, taught me a lot of stuff.
Alien Debate (3:50:29.140)
Yeah, actually, when you're a grad student
Lex Fridman (3:50:30.900)
or when you're a student, when you're even a student,
Alien Debate (3:50:33.340)
the younger it is, the better.
Lex Fridman (3:50:35.660)
The attention, the support, the love you get
Alien Debate (3:50:38.740)
from an older person, a teacher,
Lex Fridman (3:50:40.580)
something like that is super powerful.
Alien Debate (3:50:42.660)
It's fascinating.
Lex Fridman (3:50:43.580)
And from the perspective of the teacher,
Alien Debate (3:50:45.500)
they might not realize the impact they have,
Lex Fridman (3:50:47.580)
but that little bit, those few words,
Alien Debate (3:50:51.460)
a little bit of help can have a lot of impact.
Lex Fridman (3:50:54.660)
What about you, Sarah?
Lex Fridman (3:50:56.860)
Somebody give you a free Starbucks at some point?
Lex Fridman (3:50:59.300)
I love free Starbucks.
Alien Debate (3:51:00.500)
I like it when you're in the line at Starbucks
Lex Fridman (3:51:03.300)
and somebody buys your coffee in front of you
Lex Fridman (3:51:05.020)
and then you buy the next one.
Lex Fridman (3:51:05.860)
I love those, but that's not my example.
Alien Debate (3:51:08.260)
Those are great.
Lex Fridman (3:51:09.460)
It makes me happy.
Lex Fridman (3:51:10.300)
And now my kids get all excited when we do it,
Lex Fridman (3:51:11.700)
when we go in, we're the first ones in line doing it.
Lex Fridman (3:51:14.020)
But I guess I can use a similar example
Lex Fridman (3:51:20.700)
about just being a student.
Lex Fridman (3:51:22.980)
So Paul Davies is a very well known theoretical physicist
Lex Fridman (3:51:26.460)
and he was generous enough with his time
Alien Debate (3:51:31.060)
to take me on as a postdoc.
Lex Fridman (3:51:32.980)
But before I became his postdoc,
Alien Debate (3:51:34.500)
he invited me to a workshop
Lex Fridman (3:51:35.540)
at Arizona State University in the Beyond Center
Lex Fridman (3:51:37.540)
and took a walk with me around campus
Lex Fridman (3:51:40.620)
just to talk about ideas after.
Lex Fridman (3:51:42.220)
And I think there were two things
Lex Fridman (3:51:44.180)
that were completely generous about that.
Alien Debate (3:51:48.260)
One is Paul's philosophy is always interacting
Lex Fridman (3:51:51.740)
with young people.
Alien Debate (3:51:52.660)
It's like you interact with a mind in the room.
Lex Fridman (3:51:54.980)
It doesn't matter how well known or whatever.
Alien Debate (3:51:57.940)
It's like you evaluate the person for the person.
Lex Fridman (3:52:01.060)
But he also gave me a book,
Alien Debate (3:52:02.780)
The Eerie Silence that he had written and he wrote in it,
Lex Fridman (3:52:05.620)
This is How EE Gets to ET,
Alien Debate (3:52:08.980)
which was an antimeric excess,
Lex Fridman (3:52:10.700)
which I worked on as a PhD student
Alien Debate (3:52:12.260)
was the origin of homochirality
Lex Fridman (3:52:14.180)
all the way up to what the book was about,
Alien Debate (3:52:15.340)
which was are we alone in the universe
Lex Fridman (3:52:16.900)
and is there intelligent life out there?
Lex Fridman (3:52:19.100)
And it was just so much about the questions I wanted to ask
Lex Fridman (3:52:24.260)
because it was just everything about,
Alien Debate (3:52:26.620)
just it was just really, really kind.
Lex Fridman (3:52:29.740)
Like that it's okay to ask these questions
Lex Fridman (3:52:32.340)
and you can actually have strong enough to answer them.
Lex Fridman (3:52:35.100)
A lot of my career is mostly his encouragement
Alien Debate (3:52:37.140)
to ask deep questions.
Lex Fridman (3:52:38.100)
Like he gave me the space to do it
Alien Debate (3:52:39.300)
in ways that a lot of previous mentors had.
Lex Fridman (3:52:41.620)
I mean, I've had a good experience with mentors,
Lex Fridman (3:52:43.860)
but it was like go off the deep end,
Lex Fridman (3:52:46.180)
ask the hardest questions.
Lex Fridman (3:52:47.940)
And I think that's the best gift you can give somebody.
Lex Fridman (3:52:50.580)
What would you,
Alien Debate (3:52:51.420)
because you're both fascinating minds
Lex Fridman (3:52:53.040)
and not, I would say, nonstandard in the best possible way.
Alien Debate (3:52:58.040)
Is there advice you can give to young folks
Lex Fridman (3:53:01.560)
how to be nonstandard, how to stand out,
Lex Fridman (3:53:04.360)
novelty, how to generate novelty?
Lex Fridman (3:53:06.080)
That's what I want on my tombstone.
Alien Debate (3:53:08.000)
I have one.
Lex Fridman (3:53:08.840)
He generated novelty.
Alien Debate (3:53:11.600)
No, no, how to.
Lex Fridman (3:53:12.440)
Oh, how to.
Alien Debate (3:53:13.280)
How, how, still.
Lex Fridman (3:53:16.680)
I just love doing science.
Lex Fridman (3:53:18.080)
And so when I was younger, I was just,
Lex Fridman (3:53:21.280)
just wanted to, I mean, I'm still not sure
Lex Fridman (3:53:23.040)
I'm a real scientist, right?
Lex Fridman (3:53:24.160)
So I want to try.
Lex Fridman (3:53:25.600)
So my advice for the young people
Lex Fridman (3:53:27.080)
is just, if you just, if you love asking questions,
Alien Debate (3:53:30.360)
then don't be afraid to ask the question,
Lex Fridman (3:53:33.000)
even if it pisses people off,
Alien Debate (3:53:34.400)
because if you piss people off,
Lex Fridman (3:53:36.080)
you're probably asking the right question.
Lex Fridman (3:53:39.040)
What I would say though, is don't do what I did,
Lex Fridman (3:53:41.080)
which is just piss everyone off.
Alien Debate (3:53:43.600)
Try and work out how to, you know, I think,
Lex Fridman (3:53:48.400)
if other people are challenged by your questions,
Alien Debate (3:53:51.960)
you will get not only respect,
Lex Fridman (3:53:55.200)
but people will give you, create space for you,
Alien Debate (3:53:57.760)
because you're doing something really new.
Lex Fridman (3:54:00.600)
I really try to create space in my academic career,
Alien Debate (3:54:03.680)
with my team, really try and praise them
Lex Fridman (3:54:07.280)
and push them to do new things.
Lex Fridman (3:54:08.760)
So my advice is, try to do new things,
Lex Fridman (3:54:12.400)
get feedback, and the universe will help you.
Alien Debate (3:54:15.560)
Excellent.
Lex Fridman (3:54:17.800)
Because the universe likes novelty.
Alien Debate (3:54:19.120)
I think so.
Lex Fridman (3:54:19.960)
I think so, right?
Alien Debate (3:54:21.000)
This one will keep them around.
Lex Fridman (3:54:23.200)
Oh my God.
Lex Fridman (3:54:24.040)
What about you, Sarah?
Lex Fridman (3:54:26.240)
You too like to ask the really out there big questions.
Alien Debate (3:54:29.800)
Yeah, because I have a strong passion for them.
Lex Fridman (3:54:32.840)
So I think it goes back to the love.
Alien Debate (3:54:36.160)
Like if you're doing the thing you're supposed to be doing,
Lex Fridman (3:54:38.520)
you should really love it.
Lex Fridman (3:54:40.480)
So I always tell people that they should do
Lex Fridman (3:54:42.080)
the thing they're most passionate about.
Lex Fridman (3:54:43.320)
But I think a flip side of that is,
Lex Fridman (3:54:45.640)
that's when you become in some way,
Alien Debate (3:54:48.080)
like not to sound cheesy,
Lex Fridman (3:54:49.240)
but like your best version of yourself.
Lex Fridman (3:54:51.000)
So I guess for me, as I become more successful in my career,
Lex Fridman (3:54:54.800)
I feel like I can be more myself as an individual.
Lex Fridman (3:54:57.480)
And so there's this, I've always been following
Lex Fridman (3:54:59.360)
the questions I'm most interested in,
Alien Debate (3:55:00.880)
which very early on I was discouraged
Lex Fridman (3:55:03.480)
from doing by many people
Alien Debate (3:55:04.840)
because they thought they were unanswerable questions.
Lex Fridman (3:55:06.760)
And I always just thought,
Alien Debate (3:55:08.160)
well, if no one's even trying to answer them,
Lex Fridman (3:55:10.560)
of course they're gonna be unanswerable.
Lex Fridman (3:55:12.360)
And then that was kind of an odd viewpoint.
Lex Fridman (3:55:13.800)
But the more I found my way in that space,
Alien Debate (3:55:16.800)
the more I also made a space for myself as a person,
Lex Fridman (3:55:19.960)
because you're basically generating the niche
Alien Debate (3:55:23.080)
that you wanna exist in.
Lex Fridman (3:55:24.800)
And so I think that's part of it,
Alien Debate (3:55:29.360)
is not just to follow your passion,
Lex Fridman (3:55:30.760)
but also think about like,
Lex Fridman (3:55:31.840)
who do you wanna be and create that?
Lex Fridman (3:55:35.680)
Yeah, who am I, who do you wanna be?
Alien Debate (3:55:38.080)
I mean, yeah, play temporally with it.
Lex Fridman (3:55:40.880)
Yeah, who am I now?
Lex Fridman (3:55:41.760)
Who do I wanna be now?
Lex Fridman (3:55:42.920)
But who do I wanna be in the future?
Alien Debate (3:55:44.240)
They're not decoupled.
Lex Fridman (3:55:45.560)
Yeah, I always wonder if that's like,
Alien Debate (3:55:48.240)
if I become something, am I finding myself
Lex Fridman (3:55:52.680)
or am I creating myself?
Lex Fridman (3:55:54.960)
And I think those are somehow the same kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (3:55:58.040)
I do feel often like I was always meant
Alien Debate (3:56:00.480)
to be this kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (3:56:02.160)
But is that created or discovered?
Alien Debate (3:56:06.160)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (3:56:07.000)
But basically go towards that direction.
Alien Debate (3:56:09.560)
If you were abducted by aliens, Sarah.
Lex Fridman (3:56:12.320)
Excellent, I'm waiting, they can come find me.
Alien Debate (3:56:15.320)
They're on a spaceship.
Lex Fridman (3:56:16.480)
And then they somehow figured out the language you speak
Lex Fridman (3:56:22.560)
and ask you, what are you?
Lex Fridman (3:56:25.760)
What is, explain yourself.
Alien Debate (3:56:29.080)
Not you, Sarah, but the species.
Lex Fridman (3:56:31.320)
Oh.
Alien Debate (3:56:33.400)
Life on Earth, like we don't have time.
Lex Fridman (3:56:37.920)
We're busy grad students from another planet.
Alien Debate (3:56:41.120)
I see.
Lex Fridman (3:56:41.960)
What's interesting about human civilization?
Lex Fridman (3:56:45.480)
What's interesting about you?
Lex Fridman (3:56:47.680)
You specifically, too.
Alien Debate (3:56:49.040)
They could be very kind of personal, kind of pushy.
Lex Fridman (3:56:53.520)
And yeah, how would you begin to describe?
Alien Debate (3:56:57.840)
Okay, I have one.
Lex Fridman (3:57:00.400)
Because, you know, obviously I self identify
Alien Debate (3:57:03.440)
as a scientist and a physicist,
Lex Fridman (3:57:04.680)
but intrinsically I feel more like an artist.
Lex Fridman (3:57:06.360)
But it's almost like you're an artist
Lex Fridman (3:57:07.920)
that you don't know what you're painting yet.
Lex Fridman (3:57:09.840)
And I guess I feel like that's humanity,
Lex Fridman (3:57:12.600)
like in some sense, we're creating something
Alien Debate (3:57:16.440)
I think is profound and potentially very beautiful
Lex Fridman (3:57:19.560)
in existence of the universe.
Lex Fridman (3:57:20.840)
But we're just so, not night, we're just early.
Lex Fridman (3:57:25.240)
We're early, we're young.
Alien Debate (3:57:26.880)
We don't know what we're doing yet.
Lex Fridman (3:57:28.280)
Yeah, what's with the nuclear weapons?
Alien Debate (3:57:30.120)
That'd be a question, too.
Lex Fridman (3:57:31.560)
Like what are you guys, why?
Lex Fridman (3:57:32.800)
What are we doing with them?
Lex Fridman (3:57:34.240)
This creativity that you talk, it sounds very nice,
Lex Fridman (3:57:36.600)
but it's, you're seem to be.
Lex Fridman (3:57:37.760)
We're making things that are.
Alien Debate (3:57:39.080)
Like very destructive and like the rockets,
Lex Fridman (3:57:41.560)
this seems very aggressive.
Alien Debate (3:57:43.640)
Yeah, I know.
Lex Fridman (3:57:45.080)
This is my blinders on.
Alien Debate (3:57:48.320)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (3:57:49.160)
I mean, it goes back to the whole conversation
Alien Debate (3:57:50.560)
about suffering.
Lex Fridman (3:57:51.400)
I have a hard time regularizing certain aspects
Alien Debate (3:57:53.920)
of reality into what I wanna envision.
Lex Fridman (3:57:56.600)
And that's obviously problematic.
Lex Fridman (3:57:58.280)
But nuclear power has also given us a lot of good things.
Lex Fridman (3:58:02.520)
So.
Lex Fridman (3:58:03.880)
So both, that's human nature.
Lex Fridman (3:58:06.040)
Both human beings and the technology we create
Alien Debate (3:58:08.920)
has the capacity for evil and the capacity for good.
Lex Fridman (3:58:10.840)
Yeah, and we can't all be good all the time.
Alien Debate (3:58:12.680)
I mean, there's like this huge misnomer
Lex Fridman (3:58:14.560)
that you need to be liked by everyone universally.
Lex Fridman (3:58:17.040)
And obviously that's like an ideal,
Lex Fridman (3:58:19.200)
but it's physically impossible.
Alien Debate (3:58:21.120)
Like you can't get a group of people in a room
Lex Fridman (3:58:23.080)
and have everyone like each other all the time.
Lex Fridman (3:58:25.520)
So I think that kind of tension is actually really important
Lex Fridman (3:58:29.760)
that we have different aesthetics, different goals.
Lex Fridman (3:58:34.880)
And sometimes conflict comes out of that.
Lex Fridman (3:58:38.960)
Speaking of which, do Yuli and Yoshua Bach
Lex Fridman (3:58:41.920)
ever say anything nice to each other?
Lex Fridman (3:58:43.760)
Or is it always conflict?
Alien Debate (3:58:45.400)
We never have conflict.
Lex Fridman (3:58:46.400)
We argue, but I don't think arguments are bad.
Alien Debate (3:58:50.000)
It's love.
Lex Fridman (3:58:50.840)
I mean, I think the problem I have,
Alien Debate (3:58:52.240)
not problem, I think.
Lex Fridman (3:58:53.520)
Here we go.
Lex Fridman (3:58:54.760)
And he's not here to defend himself.
Lex Fridman (3:58:56.000)
No, I just, I don't necessarily understand the,
Alien Debate (3:58:59.680)
I mean, he's just talking at such a high level.
Lex Fridman (3:59:02.320)
You know, I'm a dimwit, so I'm like, I spend some,
Lex Fridman (3:59:05.240)
so I think a lot of our conflict is not conflict.
Lex Fridman (3:59:08.080)
We actually, we actually have a, I think,
Alien Debate (3:59:10.120)
I mean, I can't speak for Yash,
Lex Fridman (3:59:10.960)
I have a deep appreciation for him, he's brilliant.
Lex Fridman (3:59:13.560)
But I think I'm kind of frustrated and I'm trying to,
Lex Fridman (3:59:17.520)
he thinks the universe is a computer
Lex Fridman (3:59:20.800)
and I want to turn the universe into a computer.
Lex Fridman (3:59:23.480)
Yeah, that's a small disagreement.
Lex Fridman (3:59:25.840)
So what would you, how would you defend your life
Lex Fridman (3:59:28.040)
to an alien when you're being abducted?
Lex Fridman (3:59:30.400)
Would you focus on the specifics of your life?
Lex Fridman (3:59:32.880)
No, no, no, I would be, I would try to be
Alien Debate (3:59:34.440)
as random as possible and try and confuse them.
Lex Fridman (3:59:37.040)
Oh, good, good.
Alien Debate (3:59:42.560)
Excellent.
Lex Fridman (3:59:43.400)
That might be the wiser choice.
Alien Debate (3:59:45.160)
The Easter eggs in reality.
Lex Fridman (3:59:46.520)
No, I mean, if aliens abducted me.
Lex Fridman (3:59:47.360)
Would you play dumb?
Lex Fridman (3:59:48.200)
No, no, no, I would try and be as random as possible.
Alien Debate (3:59:50.480)
I would try and do something that would surprise
Lex Fridman (3:59:52.200)
the hell out of them, which I thought,
Alien Debate (3:59:53.800)
I mean, I'd probably risk it, they might kill me,
Lex Fridman (3:59:55.400)
but I think that'd probably be funny.
Alien Debate (3:59:56.800)
That might, yeah, they might want to study you
Lex Fridman (3:59:59.480)
for prolonged periods of time.
Lex Fridman (40:00.780)
and they're geographically constrained,
Lex Fridman (40:02.740)
or constrained in space or time, or something like that.
Alien Debate (40:06.100)
They're constrained in time
Lex Fridman (40:07.300)
because only by the virtue of the fact
Alien Debate (40:09.860)
that you need enough time to have passed
Lex Fridman (40:12.820)
for some things to exist.
Lex Fridman (40:14.580)
So the universe has to be big enough in time
Lex Fridman (40:16.260)
for some things.
Lex Fridman (40:17.180)
So just one point on the shortest path
Lex Fridman (40:18.780)
versus the average path,
Alien Debate (40:19.780)
which I think we'll get to this,
Lex Fridman (40:20.780)
is you had a nice way of saying it's like
Alien Debate (40:22.980)
the minimal compression is the shortest path
Lex Fridman (40:25.180)
for the universe to produce that.
Lex Fridman (40:26.620)
But it's also like the first time
Lex Fridman (40:28.100)
in the ordering of events
Alien Debate (40:29.900)
that you might expect to see that object.
Lex Fridman (40:32.500)
But the average path tells you something
Alien Debate (40:35.780)
about the actual steps that were realized,
Lex Fridman (40:39.100)
and that becomes an emergent property
Alien Debate (40:40.940)
of that object's interaction with other objects.
Lex Fridman (40:43.740)
So it's not an intrinsic feature of that object.
Alien Debate (40:45.500)
It's a feature of the interactions with other things.
Lex Fridman (40:47.780)
And so one of the nice features of assembly
Alien Debate (40:49.900)
is you've basically gotten rid of,
Lex Fridman (40:51.260)
you just look at the things that exist,
Lex Fridman (40:52.700)
and you've gotten rid of the mechanisms
Lex Fridman (40:54.260)
for constructing them in some sense.
Alien Debate (40:56.260)
Like the machines are not as important
Lex Fridman (41:00.780)
in the current construction of the theory,
Alien Debate (41:02.580)
although I would like to bridge it
Lex Fridman (41:04.260)
to some ideas about constructors.
Lex Fridman (41:08.020)
But then you can only communicate with things
Lex Fridman (41:11.260)
as Lee was saying,
Alien Debate (41:12.500)
if you have some overlap in the past history.
Lex Fridman (41:15.020)
So if you had an alien species
Alien Debate (41:16.900)
that had absolutely no overlap,
Lex Fridman (41:18.780)
then there would be no means of communication.
Lex Fridman (41:21.260)
But as we progress further and further in time
Lex Fridman (41:25.260)
and more things become possible
Alien Debate (41:26.740)
because the assembly spaces are larger,
Lex Fridman (41:29.500)
because you can have a larger assembly space
Alien Debate (41:31.740)
in terms of index and also just the size of the space,
Lex Fridman (41:34.180)
because it's exponentially growing,
Alien Debate (41:36.300)
then more things can happen in the future.
Lex Fridman (41:38.100)
And the example I like to give is actually
Alien Debate (41:40.580)
when we made first contact with gravitational waves,
Lex Fridman (41:43.700)
because that's an alien phenomenon
Alien Debate (41:46.060)
that's been permeating our planet,
Lex Fridman (41:47.180)
not alien in life phenomenon,
Lex Fridman (41:48.740)
but alien like something we had never knew existed.
Lex Fridman (41:51.900)
It's been like there's gravitational waves
Alien Debate (41:55.140)
rippling through this room right now,
Lex Fridman (41:57.340)
but we had to advance to the level of Einstein
Alien Debate (42:00.180)
writing down his theory of relativity
Lex Fridman (42:03.100)
and then 100 years of technological development
Alien Debate (42:05.820)
to even quote unquote see that phenomena.
Lex Fridman (42:08.540)
So the, okay, to see that phenomena,
Alien Debate (42:12.060)
our causal graph have to start intersecting.
Lex Fridman (42:16.020)
Yeah, we needed the idea to emerge first,
Lex Fridman (42:17.940)
the abstraction, right?
Lex Fridman (42:18.940)
And then we had to build the technology
Alien Debate (42:20.580)
that could actually observe features of that abstraction.
Lex Fridman (42:23.740)
So the nice promising thing is over time,
Alien Debate (42:26.500)
the graph can grow so we can start overlapping eventually.
Lex Fridman (42:29.460)
Yeah, so the interesting feature of that graph
Alien Debate (42:31.380)
is there was an event 1.4 billion years away
Lex Fridman (42:34.460)
of a black hole merger that we detected on our detector.
Lex Fridman (42:38.460)
And now suddenly we're connected
Lex Fridman (42:41.540)
through this communication channel
Alien Debate (42:42.980)
with this distant event in our universe
Lex Fridman (42:45.020)
that if you think about 1.4 billion years ago,
Lex Fridman (42:48.020)
what was happening on this planet
Lex Fridman (42:49.260)
or even further back in time,
Alien Debate (42:51.900)
that there's common physics underlying all of those events,
Lex Fridman (42:55.020)
but even for those two events to communicate.
Alien Debate (42:56.900)
Now I understand what you were going on about
Lex Fridman (42:58.300)
the other week.
Alien Debate (42:59.140)
Yeah, I'm sorry, this is a really abstract example,
Lex Fridman (43:01.180)
but it's sort of.
Alien Debate (43:03.140)
Your causal graphs are now overlapping.
Lex Fridman (43:05.700)
Well, let's just say now our causal graphs
Alien Debate (43:07.940)
are overlapping in the deep past.
Lex Fridman (43:10.100)
Yeah, sorry.
Alien Debate (43:10.940)
No, I like it, so you made it.
Lex Fridman (43:11.780)
I totally missed it.
Alien Debate (43:12.600)
Oh, the 1.6 billion.
Lex Fridman (43:13.440)
Yeah.
Alien Debate (43:14.280)
You made a connection with it.
Lex Fridman (43:15.100)
No, I do like that.
Alien Debate (43:15.940)
No, no, you can tell me what your epiphany is now.
Lex Fridman (43:17.540)
That's good.
Alien Debate (43:18.420)
Because I was.
Lex Fridman (43:19.260)
And I should get the jokes before 30 seconds after, so.
Alien Debate (43:22.860)
Oh, I get it now.
Lex Fridman (43:25.100)
No, it's all right.
Alien Debate (43:25.940)
I was slow.
Lex Fridman (43:26.780)
The joke from two minutes ago.
Alien Debate (43:27.620)
I'm slow on the uptake here.
Lex Fridman (43:28.660)
I wasn't able to comprehend
Lex Fridman (43:29.900)
what you were talking about when saying
Lex Fridman (43:31.300)
the channel communicating to the past.
Lex Fridman (43:32.900)
But what you're saying is we were able to infer
Lex Fridman (43:36.460)
what happened 1.4 billion years ago.
Alien Debate (43:40.340)
We detected the gravity wave.
Lex Fridman (43:41.700)
I mean, I think it's amazing that at that time,
Alien Debate (43:43.700)
we weren't even, we were just becoming multicellular,
Lex Fridman (43:46.100)
right?
Alien Debate (43:46.940)
It's like insane.
Lex Fridman (43:48.460)
And then we progressed from multicellularity
Alien Debate (43:51.780)
through to technology and built the detector
Lex Fridman (43:55.380)
and then we just extrapolate backwards.
Alien Debate (43:58.020)
So, although we didn't do anything back to the graph
Lex Fridman (44:01.580)
back in time, we understood this existence
Alien Debate (44:03.420)
then overlapped going forward.
Lex Fridman (44:04.500)
And that.
Alien Debate (44:05.340)
Well, that's because our graphs are larger.
Lex Fridman (44:06.620)
Yeah, but that means that has a consequence.
Alien Debate (44:09.180)
One of the things I was trying to say is I think,
Lex Fridman (44:13.780)
I don't know, Sarah might be, she can correct me,
Alien Debate (44:15.860)
information first and I'm a object first kind of guy.
Lex Fridman (44:19.660)
So, I mean, there's things that get constructed.
Alien Debate (44:21.820)
There has to be this transition in random constructions.
Lex Fridman (44:25.340)
So when the object that's being constructed by the process
Alien Debate (44:30.780)
bakes in that memory and those memories then add on
Lex Fridman (44:33.580)
and add on and add on.
Lex Fridman (44:35.500)
So as it becomes more competent and life is about
Lex Fridman (44:39.060)
taking those memories and compressing them,
Alien Debate (44:41.020)
increasing their autonomy.
Lex Fridman (44:42.900)
And so I think that, like the cell that we have
Alien Debate (44:46.300)
in biology on earth is our way of doing that,
Lex Fridman (44:48.180)
that really the maximum ability to take memories
Lex Fridman (44:51.260)
and to act on the future.
Lex Fridman (44:53.060)
Oh, I think that's mathematics.
Alien Debate (44:55.620)
No, mathematics doesn't exist.
Lex Fridman (44:58.460)
No, but that's the point.
Alien Debate (44:59.500)
The point is that abstractions do exist.
Lex Fridman (45:01.940)
They're real physical things.
Alien Debate (45:03.100)
We call them abstractions.
Lex Fridman (45:05.740)
But the point about mathematics that I think is,
Lex Fridman (45:08.780)
so I don't disagree that I think you're object first
Lex Fridman (45:11.780)
and I'm information first, but I think I'm only
Alien Debate (45:14.060)
information first in the sense that I think the thing
Lex Fridman (45:16.460)
that we need to explain is what abstractions are
Lex Fridman (45:20.500)
and what they are as physical things
Lex Fridman (45:22.060)
because of all of human history,
Alien Debate (45:23.780)
we've thought that there were these properties
Lex Fridman (45:25.660)
that are disembodied, exist outside of the universe
Lex Fridman (45:29.500)
and really they do exist in the universe
Lex Fridman (45:32.460)
and we just don't understand what their physics is.
Lex Fridman (45:34.900)
So I think mathematics is a really good example.
Lex Fridman (45:36.780)
We do theoretical physics with math,
Lex Fridman (45:39.340)
but imagine doing physics of math
Lex Fridman (45:42.580)
and then thinking about math as a physical object.
Lex Fridman (45:44.860)
And math is super interesting.
Lex Fridman (45:46.380)
I think this is why we think it describes reality so well
Alien Debate (45:48.780)
because it's the most copyable kind of information.
Lex Fridman (45:50.940)
It retains its properties
Alien Debate (45:52.380)
when you move it between physical media,
Lex Fridman (45:54.220)
which means that it's very deep.
Lex Fridman (45:56.180)
And so it seems to describe the universe really well,
Lex Fridman (45:59.180)
but it probably is because it's information
Alien Debate (46:00.500)
that's very deep in our past.
Lex Fridman (46:02.020)
And it's just, we invented a way of communicating it
Alien Debate (46:06.460)
very effectively between us.
Lex Fridman (46:08.980)
Isn't math more fundamental?
Alien Debate (46:11.180)
Isn't the assembly of the graph,
Lex Fridman (46:13.380)
isn't basically, I sound completely boring.
Alien Debate (46:16.260)
It's like math, assembly theory invented math, but it did.
Lex Fridman (46:20.020)
It has to be.
Alien Debate (46:20.860)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (46:23.860)
So what is math exactly?
Alien Debate (46:28.940)
It's a nice simplification,
Lex Fridman (46:34.780)
a simple description of what?
Lex Fridman (46:38.060)
So we have a computer scientist,
Lex Fridman (46:39.340)
a physicist, and a chemist here.
Alien Debate (46:41.300)
Walking to a bar.
Lex Fridman (46:42.140)
I think the chemist is gonna define math
Lex Fridman (46:43.860)
and you guys can correct me.
Lex Fridman (46:45.620)
Go for it.
Alien Debate (46:46.500)
I would say.
Lex Fridman (46:47.340)
Lay in on us, Lee.
Alien Debate (46:48.460)
We're ready.
Lex Fridman (46:50.900)
I think the ability to label objects
Lex Fridman (46:54.980)
and place them into classes
Lex Fridman (46:57.420)
and then do operations on the objects is what math is.
Lex Fridman (47:01.020)
So on that point,
Lex Fridman (47:02.380)
what does it mean to be object first
Lex Fridman (47:04.660)
versus information first?
Lex Fridman (47:07.020)
So what's the difference between object and information
Lex Fridman (47:09.620)
when you get to that low fundamental level?
Lex Fridman (47:11.980)
Well, I might change my view.
Lex Fridman (47:14.020)
So I'm stuff first, the stuff.
Lex Fridman (47:16.460)
And then when stuff becomes objects,
Alien Debate (47:18.780)
it has to invent information.
Lex Fridman (47:21.460)
And then the information acts on more stuff
Lex Fridman (47:23.820)
and becomes more objects.
Lex Fridman (47:24.860)
So I think there is a transition to information
Alien Debate (47:27.700)
that occurs when you go from stuff to objects.
Lex Fridman (47:29.780)
You mean time though, I think.
Alien Debate (47:30.620)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (47:31.460)
Information is emergent.
Alien Debate (47:33.460)
Not emergent.
Lex Fridman (47:34.380)
Information is actionable memories from the universe.
Lex Fridman (47:40.420)
So when memories become actionable, that's information.
Lex Fridman (47:44.820)
But there's always memory, but it's not actionable.
Alien Debate (47:48.300)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (47:49.140)
And then it's not information.
Alien Debate (47:49.980)
Great.
Lex Fridman (47:50.820)
And actionable is what you can create.
Alien Debate (47:52.340)
You can use it.
Lex Fridman (47:53.660)
If you can't use it, then it's not information.
Alien Debate (47:55.820)
If you can't transmit it,
Lex Fridman (47:56.900)
if it doesn't have any causal consequence.
Alien Debate (47:59.460)
Falls in the forest.
Lex Fridman (48:00.460)
I don't understand.
Lex Fridman (48:01.660)
Why is that not information?
Lex Fridman (48:03.500)
It's not information.
Alien Debate (48:04.460)
It's stuff.
Lex Fridman (48:07.340)
It's stuff happening, but it's not causal.
Alien Debate (48:10.260)
Yeah, yeah, we can.
Lex Fridman (48:11.700)
This is cool.
Lex Fridman (48:12.540)
But it's happening.
Lex Fridman (48:13.380)
Happening requires information.
Alien Debate (48:15.180)
No, no, no, no, no.
Lex Fridman (48:16.860)
Stuff is always happening.
Alien Debate (48:18.260)
No, this is where the physicists
Lex Fridman (48:19.980)
and the math petitions get themselves in a loop
Alien Debate (48:21.740)
because I think the universe, I mean,
Lex Fridman (48:24.620)
I think say Max Tegmark is very playful
Lex Fridman (48:28.020)
and say like the universe is just math.
Lex Fridman (48:30.220)
Well, the universe is just math.
Alien Debate (48:31.340)
Then we might as well not bother having any conversation
Lex Fridman (48:34.140)
because the conversation already written,
Alien Debate (48:35.140)
we just might as well go to the future and say,
Lex Fridman (48:36.220)
can you just give us the conversations happened already?
Lex Fridman (48:38.740)
So I think the problem is that math petitions
Lex Fridman (48:41.420)
are so successful at labeling stuff
Lex Fridman (48:43.460)
and so successful understanding the stuff
Lex Fridman (48:45.220)
through those labels,
Alien Debate (48:46.300)
they forget that actually those labels had to emerge
Lex Fridman (48:49.540)
and that information had to be built on those memories.
Lex Fridman (48:52.980)
So memory in the universe, so constraints, graph,
Lex Fridman (48:56.740)
when they become actionable
Lex Fridman (48:57.580)
and the graph can loop back on itself
Lex Fridman (48:59.780)
or interact with other graphs and they can intersect,
Alien Debate (49:02.820)
those memories become actionable
Lex Fridman (49:04.420)
and therefore they're information.
Lex Fridman (49:05.940)
And I think you just changed my mind
Lex Fridman (49:09.180)
on something pretty big, but I don't have a pen.
Lex Fridman (49:11.060)
So I can't write, I'm gonna write it down later,
Lex Fridman (49:12.460)
but roughly the idea is like you've got these two graphs
Alien Debate (49:17.100)
of objects of stuff that you have memories
Lex Fridman (49:20.540)
and then when they intersect
Lex Fridman (49:22.460)
and then they can act on each other,
Lex Fridman (49:24.460)
that's maybe the mechanism by which information is then,
Lex Fridman (49:27.540)
so then you can then abstract.
Lex Fridman (49:29.300)
So when one graph can then build another graph and say,
Alien Debate (49:32.300)
hey, you don't have to go through the nonsense
Lex Fridman (49:33.860)
we had to go through.
Alien Debate (49:34.700)
Here's literally the way to do it.
Lex Fridman (49:36.100)
Stuff always comes first,
Lex Fridman (49:37.860)
but then when stuff builds the abstraction,
Lex Fridman (49:39.500)
the abstractions can be then teleported
Alien Debate (49:41.260)
onto other stuff.
Lex Fridman (49:42.100)
And the abstractions is the looping back power.
Alien Debate (49:45.020)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (49:45.860)
Am I making, I don't know, I got stuck.
Alien Debate (49:47.620)
Yeah, so first, God made stuff.
Lex Fridman (49:52.300)
Then after that, when you start to be able
Alien Debate (49:54.740)
to form abstractions, that's when the information.
Lex Fridman (49:56.980)
God is the memory the universe can remember.
Alien Debate (4:00:00.360)
My reasoning is, if I wanted to stay alive, okay,
Lex Fridman (4:00:03.000)
so if the thing is, if I wasn't going back to Earth
Lex Fridman (4:00:05.040)
and the job was to stay alive, if I could be
Lex Fridman (4:00:07.160)
as surprising as possible, they'd keep me around
Lex Fridman (4:00:08.880)
like a pet, right?
Lex Fridman (4:00:11.600)
Petly, on the aliens page book.
Lex Fridman (4:00:13.000)
So you'd be okay being a pet?
Lex Fridman (4:00:14.720)
Well, no, but I mean.
Alien Debate (4:00:15.560)
The last human that survives would just be
Lex Fridman (4:00:18.440)
a pet to the aliens.
Alien Debate (4:00:19.560)
I don't know, but I mean, I think that might be fun
Lex Fridman (4:00:22.720)
because then I might get some feedback
Alien Debate (4:00:25.040)
from their curiosity, but yeah.
Lex Fridman (4:00:26.760)
Let me ask you this question.
Alien Debate (4:00:28.320)
Given our conversation has a very different meaning,
Lex Fridman (4:00:31.320)
not a more profound meaning, perhaps,
Lex Fridman (4:00:33.280)
but would you rather lose all of your old memories
Lex Fridman (4:00:37.240)
or never be able to make new ones?
Alien Debate (4:00:42.280)
I would have to lose all my old memories.
Lex Fridman (4:00:47.640)
Again, it's the novelty.
Lex Fridman (4:00:51.320)
What about you, Sarah?
Lex Fridman (4:00:52.320)
I'm the same because I don't think,
Lex Fridman (4:00:54.480)
like, it's about the future experience, right?
Lex Fridman (4:00:56.360)
And in some sense, like you were saying earlier,
Alien Debate (4:00:59.440)
most of our lived experience is actually in our memories.
Lex Fridman (4:01:01.880)
So if you can't generate new memories,
Alien Debate (4:01:04.160)
it's like you're not alive anymore.
Lex Fridman (4:01:06.400)
That's it, yeah.
Lex Fridman (4:01:07.960)
What comforts you on bad days?
Lex Fridman (4:01:10.280)
When you look at human civilization,
Alien Debate (4:01:11.960)
when you look at your own life,
Lex Fridman (4:01:14.120)
what gives you hope?
Lex Fridman (4:01:15.440)
What makes you feel good about what we're doing
Lex Fridman (4:01:18.640)
about life at the small scale of you as a human
Lex Fridman (4:01:21.440)
and at the big scale of us as a human civilization,
Lex Fridman (4:01:24.440)
maybe the big scale of the universe?
Alien Debate (4:01:29.200)
Children, my kids.
Lex Fridman (4:01:30.440)
But I also mean that in like a grand sense of like,
Alien Debate (4:01:33.840)
not a grand, but like future minds in some sense.
Lex Fridman (4:01:38.040)
So for me, like the most bleak movie ever,
Alien Debate (4:01:40.680)
people worry about apocalyptic things
Lex Fridman (4:01:42.280)
like AI existential risk and climate change,
Alien Debate (4:01:44.440)
which children of men.
Lex Fridman (4:01:46.200)
The whole premise of the movie was
Alien Debate (4:01:48.000)
there can be no children born on the entire planet.
Lex Fridman (4:01:50.680)
And the youngest person on the planet
Alien Debate (4:01:52.360)
is like 18 years old or something.
Lex Fridman (4:01:54.720)
Like, can you imagine a world without children?
Alien Debate (4:01:56.720)
It's just, it's harrowing.
Lex Fridman (4:01:58.960)
That's the scariest thing.
Lex Fridman (4:02:00.080)
So I think what gives me hope is always youth
Lex Fridman (4:02:03.680)
and the hope of children
Lex Fridman (4:02:07.080)
and the possibilities of the future they see.
Lex Fridman (4:02:10.000)
And they grow up in a completely different reality
Alien Debate (4:02:12.280)
than adults do.
Lex Fridman (4:02:14.320)
And I think we have a hard time seeing
Lex Fridman (4:02:17.440)
what their reality actually looks like.
Lex Fridman (4:02:19.560)
But I think most of the time it's super interesting.
Alien Debate (4:02:23.520)
Yeah, they have dreams, they have imagination,
Lex Fridman (4:02:26.280)
they have this kind of excitement.
Alien Debate (4:02:27.800)
It's so cool, it's so fun to watch.
Lex Fridman (4:02:31.480)
And yeah, you feel like you're almost getting in the way
Alien Debate (4:02:36.040)
of all that imagination.
Lex Fridman (4:02:38.760)
What about you, Lee?
Lex Fridman (4:02:39.800)
What gives you hope?
Lex Fridman (4:02:41.160)
So when I go back to my eight year old self,
Alien Debate (4:02:44.680)
the thing that I dreamed of as my eight year old self
Lex Fridman (4:02:46.560)
was this world in which technology became programmable
Lex Fridman (4:02:49.560)
and there was the internet and I'd get information
Lex Fridman (4:02:52.440)
and I would expand my consciousness by just,
Alien Debate (4:02:54.920)
you know, getting access to everything that was going on.
Lex Fridman (4:03:00.120)
And this happened in my lifetime.
Alien Debate (4:03:01.840)
I mean, we really do have that.
Lex Fridman (4:03:02.840)
I mean, okay, there's some bad things.
Alien Debate (4:03:04.120)
You know, there's TikTok, everyone just, whatever,
Lex Fridman (4:03:06.640)
all the bad things about social media.
Lex Fridman (4:03:08.040)
But I think,
Lex Fridman (4:03:12.400)
I mean, I can't quite believe my luck being born now.
Lex Fridman (4:03:16.760)
So amazing.
Lex Fridman (4:03:18.120)
Being able to program reality in some way.
Alien Debate (4:03:20.240)
Yeah, and the thing that I really find fascinating
Lex Fridman (4:03:22.920)
about human beings is just how ingenious they are.
Alien Debate (4:03:27.720)
I'm, you know, whether it's from my kids,
Lex Fridman (4:03:31.120)
my research group, my peers, other companies,
Alien Debate (4:03:34.760)
just how ingenious everyone is.
Lex Fridman (4:03:37.360)
And I'm pretty sure humanity has,
Alien Debate (4:03:40.160)
or our causal chain in which humanity is a vital part
Lex Fridman (4:03:44.160)
in the future is gonna have a lot of fun.
Lex Fridman (4:03:46.480)
And I'm just, yeah, it's just mind blowing just to watch.
Lex Fridman (4:03:50.040)
And, you know, so humans are ingenious
Lex Fridman (4:03:53.480)
and I hope to help them be more ingenious if I can.
Lex Fridman (4:03:56.840)
Well, what gives me hope,
Lex Fridman (4:03:58.160)
what makes me feel good on bad days
Lex Fridman (4:03:59.960)
is the existence of wild minds like yours,
Alien Debate (4:04:04.200)
novelty generators, assembly structures
Lex Fridman (4:04:07.160)
that generate novelty and do so beautifully
Lex Fridman (4:04:10.520)
and then tweet about it.
Lex Fridman (4:04:12.520)
Sarah, I really, really enjoy talking to you.
Alien Debate (4:04:15.200)
I enjoy following you.
Lex Fridman (4:04:16.040)
I'm a huge fan.
Alien Debate (4:04:17.440)
Sarah Lee, I hope to talk to you many times
Lex Fridman (4:04:20.000)
in the future, maybe with Yoshua Bach.
Alien Debate (4:04:21.680)
You're just incredible people.
Lex Fridman (4:04:22.800)
Thank you for everything you do.
Alien Debate (4:04:24.000)
You're awesome.
Lex Fridman (4:04:24.960)
Thank you for talking today.
Alien Debate (4:04:26.000)
Really, really appreciate it.
Lex Fridman (4:04:27.400)
Yeah, brilliant to be here.
Alien Debate (4:04:29.760)
Thanks for listening to this conversation
Lex Fridman (4:04:31.240)
with Sarah Walker and Lee Cronin.
Alien Debate (4:04:33.080)
To support this podcast,
Lex Fridman (4:04:34.400)
please check out our sponsors in the description.
Alien Debate (4:04:37.320)
Now, let me leave you with some words from Arthur C. Clarke.
Lex Fridman (4:04:41.160)
Two possibilities exist.
Alien Debate (4:04:43.440)
Either we are alone in the universe or we are not.
Lex Fridman (4:04:48.440)
Both are equally terrifying.
Lex Fridman (4:04:52.200)
And let me, if I may, add to that
Lex Fridman (4:04:55.600)
by saying that both possibilities, at least to me,
Alien Debate (4:04:58.680)
are both terrifying and exciting.
Lex Fridman (4:05:00.920)
And keeping these two feelings in my heart
Alien Debate (4:05:03.160)
is a fun way to explore, to wonder, to think, and to live,
Lex Fridman (4:05:07.280)
always a little bit on the edge of madness.
Alien Debate (4:05:10.280)
Thank you for listening.
Lex Fridman (4:05:11.400)
I hope to see you next time.
Alien Debate (50:00.500)
God is the memory the universe can remember.
Lex Fridman (50:02.980)
Otherwise, there's no, wait, did you?
Alien Debate (50:03.820)
Someone's gonna be deciphering that statement
Lex Fridman (50:05.460)
hundreds of years from now, what the hell does that mean?
Lex Fridman (50:07.900)
What does the humans mean by this?
Lex Fridman (50:09.660)
Look, don't diss my one liners.
Alien Debate (50:12.660)
I took me 15 seconds to come up with that.
Lex Fridman (50:16.660)
I don't know what it means.
Lex Fridman (50:17.700)
What does it mean?
Lex Fridman (50:19.700)
Okay, wait, we need to, how do we get onto this?
Alien Debate (50:24.380)
We were time, causality, mathematics.
Lex Fridman (50:30.580)
So what is mathematics in this picture of stuff,
Lex Fridman (50:34.540)
objects, memory, and information?
Lex Fridman (50:43.180)
What exactly is mathematics?
Alien Debate (50:44.980)
It's the most efficient labeling scheme
Lex Fridman (50:47.020)
that you can apply to lots of different graphs.
Alien Debate (50:49.540)
Labeling scheme doesn't make it sound useful.
Lex Fridman (50:52.420)
Can I try?
Alien Debate (50:53.380)
Yep, sure, please.
Lex Fridman (50:54.700)
Have you rejected my definition of mathematics?
Alien Debate (50:56.780)
I'm shocked.
Lex Fridman (50:57.820)
Yeah, no, it's all right.
Lex Fridman (50:59.260)
But it's correct.
Lex Fridman (51:01.300)
Go on, sorry.
Alien Debate (51:02.140)
Excellent.
Lex Fridman (51:03.420)
No, I mean, I think we have a problem, right?
Alien Debate (51:06.420)
Cause we can't not be us,
Lex Fridman (51:08.540)
like we're stuck in the shells we are
Lex Fridman (51:10.340)
and we're trying to observe the world.
Lex Fridman (51:11.460)
And so mathematics looks like it has certain properties.
Lex Fridman (51:13.820)
And I guess the thought experiment I find is useful
Lex Fridman (51:16.180)
is to try to imagine if you were outside of us
Alien Debate (51:19.060)
looking at us as physical systems using mathematics,
Lex Fridman (51:22.300)
what would be the specific features you associate
Alien Debate (51:24.900)
to the property of understanding mathematics
Lex Fridman (51:28.820)
and being able to implement it in the universe, right?
Lex Fridman (51:32.020)
And when you do that,
Lex Fridman (51:34.300)
mathematics seems to have some really interesting properties
Alien Debate (51:36.860)
relative to other kinds of abstraction
Lex Fridman (51:39.180)
we might talk about like language or artistic expression.
Alien Debate (51:42.820)
One of those properties is the one I mentioned already
Lex Fridman (51:45.140)
that is really easy to copy between physical media.
Lex Fridman (51:48.060)
So if I give you a mathematical statement,
Lex Fridman (51:50.340)
you almost immediately know what I mean.
Alien Debate (51:51.900)
If I tell you the sky is blue,
Lex Fridman (51:53.100)
you might say, is it gold ball blue?
Lex Fridman (51:54.860)
Is it azure blue?
Lex Fridman (51:55.700)
What color blue do you mean?
Lex Fridman (51:56.740)
And you have a harder time visualizing what I actually mean.
Lex Fridman (52:00.260)
So mathematics carries a lot of meaning with it
Alien Debate (52:01.940)
when it's copied between physical systems.
Lex Fridman (52:03.420)
It's also the reason we use it to communicate with computers.
Lex Fridman (52:06.900)
And then the second one is it retains its property
Lex Fridman (52:10.100)
of actually what it can do in the universe when it's copied.
Lex Fridman (52:13.780)
So the example I like to give there
Lex Fridman (52:16.060)
is think about like Newton's law of gravitation.
Alien Debate (52:19.500)
It's actually, it's a compressed regularity
Lex Fridman (52:22.100)
of a bunch of phenomena that we observe in the universe,
Lex Fridman (52:25.460)
but then that information actually is causal in a sense
Lex Fridman (52:28.700)
that it allows us to do things we wouldn't be able to do
Alien Debate (52:30.500)
without that particular knowledge
Lex Fridman (52:31.940)
and that particular abstraction.
Lex Fridman (52:33.420)
And in this case, like launch satellites to space
Lex Fridman (52:35.180)
or send people to Mars or whatever it is.
Lex Fridman (52:38.180)
So if you look at us from the outside and you say,
Lex Fridman (52:41.340)
what is it for physical systems
Alien Debate (52:42.820)
to invent a thing called mathematics
Lex Fridman (52:44.860)
and then to use and then it to become a physical observable,
Alien Debate (52:51.300)
mathematics is kind of like
Lex Fridman (52:52.900)
the universally copyable information
Alien Debate (52:55.580)
that allows new possibility spaces
Lex Fridman (52:58.500)
to be open in the future
Alien Debate (52:59.380)
because it allows this kind of ability
Lex Fridman (53:01.380)
to map one physical system to another
Lex Fridman (53:03.100)
and actually understand that the general principles.
Lex Fridman (53:05.700)
So is it helping the overlap of causal graphs then
Lex Fridman (53:10.660)
by mapping?
Lex Fridman (53:11.620)
Oh, I think that's the explanation for what it is
Alien Debate (53:14.140)
in terms of the physical theory of assembly
Lex Fridman (53:16.020)
would be some feature of the structure
Alien Debate (53:18.220)
of the assembly spaces of causal graphs
Lex Fridman (53:20.660)
and their relationship to each other.
Lex Fridman (53:22.140)
So for example, and I mean, this is things
Lex Fridman (53:25.420)
that we're gonna have to work out over the next few years.
Alien Debate (53:27.220)
I mean, we're in totally uncharted conceptual territory
Lex Fridman (53:29.540)
here, but as is usual, diving off the deep end,
Lex Fridman (53:35.380)
but I would expect that we would be able to come up
Lex Fridman (53:38.060)
with a theory of like, why is it that some physical systems
Lex Fridman (53:40.740)
can communicate with each other?
Lex Fridman (53:43.100)
Like language, language is basically
Alien Debate (53:45.420)
because we're objects extended over time
Lex Fridman (53:47.220)
and some of the history of that assembly space
Alien Debate (53:49.820)
actually overlaps.
Lex Fridman (53:51.060)
And when we communicate,
Alien Debate (53:52.220)
it's because we actually have shared structure
Lex Fridman (53:53.780)
in our causal history.
Lex Fridman (53:55.020)
Let me have another quick go at this, right?
Lex Fridman (53:56.500)
So I think we all agree.
Lex Fridman (53:57.420)
So I think we take mathematics for granted
Lex Fridman (54:01.460)
because we've gone through this chain, right?
Lex Fridman (54:02.940)
Of, you know, we all share a language now, okay?
Lex Fridman (54:06.460)
And we can, well, we share language,
Lex Fridman (54:07.660)
so we have languages that we can make interoperable.
Lex Fridman (54:11.460)
And so whether you're speaking, I don't know,
Alien Debate (54:14.940)
all the different dialects of Chinese,
Lex Fridman (54:17.500)
all the different dialects of English, French, German,
Alien Debate (54:20.740)
whatever, you can interconvert them.
Lex Fridman (54:22.780)
The interesting thing about mathematics now
Alien Debate (54:24.300)
is that everybody on planet Earth, every human being
Lex Fridman (54:26.540)
and computers share that common language.
Alien Debate (54:29.740)
That language was constructed by a process in time.
Lex Fridman (54:33.380)
So what I'm trying to say is assembly invented math
Alien Debate (54:35.380)
is those, right from the, you know,
Lex Fridman (54:37.940)
mathematics didn't occur, it didn't exist before life.
Lex Fridman (54:41.420)
Abstraction was invented by life, right?
Lex Fridman (54:44.100)
That doesn't mean that the universe wasn't capable
Alien Debate (54:46.060)
of mathematical things.
Lex Fridman (54:47.300)
Wait a minute, can we just ask that old famous question,
Lex Fridman (54:50.740)
is math invented or discovered?
Lex Fridman (54:52.820)
So when you say assembly invented, or whatever.
Alien Debate (54:58.020)
It means it's just.
Lex Fridman (54:58.860)
Well, someone might just say assembly
Alien Debate (54:59.700)
is a mathematical theory, but sorry.
Lex Fridman (55:01.500)
Right.
Alien Debate (55:02.340)
Are we arguing? Exactly.
Lex Fridman (55:03.160)
Are we arguing now?
Alien Debate (55:04.000)
That's what it sounds like.
Lex Fridman (55:05.020)
Are we discovering mathematics?
Alien Debate (55:06.940)
No, well, yes and no.
Lex Fridman (55:08.500)
I would say.
Lex Fridman (55:09.340)
And you call mathematics a language
Lex Fridman (55:11.940)
that we're developing. I would say that,
Alien Debate (55:13.020)
look, I'm pretty sure that there are some very common
Lex Fridman (55:17.060)
seeds of mathematics in the universe, right?
Lex Fridman (55:19.820)
But actually not the mathematics that we are finding now
Lex Fridman (55:23.860)
is not discovered, it's invented.
Alien Debate (55:27.220)
And, but even though I think those two terms
Lex Fridman (55:29.100)
are very triggering, and I don't think
Alien Debate (55:30.460)
they're necessarily useful,
Lex Fridman (55:31.940)
because I think that what people do,
Alien Debate (55:33.860)
the mathematicians that say, oh, mathematics was discovered
Lex Fridman (55:38.100)
because they live in a universe where there is no time
Lex Fridman (55:40.620)
and it just all exists.
Lex Fridman (55:42.500)
But what I'm saying is, and I think in the same way
Alien Debate (55:45.300)
you can create, let's say I'm gonna go and create
Lex Fridman (55:47.380)
and make a piece of art, did I make that piece of art
Lex Fridman (55:53.740)
or did I discover it?
Lex Fridman (55:56.060)
Like inventing the aeroplane.
Lex Fridman (55:57.460)
Did I invent the aeroplane?
Lex Fridman (55:58.780)
Let's stick with the aeroplane.
Alien Debate (55:59.620)
The aeroplane is a good one.
Lex Fridman (56:00.780)
Let's say, did I discover the aeroplane?
Alien Debate (56:03.180)
Well, in a way, the universe discovered the aeroplane
Lex Fridman (56:04.860)
because it's just chucked a load of atoms together
Lex Fridman (56:06.300)
and a load of random human beings want to do stuff
Lex Fridman (56:08.260)
and then we discover the aeroplane
Alien Debate (56:10.660)
in the space of all the possibilities.
Lex Fridman (56:12.180)
But here's the thing, when the space of possibilities
Alien Debate (56:14.980)
is so vast, infinite almost, and you're able to actualize
Lex Fridman (56:21.700)
one of those in an object, then you are inventing it.
Lex Fridman (56:24.620)
So in mathematics, because there are infinite number
Lex Fridman (56:27.140)
of theorems, the fact you're actually pulling,
Alien Debate (56:29.420)
there's no difference between inventing
Lex Fridman (56:31.540)
a mathematical structure and inventing the aeroplane.
Alien Debate (56:34.300)
They're the same thing, but that doesn't mean
Lex Fridman (56:36.340)
that now the aeroplane exists in the universe,
Alien Debate (56:38.500)
it's something weird about the universe.
Lex Fridman (56:40.340)
So I think that the more, this is the thing
Alien Debate (56:43.620)
that you probably, the more memory required
Lex Fridman (56:47.080)
for the object, the more invented it is.
Lex Fridman (56:50.300)
So when a mathematical theorem needs more bytes
Lex Fridman (56:54.340)
to store it, the more invented it is,
Lex Fridman (56:56.780)
and the less bytes, the more discovered it is.
Lex Fridman (57:00.020)
But everything then is invented.
Alien Debate (57:02.060)
It's just more or less invented.
Lex Fridman (57:03.820)
Absolutely.
Alien Debate (57:04.940)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (57:05.780)
The universe has to generate everything as it goes.
Alien Debate (57:07.860)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (57:09.620)
And it wasn't there in the beginning.
Lex Fridman (57:11.060)
And the way we're thinking it,
Lex Fridman (57:12.780)
when you're thinking about the difference
Alien Debate (57:14.220)
between invented and discovered,
Lex Fridman (57:15.500)
is because we're throwing away all the memory.
Alien Debate (57:17.820)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (57:18.660)
So if you start to think in terms of causality and time,
Alien Debate (57:22.260)
then those things become the same.
Lex Fridman (57:23.700)
Everything is invented.
Lex Fridman (57:25.980)
And the idea is to make everything intrinsic
Lex Fridman (57:27.600)
to the universe.
Lex Fridman (57:28.440)
So I think one of the features of assembly theory
Lex Fridman (57:30.580)
is we don't wanna have external observers.
Alien Debate (57:32.520)
There's been this long tradition in physics
Lex Fridman (57:33.980)
of trying to describe the universe from the outside
Lex Fridman (57:35.660)
and not the inside.
Lex Fridman (57:37.500)
And the universe has to generate everything itself
Alien Debate (57:40.100)
if you do it from the inside.
Lex Fridman (57:41.060)
Assembly theory describes how the universe builds itself.
Lex Fridman (57:46.540)
Did it take you 15 seconds to say that?
Lex Fridman (57:48.540)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (57:49.380)
And to come up with that also?
Lex Fridman (57:50.220)
No, I've thought of that before.
Alien Debate (57:51.300)
Okay.
Lex Fridman (57:52.140)
That's a good line.
Alien Debate (57:52.980)
It's a, it's like.
Lex Fridman (57:53.800)
Oh, you're making fun of me.
Alien Debate (57:54.860)
No, I'm not making fun, I'm having fun.
Lex Fridman (57:56.540)
There's a difference.
Alien Debate (57:57.380)
Oh, that's good.
Lex Fridman (57:58.200)
All right.
Alien Debate (57:59.040)
She's inventing fun.
Lex Fridman (57:59.880)
I'm not all intimidated.
Alien Debate (58:01.020)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (58:01.860)
And there's a causal history to that fun.
Alien Debate (58:06.240)
You mentioned that there's no way to communicate
Lex Fridman (58:08.880)
with aliens until there's overlap in the causal graph.
Alien Debate (58:14.160)
Communication includes being able to see them.
Lex Fridman (58:18.660)
And like, what are we, this is the question is,
Lex Fridman (58:23.760)
is communication any kind of detection?
Lex Fridman (58:26.380)
And if so, what do aliens look like
Lex Fridman (58:29.740)
as you get more and more overlap on the causal graph?
Lex Fridman (58:33.100)
You're assuming, let's assume that aliens,
Lex Fridman (58:35.880)
so when you see them and they see you,
Lex Fridman (58:39.100)
you're assuming they have vision,
Alien Debate (58:40.820)
they have the ability to construct in 3D and in time.
Lex Fridman (58:43.900)
That's a lot of assumptions they're making.
Lex Fridman (58:45.780)
What detection?
Lex Fridman (58:46.620)
All right, let's step back.
Lex Fridman (58:47.540)
So yes, okay, you're right.
Lex Fridman (58:49.140)
So when, in the English language,
Alien Debate (58:50.740)
when we say the word see, we mean visually,
Lex Fridman (58:53.260)
they show up to a party and it's like,
Alien Debate (58:54.820)
oh, wow, that's an alien.
Lex Fridman (58:56.260)
That's visual, that's 3D, that's, okay.
Lex Fridman (58:59.520)
And that's also assuming scale,
Lex Fridman (59:03.120)
spatial scale of something that's visible to you.
Lex Fridman (59:05.620)
So it can't be microscopic or it can't be so big
Lex Fridman (59:08.420)
that you don't even realize that's an entity.
Alien Debate (59:10.740)
Okay, but other kinds of detection too.
Lex Fridman (59:14.120)
I would make it more abstract and go down.
Alien Debate (59:15.660)
I was thinking this morning about how to rewrite
Lex Fridman (59:18.520)
the Arecibo message in assembly theory
Lex Fridman (59:21.180)
and also to abandon binary.
Lex Fridman (59:23.140)
Because I don't think aliens necessarily,
Lex Fridman (59:25.140)
why should they have binary?
Lex Fridman (59:27.240)
Well, they have some basic elements
Alien Debate (59:29.860)
with which to do information exchange.
Lex Fridman (59:32.820)
Let's make it more fundamental, more universal.
Lex Fridman (59:37.180)
So we need to think about what is the universal way
Lex Fridman (59:38.940)
of making a memory and then we should
Alien Debate (59:40.860)
reencode Arecibo in that way.
Lex Fridman (59:43.380)
What's more basic than zeros and ones?
Alien Debate (59:45.660)
Well, it's really difficult to get out
Lex Fridman (59:47.460)
that causal chain because we're so,
Lex Fridman (59:48.860)
so let's erase the idea of zero for a moment.
Lex Fridman (59:51.780)
It took human beings a long time
Alien Debate (59:53.260)
to come up with the idea of zero.
Lex Fridman (59:54.360)
Now you got the idea of zero, you can't throw it away.
Alien Debate (59:56.780)
It's so useful.
Lex Fridman (59:57.620)
To discover the idea of zero.
Alien Debate (59:59.100)
To discover or invent.
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