Can Physics Predict Evolution? - Assembly Theory Explained
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- čas přidán 13. 05. 2024
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Assembly Theory - A breakthrough scientific paper co-authored by professor Lee Cronin has been touted as a ‘New Law of Nature’. Creating a mathematical formula that aims to predict evolution and the complexity of life.
Does mathematics have a place in predicting the complexity of life? This was a topic I could not wait to explore. Luckily the paper’s co-author, Professor Lee Cronin gave me an opportunity to pick his brain and see how we can mathematically categorise & predict the building blocks of life…
#breakthough #assemblytheory #evolution
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00:00 Why Don't We See Life Elsewhere in the Universe?
00:44 Ad read
1:26 What is Assembly Theory?
4:46 The Mathematics of Life
5:59 Is Mathematically Correct Always Useful?
7:45 Does Assembly Theory Fill a Gap in Physics?
8:47 The Definition of Life
11:57 Evolution vs Assembly Theory
15:21 Finding Life In the Universe
19:18 Challenges and Closing Thoughts
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“Infinite balls, which is basically what it takes to propose such a theory” peak math humor
Was just coming to the comments to express similar delight. Glad to see there’s a party happening at this unique address in phase space! 🎉😂
Hilarious!
Physics can't even explain the origin of initial singularity, now you buy the idea of Physics predicting life, it's a joke. Predict or assume.
@@jbangz2023 Is there some reason you're angry at people for trying to understand the Universe? Also, you've picked an odd comment to respond to with that anger.
@@jbangz2023you have copy-paste the same nonsense several times.
It doesn't have any useful meaning, until you articulate what your attempted "point" is.
Now it's time to test this formula by calculating its values for different well-studied objects and see how well it allows to classify them.
Lol. You have no idea how messy organic chemistry is. I see no way to test it for an even more fundamental reason: the whole formula is descriptive and not predictive. If we find anything that took more than 15 steps to make we should call it life according to this theory because it is not randomly possibly. How life overcomes the problem of randomness is not in the equation.
@@Rakscha-Sun There may be more to it because scientific journalists are usually pretty terrible at conveying the whole message and simplify to the point of leaving things out. But I agree with you, this looks like a nothing burger.
Why is it so hard for journalists to add sources of the subject to their video description?
the glaring missing ingredient is the origin of the forces that holds every particle together.
it's like assuming the presence of mortar (without access to it) while speculating on how to build a brick wall.
The basic idea behind the formula is interesting but the suggested formula looks like ….
Yes, the experimental confirmation is needed.
“Statistically Impossible” changes as conditions change. What was “statistically impossible” before a certain molecule assembled became highly probable once that molecule was present. What seems to be missing from the theory is any concept of initial conditions. I suspect there must be classes of phenomena that give false signals of “life” by having just the right amount of orderliness.
I believe that was addressed with the "chemical garden" example. Do I miss your point?
@@jbangz2023there are no other useful theories to work from.
@@jbangz2023I love the strawman argument of "because you can't explain this one thing, you must not be correct about this other thing". Math revolves around modelling reality. We've used it, successfully, for thousands of years to solve real world problems, accurately predict interactions and outcomes. Pretty much everything you encounter on a day to day basis is a product of, or is accurately described by, mathematical models. I don't see how this is any different. It needs peer review, it needs study, but from a basic maths perspective, the structure of this model makes sense.
Ping!! and another atheist is born.@@jbangz2023
Getting bitten by a shark is statistically impossible if you're in the middle of a desert. It can happen if it fell from a plane or if transported to your location. However it won't be statistically impossible once you change your location to shark infested waters
Is this really a theory? For it to be a theory it would need to make testable predictions that are not already made by other theories. I think this is at best a model, or perhaps a way to construct models.
Valid models are testable, so I think the distinction you're making is significant.
It's more testable then the String theory, but you're wright. Scientists behind this are hyping it as more then it is.
It's derivative of papers on large language models and written between Deepmind's Go success with AlphaGo and their chess AlphaZero model. You combine pure randomness with memory model allowing simulation of natural selection and new complexity emerges from pure number of copies. Repeating the process is how current "AI" is trained. Reduction of possibilities they describe is why LLM's forget context so easily, context that's not recognized as useful fast enough is purged from memory.
In essence we already have proof that mathematics work as we can use them computationally to make computers do new things. Claim that this extends to biology and chemistry outside computer simulation is yet to be tested.
@@marciusnhasty polymerization mathematics are relatively complex; Bio-polymerization mathematics are on another level of difficulty entirely.
Bio-polymerization is the only mechanism by which, you can get self-replication of biochemicals, but the ''predictive aspect'' of Mathematics to form life conducing organisms is putting the cart before the Horse. There are too many variables to formulate a useful Mathematical tool to ''re-create'' life. Proteins and other more complex bio-molecules can be produced based on Mathematical models and raw molecules, but not fully functioning, replicating organisms. When a Biochemists/Organic Chemists or a team of such researchers will succeed & I believe that someday they will, Mathematics will still be far behind in providing an explanation for the ''how'' & ''why''.
@@marciusnhastyString theory is actually a hypothesis.
@@frgv4060 Yup. Hyped to be more then it is just like this proposal. Possibly the most influential reason everything gets called "theory" these days.
Thank you for a nice summary of this latest physics theory trend. From your video and the original papers, the main point of assembly theory appears to be that successful evolution is necessarily multi-level, with each level having its own ability to select, remember, and replicate valuable entities. Software designers call this modularity.
At this pace, we will need OOP developers to apply proper software design patterns as a convenience.
@@notsojharedtroll23 Pretty much. Suppose you make the not-too-radical assumption that history works bottom-up. In that case, every bump between two bits of energy or matter creates an irreversible historical event regardless of their relative sizes. You get a vast Lamport network [1][2] of asynchronous interacting processes. All the supposedly fundamental laws of classical physics, including the constrained forms of change and distance we call time and space, become secondary effects emerging from the multi-scale synchronization of all those events. You can locally force this spacetime approximation to look as smooth as you wish by packing higher densities of events (“pixels”) into a small region of space. However, fundamentally, it’s never more than a finite-resolution network simulation. Quantum mechanics is what you get when you try to extract information beyond the network’s actual resolution.
Alas, there are no continuums, multiverses, itty-bitty vibrating strings, block universes, or event infinite-dimensional Hilbert space quantum superpositions in such a universe. Those all become illusions created by assuming that information storage is free. You get black holes, but they stop at the event horizon: no singularities.
If you were wondering, you also don’t get cellular automata networks. That’s because bit storage is another emergent phenomenon, making the cost of placing already-classical cellular automata throughout space impossibly high. These various impossibilities, which include smooth manifolds and all infinitely differentiable forms of mathematics, share the same non-physical, non-experimental feature: A belief that information storage comes at zero or negligible cost. A Lamport universe doesn’t have room for that level of resource presumption.
What you do get, however, is a universe that looks much more like what resource-limited software designers must deal with daily. While accepting infinite limits as no-cost givens can be fun conceptually, these concepts don’t exist experimentally or computationally. So why try to build your universe out of them as if they are “fundamental” when all we ever experimentally see is finite resolution? You are better off starting over with the language and concepts of the software world, which more clearly recognizes events, messaging, networks, network synchronization, and modularity as first-order principles.
Even in its name, it’s hard not to see assembly theory as physics moving slowly closer to software and network perspectives and terminologies. Physics is having difficulties with this important conceptual transition mainly because of those “bumps” I mentioned earlier. In physics terminology, those are called “quantum wave collapses.” Many clever people have devoted enormous intellectual effort to making wave collapses disappear since they are not mathematically smooth and don’t follow the usual rules of space and time.
However, if space and time are nothing more than grainy emergent effects of an extensive Lamport network, does it even matter if wave collapses are grainy and fail to follow the overly perfect rules of classical spacetime?
It’s time for physics and continuum mathematics to move away from the experimentally non-tenable premise that information storage is “free” in the physical universe. Object-oriented concepts applied to Lamport-parallel networks are more likely to be relevant to advancing and fully integrating physics than any number of speculations, no matter how popular, that instead begin with the assumption that information is free for the taking.
----------
[1] L. B. Lamport, “Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System,” in Communications of the ACM, July 1978.
[2] I sincerely thank Jean Michel Sellier for pointing out the potential connection between Leslie Lamport’s work and physics concepts of emergent space and time. Ironically, while I first learned to use Lamport’s diagrams decades ago, I wouldn’t have connected Lamport’s approach and my recent work on bottom-up causality in physics without Dr. Sellier’s observation.
Industry men call it supply chain.
The complexity for a “phospholipid ball” to acquire a GLUT transporter and start the tremendous steps to make ATP, to me is mind boggling
How small is that system? How many of those systems can run in the host system? Humans are idiots because they think their perspectives are foundational. Also their inability to understand numbers bigger than a few hundred.
By when do you think _that_ had taken place? (My bet _well_ before the heavy bombardment).
@@tonyduncan9852 Any answer is speculation, but a fairly neutral water supply so the phospholipid ball remains stable and of course photosynthesis where photosystem ll breaks apart water molecules is the beginning of ATP production, but the when and how are the billion dollar questions. To acquire the correct protein without the means to make it, interests me.
Regarding the SOS or Friends radio signal, if my understanding of Assembly theory as you describe is correct, then it depends on how likely it is for their complexity to exist based on random processes. The example of the SOS has lower assembly complexity than the Friends radio signal though so it would be easier to determine that the latter is more likely from life than the former unless there were enough copies of SOS made out of rocks that it couldn't be produced randomly.
Exactly my thoughts. The SOS examples goes back to the bias before this theory, it's just a symbol with random meaning to us. The same way people "find" hearts or faces in coffee stains, and think it's special.
Hmm my thought was that theory does not say that life cannot produce things that are simple or unique but that you need life to create things of significant complexity. The SOS would simply be undetermined weather it was the output of life or not since it was both uncommon and not complex
Physics can't even explain the origin of initial singularity, now you buy the idea of Physics predicting life, it's a joke. Predict or assume.
Ping!! and another atheist is born.@@jbangz2023
@@jbangz2023 If "you" aren't a bot, then are you trying to communicate that you feel YOUR LIFE IS A JOKE and to compensate by trying to ridicule those who can make meaningful connections between ideas chosen on the basis of how likely the assumptions leading to them are.
very interesting topic! It reminds me of Kauffman's Theory of Adjacent Possible (also on combinatorial). I've also considered similar ideas, but from a physics and information theory perspective, in the paper "The Universe as a Telecommunication Network" (J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 2533 012045 - DOI 10.1088/1742-6596/2533/1/012045)
Didn't Kenyon write the book on this and then found out it was impossible? Information theory is different from complexity. It's a whole other level.
This is the most exciting theory I have heard in years. Of course, I like to measure things, that said however, being able to recognise something is of great benefit.
Fascinating and love how it grants us a way of thinking about the pathway to life. Very cool video and good review.
I think the Banarch Tarski theorem is quite different from Euclid's parallel axiom.
In fact, the situation is practically the opposite:
With the parallel axiom, it turned out that there are other, slightly different valid axioms that also fit with all the other things you want Euclid-style geometry to do Anything that does not rely on that axiom is simultaneously a proof for *all* forms of geometry, and the parallel axiom tells us about the situations where we must special-case.
So dropping or relaxing the axiom gave use new universes of mathematics to look at, which is great.
However, Banarch Tarski has basically the opposite situation: It is a direct consequence of the Axiom of Choice and it's one of the reasons why that axiom is considered suspect by some, with many relying instead on weakened variations that can no longer be used for deriving Banach Tarski.
It's basically one of several strange artefacts by just assuming unbounded choice.
So it's a result of a very particular, specific mathematical world that probably doesn't have much bearing on reality.
In fact, if you want to guarantee stuff to be actually *realizable,* you're going to have to drop one more axiom beyond choice:
The Law of the Excluded Middle is *also* causing some strange things (though fewer than the Axiom of Choice) and makes it impossible to say *how* to get something by simply following the proof *that* you get something.
By dropping these two axioms and looking at various alternatives, you discover many different mathematical worlds, *some* of which have weird stuff like Banach Tarski in them, others weird in other ways. For instance, in one such world you have things of which you can not prove them different from zero nor can you prove them to be zero. They are "confused with" zero, and it's strange to have them at first, but these objects are very useful. In particular, they allow you to quite trivially redefine how differentiation works entirely algebraically, no limits needed: These strange new objects are one particular flavor of infinitesimals!
And there are many many such worlds, hidden away by overly strict axioms that can often be avoided. And that's what the discovery of spherical and hyperbolic space broke through.
I like this theory. Any attempt to quantify a phenomenon is a step in the right direction. It is long overdue for biology.
I like the theory too. I just wish we didn't rely so much on math now for all such theories. You can't quantify life mathematically until all variables are known, and it's unlikely we can know all of them for every step along the way.
Well said.
Physics can't even explain the origin of initial singularity, now you buy the idea of Physics predicting life, it's a joke. Predict or assume.
And yet more is understood today than previously. There must therefore be something wrong with your assertion, no matter how compelling it seems to you..@@jbangz2023
@@tonyduncan9852 so you know the origin of initial singularity?
I think many biologists have had this idea of "start with simple pieces, combine them into more complex things, check what's able to reproduce more and build upon that" for quite a while now, and it's not hard to see how that process can slowly turn seemingly impossible events into very likely ones. However, it's really nice to see that idea formalized into a mathematical model, kudos to Professors Sara I. Walker and Leroy Cronin!
Thanks to Dr. Ben Miles for the nice presentation of the subject, too. I'd just like to point out that the title of the video can be a bit misleading with that "Predict Evolution" part. Assembly theory does not let us predict if, say, zebras will grow horns one day or things like that. It's still nice, nonetheless.
lets just say it is possible that zebras will grow horns some day simply because of genetic errors
@@edwardmacnab354 I agree, that's a perfectly possible scenario. My point is that we can't say "predict evolution" because we can't say for certain if that particular scenario will really happen, due to the random nature of the genetic errors. It's still a possibility, anyway.
Edit: typos
@@thaisfaria1255we might be able to manipulate evolution in an obviously non random manner and in fact we do that all the time now in a very non advanced way. I myself perceive evolution not as evolution but simply as the proliferation of monstrosities because that's what all life forms are "Monstrosities?
The theory of evolution is not prescriptive and neither would assembly theory be either. We can make qualified predictions however, but these are more likely to be general statements rather than specific ones.
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This too interesting! And your breakdown of things in lay terms is really good. Thanks! 👍
The more we learn the further we are from solving this question.
Lee Cronin has pitched his life's work to saying "I will create life in 18 months. 30 years of 18 months away.
I took 3 Synthetic Chemistry courses for fun to better understand this question.
I came down to write essentially the same thing, ha.
Yes, although his work deserves some appreciation regardless of his bad predictions (Dunning Kruger effect?)
These mathematicians have clearly have no idea just how complex a cell is…imagine an entire city that builds copies of itself over and over, then multiply that complexity times a million or so, except imagine that all of the parts are made outside of the city walls and brought in by machine’s specifically designed to go search out exactly the right pieces and bring them back. That should give you an idea of a single cell.
I think that's the point they're making. This level of complexity is the definition of life, because life seems to be the most complex thing that happens. Anything made by life is called life derived but it is not alive. A computer is really complex but it's not nearly as complex as a human. Still, only a human or life could have made it happen so often, so it is an indicator of life. So yes, they have an idea of how complex a cell is, they're studying it and these are the results their theory has produced.
@@c-eb3634 so are you saying that life is anything that creates life because the only thing that can create life is more life?
If so, that's not really addressing the issue; it's just restating the problem in a way that calls it a problem.
@@markc4176 If you care to, elaborate on the point you were making in the first place. I don't really understand where you're coming from. I thought the theory was interesting, not necessarily useful; time will tell. But I would not say that they don't understand the complexity because that is what they are studying.
@@c-eb3634 The original point is to address the elephant in the room: the sheer number of steps needed to produce a reproducing machine akin to that of living organisms is incalculably big...and we know this BECAUSE of just how complex our man-made machines are. There's already a lot of literature on how feasible a universal constructor is, but in the realm of philosophy, and it doesn't bode well for this theory, in spite of the complexity problem.
@@markc4176 I don't think they're trying to replicate life, they're only trying to characterize the complexity to determine if it's life or not. For that they don't need to calculate all the steps needed to create that life, they only need to know how many different steps are needed, and it's hard for DNA, but not for all molecules.
8:49 - interesting. I was just listening to a podcast about “bioelectricity & the blueprints of life” - trying to explain (among other things) cell differentiation when the cells start with identical genetic code. Feels pretty layered.
11:10 "Of course mule is alive metabolically." -- But isn't _that_ the important part? Technically it is a multicellular eukaryotic organism and the individual cells of which it consists are reproducing all the time.
My posdoctoral mentor, who earned his PhD in biophysics with a Nobel laureate, once said something to the efeect of, physics and biophysics have uniquely helped illuminate some crucially important questions, such as the mechanism of neruronal excitation and the structures of macromolecules. Unfortunately, it also caused too many smart people to waste their lives. I think this might be an example.
Grrrrreat stuff.
What app is used to make your moving graphics (like the equations)?
Cheers!
What about systems that have more than 15 connections/dimensions? Their phase space is less than their connection space. Like a puzzle piece that needs to fit into a 25 sided polygonal hole? Is that testable?
O, this is very interesting. So, complexity theory can theoretically help focus on how random something is in the universe... impressive. But, the simple "formula" is not as simple as it looks, because it takes into account all possible iterations and possibilities. So, while it might only take up a few symbols on the page, it is not actually "usable" unless the "phase space" is well defined and also confined. Since it is not really possible (AFAIK) to confine a phase space, this theory is not going to be very usable without adding some way to isolate a defined and much smaller phase space.
you missed the whole point. assembler theory literally shrinks the configuration spaces WAY down by realizing the system's subsystem's have already been selected for.
@@anywallsocketOh really, then how come the universe isn't solved?
@@marcfruchtman9473 LOL
@@anywallsocket You're wrong though like he didn't miss the whole point, the scientist created a nicely looking simple equation to represent an idea about complexity/entropy we already understand. But really the main idea here is about predicting patterns --> Which is by knowing what patterns lead up to a certain pattern... This being thought for in terms of complexity in biology in THIS way is ok and is cool but it isn't anything useful until you can actually APPLY it --> and even then you basically need the entire molecular + chemical + physical environment state of the early EARTH or atleast HUGE parts of it to tell us deeper understandings of how life evolved from very vague conditions... Once you start creating the indexes of phases spaces and memoize them in a sense does this idea become a quickly applicable algorithm for detecting life-evolved or life-evolving states of systems where there may or may not already be life. and even then its like impossible to understand how we are going to apply this without literally being able to create computationally humongous and impossible tree diagrams of phase spaces in a way that will let us scan the surface of mars and somehow see physical patterns that we can match back to our index and say with certainty "oh yeah based on these patterns life was here" --> Like its a nice mathematical equation but like this isn't a research break through because we already know the structure of a living organize down to such detail that we need, if you wanna make crazy ass predictions of how a system will evolve into a human brain based on a vague amount of information like the starting state of the earth you'll simply need a bigger computer not a MORE organized WAY of thinking about it that we basically already know and have been studied in 10000million different ways in every field of science --> That's what complexity theory is for in the first place. So the problem here is that the VERY SIMPLE idea of determining information from randomness based on observations entropy at different levels of systems is being presented as the holy grail to seeing hidden patterns in the phase spaces of computationally dense molecular systems that will let us ultimately predict evolutions from very vague and seemingly random states BUT it completely ignores the fact that in order to achieve that goal we need so much more information about a system and its stochastic variables than just its quantifications of complexity at any given moment in time...
@@anywallsocketNo it shrinks the space by ASSUMING that the subsystems have been selected for. How do you make the definition between Subsystem and system anyway?
Its not enough for something to be mathematical, it should be testable. Is assembly theory falsifiable?
If you find an object with a complexity index over 15 that was created by natural processes it’d disprove it
18:54 Wait a minute the stones in the SOS message may be simple but it took more than 15 operations to place all those stones into that shape.
Also if you consider the entire universe that SOS message should add one to the copy number of all the times anyone has written SOS, which is relatively high compared to totally random gibberish strings that people have only written once or never, such as "0x4938adf394944" which nobody has written before ever.
That diagram was good for me. Thanks. Emergence is so interesting.
One of the key characteristics of living things is that they are overwhelmingly only reproduced. This is why life and and memory are indissociable. This means that those items that were happened at the beginning of a long reproduction chain, must have been assemblies and assemblies have a very low statistical occurrence. Why would the universe produce such assemblies, and why do assemblies reproduce ? Because life is an opponent principle to entropy ; life is entropy's "dark matter".
Entropy might just be responsible for mixing up the batter
Life is not an opponent principle to entropy. It’s a continuous chemical transition from low entropy nutrients and high entropy heat and byproducts. It isn’t a low entropy system but it is doesn’t “defy” entropy or more specifically the second law of thermodynamics, which is the tendency for entropy to increase. Yes, life keeps its amount of entropy rather stable but that’s because it actually continuously raises entropy from lower entropy energy sources in its environment (such as chemicals or sunlight). Life is more like a rare manifestation of the second law rather than a principle than goes against it. In the end, once all energy sources are used up, life will fade away; since in reality, we’re just “agents” of the second law of thermodynamics.
My brain's imploded
Mine goes into stand-by mode every few minutes listening to them…… Just when I think I might understand what they are saying…. I realize I have no idea what they are talking about. 😂
Didn't it so..? And just like the other guy said rep, "standby" mode or pauses.. ..mine actually went 😵, by 4th min..
😂
@TheOverproof151 yeah it's like the more I try to follow them the less I can do so
@makersmark1974 yes rewatching the vid hasn't helped me either
Lee Cronin: "I've got no clue...".
Sir, you are correct about that.
This mimics my thoughts of chaos to complexity theory and how nothing becomes something I might not have the Fancy math to explain it but from a ripple in this plane of reality's to the end product this makes a lot of sense and it is testable too.
There aren't endless theories for the origin of life. That's just a dream for the depraved.
Good grief. Taking a little glance at your other comments and I see this little nugget of hilarity.
Your sort are so full of it.
Imagination and speculation on what the truth might be is depravity now?
Just go back to whatever cave you crawled out of
It's a simple and possibly valid theory, with regard to structuring a formula for calculating the probability of life, but unfortunately it has the same weakness as the Drake equation, because we still don't know the values of the variables.
the variables, unlike drake's constants, are contextual lol
All self proving theories are 'simple and possibly valid'.
@@sirbarringtonwomblembe4098 I'm not sure what would be considered a "self-proving theory." It sounds like an oxymoron. Perhaps a non-falsifiable theory.
@@crawkn Many modern theories are what I would term 'self proving', eg that 'left-handedness' evolved to increase the procreational success of some humans by making them better/more unpredictable fighters. In fact, all such theories are practicably unprovable.
That's not to say that they are incorrect.
@@sirbarringtonwomblembe4098 yeah that would be pragmatically unfalsifiable
Thank you for sharing this, sincerely
Limited data - limited models.
Also:
The entropy of a system in a given state (a macrostate) can be written as S = k lnW, where k = 1.38 × 10−23 J/K is Boltzmann's constant, and lnW is the natural logarithm of the number of microstates W corresponding to the given macrostate.
Great presentation Ben, thank you for sharing. Personally I think Lee Cronin is a genius and this theory at least goes a long way to defining a mechanism of emergence which is a crucial piece of the puzzle. I’d be very curious if Lee were ever to collaborate with Michael Levin who is also doing really exciting work.
Physics can't even explain the origin of initial singularity, now you buy the idea of Physics predicting life, it's a joke. Predict or assume.
Ping!! and another atheist is born.@@jbangz2023
@@davidfiler7439Your comment was embarrassing the first dozen times you pasted it.
Thanks, that was my intention.@@LuckyFlesh
@@davidfiler7439 Good job!
I do like the way it was always in response to that other guy's spam.
I just figured you'd be more likely to play along than he would. :)
Interesting stuff. First "new" thing I've heard in a while - I kinda like that definition of life. If this pans out, I can see how it could be used in AI development - set the starting conditions right, and let it evolve on its own at digital speed.
At Quantum, Quantum action Is 10,000 times faster than light
Ouch.
Dr James Tour would argue that we don’t have sufficient current understanding of the chemical process to fully explain how life started on this planet let alone on other worlds.
Look up what professor Dave had to say on James Tour ;)
I'd say Tour is a moron and that Cronin does the exact opposite of what Tour does: He has ideas, doesn't claim to be right and submit actual papers...
Very Interesting. These ideas have been around for some times, especially in applying natural selection to non living processes such as crystal. The real breakthrough is offering a mathematical framework to somehow quantify the process indeed.
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊
Where can I read about that idea? Thanks
nice video. thx. I've been thinking about how to try to get across ideas on patterns and Ramsey Theory to non-experts.
Thinking about a phase space approach is interesting.
if you consider time as making the phase space larger that facilitates a total pictorial representation.
pattern existence is then like an event, once it exists it cant be "unexisted".
adding to the phase space doesnt change that forward of that point.
the interesting part is that if you make a fraction out of the paths going forward (from when the pattern emerges)
of the number of paths that historically contained the pattern and the total... it is a constant.
if you can then show that the pattern must emerge somewhere it previously has not, then this fraction always increases.
the asymmetry is that a lack of pattern is not fixed into existence like the existence of the pattern as the phase space grows.
that is the abstract inductive step which I think makes it hard to follow otherwise.
thanks again.
Sounds as testible as string theory. 😅
The problem with these scientists is they try to bring everything down to mathematics despite so many inconsistencies. The randomness of physics and random of probability are entirely different things. This theory sounds interesting but again it suffers from the very basic question - Life didn't start from just numbers
Accurately describe protein folding without math, or the ignition of a star. Name something made from things that cannot be enumerated. The two examples I gave are essential to life. The problem isn't with the scientists. The language of the universe is in numbers. Or perhaps you could explain life?
@@kittyhooch1you also forget that it was not all maths. Physical things had to happen first before we could get the right equation if not we would be trying different formulas till the end of time
That is so fascinating
It's so simple I wish I had come up with it. I came to a concept of "histories of energies" within an object once, but these researchers have been at it since 2017. Happy to see they have worked this all out so quickly so well!
I came up with the 'Evolution of Systems', or the 'Evolution of Forces', but never formalized anything (just a layman)..
This sounds and smells like pseudocscience. In any case the video didn't gave a good explanation.
Nope. Go look up complex systems 101 and start your journey
It would be nice if you add the link to the paper in the description of the video. It is even open acces.
Funnily enough , i was thinking about this yesterday... then mulitiply everything for the age of the universe, on one/infinte hydrogen atom/s based (did rhe universe had a start ?!? To start with ?!? ), a conjunction of quantum rules anyway; then given enough time the principle of conservation of energy eventually leads to one of the possibilities in another multiplier by the number of galaxies etc ....
I once programmed Conway's Game of Life and was amazed how a handful of rules created such complex shapes. I also play chess which has a handful of rules but a huge number of possible moves.
In a turtles all the way down sort of manner, you could potentially extend this concept back to the big bang in a multiverse theory sort of manner, whereby the physical constants and observed particle zoo of the standard model are assemblies of a more fundamental underlying structure that perhaps only exists toward the grand unified energy.
Kinda like Wolfram physic explanation
So you’re saying basically that since we are complex, and the universe created us and is therefore somewhat conducive to complexity higher than however many phase states, the universe must have been formed in the same way life was? Interesting thought. This would mean that our universe would have to be somewhat conducive to making other universes which can support life. Maybe this suggests the purpose of life on a universal scale is to create a new universe, or that something else in the universe can create new universes, like the theory that black holes have universes inside of them.
I think in the SOS or Friend signal Would come up a inverse ecuation for the assembly theory. It's the lighthouse in the middle of the sea of almost 0 assembly index (the sand background or the empty space) which lights out the one object that doesn't stick on the index. Even if close to 0 index too, They are just too different in the sample size. You can't reconstruct a SOS signal or a friend episode from the sand and rock alone. Even if they are simple and little copies
Elementary thermodynamics. If assembly is to be possible, it must be at an interface with energy flowing in, and out. Where also entropy is being created, to 'compensate' for the building, maintenance, replication of structure.
The earth surface has an influx of high energy photons, and turns them into many more low energy infrared thermal photons. This is entropy creation. The same happens at deep sea thermal vents. Or at the surface of cells.
Life must 'use up and covert' energy and also create entropy. It can only exist in places that are out of thermodynamic equilibrium.
Interesting to think about but little substantive value. We need to understand the initial conditions that facilitated abiogenesis and how assembly overcomes entropy over large amounts of time through random processes alone.
I’ll be interested to watch as this concept makes its way in the world. I’ve seen some heavy pushback from some quarters already.
Your orbiting illustration of warped space time has the orbiting sphere crossing the grid lines, which remain square.
As a chemical I see that time is not in fever of any chemical reaction not guided.. it will create some unwanted reactant which will end up with not desire composition
What's with the unexplained type of bracket that looks like the illegitimate lovechild of a square bracket and an angle bracket?
It's not even quite the same as the fairly rare \lgroup and
group which gives you the mathematical flattened parenthesis from Unicode. Though maybe that's just a font oddity. Still, it'd be nice to know if the choice carries any meaning beyond grouping since that's often the case.
Yeah, I was wondering that too. My bet is it was just for style but I'm commenting here in case someone has another explanation : p
It's just to be quirky to be visually interesting.
Just a note:
It can seem from talk about evolution that it is building complexity.
It happens to be doing so but only on some liniages and only because it started with low complexity.
What it's really doing is exploring desgin space and complexity is but one of desgin spaces dimentions and it started at or near "0" on that axis.
Just as there is conversation of momentum in the world, so there is conservation of structure, which structure I have in mind is DNA. DNA is, at the same time, structure and information, memory. In the context of biogenesis it had to be structure, information, and boot-strap mechanism.
6:30 nice one gonna use that when i explain this to people
To my mind 'phase space' is the same as layers of 'the adjacent possible', a concept of Stuart Kauffman.
Related for sure, but not the same I think? If phase space is the whole tree of possible states, which contains a subset of the actual branches a given real tree we’re studying has grown, isn’t Stuart Kauffman’s beautiful concept of the adjacent possible more like next season’s possible shoots and buds, on the actual tree we’re looking at? Isn’t the mappable predictive power of the Adjacent Possible lens precisely in the fact that it takes all the previous generations of actual vs possible branching into consideration?
I like it. I like the incredible simplicity.
Very interesting. Does assembly theory mention the concept of "self-organizing criticality"?
SOC is just a system that orbits a phase transition, this is an engine. If it's natural, then it's a self-organizing engine, eg a metabolism. AT just make the evolution of such systems more obvious, because the options are generally to converge, diverge, or oscillate.
Which variables am I supposed to put in and what do I get out of it?
rare+complex = life?
common+complex = life?
rare+simple = life?
common+simple = life?
it is not about defining life, just about measuring the complexity of things.
Well done!!
Interesting😊 actually was thinking smth similar stuff
So, memory first, then replication of self, and then just build on that for more memory and new levels of replicators - us, memes, software etc. It's more like the 'evolution of dynamic systems'. This universal Syntropy will go on as long as there's energy in the universe to drive it. Amazing perspectives..
When you get the right number of cogs for a stable transmission between higher level states - building a mechanism out of them becomes practical...
I wasn't ready for the infinite balls joke. Fantastic
The 1 thing that gives life to all creatures is charge. Your body runs because of the overall system of the galaxy. And each galacty will have life at some point in its existence. Our goal now should be to explore our solar system which we are but more importantly our galacty. The sooner we stop fighting and work as a collective community we will do amazing things. Great video
I would be curious as to how Mr Cronin's work might relate to that of Physicist, Jeremy England... for that matter how it might intersect with Constructor Theory.
Fascinating.
Thank you, quite interesting
“Heat death” I remember in school or everywhere we were told another law: that energy can neither be created or destroyed. Change form. So change form to ?
Wouldn't you be able to take the beginning of each combination sequence that results in biological life (if what the man says about his intuition that severe depth = biological life) to create a list of life-useful combinations? This could then account for things like lipids or whatever
Something I find fascinating is that the theory can be abstracted a bit to include reproduced non-chemical complexity. In other words, life based on energy, gravity, information, time or any other basis.
Wow very interesting theory
Can you link the research paper ?
this appeals to my cognitive bias so hard because this is precisely the way i liked to think about life before i had any idea about this theory
great video nonetheless
How does this relate to the idea of autopoiesis proposed by Maturana and Varela?
All you need is a system that can generate many many shapes quickly, and the shapes which provide scaffolding structure will become from astronomically glow to inevitable
Assembly theory (as explained at 8:47) seems to be claiming that (x^n * x^m) is not equal to x^(n+m) . That is, by breaking the problem into smaller chunks, you can somehow bypass the brick-wall mathematical limittaions looking back at you. I would welcome properly-derived statistical projections, on the odds of randomly realizing the reverse transcription mechanism, animated at time stamp 10:11 . The assembly index has to be breath-takingly high. The principle of irreducible complexity pushes some of your claims into the realm of fantasy. I look forward to watching how this 21st Century Alchemy works out. You will learn a lot, and it will border on the Divine.
The best understanding of life has a form of two related but independend phenomenons:
existence of self-copyig homeostates (cells) and replicators (replication theory).
There could be homeostates without dna-codes (some kind of "dividing foam"), and there could be replicators that don't use homestates. Now they are totally dependant on itself.
We can easly imagine technical civilization of "steampunk" robots that have to use factories to produce self, using quite complicated "supply chain".
It is not a life as we understand it.
18:54 About your SOS example... A pattern of rocks on their own mean nothing. It's only if that pattern conforms to a language that it actually has meaning. And if it conforms to the language, all the other written texts out there in the same language add to the copy count. It sounds like this theory only applies to species, not individuals. Similarly, it would apply to languages rather than specific writings
It sounds very important for identifying life like processes: Big delicately balanced cyclic systems.
Sounds like the real problem is categorizing the complexity of molecules and subtances.
link to reference paper?
For something to form "SOS" or another message, would require a complex system to be or have been present, and this is detectable.
I'm thinking how can we use this perspective to create AGI
I take slight issue with the definition of life involving being able to generate offspring - or having offspring. Metabolically alive = alive, no need for additional criteria.
“A researcher from Harvard University and a group led by a Cambridge University researcher have criticized assembly theory as being grounded in fallacies and inappropriately hyped by its creators.[12] The group affiliated with Oxford and Cambridge reproduced all the results of assembly theory with traditional statistical algorithms,[13] including Huffman coding that counts "copies" more effectively than assembly theory does. Due to the issues that these researchers identified, critics advocate against a simplistic approach to life based on what they say is an ill-defined measure” - wikipedia
Life and consciousness are cojoin twins.
Life is a singular object which through internal processes and interactions with the exterior MAINTAINS OR EXCEEDS HOMEOSTASIS.
I argue that life means consciousness because HOMEOSTASIS is regulations to an internal desired condition and responses to identical input will vary depending on pre existing internal conditions.
Mediated, non simply casual , response.
Life is insanely conscious because it chooses
When you experience the true potential in this life, all of the why's and how's evaporate, because that one experience of the true infinite self dispells darkness in an instant and replaces it with light.
Do they have any examples of these molecules?
Great video, this theory is a real brainteaser.
This seems only vaguely different from emergence. Both describe unexplained complexity arising from simple systems.
What a great video... I think I need a new video to get this one 😂
Yes, yes. So you now have a mathematical basis for evolution. I got that; but unless I am missing something, it still doesn't explain how the "cell" and/or "DNA" (aka the "complexity storage mechanism" in question) originated. Are there conditions under which the "assembly" of DNA becomes statistically simple?
I get that this was not the point of your question, but there clearly are, considering we are under such conditions : p
2:03 I think that's what Stephen Wolfram calls "ruliad space" in computer science
Wolfram has been staring at computers for so long he simply re-imagined the multiverse to be 'the set of all possible computations' lol
Don’t listen to wall socket. I studied complex systems for about 5 years now, and wolfram model for about 3. All these theories like assembly theory are subsets of Wolframs, which is the real true unifier. Theories like this further support Wolframs model and obviously I made the same conclusion when I was studying complex systems before knowing about wolfram…as complex systems leads to the same conclusions like a trail of bedcrumbs.
@@NightmareCourtPictures don’t listen to nightmare court pictures (lol at that username). What about Tegmark’s level 5 multiverse where everything is pure abstract mathematics? Isn’t wolfram’s multiverse just a subset of that? Lol I’ve been studying physics for 20 years I can smell the bs in all of this over-abstraction from a mile away. Everyone eventually finds a god to worship, but they’re all the same vacuum.
If you disagree then please explain how this relates to wolframs model (other than to say everything is computation bro) lol please be specific too 🙏
@@anywallsocket For one, the wolfram model is not a multiverse model. It's is a single universe model. Tegmarks mathematical universe, and the wolfram model are similiar...more or less because they are both describing the same thing...because if you study physics long enough you should come to the conclusion, that the universe is some kind of computational system. Complex Systems is no different and if you study that you arrive to that conclusion too...that roughly speaking systems are driven by a mechanism that can only be described as "Systems evolution according to computational rules."
Like stated. the difference between the wolfram model and Tegmarks, is firstly that wolfram model is a universe (singular) model, not a multiverse model. The way it is formulated is also different, as it has no notion for numbers...where Tegmarks is far too heavily based on numbers. In the Wolfram Model numbers are, non-essential human constructs, that we use to describe rules (specifically, we use equations to describe a coarse grained version of a systems molecular dynamics) that systems are following...and therefor mathematics is a subset of computation and not the other way around.
There's also...just way deeper concepts in the wolfram model, like establishing how observers are fundamentally part of how our physics is even described.
I already mentioned this about Complex Systems...but Complex Systems and Wolfram Model...if you didn't notice use the same constructs (Networks) which if you know anything about complex systems : Networks is how these theories are formulated because they are way more useful then newtonian/euclidean/cartesian conceptions of topology (like 90 degree angles, integer dimensions and what not). Complex systems for the past 40 years is the reason you have neural networks btw...social networks...basically any network model comes from complex systems.
Complex systems is known to be not unified yet...it has no single formulation because it's like a giant elephant in a room of blind men...people can describe it as "system evolution according to computational rules" but nobody has come up with a single unified idea of what that means, and so it splintered into all of the partitioned subfields, where people just model biology, economics, computation, and then take the bulk phenomenon that one observes in complex systems like emergence, chaos, feedback loops and fractals, into those subfields...that is where the wolfram comes in and given it all a unfied formulation. If you read New Kind of Science, it's self evident in how they get unified (and the book has subsequent proofs for that)
I remember a chapter in never ending story, where there are monkeys with typewriters keying random characters. Over time some might write a word and with infinite time one might write a novel.
yes and assembler theory, and evolution, explains why monkeys like us can write novels in much less time.
You're thinking of the concept of monkeys creating the 'Compleat works of Shakespeare"
Or Bob Newhart's 'Gzorninplat'.
@@anywallsocket ...Or comments on CZcams.
Where is the “memory” of objects lower than say prions? Are prions “alive”? Do we need a different word for what we are trying to describe?
Around 2:00 -2:30 when you're introducing this, you talk about the possible combinations of the molecules being infinite, but that's not really true. The phase space for most kinds of objects (that are not complex adaptive systems) will have a finite number of attractors (possible stable states) specified by the physics and chemistry.
It's in complex adaptive systems (e.g. living systems) that you get more interesting phenomena, because then there are an indefinable, and dynamically changing number of possible stable states (e.g. because organisms are constant changing their structure through development at short time scales, and evolution at long time scales).