Conversations about science, technology, history, philosophy and the nature of intelligence, consciousness, love, and power. Lex is an AI researcher at MIT and beyond.
#269 – Lee Cronin: Origin of Life, Aliens, Complexity, and Consciousness
Lee Cronin is a chemist at the University of Glasgow. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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Lee’s Website: https://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(08:31) – Life and chemistry
(21:56) – Self-replicating molecules
(32:19) – Origin of life
(48:45) – Life on Mars
(53:49) – Aliens
(1:00:30) – Origin of life continued
(1:07:24) – Fermi Paradox
(1:17:04) – UFOs
(1:25:25) – Science and authority
(1:31:28) – Pickle experiment
(1:34:23) – Assembly theory
(2:17:22) – Free will
(2:28:37) – Cellular automata
(2:52:08) – Chemputation
(3:09:23) – Universal programming language for chemistry
(3:22:34) – Chemputer safety
(3:35:15) – Automated engineering of nanomaterials
(3:44:15) – Consciousness
(3:53:48) – Joscha Bach
(4:05:04) – Meaning of life