Description: exploring the frontiers of places and ideas
Assembly Theory (AT) ( original paper ) is some new theoretical chemistry that tries to assess the relative complexity of the molecular underpinnings of life, even when the chemistry might be completely alien. For instance, if we send a probe to a Jovian moon and there are new microscopic creatures in the ocean, how will we figure that out? In AT, it is assumed that all living organisms require a certain complexity in order to function since that is a minimal requirement for life on Earth. The chemists expe
But what is “complexity” exactly? There are a great number of candidates, as Seth Lloyd notes in this little round-up paper that I linked to previously . Complexity intuitively involves something like a trade-off between randomness and uniformity, but also reflects internal repetition with variety. There is a mathematical formalism that in full attribution is “Solomonoff-Chaitin-Kolmogorov Complexity”—but we can just call it algorithmic complexity (AC) for short—that has always been an idealized way to thin
I’m almost always surprised by the spectrum of political responses to events and circumstances around the world. The political animal, it seems, is very different from me. I don’t need a fusillade of analysis to understand a Supreme Court decision, or an indictment, or an economic event. I don’t want to be glad handed an interpretation meant to soothe me or align me with a tribe. I just need facts and am willing to hold labeling and castigation at arms length while looking at the matter in as dispassionate