Joe Rogan Experience #2184 - Sara Imari Walker

1. 0:00 – 0:04

   Intro

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drumming music plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

2. 0:04 – 1:34

   Assembly theory: measuring complexity to spot life and aliens

   1. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) So, uh, your subject matter is so fascinating to me. Um, so first, please explain what, uh, this idea of assembly theory.

   2. SWSara Imari Walker0:24

      Yeah. Um, assembly theory is born out of an interest in solving the origin of life and finding aliens. So, that's sort of the motivation. I think it's really important to be clear about that to start, because it introduces some kind of radical reconceptions of the way we think about fundamental physics, at least I think so. Um, but the key idea of the theory is that the universe cannot generate complexity outside of living processes, and so we have a way of formalizing what seems kind of intuitively obvious, that the universe doesn't generate complex objects for free. Um, and we do this with this idea of assembly theory, of thinking about the assembly space, which is like the space of all constructible objects, and you can talk about the complexity in that space as a minimal number of steps for making an object. And if you see, uh, objects that require a lot of steps to make them and they're in high abundance, life is the only thing that can make them.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:16

      Wow. Um, so this includes plant life. This includes the-

   4. SWSara Imari Walker1:23

      Everything.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:23

      ... everything.

   6. SWSara Imari Walker1:24

      Technology. Everything on your table (laughs) -

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:26

      Right.

   8. SWSara Imari Walker1:26

      ... you know, requires, uh, billions of years of evolution, evolution of intelligence, and, uh, technology to generate, so.

3. 1:34 – 2:43

   Crystals, minerals, and a measurable boundary for “life-made” molecules

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:34

      When you say, "life to generate," what about, like, crystals? And what about, uh... Have you ever seen that enormous cave in Mexico where they have these insane crystal structures that are-

   2. SWSara Imari Walker1:44

      Is that the one that's, like, hot inside and, like-

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:46

      Yes.

   4. SWSara Imari Walker1:47

      Yes. I have seen that. It's gorgeous.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:49

      Amazing.

   6. SWSara Imari Walker1:49

      I've never been there, but yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:50

      Amazing.

   8. SWSara Imari Walker1:50

      Yeah, totally.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:51

      But it kind of looks like somebody made it, but it's just natural processes.

   10. SWSara Imari Walker1:54

       Yes. Um, so I'm actually really interested in understanding to what degree we can consider, um, minerals on our planet alive or artifacts of life.

   11. JRJoe Rogan2:04

       Mm.

   12. SWSara Imari Walker2:04

       Um, but we haven't formalized the theory entirely for minerals yet, so I think that one of the, uh, sort of key results we have so far is, um, actually quantifying a molecule's, uh, complexity boundary above which a molecule is so complex that we can say it's definitively of life, and we've experimentally verified measuring this property of assembly of molecules to say, "These are derived from life. These are, um," you know, and that there's a clear boundary. Uh, for minerals, we haven't done that yet 'cause we're still formalizing the theory and the kind of measurements we need to take, but I expect there to be a boundary that planets can make some kinds of crystal complexity, but not all of it that we see on this planet.

4. 2:43 – 4:42

   Why standard definitions of life fall short (and why chemistry isn’t the essence)

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:43

      So, what is, what's the conventional definition of life?

   2. SWSara Imari Walker2:49

      Yeah. So, there's a lotta debate about what definitions of life should hold, but the one that is usually cited by astrobiologists is, "Life is a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution." And I've memorized it 'cause I find it so annoying. (laughs)

   3. JRJoe Rogan3:04

      (laughs)

   4. SWSara Imari Walker3:05

      So I'm like, "I got it down. I gotta know what I'm annoyed with." (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan3:08

      (laughs) What, what, what annoys you about it?

   6. SWSara Imari Walker3:10

      Everything. It's like, actually-

   7. JRJoe Rogan3:11

      (laughs)

   8. SWSara Imari Walker3:11

      ... it was, it was very funny writing the book 'cause I wanted to get into the new ideas and, um, my, um, my editor was like, "You gotta explain how people think about life now." And I was like, "Okay. Well, this definition is the most annoying one. I'll just pick it apart." Um, and it's actually, like, all the words in it are annoying in some sense. So, the first one is that life is chemical. I've never really thought about chemistry being the defining feature of life. I think you have to separate out that life emerges, at least as we understand it, from a chemical soup on a planet. Right? So, it emerges in chemistry, but it doesn't mean it's a chemical phenomena. And the sort of analogy from the physicist's conception of nature I could draw there is, we don't think that gravity is a phenomena of rocks. Gravity represents some universal physics in our universe. Um, and so, uh, when we're thinking about, um, you know, planets and things, we don't think that they obey the laws of gravity because they're made of rocks. We understand that there's some property called mass that's much more abstract and applies to everything. Um, I think life's kind of the same. It emerges in chemistry, but there are some informational properties, these things about how life generates complex structures and how it does that so uniquely, um, that is universal physics that happens to emerge in chemistry. So, chemistry has to go out, um, it's not just a chemical phenomena. And I think you need to recognize that if you're gonna talk about, like, technology and artificial intelligence and, like, are they alive or not?

   9. JRJoe Rogan4:30

      Mm.

   10. SWSara Imari Walker4:30

       Because they're very different than, you know, like, what's happening inside a cell.

   11. JRJoe Rogan4:34

       Right. Non-biological.

   12. SWSara Imari Walker4:35

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan4:36

       But still seemingly alive.

   14. SWSara Imari Walker4:38

       Yes. Maybe.

   15. JRJoe Rogan4:39

       Maybe.

   16. SWSara Imari Walker4:40

       Maybe.

   17. JRJoe Rogan4:40

       Perhaps. Yeah. Open to debate.

   18. SWSara Imari Walker4:42

       Open to debate.

5. 4:42 – 7:54

   Technology as a descendant of life: lineages, cities, and collective organisms

   1. JRJoe Rogan4:42

      I've said that about technology, that technology does seem to be a life form that requires us to give birth to it.

   2. SWSara Imari Walker4:48

      Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan4:48

      Didn't, uh, Marshall McLuhan have-

   4. SWSara Imari Walker4:49

      I like that way of thinking about it. Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan4:51

      Yeah. Marshall McLuhan had a great quote, and I believe this was in the 1960s. He said that we are the sex organs of the machine world.

   6. SWSara Imari Walker5:00

      Oh. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan5:01

      Isn't that incredible?

   8. SWSara Imari Walker5:02

      Yeah, I like that a lot, actually. I don't disagree with that. Um, yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan5:07

      Especially if it does become some sort of digital life.

   10. SWSara Imari Walker5:10

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan5:10

       That's essentially what we are.

   12. SWSara Imari Walker5:12

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan5:12

       We're just, by proxy, moms.

   14. SWSara Imari Walker5:14

       We are. So, the way that I think about it is to think about life not in terms of individuals but lineages. So, you know, there's a lineage of how information has been structuring the material world, what we, what we talk about in assembly theory in terms of all of the configurations of objects created on our planet over four billion years, and that's a process of, that's continuous, um, with objects making other objects. And there's no reason that that should stop with biological forms of life and it just moves into technology. So, um, I, I like this idea that-... or the reproductive organs, though, 'cause I always think about like societies and like global integrated systems as being living things-

   15. JRJoe Rogan5:54

       Mm.

   16. SWSara Imari Walker5:54

       ... and we're just like component parts of them.

   17. JRJoe Rogan5:56

       Well, they certainly look like it. When you look at traffic, uh, from overhead and you compare it to blood moving through-

   18. SWSara Imari Walker6:02

       Yes.

   19. JRJoe Rogan6:02

       ... arteries, it's really kind of extraordinary.

   20. SWSara Imari Walker6:05

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan6:05

       Because if you see the ebb and flow of the white lights and the red taillights back and forth, and then you see s- blood cells moving through a person's body, it's kind of similar.

   22. SWSara Imari Walker6:15

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan6:15

       In a very weird way. And if you think that these cars are all carrying people that are assembling this society, both from the inside in terms of like paperwork and research and all the different things that people are doing, then the outside, in terms of constructing new buildings and putting glass structures and all these different things, like we really are-

   24. SWSara Imari Walker6:34

       Yes.

   25. JRJoe Rogan6:34

       ... like some sort of weird, you know, w- we're like a form of like the city itself, is like a living thing-

   26. SWSara Imari Walker6:41

       Yes.

   27. JRJoe Rogan6:41

       ... that we're making.

   28. SWSara Imari Walker6:42

       Yeah. And I think it's really important for us to recognize that. Actually, it's interesting that you- you use cars as your analogy, 'cause Carl Sagan actually had like the same analogy. He would have liked that a lot.

   29. JRJoe Rogan6:50

       Mm.

   30. SWSara Imari Walker6:51

       Um, you know, thinking about aliens coming to life, would have thought cars were the dominant life form.
6. 7:54 – 14:37

   Materialism, ‘better things,’ and creativity as life’s unique physics

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:54

      Right. Right. I've- I've often said that if an alien race that was completely (clears throat) outside of our understanding of life and our understanding of biology, if they observed us and they'd say, "Well, what is this dominant species doing?" "Well, it makes better things. That's all it does."

   2. SWSara Imari Walker8:12

      Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:13

      The- the ... We do a lot of things, but ultimately those things, even war, which is essentially about acquiring money and resources, we use those resources and that money to make better things. And in engaging in war, you're constantly advancing technology to have an advantage over the enemy, so you're making better things.

   4. SWSara Imari Walker8:30

      Yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:31

      Like everything is making better things, which, when you scale it up, ultimately will lead to another life form. It will leave t- it will lead to some new thing.

   6. SWSara Imari Walker8:39

      I hope so. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:40

      I think ... Well, if we don't kill ourselves or if we don't get super volcano, asteroid, lot- lot of different things can happen.

   8. SWSara Imari Walker8:45

      Yeah, I'm not a pessimist. I think we'll be around for a while.

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:47

      You think so?

   10. SWSara Imari Walker8:48

       Yeah, but I have a pathology that I'm like really optimistic as a person, so I have a hard time like-

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:53

       That's good.

   12. SWSara Imari Walker8:53

       I know. (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:53

       That's not a pathology. Why do you think that's a pathology?

   14. SWSara Imari Walker8:56

       Um, I think because I think being overly optimistic can leave blind spots, but part of the reason that I imbue so much optimism in my work is like I think we need more optimistic narratives about the future, 'cause so many people are really bleak.

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:08

       I agree. I don't think that helps anybody, and I think ultimately, most of the things you're really terrified about do not come to pass.

   16. SWSara Imari Walker9:15

       Yes. I think us being terrified of them is like an immune response.

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:19

       Mm-hmm.

   18. SWSara Imari Walker9:19

       So, usually I'm not afraid of the things that people are really scared of and talking about 'cause it means society's dealing with it.

   19. JRJoe Rogan9:24

       Right.

   20. SWSara Imari Walker9:25

       Which I, you know, maybe that's just sort of a scapegoat. I don't have to worry about those things 'cause someone else is. But I think actually there's something rather deep there that like the things that we're trying to work through at this moment in history are being worked through. And-

   21. JRJoe Rogan9:35

       My fear about those kind of thoughts is when I worry about things and I say, "Well, I don't have to worry 'cause society's working through it," I also say, "Yeah, but someone's probably not and they're, uh, they're enhancing the actual threat so they could profit off of it."

   22. SWSara Imari Walker9:50

       Yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:50

       Which is, that's another, I mean, that's the military industrial complex. That's a lot of different things. I think that there's a lot of that, unfortunately, that's attached to green energy. I think, you know, the idea of having green energy is wonderful. Everybody should agree to that. But the idea that you're gonna give massive corporations this completely philanthropic view of the world all of a sudden, that's not-

   24. SWSara Imari Walker10:09

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan10:10

       That's not real.

   26. SWSara Imari Walker10:11

       No.

   27. JRJoe Rogan10:11

       That's not real.

   28. SWSara Imari Walker10:11

       I know.

   29. JRJoe Rogan10:11

       They make money. They're trying to make more money.

   30. SWSara Imari Walker10:12

       Yeah.
7. 14:37 – 16:35

   Alien possibilities and the sheer size of chemical space

   1. SWSara Imari Walker14:37

      Yeah. Um, I have, li- I- I don't really think that humans are, like, ourselves as currently constructed are a universal phenomena. I think we're pretty special to this planet. But I think there are certain attributes of humans, like, you know, the theory of computation and its universality that, like, we invented in the last century that might be universal to any intelligent species that emerges-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:02

      Hmm.

   3. SWSara Imari Walker15:02

      ... on any planet.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:03

      Why do you-

   5. SWSara Imari Walker15:03

      So I think it's really hard to say, like, what here is universal to other places versus... Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:09

      It's certainly a big leap. Right? We have-

   7. SWSara Imari Walker15:10

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:10

      ... no evidence.

   9. SWSara Imari Walker15:11

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:11

       There's no evidence of people anywhere else.

   11. SWSara Imari Walker15:13

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:13

       Or any other life form.

   13. SWSara Imari Walker15:14

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:15

       No real evidence. There's a lot of shenanigans, there's a lot of weirdness, but there's no real evidence.

   15. SWSara Imari Walker15:19

       Yeah, there's no evidence for life on any other planet, and so the me- and the mechanism of how life even got on this planet is not known. I spent my entire career working on it. It's fucking hard problem. (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:28

       (laughs)

   17. SWSara Imari Walker15:28

       Um, but, like, I think that's, like, the appropriate descriptor of it, it's really hard. So I think it's easy to speculate on, like, what we think life on other worlds will be like, and we tend to do it from a very anthropocentric lens where we'll say, "It will be like us." And, you know, even professional astrobiologists will do the same kind of thought experiments and they'll say, "Oh, well, the geochemistry on a planet should give rise to things like DNA and proteins, and so we should look for those in the universe." And I think that's really underestimating how large the space of possibilities actually is.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:58

       Hmm. So when y- you're thinking about the emergence of life, is the only way to do it... I mean, it can't be the only way it has to emerge with certain temperatures, the way ours has, and water. It seems like there could-

   19. SWSara Imari Walker16:13

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:14

       ... be a wide variety of possibilities that things could adapt to whatever particular unique environment that this planet provides, given a sustainable temperature and div- given enough resources that it can s- survive, that we could have... Look, like, we have jellyfish, right?

   21. SWSara Imari Walker16:29

       Yes. We have lots of weird stuff (laughs) on this planet.

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:32

       Yeah. They've been around as long as us.

   23. SWSara Imari Walker16:33

       Yeah.

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:34

       Right? Like-

   25. SWSara Imari Walker16:34

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:34

       ... octopi.

8. 16:35 – 41:22

   Earth’s weirdness tour: octopus minds, jellyfish beauty, and other intelligences

   1. SWSara Imari Walker16:35

      Uh, octopi are really weird.

   2. JRJoe Rogan16:37

      Crazy.

   3. SWSara Imari Walker16:38

      Crazy.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:38

      Crazy.

   5. SWSara Imari Walker16:39

      Totally batshit crazy.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:39

      Like, what a nu- When my friend- my friend Remy Warren, he used to host a show called Apex Predator, and what essentially the show was about was, like, examining apex predators and their particular adaptation they have for their environment and seeing, like, what, uh, a human can imitate. Like, what are these things that they do? And he said octopus, by far, was the most bizarre thing to dive into-

   7. SWSara Imari Walker17:00

      Yeah.

   8. JRJoe Rogan17:00

      ... 'cause he said they're aliens.

   9. SWSara Imari Walker17:01

      They are.

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:02

       They-

   11. SWSara Imari Walker17:02

       I mean, not literally, but, like-

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:03

       No.

   13. SWSara Imari Walker17:03

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       But seemingly.

   15. SWSara Imari Walker17:05

       Yeah. No. No, I totally agree. I- I mean, they independently evolved a nervous system, so, and, like, and, uh, you know, like, they're crazy.

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:13

       Yeah.

   17. SWSara Imari Walker17:13

       I- I think they're the most alien thing on this planet from us as far as, like, trying to look at comparable intelligence and really understanding a different evolutionary trajectory.

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:22

       Also, like, w- what, how they can take their body and completely morph it-

   19. SWSara Imari Walker17:26

       (laughs) Yeah, that too.

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:27

       ... to look like coral.Instantaneously-

   21. SWSara Imari Walker17:30

       Yeah. Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:30

       ... within seconds they look like-

   23. SWSara Imari Walker17:30

       I know, the color changes are shocking.

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:32

       Incredible.

   25. SWSara Imari Walker17:33

       Yeah, yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:33

       And the texture. It's everything. They just, how does it even know what it's doing? How's it know what it looks like on the outside? It doesn't have a mirror.

   27. SWSara Imari Walker17:40

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:40

       What, how did it adapt to that?

   29. SWSara Imari Walker17:42

       I don't know. They're making a lot of progress. There was like the first Cephalo-Neuro Conference this year, which I sent one of my students to, I didn't go to, but-

   30. JRJoe Rogan17:48

       That's a great term.
9. 41:22 – 45:31

   Origins of life: what we know, what we don’t, and how assembly theory aims to help

   1. JRJoe Rogan41:22

      Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, when you start studying all these things, and thinking about life, and, and, and thinking about the v- the various possibilities of life, w- what is the, what's the l- the lowest single-celled organism? How long ago do we think that that emerged?

   2. SWSara Imari Walker41:41

      Um, I think current estimates are that life ... Like, the oldest fossils that we can identify and, like, tracing back genomically about 3.8 billion years ago.

   3. JRJoe Rogan41:51

      So, essentially, somewhere around a billion or so years, that we can find, from the time-

   4. SWSara Imari Walker41:57

      Yes.

   5. JRJoe Rogan41:57

      ... Earth was formed?

   6. SWSara Imari Walker41:57

      Yeah. So, Earth we think f- uh, you know, formed between 4.5 and four billion years ago. So, like four, four billion years ago we kind of had Earth as we understand it. Mostly now we don't know if there were oceans, um, but the moon-forming impact had happened.

   7. JRJoe Rogan42:10

      That's Earth One and Earth Two, the impact with some other planets?

   8. SWSara Imari Walker42:13

      Yeah. Theia, I think it was called-

   9. JRJoe Rogan42:15

      Yeah.

   10. SWSara Imari Walker42:15

       ... just smacked into Earth and then made our moon. It must have been really traumatic. (laughs)

   11. JRJoe Rogan42:20

       I imagine.

   12. SWSara Imari Walker42:20

       So, I think most people think, like, life didn't happen before that 'cause if it did, it would have been obliver- obliterated, but we really don't know. So, yeah, current estimates are around, you know, like four to 3.7, 3.8 billion years ago.

   13. JRJoe Rogan42:31

       So, somewhere a billion or less than a billion years later, something emerges?

   14. SWSara Imari Walker42:36

       Yes.

   15. JRJoe Rogan42:37

       And how do we think that happened?

   16. SWSara Imari Walker42:39

       Um, there is no consensus.

   17. JRJoe Rogan42:42

       Ooh.

   18. SWSara Imari Walker42:42

       None.

   19. JRJoe Rogan42:43

       (laughs)

   20. SWSara Imari Walker42:43

       Yeah, I know. It's not-

   21. JRJoe Rogan42:44

       (laughs)

   22. SWSara Imari Walker42:44

       ... isn't that fun? It's fun. (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan42:46

       (laughs) Yeah. It's kind of crazy.

   24. SWSara Imari Walker42:47

       It's totally crazy. I, uh, that's why I like this problem because nobody knows what happened.

   25. JRJoe Rogan42:52

       Wow.

   26. SWSara Imari Walker42:53

       And, you know, there's a lot of s-

   27. JRJoe Rogan42:54

       So, what are the primary theories?

   28. SWSara Imari Walker42:55

       There's a lot of speculation. Um, you know, the sort of canonical ones that you'll hear about are usually like the RNA world, that life started with an RNA molecule which, like, RNA is still in our bodies today. Um, so, like, DNA most people are probably familiar with, um, gets translated, uh, like, transcribed into RNA and then the RNA is what's used to make protein. So, um, so RNA, you know, kind of does a dual role, so people think, "Oh, maybe it, it happened early on and it was the first life." And then there's like other hypotheses like hydrothermal vents and, you know, sort of energy first approaches to origins of life that, like, we had some metabolism that was organizing. But all of these are really speculative and I think, um, I think the issue is that we're trying to take molecules that are in modern living systems and trying to understand how they can emerge in a prebiotic environment on early Earth, and not really thinking about how the Earth and the geochemistry on the Earth had to evolve into a living system. So, it had, like, selection had to happen, evolution had to happen before life.

   29. JRJoe Rogan43:58

       Hmm.

   30. SWSara Imari Walker43:58

       Um, and this is sort of the critical gap that we're really missing is, like, what is that mechanism? And that's where assembly theory is supposed to be coming in is trying to give us a mechanism for how chemical systems can evolve before we even have a living cell, for example, and, like, in trying to iterate what those missing stages are because we just don't know what they look like right now.
10. 45:31 – 48:09

    Robotic chemistry and ‘finding aliens in the lab’: Cronin, Chemify, and artificial life

    1. JRJoe Rogan45:31

       And so experiments are being done to try to create-

    2. SWSara Imari Walker45:33

       Yes. Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan45:34

       How do they conduct these?

    4. SWSara Imari Walker45:35

       Um, so that's... My, my collaborator, Lee Cronin, uh, is a chemist, uh, and he's totally brilliant, and actually him and I are probably, uh, you know, I don't know, like, what we're trying to do is, is a little bit crazy (laughs) , um, to solve the origin of life. But, you know, like, I had an, uh, like, he- he's doing the experimental stuff, but, like, the, the sort of idea we had in mind is, like, I'll write a book, try to get the ideas out there, get people excited about thinking about this space, and he'll start a company that will digitize chemistry and try to raise the funds to actually do the experiments. So, he's trying to build the technology and the experiments. It's built on this platform he has for building robots that basically do the chemistry for you. And the idea being if we could build a large enough experiment, we could search that huge space of chemistry, a little bit like a circui- search alg- algorithm for chemistry, and then be able to look in chemical space and try to discover aliens.

    5. JRJoe Rogan46:27

       Whoa.

    6. SWSara Imari Walker46:28

       In an origin life experiment on Earth. And so that's what we're trying to do. Um... (laughs)

    7. JRJoe Rogan46:32

       Whoa.

    8. SWSara Imari Walker46:33

       I'm really excited. I hope it happens.

    9. JRJoe Rogan46:36

       Imagine if you guys d- if someone does something like this, maybe it's you, maybe it's someone else, someone does something like this and creates an artificial life form, and then starts manipulating that life form and evolving that life form-

    10. SWSara Imari Walker46:50

        Yes.

    11. JRJoe Rogan46:50

        ... through some-

    12. SWSara Imari Walker46:51

        That's the aim.

    13. JRJoe Rogan46:52

        ... sort of extraneous processes.

    14. SWSara Imari Walker46:53

        Yeah. So, I mean, y- there are benefits to that, right? So, so Lee's company, Chemify, is a digital chemistry company, and their stated aim is to be able to 3D print any molecule on demand, right? So, this has huge impact for the pharmaceutical industry, but, like, the real goal is to make an artificial life form in the lab. But that also has huge impact for humanity 'cause you imagine that now you have the ability to study in this other system all of these other kinds of chemistries, like what can you do for, like, antibiotic discovery, or, um, pharmaceutical drug discovery, or even psychedelic drug discovery if people like that. But, you know, like, there's, there's a- a crazy amount of new technology and new insights fundamentally to come out of that, but I also don't think that we're really gonna understand these other kind of technologies that we're building, like, when we're thinking about artificial intelligence and, like, is that alive or not, unless we solve this chemical problem of what life is because I think the chemical problem is much harder, but much more direct as far as, like, understanding the fundamental nature of life when you solve it in an experimental program.

    15. JRJoe Rogan47:52

        Biological life?

    16. SWSara Imari Walker47:53

        Biological life.

    17. JRJoe Rogan47:54

        W-

    18. SWSara Imari Walker47:54

        Chemical life.'Cause it won't, it won't be biology as we know it, right?

    19. JRJoe Rogan47:58

        Right.

    20. SWSara Imari Walker47:58

        That's the whole point.

    21. JRJoe Rogan47:59

        Right, that's the point.

    22. SWSara Imari Walker47:59

        It'll be alien biology that we evolve in the lab.

    23. JRJoe Rogan48:03

        Right.

    24. SWSara Imari Walker48:03

        And I actually think this is how we're gonna make first contact with alien life, because I think we won't recognize it unless we understand what it is.

11. 48:09 – 52:04

    Ethics, AI as lineage, and why chemistry might outcompute silicon

    1. JRJoe Rogan48:09

       Wow. No, what ethical concerns would arise when you take a thing, like s- let's say, w- w- let's advance this, this whole process a few hundred years from now.

    2. SWSara Imari Walker48:19

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JRJoe Rogan48:20

       And you've created artificial life, you've created this thing that doesn't exist anywhere else, and then instead of it being subject to natural selection as a, a vehicle for it, it, its advancement, instead we just start fucking with it.

    4. SWSara Imari Walker48:34

       Yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan48:34

       And then it gets to a point where there's an ethical concern, like, "Hey, this thing is about to get smarter than us." What do we do?

    6. SWSara Imari Walker48:39

       I think there's ethical concerns right along the way. And I don't know that I know immediate answers to those. So, I, you know, it's kind of, uh, like, this is the part where it's a little existentially traumatic to work on these kinda problems. So, I have a friend that's a philosopher, Ben Bratton, and he says the best kind of, like, ideas are the ones that are, like, equally, like, really exciting and horrifying.

    7. JRJoe Rogan49:00

       Mm.

    8. SWSara Imari Walker49:00

       And, like, you wanna work on those ideas 'cause you don't know what it's, like, future is gonna be, and I tend to be on the optimistic side. I think we need to solve this problem because I think we have this sort of existential crisis in some sense that humanity is facing 'cause we don't understand what we are, we don't understand what our technologies are doing, we don't understand what our long-term future holds. We don't even understand all the life around us on this planet. So, we solve that problem. I think that the lens through which we will look at the kind of ethical things that you're talking about will be radically different, because the knowledge itself will have transformed us. So, I can't even anticipate what those kinda dialogues are gonna be like.

    9. JRJoe Rogan49:32

       Hmm.

    10. SWSara Imari Walker49:33

        Imagine if, like, instead of just wondering about cephalopods and plants and stuff on this conversation, we actually had a fundamental understanding of what it is to be other life forms and, uh, life as a, uh, you know, as part of the fundamental structure of reality and, like, participatory and actually, like, what the universe builds, and you have that kinda understanding, I, I think it radically changes the way that w- we conceptualize who we are and what we're doing. And I don't, uh, you know, I don't know what that looks like.

    11. JRJoe Rogan50:02

        And we would assume that if we continue, uh, especially down the path of AI and quantum computing, they are probably gonna solve a lot of these problems.

    12. SWSara Imari Walker50:11

        Yeah, I think we're flying blind in those areas, though-

    13. JRJoe Rogan50:13

        Hmm.

    14. SWSara Imari Walker50:13

        ... really, especially AI. I mean, I think that that's pretty obvious that, you know, there's a huge amount of debate about the nature of intelligence in these artificial algorithms. I certainly think that they're life, but I think they're life in the sense that the lineage of information necessary to train a large language model, for example, you know, requires a planet to evolve something like us and evolve language and then enough data about that language to train the model. So, it's a direct descendant, like you were saying. Like, you know, our technology is our babies. Um, but, um, so there's that part of it, but I think... I don't know. I totally lost my train of thought. This is very funny. (laughs) Um, it went two ways, and I don't know which way I wanna go. (laughs) Um, that's very funny. Um, yeah. What was your question again? I'm so sorry.

    15. JRJoe Rogan50:57

        That's a good question.

    16. SWSara Imari Walker50:58

        (laughs)

    17. JRJoe Rogan50:58

        I don't remember what my question was. So, we're both in the same boat. Th- the idea was-

    18. SWSara Imari Walker51:01

        (laughs) And it was like, boom.

    19. JRJoe Rogan51:02

        ... that artificial intelligence would enhance our understanding of what it means to be biological life.

    20. SWSara Imari Walker51:09

        Oh, I see. And you were e- yeah, and you were asking about quantum information.

    21. JRJoe Rogan51:12

        And how it became-

    22. SWSara Imari Walker51:12

        Yeah.

    23. JRJoe Rogan51:12

        Yes. And that with-

    24. SWSara Imari Walker51:13

        Yeah.

    25. JRJoe Rogan51:14

        ... when, when, when computing power is massively increased, and you have a sentient artificial intelligence that essentially has all the information that we have, of every human being, all, every database-

    26. SWSara Imari Walker51:25

        Right.

    27. JRJoe Rogan51:25

        ... everything all over the world, but yet far more capable of processing this and advancing these things-

    28. SWSara Imari Walker51:30

        Yeah, so-

    29. JRJoe Rogan51:30

        ... that maybe it'll have a more c- complex understanding of what life is.

    30. SWSara Imari Walker51:33

        Yeah, so there, there, yeah. So, I think, I think there's, like, a sort of subtlety here when you're talking about artificial intelligence and whether it could compete with natural intelligence, right? So, this is sort of the canonical debate about the nature of artificial intelligence. But I think, I think we really underestimate what chemistry can do, and I think some of the most powerful computers on this planet are still chemical. And if we actually understand chemistry better, you know, with these kind of new digital chemistry technologies, the kind of compute we can get out of chemistry might actually out-compete silicon in the long run.

12. 52:04 – 1:13:11

    From transhumanism to social cognition: Neuralink, ‘the other,’ and podcasting as a transition tech

    1. JRJoe Rogan52:04

       Hmm. Well, and then there's also the concept of hybrids, right?

    2. SWSara Imari Walker52:08

       Yes.

    3. JRJoe Rogan52:08

       When we becomes hyboids.

    4. SWSara Imari Walker52:09

       I like, I like, I like that concept. Um, but this gets into the blurry area of, like, are you human anymore? Like, if you-

    5. JRJoe Rogan52:16

       Right.

    6. SWSara Imari Walker52:16

       ... if you have a chip in your brain, and you're, you're, you're, like, being a cephalopod, and then you morph into, like-

    7. JRJoe Rogan52:21

       Yeah.

    8. SWSara Imari Walker52:21

       ... you know, being, you know, uh, on y- your own desktop. Like, are you still human?

    9. JRJoe Rogan52:26

       Well, that's what I always say about, like, if you go back to Australopithecus and explain to him airplanes and-

    10. SWSara Imari Walker52:31

        Yeah.

    11. JRJoe Rogan52:31

        ... cellphones, but you can't be Australopithecus anymore. He'd be like, "Whoa, I don't wanna stop being me."

    12. SWSara Imari Walker52:36

        Yeah.

    13. JRJoe Rogan52:37

        You know? Wouldn't that be the same reaction that they have?

    14. SWSara Imari Walker52:40

        I think-

    15. JRJoe Rogan52:41

        Probably.

    16. SWSara Imari Walker52:42

        Yeah.

    17. JRJoe Rogan52:42

        Probably be terrified.

    18. SWSara Imari Walker52:43

        Yeah.

    19. JRJoe Rogan52:43

        "I don't wanna be a, become a person. I don't wanna become an alien."

    20. SWSara Imari Walker52:45

        No.

    21. JRJoe Rogan52:45

        "I don't wanna be some great dude with a giant head and big, black eyes," but maybe that's what we become.

    22. SWSara Imari Walker52:50

        Yeah, I think also inter-generationally, we're already doing that. So, like, the sort of, you know, people will always talk about how kids are more comfortable with technology than their parents or grandparents were.

    23. JRJoe Rogan52:59

        Oh, yeah.

    24. SWSara Imari Walker52:59

        And why are they more comfortable? Because they grew up in a totally different environment.

    25. JRJoe Rogan53:03

        Right.

    26. SWSara Imari Walker53:03

        Like, the world has literally changed in the last few decades.

    27. JRJoe Rogan53:06

        Mm-hmm.

    28. SWSara Imari Walker53:06

        So, like, the world that kids are growing up today is not the world that it was when kids were growing up, like, 50 years ago.

    29. JRJoe Rogan53:11

        Right.

    30. SWSara Imari Walker53:12

        And so they are, quote unquote, "alien," not really alien, but, like, they're, they're really fundamentally different in, in a lot of ways. And I think it's okay to recognize that. Like, that's, you know, part of the progression of understanding and the fact that the world is changing and...

Episode duration: 2:45:19