Sara Walker: The Origin of Life on Earth and Alien Worlds | Lex Fridman Podcast #198

ℹ️ EPISODE INFO

Released

July 9, 2021

Duration

1h 59m

Channel

Lex Fridman Podcast

Watch on YouTube

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📝 EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Sara Walker is an astrobiologist and theoretical physicist interested in the origin of life. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:

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EPISODE LINKS: Sara's Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sara_Imari Sara's Website: http://emergence.asu.edu/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 1:53 - Origin of life 9:46 - Did aliens seed life on Earth? 14:57 - What is life? 26:36 - Cellular automata 31:04 - The laws of physics may change with time 40:50 - Nobel Prize for the origin of life 46:09 - Is consciousness fundamental to the universe? 57:28 - Life is the most deterministic part of physics 1:00:03 - Free will 1:08:20 - How to detect alien life 1:22:57 - How many alien civilization are out there? 1:29:41 - Shadow biosphere 1:36:08 - UFO sightings 1:39:43 - Exponential population growth of AI lifeforms 1:46:50 - The role of death in life 1:50:54 - Advice for young people 1:56:40 - Meaning of life SOCIAL:

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• Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman

🎤 SPEAKERS

• Lex Fridman

  host

• Sara Walker

  guest

🧾 EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Lex Fridman Podcast, featuring Lex Fridman and Sara Walker, Sara Walker: The Origin of Life on Earth and Alien Worlds | Lex Fridman Podcast #198 explores sara Walker Reimagines Life, Causality, and Alien Worlds from Within Lex Fridman and astrobiologist/theoretical physicist Sara Walker explore the origin of life, the limitations of traditional origin-of-life hypotheses, and why she thinks we’re asking the wrong core questions. Instead of defining life biochemically, Walker argues we need new physics centered on information, causation, and history to explain why certain complex things exist at all. They discuss assembly theory as a way to detect life (on Earth and elsewhere), the possibility of multiple origins or a shadow biosphere, and how alien life might be radically unlike us yet still recognizable via its causal structure. The conversation broadens into consciousness, free will, AI, and the idea that life is a planetary-scale creative process that continually increases what can exist in the universe.

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