#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: – Paperspace : https://gradient.run/lex to get $15 credit – Athletic Greens : https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil – Notion : https://notion.com/startups to get up to $1000 off team plan – Blinkist : https://blinkist.com/lex and use code LEX to get 25% off premium – Onnit : https://lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off EPISODE LINKS: Lee’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/leecronin Lee’s Website: https://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/cronin/ Chemify’s Website: https://chemify.io 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/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman 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