Lee Cronin

Chemist, Assembly Theory Pioneer

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Leroy Cronin is the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow.   He, along with Sara Imani Walker are the pioneers of Assembly Theory.   Cronin is also a leader in the field of automated molecular chemistry, and the creator of the "chemputer".   He has many great insights into cosmology, the origins of life, artificial intelligence, physics and consciousness. 

Quotes by Lee Cronin

"The universe is infinitely creative." - Lee Cronin

"Creativity is the act of pushing on the causal structure, and novelty is measuring the degree of that change. " - Lee Cronin

"Life is the mechanism that produces novelty in the universe." - Lee Cronin

"We will get to AGI... but AGI can't separate from human consciousness, because the causal chain taht produced it came from humans." - Lee Cronin

"Assembly theory is going to change things. Since Darwin, we have tried to understand how the countless forms of life can evolve in a universe with fixed laws. The laws of physics are connected to life, evolution, and human culture, but they can't predict their emergence. Assembly theory doesn't change the laws of physics, but it changes how we think about selection. In AT, objects aren't seen as single points but as a collection of possible formation histories. AT demonstrates that objects can show evidence of selection, whether part of an individual or not. This requires the new concept of Assembly, which measures the amount of causation needed to create a group of objects. AT reimagines matter in terms of assembly spaces, offering a way to unite physics and biology in a new field that starts playing a significant role at the chemical scale, where history and selection become important factors." - Lee Cronin

"My intuition is that the mechanism of consciousness requires time to be fundamental." - Lee Cronin

"Humans have little causal control of future... [But,] by reinterpreting your past, you can better shape your future." - Lee Cronin

"People who talk about emergence are really talking about magic. Emergence is the word you use when you have coarse grained away the causal structure. Assembly theory explains emergence without the magic." - Lee Cronin

"The only instance of intelligence we know is bound uniquely to biology. Current physics cannot explain biology. Making an AGI is not a given because we have no idea what the principles underpin intelligence. Therefore worries about the emergence of AGI are hysterical nonsense." - Lee Cronin

"Imagine two molecules with exactly the same mass, but different molecules assembly index / complexity, fall into a black hole. The more complex one (higher assembly index) will give off more Hawking radiation because information is not destroyed by the black hole." - Lee Cronin

"The universe, in the past, did not have the computational power it has now... The universe is smarter than it used to be [going back near the Big Bang]...  because of novelty generation and [the ability to create more complex objects through time progresses] " - Lee Cronin

"Could Dark Energy be Time?" - Lee Cronin

"Emotion happens when your expectation function is dashed and something else happens." - Lee Cronin

"AGI is instantiated in a resource limited substrate (Silicon).  Training AI is about failing (and learning), and not [actual] understanding.  There is some understanding [in consciousness] that is not symbolically represented in AI.  " - Lee Cronin