Lee Cronin

Factories in the end produce computers and then algorithmic information theory comes out of that. The frustration I've had with looking at life through this kind of information theory is it doesn't take into account causation. So the main difference between assembly theory and all these complexity measures is there's no causal chain. Yeah.

Exactly. And if you've got all your data in a computer memory, all the data is the same. You can access it in the same way. You don't care. You just compress it. And you either look at the program runtime or the shortest program. And that, for me... It is absolutely not capturing what it is, what its selection does.

Exactly. And if you've got all your data in a computer memory, all the data is the same. You can access it in the same way. You don't care. You just compress it. And you either look at the program runtime or the shortest program. And that, for me... It is absolutely not capturing what it is, what its selection does.

Exactly. And if you've got all your data in a computer memory, all the data is the same. You can access it in the same way. You don't care. You just compress it. And you either look at the program runtime or the shortest program. And that, for me... It is absolutely not capturing what it is, what its selection does.

I would say it does in a way, and it is fascinating to look at. So you've just got the object.

I would say it does in a way, and it is fascinating to look at. So you've just got the object.

I would say it does in a way, and it is fascinating to look at. So you've just got the object.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

and you have no other information about the object, what assembly theory allows you to do just with the object is to, and the word infer is correct, I agree with infer, you say, well, that's not the history, but something really interesting comes from this. The shortest path is inferred from the object. That is the worst case scenario if you have no machine to make it.

and you have no other information about the object, what assembly theory allows you to do just with the object is to, and the word infer is correct, I agree with infer, you say, well, that's not the history, but something really interesting comes from this. The shortest path is inferred from the object. That is the worst case scenario if you have no machine to make it.

and you have no other information about the object, what assembly theory allows you to do just with the object is to, and the word infer is correct, I agree with infer, you say, well, that's not the history, but something really interesting comes from this. The shortest path is inferred from the object. That is the worst case scenario if you have no machine to make it.

So that tells you about the depth of that object in time. Mm-hmm. And so what assembly theory allows you to do is without considering any other circumstances to say from this object, how deep is this object in time? If we just treat the object as itself without any other, any other constraints. And that's super powerful because the shortest path then says, allows you to say, Oh,

So that tells you about the depth of that object in time. Mm-hmm. And so what assembly theory allows you to do is without considering any other circumstances to say from this object, how deep is this object in time? If we just treat the object as itself without any other, any other constraints. And that's super powerful because the shortest path then says, allows you to say, Oh,

So that tells you about the depth of that object in time. Mm-hmm. And so what assembly theory allows you to do is without considering any other circumstances to say from this object, how deep is this object in time? If we just treat the object as itself without any other, any other constraints. And that's super powerful because the shortest path then says, allows you to say, Oh,

This object wasn't just created randomly. There was a process. And so assembly theory is not meant to one-up AIT or to ignore the factory. It's just to say, hey, there was a factory. How big was that factory and how deep in time is it? Mm-hmm.

This object wasn't just created randomly. There was a process. And so assembly theory is not meant to one-up AIT or to ignore the factory. It's just to say, hey, there was a factory. How big was that factory and how deep in time is it? Mm-hmm.

This object wasn't just created randomly. There was a process. And so assembly theory is not meant to one-up AIT or to ignore the factory. It's just to say, hey, there was a factory. How big was that factory and how deep in time is it? Mm-hmm.

It is. It becomes harder. But one of the things that's super nice is that it constrains your initial conditions, right? Sure. It constrains where you're going to be. So if you take, say, imagine... So one of the things we're doing right now is applying assembly theory to drug discovery. Mm-hmm.