Lex Fridman hosting Sara Imari Walker
Physics of Life, Time, Complexity, and Aliens
Sara Imari Walker is an American theoretical physicist and astrobiologist with research interests in the origins of life, astrobiology, physics of life, emergence, complex and dynamical systems, and artificial life. Walker is deputy director of the Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University (ASU). (Wikipedia)
Sara has graced the Lex Fridman podcast for the third time with her presence. Her insights are so profound that keeping up with her is a challenge. Each one-liner she drops is a spark that ignites your curiosity, sending you on a journey of deep thought and contemplation.
A few of her unique perspectives will convince you this is a podcast you don’t want to miss.
• To properly think about life, you have to get rid of the relevance of the individual.
• No life form is self-sustaining. All are dependent on their environment. Humans are dependent on society.
• The life and death cycle allows nature to explore possibilities.
• There are essentially two types of investigators studying the origin of life: materialists and vitalists. Materialists focus on chemistry, while vitalists search for something beyond. There are properties of life we haven’t clearly recognized or identified that support the vitalists.
• Things that are ‘alive’ are language, mathematics, populations, society, etc.
• Mathematics is open-ended. It notices abnormalities in the universe.
• Evolution doesn’t happen to the individual; it happens to populations.
• The history of the universe that arrived at ‘you’ is you.
• The universe is far more extensive in time than it is in space, and our planet is one of the biggest things in the universe.
• Ideas often don’t even coalesce into pictures in the mind. (see the post ‘Writing’) The gulf between ideas and words is immense.
• Why can life generate so much order, and we lack physics to explain it?
• The origin of life is when a structure comes into existence that can support its perpetuation.
• Solving the problem of the origin of life will determine the likelihood of alien life.
Tune in to Sara Walker. Be fascinated!
Content link: Sara Walker: Physics of Life, Time, Complexity, and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #433 (youtube.com)
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