📚 2 Books mentioned in "Lee Cronin: Origin of Life, Aliens, Complexity, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #269" of Lex Fridman Podcast
Podcast: Lex Fridman Podcast
Episode: Lee Cronin: Origin of Life, Aliens, Complexity, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #269
Published on March 11, 2022
Here’s a list of all the books mentioned in this episode. Click on the links to watch specific excerpts on YouTube and feel free to purchase the books if they caught your interest!
Solaris
Buy Solaris by Stanisław Lem on Amazon
They allow you to record those memories, or at least on Earth, you could imagine, you know, a Stanislaw Lem-type world where you might have life emerging or intelligence emerging before life; that may be something to unwind, like Solaris or something.
Lee Cronin refers to the book Solaris by Stanislaw Lem to illustrate a concept where intelligence might emerge before life itself. He uses this reference to delve into potential alternate trajectories for the evolution of intelligence and life.
The Blind Watchmaker
Buy The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins on Amazon
This relates to the blind watchmaker argument, which questions how something complex, like a watch, could spontaneously emerge. Well, it doesn't; it's a lineage of lesser watches and devices that couple and bootstrap onto one another.
The mention of the 'blind watchmaker argument' refers to the idea of how complex systems can emerge from simpler components. This is an implicit reference to Richard Dawkins' book, 'The Blind Watchmaker', which explores evolution and the process of natural selection.