Lee Cronin: Chemist trying to make life from chemistry discusses genius, being wrong & Twitter mobs
The Vance Crowe Podcast · Vance Crowe
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Show Notes
Dr. Lee Cronin is a university professor that is searching for a way to turn chemistry into something living. Cronin sat down with Vance Crowe to discuss what does it mean to be alive, how he has been a professor that has been able to question core assumptions in science, and why a Tweet almost got him canceled by a Twitter mob for a joke he made about the name of his lab POMHub.
Vance and Lee talk about famous scientists like Stephan Wolfram (A New Kind of Science) and Joscha Bach
Link to Lee Cronin's Ted Talk
https://www.ted.com/talks/lee_cronin_making_matter_come_alive?language=en
Joscha Bach's Computational Meta-Psychologist (Paper Walls)
https://youtu.be/WRdJCFEqFTU](https://youtu.be/WRdJCFEqFTU
Vance referenced an article on the value of dreams: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/enter-the-supersensorium-hoel
Chapters:
3:12 | Start
3:58 | What Lee Cronin's Lab Does
7:12 | What really is AI?
11:12 | Discovering the origin of Life
12:57 | How long until material science becomes useful?
19:55 | What does it mean to create life?
28:08 | Being wrong as a helpful trait
30:34 | How to survive in ivory towers
34:17 | Joscha Bach's Paper Walls
36:02 | Lee Cronin's Daemon
40:03 | How dreams enter the mind
42:31 | Dreaming a new model for time
45:52 | Twitter Joke wakes mob
50:22 | Using Twitter to offend people intellectually
55:56 | What's Lee Cronin's social life like?
59:13 | Where is Lee Cronin's work heading?
1:05:03 | How can you help Lee?