Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution | Hacker News Reader

Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution

nature.com

77 pointsnetfortius12 comments

Erwin Schroedinger explained this in 1944 with a quantity called “negative entropy” instead of “assembly”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy

I personally like to think of life as “eddies in the current of entropy”

We can assume the authors know about negentropy. This response is like reading an article on quantum computer architecture and saying “Max Born explained all this in 1925.”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ectropy

The nature article is a bit over my head and the press release seems a little hand-wavy, so forgive my ignorance but....

It sounds like "all" they've done is develop a formalism that is (1) mathematically precise, (2) testable and (3) useful for describing evolutionary processes.

That is, they haven't actually showed how selection can overcome the constraints of physics and randomness; they've just developed a useful framework so that hopefully a future breakthrough can be found more easily.

Do I have that right?

I've listened to Sara talk about this a couple times. It's basically about approaching chemistry and biology from the perspective of a physicist/computer scientist where everything is about information.

The idea is that the possibility-space of molecules is combinatorially vast, even for nature itself. If you can identify a sort of kolmolgorov complexity for molecules (assembly index), the ones with high complexity are indicative of intentional, non-random processes like life.

One of the key differences here from prior approaches is that the definitions they've chosen are computable and universal, though I haven't gotten the same impression of universality and utility from their papers.

Yes. But it seems perhaps they haven't even done those things correctly.

The project seems to have a slight case of Wolframesque overreach

https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.00901

The 8 Fallacies of Assembly Theory

https://hectorzenil.medium.com/test-8f0be54817c4

I think I found those more insightful in some ways than the linked paper.

I think they mischaracterize evolutionary theory and overstate the gap, if any, with physics. But I think there's some kernels of useful insight, like this:

"The more complex a given object, the less likely an identical copy can exist without selection of some information-driven mechanism that generates that object."

Previously discussed, the Quanta overview:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35827189

"We present assembly theory (AT) as a framework that does not alter the laws of physics, but redefines the concept of an ‘object’ on which these laws act. AT conceptualizes objects not as point particles, but as entities defined by their possible formation histories. This allows objects to show evidence of selection, within well-defined boundaries of individuals or selected units."

In other words, tweaking definitions to fit a pre-defined narrative.

KISS https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_1008527_en.html

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