#388 — What Is Life?

Sam Harris speaks with Sara Imari Walker about a scientific
understanding of life. They discuss the contributions of physics
to this topic, Erwin Schrödinger, the inadequacy of standard
definitions of life, the prospect of "artificial" life, the role
of information, constructor theory, assembly theory, the space of
all possible structures, a "block universe," the existence of
abstract objects like numbers, the Fermi paradox, the likelihood
of life elsewhere in the universe, experiments that could decide
how likely life is to emerge, the possibility of a Great Filter,
the number of Earth-like worlds, and other topics.


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