Comments by "Kristopher Driver" (@paxdriver) on "Lee Cronin: Controversial Nature Paper on Evolution of Life and Universe | Lex Fridman Podcast #404" video.

  1. Lee is always a good conversation, but he strikes me as a narcissist. As an academic biochemist who's publishing theories on the nature of emergence in the universe, how has not so much as stumbled across the specifics of carbon dating and radioactive decay? It takes a weekend to understand that, I'm a public highschool grad and I produced a podcast describing nuclear power generation in a week... It's like he thinks what he already knows is good enough. Like how he decided what was important in his own theory before knowing why then found a reason to confirm his priors. I'm one of his critics on twitter, and when I brought up how assembly theory was precisely in line with Karl Friston's work on free energy and Stephen Wolfram's rulead for cellular automata he didn't even bother to listen or look it up (both of which can be found in Lex's podcast history btw). He's interesting but he's not a scientist. He's just a guy who wants to look smart, dismissing critics as saying his theory is rubbish without ever even listening. I hate science that invents an idea then looks for excuses to make it apply when others have already done the same thing properly. It's an affront to the practise of intellectual exploration because he works in the same way religious zealots apply the world to suit their doctrines (notice the irony if not hypocrisy?) That said, I like the conversations for the exploration of ideas, but I really hate how his followers are treating his ideas like they're so deep and he only listens to people who boost his ego. There's zero interest for him to expand knowledge, he just wants to be seen as someone who is expanding knowledge for the opti s or status or something. It's a wretched motivation to pursue science imho so I hope people learn to appreciate him for the real contributions he makes in his communication rather than feed his ego without ever exploring even the boundaries of the theories he's copying to call his own.
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