Lee Cronin’s Assembly Theory Disputed & Debunked by Dr. Hector Zenil 

The counter-argument at 3:46 is a bit odd. It seems to discount that if a protein A, causes X, where X~=X(A) ever allows for an X2=X(A) where X2(X(A)) is better than mere X(A), then you get more X2(X(A)), such that you get X(A)

Lmao people like you are such losers , there is literally nothing wrong about trying to disprove/dismiss others theory regardless how influential or well know you are. Reminds of people who would oppose anyone who go against Newtons law of gravitation until Einsten came in to disprove it.

This is not the right way of contesting a paper exactly because of your comment. This stuff was limited to twitter trolling and Trump supporters. It is a totally inappropriate way of going about this sort of thing. If some one has an objection there are a number of ways to make their objections heard amongst the specialist and the well informed. The paper was published in a reputable publication and it has been revised over and over again. The person making this video could have taken it up with the publishers. If they didn't want to hear about it or did not respond is no excuse for this kind vandelism. If anything derides the crediblity of the person making this video. Sticking bits of video from here and there is taking the information out of context. There is already a loss of faith towards academic publications in humanities and this sort of practice is like pouring petrol over fire until everone including the person making this kind video and the institutions they belong to are destroyd for good. Washing your dirty sheets in public in front only partially informed audiance is not the scientifc way of going about these things. This is how Brexit came about with tabloids confusing the public about a exntremly conplex issue around EU membership using sound bites. This is shameful.

Thanks, Alejandro. Don't forget there are serious scientists though, most of them don't appear on media and magazines like Cronin and Walker do all the time. Don't give up on science.

​@@HectorZenilIf scientists have to invest to much time in polishing their public image they have no time and focus left to focus on the actual work. I guess that the best scientist are hence often the most unknown to the public. Who of us can name the last three recipients of the nobel prize in medicine for example? Better leave youtube hell before it starts to kill your focus too😊

It is none of man’s business poking his nose into areas that are not his ever to know. These scientists are truly disturbed - what a dull way to think. Dragging many children down with you into your hell… Wake up and show some bloody respect.

Who's Suzan Mazur?

@@wiki_social She's a journalist. She wrote a book on Origin of Life research called "The Origin of Life Circus".

Nonsense. Ask him to publish his work to challenge Dr crohnin in reputable journals not rant in youtube

@@evanskip1cope harder

@@evanskip1 there's the paper shown in the video, "On the Salient Limitations of the Methods of Assembly Theory and their Classification of Molecular Biosignatures", which is available on arxiv (210.00901), from late 2022. They show how other measures got similar or better results as the ones shown by Assembly Theory and argue why Assembly Theory is functionally identical to a compression algorithm.

@pj-vu3cn So what?

Exactly. Dr. Z is arguing straight from material science so the argument AGAINST Cronin is more of them tasting their own medicine and not liking it because the majority of these origin of life "experts" are complete hypocrites, charlatans and outright liars.

@pj-vu3cn You have to double check, open unsigned browser. Sometimes it's a key word, sometimes it's comment load perhaps. Eitherway it's clear big tech has made it impossible to have meaningful discussions across social platforms to keep people browsing for more revenue and control.

Cold vacuum fusion of cause and effect.

The counter-argument around 3:46 is a bit odd against at 3:15, as applied to evolution The explanation is not like LZ compression. As I interpret what was explain in the Assembly Theory, and the counter, the counter seems to discount that if a protein A, causes X, where X~=X(A) ever allows for an X2=X(A) where X2(X(A)) is better than mere X(A), then you get more X2(X(A)). The DNA/RNA protein would have to create a protein that was self reflecting in such a way as to cause self replication such that you get X(A)

Thanks for your comments. Yes, they were quantified by AID and our measures in a precise fashion and without having to replicate the actual physical experiments. Please, check the papers from which the videos were based upon. Even things that seem common sense often are not and we need precise scientific tools to validate them. For example, in the case of flies, we didn’t know if flies simply react to external stimuli or take decisions driving their behaviour. In the case of ants, experiments are incredibly difficult because they leave traces of pheromones etc so even simple questions don’t have straight answers. The question regarding ant communication and complexity has been around since the 70s and could not be quantified until we introduced our measures. It made common sense precise. In the case of decoding messages, it was definitely not common sense that one could automate deriving the spatial dimensions of a message as we did. The same for rats. We did much more than what the video says, including inferring learning curves. With rats it was also not obvious that the engage in random behavior on purpose as a strategy. Thanks for asking.

@@HectorZenil Thank you for your reply, that is much appreciated (and rare, in the world of RU-vid!). I'll admit that I still have questions regarding what the specific results of AID are that allow you to determine these things without actually doing the experiments and being able to "get inside" the heads of the rats, cats, ants, and flies. I think the example of using AID to determine what is intelligently designed vs what can happen in nature is the most interesting to me, though, by far, as it gets to the question on origins. Regarding assembly theory, it comes across as pure philosophy to me, as I'm having a hard time seeing what practical benefit to science a theory that says something like "we think the universe works in a way that allows complexity/information to increase with time" would be. It comes across at the same level as saying that God, or aliens, or something similar created life. It doesn't really tell us, from a mechanical or physical perspective, how non-living molecules organize to organic molecules to cells, and so on. Does it? Is there any way in which it can lead to improvements in mechanics regarding these things? Your video on AID says that AID can do this. What is the fundamental difference between AID and assembly theory, to account for this difference? Anyway, I appreciate your video and agree with you and James Tour, and really appreciate what you both do. Would love to keep in touch.

@@rubenbehnke3975 Thanks for your comments. We never say that AID can explain how molecules become cells and lead to life. However, algorithmic probability, that the authors of Assembly Theory misapropiated, explains how you can create objects with high structural compelxity out of a combinatorial explosion of random processes, and that is what AID utilises to do pretty impressive stuff like reconsturcting an epigenetic Waddington landscape, this is a diagram that tells how cells can differentiate over time by reprogramming gene cells, or validating an oncogene pathway, this is a set of genes associated to cancer. All of which is empirical evidence and actual experiments, unlike, as you say, the Assembly Theory rethoric. Regarding the comment on not having to re-do the experiments, I can see how that can be confusing. What I mean is that we take the input of the experiments but not the output or the scientists' interpretation of the output and what AID and our measures have been able to do, is to reproduce the output results and validate the interpretation of the scientists, like the example I gave about the ants that was long thought was the case but couldn't be confirmed until our measures that can also deal with small objects, like small maze trajectories of ant behavioural experiments.

@@HectorZenil Yes, I know you never said AID can explain molecules to life, but at 29:30, the video does say AID can help with mechanistic explanations, in general.

Well, it is not profound because it has been done before. That's why they resist so much in saying is compression and related to algorithmic (Kolmogorov) complexity, but whether they say it or not, it has been done before (by my groups), so I am glad you find it relevant, kind of is, not to the hype level they have made, but those were the results of my groups, not theirs. Our results are better, because we knew what we were doing, followed the scientific methodology and gave it proper value rather than go out on every podcast to say it will change the way we see the universe (Cronin literally says so). Best

@@HectorZenil one would think that with the access to information that we have today, this kind of thing would be less likely. But because there is so much competition over funding now there tends to be a lot of self promotion. But that just ups the stakes when those self promoters make mistakes. Any normal person who is sincerely just interested in the pursuit or sharing of knowledge would at some point recognize that this has actually been done before, learn the details and then provide an update over what they discovered. Being wrong and acknowledging the mistake is relevant and important information. Anyone focused on maintaining status will of course focus elsewhere.

I agree. It’s a symptom of a system that rewards for the wrong reasons and Cronin is the perfect product of it, among others

That's right. Although the authors of Assembly Theory changed their version of their results to save face by saying that they can also detect artifacts made by living systems. However, we know there are crystals that are naturally occurring and would have huge assembly index. A paper is coming out showing this and we predicted it and even showed theoretical examples on our paper. But you are right, this theory is so simplistic that anything repeating the number of identical copies would be eventually alive according to the theory, and it does not matter how it interacts with its environment.

Precisely. Thanks for your comments

Unfortunately, Lex Fridman and others seem to hate the idea to be seen as they have been fooled. that's why you would usually not see them reaching out to those that challenge their interviewees. They make most of their money from their podcasts and challenging their guests means that future guests will probably think twice if Lex and other influencers do not protect them. It is a mafia business this time penetrating science by way of Cronin and Walker.

How?

Thanks for your comment. Let's dissasemble it: Let's assume for a moment that you are right. What you are saying is then that what Assembly Theory is using is a different compression algorithm. Their argument is that they are not using any and that they are not an approximation to algorithmic (Kolmogorov) complexity. If you are right, they are wrong. However, you are not right. LZ77/LZ78 looks for the longest matches first, so it would do ABRA first because it saves more space. If you destroy the longest match by replacing shorter ones, you don't gain as much. Yet, if you wanted to keep going and do the shorter ones, you only have to run LZ77/LZ78 on it again, and that is what other algorithms like ZIP and GZIP actually do as an input parameter. LZ may discard the order but AT cares about the number of steps, and that would be the same. In the worse case, what you are saying, is that the difference between an LZ variation of the AT algorithm would differ by a small constant. That means AT would be still driven exactly by LZ. If you wanted to track the order of the subtitutions in LZ that would be trivial but it is irrelevant for the number of steps at the end. Finally, a third option. Let's say that you are right and they are using another compression algorithm, which already means they are wrong. What evidence do they have that nature prefers their compression algorithm than any other? None. In fact, the experiment we conducted in the debunking paper uses several compression algorithms. One would be inclined to think that the best one at separating life from non-life would be the most suitable as a candidate of how nature assemble molecules. Well, the assembly index did not come on top, other decomposing equally mechanistic and causal compression algorithms did better. You may also ask, what is wrong with assembly index being a compression algorithm. Actually, nothing, except that they should credit it if they are using an existing algorithm even if perhaps at the beginning they did it without knowing. But Cronin and Walker get even offended by the idea that it is compression and speaks of their unwillingness to see reality let alone do science. This is because they do not want to accept that their measure is an approximation of algorithmic (Kolmogorov) complexity. If they did, they would need to acknowledge that we have reported exactly the same results they have reported but five years before. They would need to accept that they did not do a good job at following the basics of scientific methodology, like literature search, performing basic control experiments (comparing with other indexes and other representations of the data) all of which we ended up doing for them. And that all the attention they provoked from the media was a publicity stunt that should never have happened because they are misleading the public and the research community. I hope you follow my blog on this: hectorzenil.medium.com/the-8-fallacies-of-assembly-theory-ba54428b0b45 So, whatever path one takes above, Assembly Theory and their authors would be wrong. Regarding the point of a state automaton. the assembly index would require one too, it does so when it is implemented as a computer program (in principle or in practice). You can completely discard the state automaton for any other approximation to K including AT only because is of fixed size. The assembly index is therefore absolutely not different to K as an approximation to it when it comes to the "Turing machine" argument that they advance against K, which makes absolutely no sense, as I say on the video. I think I agree with your other points. Thanks for your comment.

@@HectorZenil Thank you for responding. I am only disagreeing with what I think is an hyperbolic statement that is otherwise true. I have only read the popular descriptions of Cronin's paper. LZ* looking for longest sequences is not what these summaries of AT use in their description, they used oldest rather than 'most frequent of the longer'. That makes them similar in many ways to LZ but different in one critical way: the historical placement of a sequence matters to the decomposition, which decomposition as a side effect provides an opportunity for compression. For modeling evolution it matters as to when a sequence first appears. It seems to me that they cannot use their modeling as proof of evolution if it insists evolution exists in its fundamentals. Compared to a compression algorithm looking for a maximally compressing encoding, their goal is to detect a factoring of the strings that provides a parsimonious phylogeny rather than a maximal compression. The difference between what their work should be and compression algorithms is that the equivalent of the LZ dictionary is the desired output, versus a compressed message. -- For your amusement: I haven't used my Information Theory skills commercially since I proved the products I was hired to work on weren't worth implementing. For one of them I showed that they were already getting a good enough digitization of the noise in the system that adding more bits was not going to improve the signal to noise ratio by an amount that could be reliably measured. The second was a design for a 1000 channel decimation filter, to sample down the stream from 1000 geophones from 4kHz to 1kHz with time dependent noise characters to be tended to simultaneously. The design was shown to the company experts which said it could do what was needed and was about as small as could be, but it took more electricity than could be supplied by batteries in the field. The only thing ITish I have done since then was an algorithm for sorting things by elemental composition measured via XRF that PCA failed on due to XRF having correlation between signal amplitude and noise amplitude. For an $10k upsell I figured out how to weight the determinations by economic significance of false positives. I had to fight a degreed in the art lab manager who insisted upon averaging the measurements on calibration samples and only giving the averages to the search algorithm, eliminating the critical information of sampling variation separate from measurement variation. I had to get a technician to slip me the raw data so that I could get the system to perform to spec.

@@histreeonics7770 Thanks for your comment. The original purpose of LZ algorithms were compression for saving data but they have been used for at least 3 decades for other purposes, clustering (Clibrasi and Vitani) and even classification of molecules (my own work, published in Parallel Information Letters, 2018), causality, selection and evolution (e.g. our paper in the Royal Society Open journal) since we know they are weak approximations of algorithmic content. LZ78 does not have too many options to do much different than the assembly index because it also traverses sequentially the string once, so there is an order even if it is lost in the final word dictionary. The underlying discussion that you may not be fully aware is whether the assembly index is a compression algorithm and whether they differ qualitatively from the LZ family in the number of steps. Regardless of wether you or me are right, the answer is that *it is* a compression algorithm and in the worse case is exactly the same as one of the LZ up to a small constant or it is a small variation of LZ but is still a lossless compression algorithm that at the end is an approximation of algorithmic (Kolmogorov) complexity and is unlikely to be driven by a factor that is not just an additive term compared to an LZ algorithm or any other dictionary-based algorithm. The examples that Cronin has provided, saying that is their algorithm and nothing else, is LZ77/LZ78 (followed by him saying, 'this is not a compression algorithm'). I do not agree with the comment on the directionaility in the context of modeling evolution because remember that AT is not looking at the actual evolution history, they are looking at a single object, a molecule or a genome sequence, then speculating how it was assembled. We already know it does not gets assembled as they suggest, because it is not sequential as they propose, chain reactions happen in parallel and full genome sequences are subject to evolutionary forces all the way, so their order is as arbitrary as any other. The fact that other measures separate better non-living from living systems actually suggests as empirical evidence that other schemes originally designed for compression (some other not, like our BDM, designed to capture causality) are potentially closer to capturing how those objects came into being as opposed to how AT wildly speculates do. Thanks for agreeing on the other points and for the amusing comment too.

@@HectorZenil I don't see any compression algorithm applied to a single message as being proof of evolution. We don't think that repeated CH2 monomers in a carbohydrate chain are a sign that the carbohydrate chain evolved. I would think that you have to apply such an algorithm to an ensemble of messages that you wish to test the relatedness of and then judge whether the dictionaries produced are in a nested hierarchy. And that is still only an indication of a common mechanism, not descent with modification from a common ancestor. I am not sure how I wandered from searching for a measure of life to one of evolution. I still think that the most reliable indication of life is when a functionally stupid complexity is present, and that requires injecting some valuation system into the discussion, I can't imagine coming up with a numerical measure of stupidity (too many infinities to deal with ;).

I wouldn't bundle evolution theory in there. It's definitely a theory. And I've only heard Abiogenesis described as a hypothesis.

@@dsdsspp7130 Nitpicking here but there are different /hypotheses/ of abiogenesis describing the "how". Evolution Theory is the body of knowledge and evidence that describe how evolution happens. But you're right about macro and micro being misnomers.

Thanks for your comment. I agree, it was a difficult decision but there are no many other people with the courage to face Cronin and his colleagues. I don’t think Tour is the typical creationist either and I don’t think is uncommon among some scientists to have this belief duality. I didn’t think that his personal beliefs disqualified him to have a conversation with me after his kind invitation. Prof Tour has also said he thinks life will eventually be explained by science and while he speaks a lot about religion to my taste publicly, I haven’t ever heard he mixing them in the same argument or to criticize others. He is definitely criticizing the science even if perhaps there is some other motivation of him to focus on OOL. It could be that OOL people are also the most ego driven when they have so few solid results. I don’t see how my ego could have intervened in deciding something difficult to me which I knew I would be attacked for.

@@HectorZenil well it comes off as petty because you seem to need to join forces with someone who engages in transparently dishonest debate tactics and insulting people. Tour’s response to Cronin’s very abstract and high level, non-historic approach to OOL, is to ask super specific arbitrary details of life on our earth’s history. He keeps misrepresenting Cronin’s work and arguments. This is all in the context of Tour’s haphazardly obscured association with the Discovery Institute, and very similar to other figures like Stephen Meyer. Their whole point is to not further scientific debate but to sow public distrust in the sciences. I can recommend watching Dave Farina’s videos on Tour and on the Discovery institute, as well as Tour’s own channel.

There I disagree. Farina is not very qualified in this topic and misrepresents Tour. James Tour is one of the highest regarded and awarded synthetic chemists in the world. While Tour has been awarded prizes by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the same society has suspended Cronin in the past for misconduct. As far as I know Tour does not support intelligent design (he says so publicly) or traditional creationism but even if he did, that is his problem as long as he does not mix his science with his beliefs which as far as I can tell he does not. The arguments presented to OOL and Cronin were scientific and very valid. That his questions are very specific doesn’t matter, Cronin could have discussed them even in the context of Assembly Theory but he is incapable and he hardly even understands them. Lee Cronin is in no capacity to conduct science, he does not do basic literature research (some of his collaborators tell me that on purpose), he does not know or does not want to conduct control experiments that may contradict his ‘discoveries’ and so on. That’s why he ends up incurring in plagiarism perhaps even without noticing and later gets himself into so much problem. I didn’t team up with anyone. Tour asked me a scientific question regarding the validity of AT and invited me to his podcast and I answered the call just as I would have answered the call of a non religious person. His personal beliefs and personal life are not my business. My duty is to answer to anyone in the best and most scientific way possible. You should have a greater problem with someone as unscientific and dogmatic as Cronin if you want to defend science. There are way worse things than being a creationist. I welcome non religious communicators to reach out to me and I will gladly speak to them too.

@@HectorZenil “Prof Tour has also said he thinks life will eventually be explained by science” Indeed, he said so at the Harvard roundtable (with Cronin). But he immediately continued: “to me that’ll be like ... ah, so that’s how our lord did it”. I think this is crucial when considering, as you do, that he’s not a “typical creationist”. He is, by definition, and he demonstrates it by stating “when science explains it, it will explain how god did it”. This is a non sequitur and it points to his ‘divine’ presuppositionalism. “and while he speaks a lot about religion to my taste publicly, I haven’t ever heard he mixing them in the same argument or to criticize others.” As I replied above, stating that “he is convinced that science eventually will figure it out” while immediately thereafter stating “to me that will be, so that’s how god did it”, is by no means anything other than ‘mixing science and religious belief in the same ‘argument’. You personally may not have heard him mixing them, anyone who watched the Harvard roundtable did, which only demonstrates you haven’t done fact checking. And then also consider what Tour writes on his own website: “Based upon my faith in the biblical text, I do believe (yes, faith and belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist) that God created the heavens and the earth and all that dwell therein, including a man named Adam and a woman named Eve. ... So, in addition to my chemically based scientific resistance to a macroevolutionary proposal, I am also theologically reticent to embrace it.” “As a lover of the biblical text, I cannot allegorize the Book of Genesis that far.” Here the ‘mixing’ has, again, become apparent-“I am theologically reticent to embrace it”. However, the most baffling part of this text, as you will have noticed, is that he calls himself a scientist yet states that “faith and belief go beyond scientific evidence for this scientist”. To top it off, he puts such statement between brackets, as if it’s no big deal. To me, anyone claiming scientific evidence is subordinate to his personal belief, has disqualified himself before any ‘argument’ is construed. "He is definitely criticizing the science” As you know, criticising the science is done on the platform of peer reviewed journals. JT has never responded via this platform to any published paper concerning OoL research. While one can indeed use popular media channels to convey science, even on a specialised level, scientists will nevertheless and foremost engage via these journals. So is he criticising the science? Only on media channels ... And is it critique or mere opinion? (I will adress that later) At the end of the Farine-Tour debate at Rice an audience member asked Tour why he has not tried to publish his critiques of origins of life research in reputable journals, instead opting for RU-vid videos. Tour said: “I am not trying to reach the origin of life researchers. I am trying to reach the masses.” Quote from JT: “It is not a matter of politics. I simply do not understand, chemically, how macroevolution could have happened. Hence, am I not free to join the ranks of the skeptical and to sign such a statement without reprisals from those that disagree with me?” The short answer to his question is "no". When one admits to not understanding the Modern Synthesis, one has already dismissed himself from making any relevant statements on the topic. Just because JT doesn't understand something is no reason to identify as a "skeptic" and imply that an entire field of study is wrong. He has demonstrated over and over again, in his presentations and speeches, that he is not informed on the literature and accomplishments on OoL research ... yet he postulates that “they are clueless” and “funding for OoL should be stopped”. I cannot see how you can state that he is “definitely critisising the science”, unless your definition of criticising is restricted to ‘have an opinion’ rather then ‘making an informed (based on relevant knowledge) judgement’. JT doesn’t understand information theories and proposed models for detecting complex systems either-just like he is ignorant on biochemistry. And that’s where you come in handy, to advance his religious creationism-to demonstrate to his gullible audience that even expert scientists in the field, like you, also dismiss AT as fraudulent. You underestimate JT’s intent, to promote the creationist meme “science can’t or doesn’t know” or “scientists like Cronin are frauds”, therefore “science is clueless, even making up stuff” and hence ... “goddidit is more likely or simply the truth”. Sadly, you fell for it. Maybe if you would have read the statements on JT’s own website you would never have engaged with him. Cronin agreed to the Harvard roundtable, as he said during, he "came in good faith" to have a discussion, yet Tour in his opening called Cronin’s work garbage and that OoL researchers couldn’t answer his 5 challenges/questions-which JT without any conference with respondents, threw out via RU-vid, as if he’s the arbiter in chief, as if serious scientists have to 'watch' whatever happens on RU-vid. And what did JT do a couple of weeks after Harvard roundtable? He aimed his vitriol at Cronin on RU-vid and soon thereafter he lured you into his scheme. That's what Cronin got when he said to JT at the dinner table: "I came in good faith". The result is already surfacing. You now have your own RU-vid vid aiming at Cronin-however honest and sincere your intentions might be. But when reading through the comment section, the creationists are already dripping in. That's what you get when engaging with JT & co. Indeed, the fire has started, you’ll be their new asset, their expert that debunks science in favour of ‘goddidit’ and your effort to stop it-if you’re inclined to it, that is-will prove to be next to impossible. Arguing with religious zealots and presuppositionalists is by nature futile. Soon you’ll be [mis]quoted by pseudoscientist organisations like Discovery Institute, Answers in Genesis, etcetera. Your statements, fragments from your vid-expect blatant quote-mining, misrepresentation and editing-will be incorporated in their “proof for god or intelligent design”-argument. As an academic myself, I deplore that you fell for it, just as I find that Cronin as well should have stayed well out of JT’s ‘aureola’. Nothing good comes from it, being cited on creationist websites won’t help your academic career. How will your application for research grants fare when the board discovers you’re being referenced by the Discovery Institute next to pseudoscientists like William Dembski and his crap math and CSI mumbo jumbo? You really want to be associated with nitwits like that, or, more to the point, have you considered that before going on RU-vid with creationism proponents like JT?

@@lizadowning4389 Thanks for your comment. You rather wrote an essay and I am afraid I didn't go in detail throughout but I can tell you a few things: If I am asked to speak to creatonists again, I would. My duty as a scientist is to answer questions in the most factual and scientific fashion possible to anyone taht asks and especially those less informed. This is what science and educators are failing to do, they don't reach out accross the aisle if they don't like the other side basically creating silos of bubbles from which people never come out. I consider my intervention a double mission accomplished. I was able to speak the thruth about Assembly Theory and also creationists heard an atheist telling them that I thought that Intelligent Design supporters were unsophsiticated charlatans, even in writing on my slides. One can be respectful with people's beliefs and as long as they are out in the open one to know whether there is an agenda or not or whether they are using that agenda in the very topics they are discussing with you. In no moment there was that indication with me and the only topics I spoke with Tour were sience. Tour cannot be characterised only as a creationist if he is one, he is also a scientist and a very good one from almost any measure. If they use me for purposes other than the ones I had the intention, that is on them and I may call them out if they go too far. I haven't seen it yet and people on their channel have been not only respectful but open and clear of what is science and what is not. I have heard Prof. Tour talking about religiion even when he is asked to combine it with his science he says that his religion is only the source of his creativity and srpiritual motivation to do good and do science. There are worse things than being a creatonist, which anyone that beliefs in the bible textually is, and there are probably many only that they are not as vocal and seems to be what annoys us the most. It does annoy me when they use it to shape education, for example, and I would and have called it out. But having an agenda to mislead people using science without disclosing it as obscure as Cronin and Walker is way worse. Tour has no chance to make real damage in science. Cronin and Walker already do every day spending public money in large groups that inundate the media and scientific journals with nonsense and falsehoods. When they are rejected in one journal by an editor that calls Cronin out and calls him a fraud, he simply moves to the next one and then the next one with his army of 100 underpaid postdoctoral researchers any checkpoints fail. Unfortunately, I have been forced to become the checkpoint, and it is sad indeed that instead of science communicators reaching out to undo what they have done with all the undeserved hype of Assembly Theory, it is a niche group that turned out to seek the thruth even if they have a motivation that you or I may not like.

Thanks for sharing. However, Assembly Theory does not do anything of what you say. We just proved once and for all that Assembly Theory is actually equivalent to Shannon Entropy, a subclass of algorithmic complexity, and its implementation exactly equivalent to a compression algorithm like LZ. There is zero chance that Assembly Theory, its index or any explanation behind can provide ‘the full causal history’ of an object. It would be cool except that in fact Algorithmic complexity (aka Kolmogorov complexity) already attempts to do this. Via algorithmic probability it can give you the full set of causal models that assemble the object including, with the proper constrains, the one that builds everything bottom up. It is incorrect thinking that algorithmic complexity requires a Turing machine but Assembly Theory doesn’t. Here the papers: arxiv.org/abs/2403.06629 arxiv.org/abs/2210.00901 This last one accepted for publication in npj Systems Biology to be announced soon and the other one also forthcoming. Unfortunately, you are attributing Assembly Theory super powers that does not have but I don’t blame you, it does look like so when reading the papers from Cronin and Walker that make them sound cool and even mystical. In the impossible case Assembly Theory were able to do what you say, so do Shannon Entropy and LZW by way of their full equivalency. Thanks!

@@HectorZenil Thank you for your answer! I will read everything and get back to you.

Indeed. That’s the positive side we can see. So many disinformation and ignorance encourages us and hopefully others to set the record straight and counteract.