>>5740527There was a Quanta web article about a new combined physics / chemistry / evolution theory of Time. Everyone knows about space-time gravity wells etc. Time unified with Space. Well there is a new theory apparently called Assembly Theory, it attempts to unify Time and Matter, "Time as object".
Basically Time is the computational "memory" needed to assemble an object from fundamental components. It is trying to reconcile fundamental physics where elementary particles spontaneously arise from energy, with evolutionary biology and chemistry, where compounds are being formed by selection. The theory is obviously inspired by computing (similar variant called Constructor theory)
The phrase abracadabra has Assembly Index 7
0 a, 1 ab, 2 abr, 3 abra, 4 abrac, 5 abraca, 6 abracad, 7abracadabra (abra assembled at step 3)
A phrase like abcdefghijk would have Assembly Index 10 because it has no repeat sequences (similar to Kolmogorov complexity). It does not have to be letters or symbols, it could be atoms, or molecules, or various components of Life etc... The idea is this Assembly Index is a measure of Time. If you go back in Time, the theory is complexity is reduced, from human back to an amoeba, or even the beginnings of the Universe the Big Bang etc. before even electromagnetic waves / cosmic background radiation formed. So this memory or Assembly Index is like a dimension of Time, and crucially it is agnostic to the components, you can set the constructed elements to anything you want. It is converting Time to computational instructions, a measure of the informational complexity of Matter.
The researchers did some empirical validation apparently an index of 13-15 is the cutoff, random selection cannot surpass 13 levels whereas Life ie organic compounds begin at 15 steps. However I wonder if you could try ridiculous things (take a speck of yeast, which is alive, place it on an inert rock, thus increasing the Assembly Index. But I have not made the rock-yeast combo more "alive". The researchers might argue that if you found a lot of specks mysteriously appearing on rocks, this might be a sign of a strange new life mechanism).
There are some ambitious claims about this Assembly Index Theory, I was suspicious because it feels like the old Paley's Watchmaker God Argument refuted by Hume. The researchers even stated it as an analogy "like throwing thousands of Lego into the air and finding themselves reassembled into the Taj Mahal" which is exactly the Paley Watchmaker flawed philosophical line of reasoning. It could also be orthogenesis (a common fallacy of "goal-oriented evolution", teleological evolution, the more sophisticated fallacy is not god but akin to "things evolve towards greater complexity" which is a stronger assertion than mere random selection and survival fit to environment). Nonetheless this new theory of Time is worth pondering, it made me consider a lot of phenomena from a new perspective
