Talk:Assembly theory

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A fact from Assembly theory appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 30 July 2021 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that assembly theory provides an experimentally verifiable way of detecting extraterrestrial life without needing to define what life is?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2021/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Assembly theory.

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Confusing sentence

I find the following sentence from the article extremely confusing. It's very long, and it contains many double negatives. I recommend rewriting it.

I would rewrite it myself, but I honestly don't understand what it's trying to say. The article is also locked, so I can't add a "Clarify" tag.

Here's the sentence:

"Benner argues that it is transparently false that non-living systems, and with no life intervention, cannot contain molecules that are complex but people would be misled in thinking that because it was published in Nature journals after peer review, these papers must be right."

LibreLearner (talk) 08:23, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support for Assembly Theory

Hello, I would like to propose a section on the philosophical, mathematical, and scientific support for Assembly Theory. This theory does not emerge in a complete vacuum. There are at least two previous papers that are predecessors, companions and in support to AT's formulation, Gregory Chaitin's "Towards a mathematical definition of Life", and Ioannis Tamvakis's "Quantifying Life". I can provide links if necessary. I think that AT is an important step into understanding Life, to the least philosophically, so we need a section like this to underlie that not at all scientists are negative to it, and connect it with its proper context in the history of theoretical biology. Deepforests (talk) 14:36, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have secondary sources that explicitly connect those two papers to Assembly theory? MrOllie (talk) 14:47, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment no but I think it is self evident they are connected. If you look at the formulations all 3 theories consider similar metrics. I would not consider how credible they are, just note in the page that they are in the same vein of philosophical approach to life. If we put this kernel in the wiki others might contribute more. Deepforests (talk) 17:52, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Without sources we cannot include this connection. Wikipedia is not the right place to drum up support for others to follow this approach. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:58, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia though, and this theory needs to be placed in it's proper context, with all respect to you and your work. I think that if there is an explicit part about Criticism there should be a part as well of "support" somewhere in the text. Could this be in the main Background section? As an academic I should be able to contribute in connecting Assembly theory to other areas of information theory if there is a self-evident point to be made. Could I propose a short paragraph and we revise it here? Deepforests (talk) 13:10, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look at WP:NOR. We cannot draw this connection ourselves. MrOllie (talk) 20:53, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the link, indeed I was not aware of it. My proposal falls under the "Synthesis.." section from the link. All authors in the 3 theories explicitly propose quantifying life under information terms. Would it be acceptable to point this out with references from all 3 works? Deepforests (talk) 13:23, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No. That is exactly the kind of thing that is barred by the policy on Synthesis. MrOllie (talk) 14:10, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am sorry, it seems that there is a certain way that we could mention the original research and avoid synthesis, as pointed out in the WP:NOR. That is, if I just point out what the primary sources have stated on the topic at hand. There will be no further elaboration on my part. Then we all should be happy. There is no blanket ban on referring to multiple authors's original work, is there? Would it be too much to ask to give a paragraph to be considered? Deepforests (talk) 17:09, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I do not believe there is any way to mention these papers without performing synthesis - you have to perform synthesis to establish that they are related to the topic of this article at all. You can write a paragraph if you like, but I would not expect it to appear in the article without a secondary source that actually makes a connection. MrOllie (talk) 17:13, 16 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A Citation from Quanta?

Quanta Magazine is a site for popular science reporting, instead of an actual scientific journal where literature is presented, and is therefore unreliable. Is there a reason for this citation? GordyBeefPasta (talk) 09:38, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's not used as a citation, it is in the further reading section which has more relaxed requirements. MrOllie (talk) 11:15, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]