Ideation on Entropy, Life, Civilization, and Fractals
| Ideation on Entropy, Life, Civilization, and Fractals21-04-2021 23:50 | |
| gpbala☆☆☆☆☆ (1) |
Hello Co-Thinkers, I have a speculative interest in relating civilizational evolution to the natural life-driven objective function of minimizing entropy locally. This may transcend climate, but climate is definitely a core piece and thus a good place to start. Inviting any and all to ideate with me in this area, wherever it may lead... First, a quick "in the beginning part" -- If we think about it, and very likely you already have, life forms in the universe are things that tend to directionally or "intentionally" counteract entropy in their own local space and time - even in fractal layers (more on that later). This offers a general operational definition of living things. Notice it doesn't presuppose carbon, etc. -- those incarnations and instances likely just localized special cases of life such "as we know it" here. At this point, we only know of such phenomena on Earth, mostly carbon-based. A reasonable hypothesis is that the localized counter-entropy property is a universal characteristic or indicator of all life forms, something to look for in our search, no matter what the "matter" involved.As you probably already know, Schrödinger also formulated a similar set of ideas way back when (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_and_life#Negative_entropy). The idea here is that Schrödinger's paradox suggested that life forms violate the second law of thermodynamics as they seemingly counteract the tendency of increasing entropy -- a known physical law. The pushback on that assertion of course is that life forms do not operate in closed systems, as they obtain useful energy and resources from the surrounding environment and then discard their products of life externally back into that environment, in a more disorderly form, as a byproduct of maintaining their own internal order. This then nets out so that global entropy and output thermal energy still obey the physical laws. There is also more recent postulation (https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/2/37/2011/) that the formation of life may be the universe's way of accelerating its natural tendency to increase entropy, as when netted out, the longer-term effects of life forms on the general environment is greater general entropy and at a faster rate. Not to get too much into the thermodynamic science of it, but that's the gist. Now, reasoning by observational analogy, social structures exhibit similar behavior. While endeavoring towards self-preservation and further advancement, tribes, families, households, organizations, businesses, multinational corporations, governments, nations, empires, political systems, and the like all do the same thing -- maximize and compete for input energy and resources while producing external outputs of higher entropy and of traditionally less concern to internal processes and operations. "It's me who cares about my neighbor dumping garbage on my lawn, not so much my neighbor." For most of human history up to the near present, this "live and let die" or "ignorance of unintended consequences" has been the modus operandi of humanity, but at this point in our history it can no longer be. Perhaps even our evolved "us versus them" divisiveness tendencies are rooted in our need to protect our quantity of minimized entropy local to our groupings. What then is needed is greater influence, governance, meta-engineering, or whatever we want to call it that deals with these things we in the know call "externalities" -- the overlooked entropy shifted from the internal to the external in favor of promoting the internal. Life forms do it, and so do social structures. The structures grow via successively, fractally, expanding circles of empathy -- radii within which only the internal stakeholders care and outside which only the external impacted stakeholders care. Traditionally, only the former has been precisely measured and managed. Perhaps, in our now increasing level of enlightenment of this wider scope of our effects, we are now technologically, if done right, incubating a framework to enable and operationalize the latter to be precisely measured and managed as well, and to characterize the interactions between the interior and exterior. Serendipitously, as we recognize, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has ushered in the ability to quantify and actionalize such social entropy. These new measurement and management capabilities then enable civilization to innovate going forward in such a way that future technologies and social arrangements developed best utilize free energy (in both the thermodynamic sense and being virtually free from our local star) to do useful work that satisfies both civilizational needs -- transportation, construction, information processing, internal environmental controls, manufacturing, pastimes, and the like -- but also to optimally manage the entropy outputs of all those activities in such a way that their effects are not adverse -- to widen the circles so large that they don't negatively affect anyone, or at least as minimally as possible -- or, more ideally, cycle back as useful resources serving some other circle, fractally perhaps -- analogous to the symbiosis between plants and animals. New ideas and approaches such as "circularity" are along that axis. More generally, socially thermodynamic external entropy considerations can then be input to all decisions of action -- investments, innovations, structuring, building, deployment and the rest. It can also be noted also that there may well be a lot of "doing well by doing good" types of business opportunities that can arise from thinking in this kind of frame. An additional analogy with life forms is the use of regenerative information (DNA in our local Earthly case) for propagation and generational preservation (again, at risk of restating the obvious to you) -- with this information property being a necessary condition for robustly perpetuating the ability to maintain complexity, counteracting entropy in localized space and time. This also applies to perpetuating social structures,.while its absence conversely causes degeneration (analogous to cancer) resulting from cultural malaise, loss of purpose, rudderlessness, and such -- counteracted by enabling information-driven reinvention and renewal like Darwinian adaptation through information management analogous to biological systems. We note, for example, that technology-centric companies are particularly better at doing this kind of reinventive thing. The above was also peppered with references to fractals. There has been additional recent study (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259436547_The_potential_for_detecting_%27life_as_we_don%27t_know_it%27_by_fractal_complexity_analysis) applying this idea to assess the probability of extraterrestrial life forms being present, through implicit observations, as indications of their past existence. Lots of fertile ground there too. For example, the techniques describe spatial analyses, so got me wondering if the techniques could also be applied to temporal observations on exoplanets -- perhaps needing various time series spanning multiple earth years, but still feasible. For example, if a far off observer of Earth could detect changes in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere following curves of fractal dimension greater than a "natural" process background, it could indicate the existence of an ordering process, something living, namely the collective effects of our civilization, reflecting again on your presentation regarding quantifying the characteristics of the "human experiment". More advanced civilizations might also have more pronounced fractal signatures, easier to detect -- and perhaps specify a recipe for how we go about optimally ordering things in our human future. Overall, there are a lot of things in broad areas to ideate upon in this frame of thinking. |
| 22-04-2021 00:48 | |
IBdaMann ★★★★★(14448) |
gpbala wrote:I have a speculative interest in relating civilizational evolution to the natural life-driven objective function of minimizing entropy locally. Before I call BOOLSCH'T, I'd like to give you an opportunity to explain the word soup you just spilled on my screen. When you say "reduce entropy" you are not only implying a closed system but are implying one that egregiously violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. However, the word "locally" implies an open system. Unless you have a good explanation this is an irreconcilable contradiction involving violating physics. Would you care to elaborate? @ Harvey, per our previous discussion, this is another newcomer who was not expecting to be met with any actual science and is obviously totally unprepared for his utter misconceptions to be questioned. If this person leaves it's not because he was somehow "attacked." gpbala wrote: This may transcend climate, but climate is definitely a core piece and thus a good place to start. Nope. The only place to start is with a formal, unambiguous definition of Climate. Presume I have no idea to what you refer when you use that word. So go ahead, lay it on me ... Climate = ? gpbala wrote: Inviting any and all to ideate with me in this area, wherever it may lead... OK, I'll start this show ... as FIRE flares from my fingers and I resin up my bow. Idea #1: Why don't we just change the constant of gravity and control the flow of negative work until all the entropy is effectively washed away ... or am I missing something? gpbala wrote: First, a quick "in the beginning part" -- If we think about it, and very likely you already have, life forms in the universe are things that tend to directionally or "intentionally" counteract entropy in their own local space and time - even in fractal layers (more on that later). Man, how I am biting my tongue right now. gpbala wrote:This offers a general operational definition of living things. Notice it doesn't presuppose carbon, etc. -- those incarnations and instances likely just localized special cases of life such "as we know it" here. At this point, we only know of such phenomena on Earth, mostly carbon-based. A reasonable hypothesis is that the localized counter-entropy property is a universal characteristic or indicator of all life forms, something to look for in our search, no matter what the "matter" involved. I can't take this anymore. gpbala wrote: As you probably already know, Schrödinger also formulated a similar set of ideas way back when. ... and here I was thinking he theorized on quantum mechanics. Well hog-tie me and throw me in the fire, if that don't beat all. gpbala wrote: The idea here is that Schrödinger's paradox suggested that life forms violate the second law of thermodynamics as they seemingly counteract the tendency of increasing entropy -- a known physical law. Schrödinger's paradox is that we don't know if the cat is dead or alive until we collapse the wave function with an observation. How does that relate to what you are claiming it is? gpbala wrote: The pushback on that assertion of course is that life forms do not operate in closed systems, All the life forms of which we are aware operate within the closed solar system. I hope that doesn't rip a gaping hole in your premise. gpbala wrote: This then nets out so that global entropy and output thermal energy still obey the physical laws. This is pure gibberish, I'm sorry. You don't have a clue what you're talking about. gpbala wrote: There is also more recent postulation that the formation of life may be the universe's way of accelerating its natural tendency to increase entropy, I am not aware of any acceleration that the universe applies to the creation of entropy. What does that even mean? gpbala wrote: Not to get too much into the thermodynamic science Don't worry, you haven't gotten there yet. gpbala wrote: Now, reasoning by observational analogy, What is analogous to observation that I can use instead? gpbala wrote: ... social structures exhibit similar behavior. They don't use direct observation either? gpbala wrote: "It's me who cares about my neighbor dumping garbage on my lawn, not so much my neighbor." Are you saying that the universe's acceleration of entropy is what makes your neighbor dump his garbage on your lawn? gpbala wrote: , this "live and let die" or "ignorance of unintended consequences" has been the modus operandi of humanity, but at this point in our history it can no longer be. What's special about this point in human history? gpbala wrote: What then is needed is greater influence, governance, meta-engineering, or whatever we want to call it that deals with these things we in the know call "externalities" You did it. You went there. You want to discuss "externalities" as though it is a legitimate concept. This is what you have told me: 1. You are a Marxist. 2. You HATE capitalism 3. You'd like to see corporations taxed to the bone. 4. You'd like nothing more than a tax on the second law of thermodynamics. 5. All of the confusing/baffling/contradictory lead-in above is pure set-up to disguise points 1-4 from your audience. After you unambiguously define "Climate" explain why capitalism is bad. We'll get to "externalities" right after you have done both. @ Harvey, this person knows nothing about economics and came here to push a Marxist agenda that involves broken economics and ultimately destroying capitalism. What is one to do?  |
| 22-04-2021 01:55 | |
| GasGuzzler★★★★★ (2935) |
gpbala wrote: What then is needed is greater influence, governance, meta-engineering, or whatever we want to call it that deals with these things we in the know..... For someone that is not "in the know" such as myself, I'm pretty good at sifting through all the urine to find your purest shit. (quoted above) IBdaMann has nailed you quite precisely in points 1 through 5. However, I would like to add #6. The phrase "we in the know" tells me- #6 you are also a snot nosed arrogant elitist piece of pure shit. Radiation will not penetrate a perfect insulator, thus as I said space is not a perfect insulator.- Swan |
| 22-04-2021 07:41 | |
gfm7175 ★★★★★(3314) |
Thank you IBD and Guzzler for taking the time with this. I, beforehand, read the first few sentences of the OP, saw the complete word salad, and dismissed it on sight. The moment that I was tipped off about what you both have so beautifully addressed was the moment that I read the word "co-thinkers". This tipped me off that the OP is a member of some sort of fundamentalist religious cult (in this case, the Church of Global Warming) and that he wishes to recruit others into his cult (apparently thinking that his making use of a bunch of confusing gibberbabble would come across as him being "enlightened"). For purposes of "what we have been told", this bit of mine regarding the word "co-thinkers" can be considered as "#7". |
| 22-04-2021 08:17 | |
| gfm7175★★★★★ (3314) |
IBdaMann wrote: @ Harvey I am in total agreement with what IBD is saying to you here. This person just wishes to preach his gibberbabble-tinged misconceptions to the choir (notice how he addressed his post to "co-thinkers"?) ... Unless Duncan wishes to make an appearance in this thread, and wishes to allow this person to do to him as he allows Pete Rogers to do to him, then I suspect that this person will leave in a likewise manner to many others that have come before him. Edited on 22-04-2021 08:25 |
| 22-04-2021 20:40 | |
Into the Night ★★★★★(21624) |
GasGuzzler wrote:gpbala wrote: What then is needed is greater influence, governance, meta-engineering, or whatever we want to call it that deals with these things we in the know..... Nice focus. That's exactly right. The Parrot Killer Debunked in my sig. - tmiddles Google keeps track of paranoid talk and i'm not on their list. I've been evaluated and certified. - keepit nuclear powered ships do not require nuclear fuel. - Swan While it is true that fossils do not burn it is also true that fossil fuels burn very well - Swan |
| 22-04-2021 21:08 | |
HarveyH55 ★★★★★(5197) |
I don't really get int the philosophy 'stuff', and it was a long post, that didn't really spark much interest... Only clicked, because I saw 'FRACTALS', but was totally pissed off, when the word wasn't even used correctly... Fractals, are a math thing, geometry which is actually cool. The math was just a little over my book learning, but I could struggle through a little of it. I got hooked in high school, but didn't really dig into it, until later, after college, and I got my first home computer. It was before Al Gore 'invented' the internet, so basically, people either bought, or wrote their own programs... Benoit Mandelbrot, did some amazing images, with just fractals. I like the Mandelbrot set the best, but there were no programs available, and I wanted to explore so bad. Never really got a program to work, likely because it was pitiful, compared to the university mainframe the images in the book came from. Anyway, basically just scanned through the post, looking for the fractals, and a total rip-off. Is nothing sacred any more? |
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