Entropy and life, response to message

I think I agree with him. He's using "scholar talk" to make stuff sound more complicated than it is.

About life:

There's one place I'd argue with him: life isn't just a matter of semantics. The most naive viewpoint is that life is totally different and special. The second most naive viewpoint is that it's semantics. But I think the least naive argument is that classification into the "life" category can be done pretty accurately (think about using machine learning to do it) with a bunch of features. You really can tell if something is alive or not, and a bunch of features should be used to do that. The answer is not binary, but it's still an answer.

About entropy:

The simple statement is that humans organize things (decrease entropy) but they use energy to do that (mostly from the sun). So they decrease entropy in places but by using up the sun's energy really entropy is increasing overall.

My point earlier was with a really simple system like two balls bouncing around in a box with no friction at all.... the entropy trend is not as clear (I think). Sometimes they will move together, sometimes not, sometimes close, something far, sometimes synchronized, sometimes not, etc.

But as the number of balls increases, the probability of "organized things" happening by chanced (like ones I mentioned above) decreases.

And, if you have billions of balls...(like atoms), random organization (decrease in entropy) is just so improbable that you can make physical laws saying that the trend goes toward entropy. The likelihood of someone proving the law wrong is so low that it will pretty much never happen.






my friend wrote:

> Actually, the surrounding parts to that passage above are also great,
> and that passage by itself is probably no good. He analogizes the
> mechanical automata (machines) to human automata and speaks more
> generally about how life, or humans, play a role in decreasing entropy.
> Here's the larger passage attached.
>
>
>     I was just reading a book called The Human Use of Human Beings by
>     Norbert Wiener and I stumbled on this passage and I remembered us
>     talking about whether life, humans, and society could be seen as
>     reversing entropy. Here, Wiener describes it exactly as so, calling
>     it "anti-entropic", but also stating that it may be only locally
>     that it is anti-entropic and globally the second law of
>     thermodynamics is not violated.
>
>     "Here I want to interject the semantic point that such
>     words as life, purpose, and soul are grossly inadequate
>     to precse scientific thinking. These terms have gained
>     their significance through our recognition of the unity
>     of a certain group of phenomena, and do not in fact
>     furnish us with any adequate basis to characterize this
>     unity. Whenever we find a new phenomenon which
>     partakes to some degree of the nature of those which
>     we have already termed "living phenomena," but does
>     not conform to all the associated aspects which define
>     the term "life," we are faced with the problem whether
>     to enlarge the word "life" so as to include them, or
>     to deline it 'in a more restrictive way so as to exclude
>     them. We have encountered this problem in the past
>     in considering viruses, which show some of the tend
>     encies of life-to persist, to multiply, and to organize-
>     but do not express these tendencies in a fully-devel
>     oped form. Now that certain analogies of behavior are
>     being observed between the machine and the living
>     organism, the problem as to whether the machine is
>     alive or not is, for our purposes, semantic and we are
>     at liberty to answer it one way or the other as best suits
>     our convenience. As Humpty Dumpty says about some
>     of his more remarkable words, "1 pay them extra, and
>     make them do what 1 want." If we wish to use the word "life" to
>     cover all phe
>     nomena which locally swim upstream against the
>     current of increasing entropy, we are at liberty to do
>     so. However, we shall then include many astronomical
>     phenomena which have only the shadiest resemblance
>     to life as we ordinarily know it. It is in my opinion,
>     therefore, best to avoid all question-begging epithets
>     such as "life," "soul," "vitalism," and the like, and say
>     merely in connection with machines that there is no
>     reason why they may not resemble human beings in
>     representing pockets of decreasing entropy in a frame
>     work in which the large entropy tends to increase.
>     When 1 compare the living organism with such a
>     machine, I do not for a moment mean that the specific
>     physical, chemical, and spiritual processes of life as we
>     ordinarily know it are the same as those of life-imitat
>     ing machines. I mean simply that they both can exem
>     plify locally anti-entropic processes, which perhaps
>     may also be exemplified in many other ways which we
>     should naturally term neither biological nor mechani
>     cal.
>     While it is impossible to make any universal state
>     ments concerning life-imitating automata in a field
>     which is growing as rapidly as that of automatization,
>     there are some general features of these machines as
>     they actually exist that 1 should like to emphasize. One
>     is that they are machines to perform some definite task
>     or tasks, and therefore must possess effector organs
>     ( analogous to arms and legs in human beings) with
>     which such tasks can be performed. The second point
>     is that they must be en rapport with the outer world
>     by sense organs, such as photoelectric cells and ther
>     mometers, which not only tell them what the existing
>     circumstances are, but enable them to record the per
>     formance or nonperformance of their own tasks. This
>     last function, as we have seen, is called feedback, the
>     property of being able to adjust future conduct by past
>     performance. Feedback may be as simple as that of the
>     common reflex, or it may be a higher order feedback,
>     in which past experience is used not only to regulate
>     specific movements, but also whole policies of be
>     havior. Such a policy-feedback may, and often does,
>     appear to be what we know under one aspect as a
>     conditioned reflex, and under another as learning. "
>
>