Re: God's Utility Function

"Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmene...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote or quoted

My complaint was that your description of Dewar's
mechanism was wrong. You wrote:

At a low level, high- entropy states are more common
than lower entropy ones - so if a dynamical system changes
in some randomly selected way, it is likely to move into a
higher-entropy state.

You should have written: "dynamic states in which entropy
production is high are more common than states in which entropy
production is low - so ... [mutatis mutandis]".

Why do you think I should have written that?
What I wrote was good. Your criticism that it was a
restatement of the second law does not seem accurate.

The second law is another perspective on the same phenomenon -
but its expression omits quanification of the effect - it
says entropy increases, but doesn't look into how fast
that happens.

Look at the rate at which a system explores adjacent microstates,
and their corresponding entropies, and you can see not just
that entropy tends to increase, but also how fast.

That allows you to set up a utilitarian model in which
what happens next is seen as being that which dissipates
the most entropy, subject to the constraints of physical law.

The thesis of the essay is that that utilitarian metric is the
same thing that turns biology into a gigantic optimisation
process. God's Utility Function is entropy. Darwinism
is survival of the most degrading. Biology is a grand
contest to see who can dismantle the remaining residues
of order in the universe first and fastest.
--
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|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ tim@xxxxxxxxxxx Remove lock to
reply.

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Gods Utility Function
    ... Tim, I'm afraid your logic isn't very clear in this essay. ... high- entropy states are more common ... than lower entropy ones - so if a dynamical system changes in some ... Maximum entropy production and the fluctuation theorem - R C Dewar ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: found a picture of evolution in process ...
    ... total entropy still increases even in evolution. ... is no violation of the Second Law. ... Here he discusses crystals. ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: found a picture of evolution in process ...
    ... total entropy still increases even in evolution. ... is no violation of the Second Law. ... Here he discusses crystals. ...
    (comp.os.vms)
  • Re: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics - Irrelevant to Origins
    ... closed systems only. ... But that's NOT the Second Law. ... Thermodynamics has to be just about the most subtle subject ... `A Guide to Entropy and the Second Law,' by Elliot Lieb ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Abolishing the second law of thermodynamics = my ultimate fantasy
    ... be if the second law were defeated on Tuesday, March 13th 2007, 9:38 ... The von Neumann entropy is unchanged by unitary ... classical physics where you know the initial state of the system is ... both of these would allow perpetual use of energy ...
    (sci.physics)
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