Hi,
THis is my third post in this group. The other three were about four
years ago, when this list was allocated in eskimo.org. Here an then I
knew Bruno and some others. In the meantime, I remained deeply
interested in life, the universe and everythng, and this is literal,
because I remained convinced that life, and the phenomenon that
generates it, Evolution with Natural Selection, is the key to
understand the concrete nature of the mathematical universe in which
we live. For this reason I have been learning about evolution, and
deeply related phenomena such are the real nature of enthropy and
computation.
Now I thing that I have my puzzle starting to be completed. It is not
all of my own. I just mix pieces, but I think that no one has
formulated it before in clear terms by mixing these pieces togeter.
Let me share something I wrote not much time ago. Sorry for the
extension:
http://ilevolucionista.blogspot.com/2008/09/entrophy-arrow-of-time-and-life.html
The Arrow of time is, at last, a common subjective experience
experimented by living beings. According with the laws of physics,
time is just a dimension.. or not even that . The solutions of the
equations of General Relativity are cuasy arbitrary four dimensional
manifolds.where time is just a local dimension. That is, can be
approximately suppossed that in a certain point, the time could be
considered as a dimension, but the direction of this dimension can
change from point to point. Superstring theory suggest even more
bizarre 11-dimensional, geometrical figures. No intuition about the
arrow of time or any other subjective experience can be extracted from
phisical theories.
The only natural law that lthat links with subjective experience is
the anthropic principle applied to life in general. Life imposes
strong restrictions in the particular form that our Universe (or
portion of Universe) has in the infinite sea of optional solutions of
General Relativity and String Theory. These restrictions also applies
to the initial conditions. of this universe. The observed increase of
entropy with time in our visible universe means that it started with a
very improbable configuration. But this reasoning is circular: If we
try to elucidate what really is the arrow of time, we can not use
concepts that presupose a certain direction of the arrow of time !!
The quesition, reformulated in strict physical terms is as such: In
the four or eleven-dimensional manifold described by the equations of
relativty or the superstring theory respectively, why our lifes
follows a line from less to more probable configurations of matter,
that is, from less to more entrophy, that is, from less microstates to
more microstates for each observable state?. Why ?
This last view in terms of micro-states is the key for the
explanation: causes are in the side of less microstates. Effects are
in the side of more microstates, because there are less causes than
effects. In the other side, life is all about prediction of the
future. An organism can not make use of the environment for its own
ends if he can not predict what will follow at the chemical,
biological, instinctive or rational levels. Computationally, it is
much more easy to simulate the evolution of a system where entrophy
increse than in the opposite direction. The precision demanded for a
reverse simulation is much higuer: The calculus of the fragmentation
of a glass is not very difficult. Essentially, the results are not
very different using a precission or another. But a reverse simuation
from a broken glass never will reach the re-composition of the glass,
no matter how precise the measure of the real position of the pieces
from a real case were introduced in the simulation.
But the fact is that in our univese, glasses do recompose themselves,
the flame of the candles do recombines liberating oxygen and make grow
the candle, objects lighter than water sink. Why? because these events
exist in our space time; Just go in the reverse time dimension in our
space-time manifold to see them. The laws of physics permits them.
They are just reversible chemical reactions, reversible object
collisions at the particle or macroscopic level.
In terms of our perception of time, the outcomes we see happens just
because they are cuasi-infinitely probable and the reverse
counterparts, cuasi infinitely improbalbe. But, that is also an
illlusion of the arrow of time, because , In terms of time-agnostic
spacetime manifold reasoning, our life vector in space-time go along
the increase of entrophy, not the other way around. That is: the
outcomes of probability laws are a consequience of our trajectory in
space time. Why our life follow this direction?. The reason is
computational, as I said before.
The essence of life is to identify risks and opportunities, that is,
to identify causes to react accordingly in order to achive efffects
that permit survival and reproduction, while maintaining the internal
disorder controlled. This happens at all levels of life. From the
chemical to the neuronal level, the living beings look at the present
to predict the effects in the phisical direction of entropy increase.
life can not operate in other but in such direction, because this is
the computable direction.
Computation is done at all levels. chemically a cell computes by
generating proteins triggered by an stimulus, these proteins will aid
the cell to cope with what will come nest, either engulf food in the
protoplasma and diggest it or to expell toxins to scape from a
predator. For this reason life chooses the esasy path in the universe-
manifold: because computationally it is easier.
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Received on Sat Jan 24 2009 - 07:15:07 PST