On the Nature of Things | Forum

Taboo wrote:

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:Life actually speeds up entropy, decreasing it locally at the cost of increasing it globally.

But with consciousness with have the capacity to re-order how the matter and energy is used. Perhaps one day we'll be able to cause a star. Then what?

Then we'll have hugely increased entropy.

One has to wonder, if there's no cure for entropy, how are we here?

Milo wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:Life actually speeds up entropy, decreasing it locally at the cost of increasing it globally.

But with consciousness with have the capacity to re-order how the matter and energy is used. Perhaps one day we'll be able to cause a star. Then what?

Then we'll have hugely increased entropy.

One has to wonder, if there's no cure for entropy, how are we here?

Temporarily.

Taboo wrote:

Milo wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:Life actually speeds up entropy, decreasing it locally at the cost of increasing it globally.

But with consciousness with have the capacity to re-order how the matter and energy is used. Perhaps one day we'll be able to cause a star. Then what?

Then we'll have hugely increased entropy.

One has to wonder, if there's no cure for entropy, how are we here?

Temporarily.

This is the deepest and greatest dogma of all.

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Milo wrote: One has to wonder, if there's no cure for entropy, how are we here?

Temporarily.

This is the deepest and greatest dogma of all.

Dogma? Please explain.

Taboo wrote:

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Milo wrote: One has to wonder, if there's no cure for entropy, how are we here?

Temporarily.

This is the deepest and greatest dogma of all.

Dogma? Please explain.

The idea that the universe has a beginning and an end. Almost every single person believes it.

It is not a matter of dogma. Just look at the sky on a clear night. Is it black?

Taboo wrote:It is not a matter of dogma. Just look at the sky on a clear night. Is it black?

No. All that means is that we have the ability to perceive depth based upon the luminousity of light reaching us. 'Darkness' is simply a cognitive application where we eliminate data within a certain range. Any light that is not luminous enough to trigger our sensory perception of it is categorized by the mind as 'dark'.

Also, why can there not be an infinite and eternal non-static universe?

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:It is not a matter of dogma. Just look at the sky on a clear night. Is it black?

No. All that means is that we have the ability to perceive depth based upon the luminousity of light reaching us. 'Darkness' is simply a cognitive application where we eliminate data within a certain range. Any light that is not luminous enough to trigger our sensory perception of it is categorized by the mind as 'dark'.

Well, brightness decreases with the square of the distance. In a homogenous universe (as ours looks like, on the largest of scales), the number of stars for an extra unit of distance increases with the square of the distance. The two then cancel out, giving constant luminosity at each distance. Given eternity, any clouds that block the way would be heated up to the same temperature as incoming radiation, and radiate accordingly.

Also, why can there not be an infinite and eternal non-static universe?

Well, I am referring to the causally linked area of our universe, since as far as we know we can't even in theory observe any parts of space that are moving away from us faster than the speed of light. As to what is happening outside the observable lightcone, it is simply speculation. And yes, there are those who have posited theories of eternal inflation. So far they are untestable.

What we do know is that within our observable (causally closed) 100 billion light-year universe, entropy is forever increasing. In the incredibly distant future, even black holes will evaporate, unless something else rends space apart before that.

Well...I think entropy is real in its affects on the PARTS of the universe. I am just not sold that it applies to the WHOLE universe. I really do not believe that scientists have a handle on what will happen to the universe billions of years from now, or what happened to it billions of years ago. Some dudes send up a radio into space and saw an image and that confirmed the notion of a 'big bang'. I don't believe it. I don't disbelieve it. It just seems like, "Hey that reminds me of the story in Genesis."

Enki wrote:Well...I think entropy is real in its affects on the PARTS of the universe. I am just not sold that it applies to the WHOLE universe. I really do not believe that scientists have a handle on what will happen to the universe billions of years from now, or what happened to it billions of years ago. Some dudes send up a radio into space and saw an image and that confirmed the notion of a 'big bang'. I don't believe it. I don't disbelieve it. It just seems like, "Hey that reminds me of the story in Genesis."

It did not confirm the theory of the big bang* since theories cannot be confirmed. It did however subject it to a pretty thorough falsification test, and it passed it with flying colors. The idea is that if inflation happened, some very particular tell-tale marks would be left in the cosmic microwave background, as quantum-level fluctuations would be caught by inflation and magnified to cosmic scale. The size of the deviations from uniformity matches inflation theory quite well.

Other observations that favor the theory: Hubble redshift, nuclear abundance (hydrogen and helium ratios in the universe), and matching with the age of the oldest stars.

*(which is I think very unfortunately named, not surprising, since acquired its name from the derisory name given to it by its opponents - as if the tea-party would embrace the tea-bagger appelative)

Taboo wrote:

Milo wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:Life actually speeds up entropy, decreasing it locally at the cost of increasing it globally.

But with consciousness with have the capacity to re-order how the matter and energy is used. Perhaps one day we'll be able to cause a star. Then what?

Then we'll have hugely increased entropy.

One has to wonder, if there's no cure for entropy, how are we here?

Temporarily.

Or temporarily over and over again

Milo wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Milo wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:Life actually speeds up entropy, decreasing it locally at the cost of increasing it globally.

But with consciousness with have the capacity to re-order how the matter and energy is used. Perhaps one day we'll be able to cause a star. Then what?

Then we'll have hugely increased entropy.

One has to wonder, if there's no cure for entropy, how are we here?

Temporarily.

Or temporarily over and over again

Believing it reconfigures the same way twice is also dogma.

Maybe what we have is a never-ending evolution.

Milo wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Milo wrote:

Taboo wrote:

Enki wrote:

Taboo wrote:Life actually speeds up entropy, decreasing it locally at the cost of increasing it globally.

But with consciousness with have the capacity to re-order how the matter and energy is used. Perhaps one day we'll be able to cause a star. Then what?

Then we'll have hugely increased entropy.

One has to wonder, if there's no cure for entropy, how are we here?

Temporarily.

Or temporarily over and over again

Curiously, your mom said the same thing.

Don't be that guy...

Fine, don't let me get in the way of the desire for pointless eternity.

Enki wrote:

Milo wrote:

Parodite wrote:

Enki wrote:

Parodite wrote:I think physical reality pretty much fits the definition of Singularity.

Yes, but a technological singularity is a particular configuration of it. The notion is that it consumes everything that it can possibly come in contact with, kind of like a black hole.

In the Singularity is Near he postulates that the Singularity will emerge, beginning to upgrade itself and its capacity to upgrade itself increases exponentially and doesn't stop until it has consumed all matter in the universe.

I was thinking entropy doing just that. Entropyticus Rex is among us! It squeezes and consumes the universe into a dead cold and infinitly thin sheet of lavender paper.

Actually some think that the singularity will solve entropy!

http://goo.gl/2nEn

Life solves entropy.

Entropy solves life.

Typhoon wrote:Entropy solves life.

Life solves life.

The notion that not only ourselves, but everything must one day die, is so deeply ingrained within us that it factors into almost every religious belief, and I think that science was incapable of dropping that piece of religious dogma. So is it a valid observation of the universe or simply a sort of a priori bias to deeply wired into our neurological structure that we lack even the cognitive ability to contemplate that it might be otherwise?

The only thing people fear more than death is eternity.

Enki wrote:

Typhoon wrote:Entropy solves life.

Life solves life.

The notion that not only ourselves, but everything must one day die, is so deeply ingrained within us that it factors into almost every religious belief, and I think that science was incapable of dropping that piece of religious dogma. So is it a valid observation of the universe or simply a sort of a priori bias to deeply wired into our neurological structure that we lack even the cognitive ability to contemplate that it might be otherwise?

The only thing people fear more than death is eternity.

Agreed.

Single-Atom Transistor

The nature of humanity is transcendence. Moore's law is just an idea. The NYT speculated that it might be possible in a million years for man to fly- and printed that ten days before Kitty Hawk.

Demon of Undoing wrote:Single-Atom Transistor

The nature of humanity is transcendence. Moore's law is just an idea. The NYT speculated that it might be possible in a million years for man to fly- and printed that ten days before Kitty Hawk.

Without a doubt. I usually make my predictions more conservative than I expect them to be.

When the professional drivers start getting put out of business by driverless cars in the next decade, that's going to be a major shift. That we are already arguing free-speech for computers in the courts is a very important milestone I think.

Dioscuri wrote:

Taboo wrote:I don't understand. What is the Singularity? How would we know we've passed its event horizon, so to speak?

When the production of true statements regarding a particular object exceeds the capacity of a human at current (unaided) levels of cognitive speed.

Didn't that already happen a century ago?

Milo wrote:I would say that Moore's law is useful in the same way that whole numbers are: for example, when the number of transistors in the world exceeds the number of neurons, we have an actual measure of when things have begun to turn. Not that we know that is singularity but that singularity is pretty well inevitable for even the most skeptical at that point.

Unless some short-circuit in a ten cent computer chip sets off a nuclear war.

I was also using M'sL to stand in for similar laws that look at pipes and storage systems.

Also Wright's Law

Enki wrote:

The only thing people fear more than death is eternity.

"Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie". -- Pascal

Taboo wrote:

Enki wrote:The Singularity isn't about a field of subject matter becoming broader than an individual's ability to understand it. It's when the computation of a machine exceeds the IQ of about 150, i.e. when a machine has the ability to upgrade itself, its intelligence will increase exponentially.

How do we know how smart a machine must be to be able to successfully upgrade itself? Even mindless systems (like Evolution) can effect change on a working pattern, but how would we (or it) recognize a successful upgraded version of itself from the failures?

This is the Halting Problem, undecidable in the general. Incompleteness is a weak case of the Halting Problem.