Is there evidence of " Cleverness " in Nature and it's processes ?

[Acme]

Acme,

 

True insights are had regularly, more than once, because they are fitting and appropriate.

 

In my estimation scientific method relies heavily on this. Peer review would require a second mind to have an obtainable, real, true insight, similar to the first, for real true reasons. And it has not been the case, that one can have a true insight, that cannot be had by another, and certainly if it is a true insight, insight haver B can have it independently from insight haver A. In other words, Hofstadler's having a true insight, does not prevent me from having it, independently. If the insights are true, they can be reproduced and obtained independantly, and your requirement that I read his arguments, to talk about them, cuts out the most important middleman, that being reality itself, which is available to me through the insights of all I have read, all I have witnessed and all I have mused about.

 

Thus the odds of having a false insight more than once are low, but the odds of having a true insight, more than once, is exceedingly high.

 

snip...

Well, I'm not exactly requiring you to read I Am A Strange Loop; rather suggesting it. I'm rather confused at your resistance TTTT. [To Tell The Truth]

 

As to the insights, I wasn't suggesting they can't happen more than once, only that they mustn't. That is to say multiples are a sufficient condition, but not necessary. Again I am confused at you resistance to reading Hofstadter. ?? You do after all include "all I have read" as a source of insight. In the current vernacular, whatever.

[tar]

Acme,

 

I am not resisting reading it. Just not requiring myself to read it, inorder to hold similar insights.

 

I already noted that there are other books on my shelf that I am requiring myself to read, eventually, and just do not have Hofstadler on my shelf, or on my priority list. I may very well eventually read him, so it is not resistance. However there is the important consideration, that inorder to discuss the ideas that you hold, having read his arguments, it is a requirement that I read those particular arguments to have a mutual basis upon which to proceed. I conceed this, while at the same time suggest that true things will remain true, and can be noticed in other ways, by other routes that do not require reading the book, to get to.

 

As to the OP. Mike has allowed that we can proceed without the word cleverness, and still be talking about something of the sort.

"Strange" loops, indicate to me that there is a surprising and unexpected quality to the universe that we are not yet aware of, that we will find, if we do the math. What if I already "felt" the thing, embraced it, consider it real and present, and included it in my feeling of self. My cleverness a result of being in and of the thing, and thusly not a stranger to me. Evidence of cleverness in the universe being twice indicated, once in me recognizing it, and twice in it being able to result in me and others of like kind.

 

SwansonT,

 

My reluctance to accept the eventual arrival of the time that the CMB will be strecthed to wavelengths too long to matter, is based on the fact that the CMB is from material that emitted its first photons at the very beginning of space and time, an thusly must have been NOT getting ANY photons to us, yesterday(or yestermillionyears). But there is material that has been getting photons to us for 13.6 billion years and thusly there is material that has been getting photons to us for every time period between "for 13.6 billion years, and since yesterday. It is this material, all of it that will continue to provide us with photons that will have the ability to urge an electron from one energy level to another. It is not a one way street, where photons will only be created as an electrons fall, because we have an unlimited supply of photons coming continually in, from all the material that there is, that urge the electron up again to a state where it has the energy to release a photon. Plus, in regards to this thread, there is something that allows for the accumulation of energy, within certain spaces and collections of material. In this, in a way, certain entities "remember" the rest of the universe, that have provided them with its photons.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited March 18, 2014 by tar

[swansont]

 

 

SwansonT,

 

My reluctance to accept the eventual arrival of the time that the CMB will be strecthed to wavelengths too long to matter, is based on the fact that the CMB is from material that emitted its first photons at the very beginning of space and time, an thusly must have been NOT getting ANY photons to us, yesterday(or yestermillionyears). But there is material that has been getting photons to us for 13.6 billion years and thusly there is material that has been getting photons to us for every time period between "for 13.6 billion years, and since yesterday. It is this material, all of it that will continue to provide us with photons that will have the ability to urge an electron from one energy level to another. It is not a one way street, where photons will only be created as an electrons fall, because we have an unlimited supply of photons coming continually in, from all the material that there is, that urge the electron up again to a state where it has the energy to release a photon. Plus, in regards to this thread, there is something that allows for the accumulation of energy, within certain spaces and collections of material. In this, in a way, certain entities "remember" the rest of the universe, that have provided them with its photons.

 

Regards, TAR

 

CMB is getting photons to us as we speak, and will continue to do so. They are in thermal equilibrium, having cooled from the temperature present at recombination. I don't understand your objection to the idea that the temperature will continue to drop as the universe expands, and will at some point drop below the H hyperfine transition energy.

 

IOW, what will cause the behavior of the CMB change from what it's been doing for the past ~14 billion years?

[Acme]

Acme,

 

I am not resisting reading it. Just not requiring myself to read it, inorder to hold similar insights.

 

I already noted that there are other books on my shelf that I am requiring myself to read, eventually, and just do not have Hofstadler on my shelf, or on my priority list. I may very well eventually read him, so it is not resistance. However there is the important consideration, that inorder to discuss the ideas that you hold, having read his arguments, it is a requirement that I read those particular arguments to have a mutual basis upon which to proceed. I conceed this, while at the same time suggest that true things will remain true, and can be noticed in other ways, by other routes that do not require reading the book, to get to.

Roger. I will pass on what little bits as I see fits.

 

As to the OP. Mike has allowed that we can proceed without the word cleverness, and still be talking about something of the sort.

"Strange" loops, indicate to me that there is a surprising and unexpected quality to the universe that we are not yet aware of, that we will find, if we do the math. What if I already "felt" the thing, embraced it, consider it real and present, and included it in my feeling of self. My cleverness a result of being in and of the thing, and thusly not a stranger to me. Evidence of cleverness in the universe being twice indicated, once in me recognizing it, and twice in it being able to result in me and others of like kind.

 

snip...

Regards, TAR

I will give Dougie's 'first stab' at defining a strange loop.

What I mean by "strange loop" is -- here goes a first stab anyway -- not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction ( or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive "upward" shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. ... In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop.

In an earlier section of the book titled Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics, Doug makes this observation.

Our existence as animals whose perception is limited to the world of everyday macroscopic objects forces us, quite obviously, to function without any reference to entities and processes at microscopic levels. No one really knew the slightest thing about atoms until only about a hundred years ago, and yet people got along perfectly well.

The upshot, as I take it, is that to come to grips with concepts like cleverness -which are at high levels of abstraction- there is no real help or utility referring to lower levels of abstraction [such as entropy]. To paraphrase the Dougster, knowing all about cells tells you nothing about the pumpitudinality of a heart.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Acme

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

I would argue that the material from which we are now receiving the CMB has not been within our view for very long at all. If it has been, for longer than say a billion years, then it would be a billion year old bunch of material that we are receiving radiation from, which would disallow it being an area of space, that just became transparent to photons. If the theory of the big bang is correct, which I have no reason to challege, we MUST have just begun to see the areas of space eminating their first photons just recently, within the period of time between the big bang and the time universe material began exchanging photons. I forget what that time period is, but I seem to remember it was a small fraction of 13.8 billion years. So the area of space emitting those CMB stretched photons, represents the boundry of the clearing of universe, from our perspective, or location within the big bang. What energy level those photons are coming into us, at now, that 2.7K figure does not indicate our future, but that area's past, and the distance between our location within the big bang and that location's separation from us, following the inflationary period. If we were to imagine what that area of new universe, in that shell around us sending us the CMB now, looks like now, it would probably be galaxies and strings of galaxies as appear around us here and now. 13.8 billion year old stuff. We will never see that. Not in the visible spectrum. Not from that area of the universe. As it ages, its image will also stretch to one day be seen in wavelengths longer than any likely attenae...but that is just that area of space, there is still all the space and material between it and here that we will have, to recieve photons from. And since much of the stuff nearby is gravitionally bound to us, it is not unlikely that even that far away material has by now reached a similar state of being gravitationly bound to its cosmic environs.

 

And as there is evidence of a great attractor operating in our vicinity, there is probably a great attractor operating in all samples of the universe, even the samples whose early images we are just picking up in the microwave frequencies now, from 13.6 billion years prior their current condition.

 

Acme,

 

Doug's take, with the conceptual level shifts, are lessons I learned by reading Gulliver's Travels. I hardly find that surprising or strange. Rather required I would think, to be a point of focus, as we are, on a particular size and time scale, within and of a universe that operates as well on much tinier scales, and much larger, than we do.

 

Regards, TAR

We still need to describe what maximum entropy should look like, to provide the toward 10 tail of Mike's bell curve.

[Acme]

...

Acme,

 

Doug's take, with the conceptual level shifts, are lessons I learned by reading Gulliver's Travels. I hardly find that surprising or strange. Rather required I would think, to be a point of focus, as we are, on a particular size and time scale, within and of a universe that operates as well on much tinier scales, and much larger, than we do.

 

Regards, TAR

 

We still need to describe what maximum entropy should look like, to provide the toward 10 tail of Mike's bell curve.

No; Gulliver's travels is not Doug's strange loops and your entropy fixation is beating dead lilliputians. Of course if you read both you would know that.

[tar]

Off topic, but I had a thought reading the stuff about the gravity wave evidence just announced, and the density and gravity wave ratio of .2 and all, we have gleened from study of the quantum fluctuations of the CMB, and its not a good enough thought to start a thread, but interesting enough to have to mention. Since we were part of the big bang, and we can see quantum fluctuations in all directions (except through the center of our galaxy, perhaps we could determine what we looked like, back then, by taking the average between each point in the CMB sphere, and the point 180 degrees opposite.

Still a good book, and a good lesson. I bet Doug read it.

[swansont]

SwansonT,

 

I would argue that the material from which we are now receiving the CMB has not been within our view for very long at all.

 

There is no material in our view sending us the CMB. The CMB comes from the recombination, ~380k years after the BB, when it had a temperature of about 3000K. It permeates space, and the expansion cools it. So the light that will reach us in a billion years is currently somewhat less than a billion LY away from us. The universe will expand in the interim and effectively lengthen that path and also redshift the photons.

[Acme]

I have some comments on why invoking entropy has nothing to do with cleverness, or any other such word or phrase one wishes to euphemistically substitute for said cleverness. First, as others have explained, the idea of entropy describing order is bastardized from the thermodynamic meaning of entropy used in physics. Nonetheless I will dispatch both descriptions as having anything to do with constraining higher order abstractions as is suggested by TAR and Mike.

 

Observe:

Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the Yahoos were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions.

Now the higher order abstraction in that passage is the communication meant to bring to mind a set of conditions on a certain island. Now observe again.

 

Pray bring to your mind how often I desired you to consider, when you insisted on the motive of public good, that the Yahoos were a species of animals utterly incapable of amendment by precept or example: and so it has proved; for, instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions.

In the second quote, entropy under both meanings is entirely changed. In the way of order, the type differs in size and boldness. In the way of thermodynamics, the heat 'beaming' out from your screen is completely different than that of the first quote. But in either case the higher abstraction of what is communicated remains unchanged. Entropy by any other meaning would be as misapplied.

 

*source: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/829/829-h/829-h.htm

Edited March 19, 2014 by Acme

[I-try]

Despite our imperfections, we are an electrochemical and mechanical complexity the construction of which we are a long way from understanding. Information is gleaned from our exposure to many differing facets experienced during our lifetime, and then we form our own opinions. In that regard and to supply an illustration, there is the answer to a question addressed to an American person with regards to “what colour God would be”, the immediate answer was “she would be black of course”. No points will be awarded for guessing the gender or the skin colour of the person supplying that answer.

Returning to the start question of this thread regarding cleverness extant in the universe, then because the invention of a radio transmitter and receiver or a TV transmitter and receiver is considered to be acts of exceptional cleverness, and we evolved over a long period of that we call time, and by many transformations dictated by the creative forces intrinsic with all known and unknown attributes of the universe, then and given what we know about Physics we are deluding ourselves if we do not recognise cleverness as a factual part of the universe along with all of our commendable attempts to warrant all qualities implied by the word human despite our innate savagery.

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

Well, as higher order abstractions go, the CMB to you is leftover heat from the recombination, that permeates the universe, and has no material associated with it. To me there must be a mechanism behind it. A particular photon of it having been released at some point by a particular peice of material, say a hydrogen atom, whose electron fell one quantum's worth and released the thing, causing a wave/particle to go out toward us, 13.8 billion years ago. We are just getting the information it sent, now, and that particular atom, its protons and neutrons, quarks and electrons still exist, and have been doing stuff, repelling and attracting, combining and breaking up, absorbing photons and releasing them for the 13.8 billion years since they sent the photon we are just now receiving in the microwave range, now. You say no material sent it. I say it must have been material that sent it. Material which has no way of disapearing since matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Can just change position and momentum, arrangement and order, as in what entities compose it, and what entities it is a component of.

 

So sure, it is no longer in the arrangement it was in when it sent a pulse at a particular frequency toward us 13.8 billion years ago, and the pulse has stretched, so that it appears to us now, as if the thing was operating in slow motion (cooled) but at the time it was hot there, as it was here, and the material there still exists at the temperature it has reached after 13.8 billion years of material evolution. Could be in a Sun, or a particle of dust, the center of a black hole, or a component of a super nova, much as a particle that was in this area of the big bang, that was also operating in a 3000K average type environment.

 

Any hydrogen atom and its components then, here, was and still is material, Any hydrogen atom and its components there, then, was, and still is, material.

 

Regards, TAR

I-try,

 

Or put another way. Can a model be more accurate than the thing it is a model of? Or can a formulae be more clever, than the form that it describes?

 

Regards, TAR

[swansont]

You say no material sent it.

 

I said more than that, and truncating my statement removes that context.

 

Regardless, the point was that the CMB will eventually cool and eventually have wavelengths too long to excite the Hydrogen hyperfine transition. I don't understand your objection to that statement.

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

My objection, in regards to this thread, is that the statement that the CMB will eventually cool to a point where it will no longer be able to excite the hyperfine hydrogen transition implies that entropy will win. I don't believe this is indicated by the current state of affairs of the local universe, and by implication, the current state of affairs of any part of the universe, when taken locally from there.

 

Larwence Krauss in one of his videos had painted a picture of our galaxy in 600 billion years that had the CMB unpickupable as its wavelengths would be stretched by then to lengths on the scale of solar systems, yet he had local galaxies, still visible, as they are "gravitationally" bound. I thought these two thoughts were inconsistent with each other, and no principle that would separate all matter to such an extent, would overlook our local cluster. He made no attempt to explain why space should continue to expand, except for here. He did not explain why entropy should win on the largest of scale, but continue to lose around here.

 

So I object to his statement that the rest of the universe will disappear and leave only the local cluster behind, to continue to be able to excite its hydrogen electrons with the photons that its hydrogen electrons release.

 

Perhaps being "gravitationally bound" is the cleverness that Mike and I are sensing. The ability to grab form and structure, and pass it along, and retain it and remember it, in a universe that otherwise seems headed toward entropy.

 

In anycase, if entropy is to win, if entropy is to be the victor, it has not done it yet, and it has not done it here. So the score around here, remains life and consciousness 0, entropy 10.

 

Regards, TAR

Perhaps disorder cannot happen without forming a pattern, like the hexagons in the heated fluid.

 

And no single snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche.

And a hurricane is a definite ordered entity that has emerged from some random collection of air molecules and water molecules heated by the ordered energy of the sun, under the gravitational influence of this large round lump of cooling heavy elements we exist on.

 

Pretty clever arrangement we have here. Works out pretty well for us. We are rather in sync with its patterns. And we fit the place.

 

Survival of the fittest, indeed.

[swansont]

SwansonT,

 

My objection, in regards to this thread, is that the statement that the CMB will eventually cool to a point where it will no longer be able to excite the hyperfine hydrogen transition implies that entropy will win. I don't believe this is indicated by the current state of affairs of the local universe, and by implication, the current state of affairs of any part of the universe, when taken locally from there.

 

Larwence Krauss in one of his videos had painted a picture of our galaxy in 600 billion years that had the CMB unpickupable as its wavelengths would be stretched by then to lengths on the scale of solar systems, yet he had local galaxies, still visible, as they are "gravitationally" bound. I thought these two thoughts were inconsistent with each other, and no principle that would separate all matter to such an extent, would overlook our local cluster. He made no attempt to explain why space should continue to expand, except for here. He did not explain why entropy should win on the largest of scale, but continue to lose around here.

 

 

Entropy is not "losing" around here. There is nothing going on in violation of the 2nd law of thermo. What is going on is the problems you run into when you try to learn, interpret, and apply science qualitatively.

 

What Krauss said is not in conflict. Should you wish to discuss that, I suggest opening a thread on the subject.

[tar]

SwansonT,

 

I had brought up my objections in another thread. It was decided I didn't understand the math, so had not right to question Krauss' take.

 

It's pertinence to this discussion is the existence of the Sun, Earth and Life and humans and consciousness, and the thought that what scientists in this locale will or will not know about the beginnings of the universe, in 600 billion years, matters.

 

It with a great amount of examples points to a universe that operates in some large measure in defiance of the second law...at least on the timescales we have to operate on, and at the size scales that we exist on.

 

It is interesting to me that qualitative views would be non-scientific to you, when the topic of conversation is what will happen to the universe in 600 billion years. Like you could take the required measurements and report back your findings.

 

Besides, the mere qualitative notion of caring about what happens to the universe in 600 billion years, proves undeniably that consciousness exists in this universe and is projected to continue to exist in 600 billion years, in the bodies that would be the scientists of that future time. Which means, at the very least, that Larwence Krauss, TAR, SwansonT and anyone reading this, and considering what might happen to the universe in 600 billion years, is alive, conscious, and capable of, at least for the moment, laughing louding in the face of entropy, and taking pride in the knowledge of the place that we hold, that will possibly be unavailable for conscious minds to hold in 600 billion years.

 

This threads title is already vindicated, by the fact that we are clever, we are natural, and we are evident.

 

The current challenge is to describe the scientific measurement we can make to describe order and usefulness and entity "cleverness", in opposition to disorder, emptiness, and lack of structure, or pattern.

 

If these things, complete order and complete disorder are outliers on a normal distribution bell curve, it would not surprise me. If the shape of a typhoon and the shape of a galaxy bear some resemblance to each other, it might be a significant pattern to understand, both from the inside and the outside. And neither a galaxy or a typhoon lets the second law of thermodynamics deny its existence.

 

Regards, TAR

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

[

 

Tar said :-

The current challenge is to describe the scientific measurement we can make to describe order and usefulness and entity "cleverness", in opposition to disorder, emptiness, and lack of structure, or pattern.

 

Information has come to light : that three assumptions made with entropy , where :-

 

1 gravity is not included

2 life is not included

3 open systems are not included.

 

As these then are free to be used in our new "generation " entity we have the makings of a phenomenon acting in opposition to entropy?

 

Namely :

 

-----------...-- Generation -- ... ----------can be viewed as a mechanism that :

 

1.Can act under the influence of gravity.

2. Act as an open system

3. Be supportive of an increase in order and complexity.

4. Work within an environment for the generation and development of life .

5. Put energy into a form that is useable.

6. Others

 

These initial 5 or 6 pressures of GENERATION are sufficient to function within the universe to act in opposition to entropy .

ENTROPY tends to work in the opposite direction. (Namely . Not work under the influence of gravity.: Acts within closed systems: increases in disorder . ; Does not involve life forms: Puts energy beyond use. Etc )

 

Gravity

Edited April 3, 2014 by Mike Smith Cosmos

[Acme]

All-in-all I think Mike & TAR have failed to make their case. The only universal element connecting all these different scales/contexts is chance. Blind chance. While bell curves and paintings may make you feel all cozy & secure, there is nothing in them or probability that tells us one whit about when -i.e. what order- or even if a particular data element occurs.

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

All-in-all I think Mike & TAR have failed to make their case. The only universal element connecting all these different scales/contexts is chance. Blind chance. While bell curves and paintings may make you feel all cozy & secure, there is nothing in them or probability that tells us one whit about when -i.e. what order- or even if a particular data element occurs.

 

 

AH !

 

.This is one of the points.If you want flexibility to be a driver for change, then energy, gravity, life , non closed systems. there is a need to loosen up on the strict determinism, the strict maths formula, and allow unrestrained negative feedback to allow things to adapt, followed or with the shaping adaptive controls. This is a very interesting flow towards more energy, more order, more gravityand its effects, more of an open system .

This is not in anyway saying the science of prediction, maths. rigor , absolute values is not necessary. far from it. the atomic level full of exact values and rigor. the universe would fall apart without it. however i think it is necessary that we explore the emergent aspect to allow its clever generative contribution .

 

mike

Edited April 7, 2014 by Mike Smith Cosmos

[Acme]

AH !

 

.This is one of the points.If you want flexibility to be a driver for change, then energy, gravity, life , non closed systems. there is a need to loosen up on the strict determinism, the strict maths formula, and allow unrestrained negative feedback to allow things to adapt, followed or with the shaping adaptive controls. This is a very interesting flow towards more energy, more order, more gravityand its effects, more of an open system .

This is not in anyway saying the science of prediction, maths. rigor , absolute values is not necessary. far from it. the atomic level full of exact values and rigor. the universe would fall apart without it. however i think it is necessary that we explore the emergent aspect to allow its clever contribution .

 

mike

No. Clever implies foreknowledge; blind chance is not clever.

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

No. Clever implies foreknowledge; blind chance is not clever.

I have changed it to ' Generative ' , which is what I had been agonizing over many posts way back.

 

I really am enthused that we are finding various processes afoot which are moving things forward into,:

 

increase in order,

adaptive mechanisms

fixed accessible energy

complex systems ,

living things

open systems

 

 

 

mike

Edited April 7, 2014 by Mike Smith Cosmos

[Acme]

I have changed it to ' Generative ' , which is what I had been agonizing over many posts way back.

 

mike

That too has an implication of foreknowledge, in my humble opinion. Generative is just a euphemism for the idea behind all this, as is entropy euphemistic. Chance by any other name would be as lucky.

[davidivad]

mike;

 

might i suggest you try a statistical approach to first identify the patterns you are seeing and then verify the statistical results. in the end quantum physics is based upon statistics. yet we cannot prove what we see.

[Acme]

mike;

 

might i suggest you try a statistical approach to first identify the patterns you are seeing and then verify the statistical results. in the end quantum physics is based upon statistics. yet we cannot prove what we see.

This is what he is trying to do with the entropy and bell curve. The problem is as I said, that these approaches only describe was has happened -or more to the point what we have witnessed happening-, not what will happen, must happen, or must have happened. We find ourselves as we are due to blind luck and it is blind luck that will find us as we will be. This is not to say we don't know things or can't learn things about the cosmos, only that we can only do so as luck allows us.

[davidivad]

yea, i was distracted by a childish post in another section.

[Mike Smith Cosmos]

Rather than dismissing the idea 'out of hand ' .

I would like to deal with things one at a time. GRAVITY

 

Some billions of years ago the scattered remnants from a super nova explosion/s lay scattered, spread out, their host star long since extinct. The dust and gas could be said to be harbouring potential energy in its diffuse state. But this energy was near to inaccessible .UNLESS ...GRAVITY ... could do some form of generation. By a relentless pull over a few million years the dust began to go inward . As it did so it turned gently. We know the story the gas got hotter the particles fused a little and a while later ENERGY was available in a very accessible form. In fact it did not ask but spread its powerful energy source , certainly in the near environs.

Now we can move on to the next ..

 

Mike

Edited April 7, 2014 by Mike Smith Cosmos