Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!ames!amdahl!rtech!wrs!hwajin From: hwajin@ganges.wrs.com (Hwa Jin Bae) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Entropy and the human brain Message-ID: Date: 2 Feb 90 20:40:37 GMT References: <523@massey.ac.nz> <940@watserv1.waterloo.edu> Sender: news@wrs.wrs.com Organization: Wind River Systems, Emeryville, CA Lines: 24 In-reply-to: ssingh@watserv1.waterloo.edu's message of 2 Feb 90 02:01:34 GMT In article <940@watserv1.waterloo.edu> ssingh@watserv1.waterloo.edu ($anjay "lock-on" $ingh - Indy Studies) writes: Again this is from OUR vantage point with our brains set up to see time as we do now. It might be different entirely if our minds were in a universe that had negative entropy. This is an important point that gets little attention in many discussions. In a larger context, Steven Hawking's (and many others') insistence to categorically assign meanings to everything from the point of the observer seems "natural", which is not to say scientific. The concept of time-space as known to man may have no meaning whatsoever to some gaseous-cloud-like alien creatures with consciousness (whatever it means to have one) whose censory devices cannot register the meaning of "unit" or "measurement" at all. The negative entropy idea seems to take it for granted that the same type of value references can remain in an entirely different time-spatial condition. It's also not clear what he means by "entropy" here as he doesn't clarify what he considers "entropy" or "negative-entropy". Claude Shannon was knowned to have said that he was urged to use the word "entropy" in his information theory by Von Neuman who asserted that he should use it because no one really knows what it means. hwajin -- Hwa Jin Bae, Wind River Systems, Emeryville CA hwajin@wrs.com (uunet!wrs!hwajin)