Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!zds-ux!gerry
From: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Entropy and the human brain
Keywords: negative entropy, brain structure
Message-ID: <181@zds-ux.UUCP>
Date: 9 Feb 90 20:48:57 GMT
References: <523@massey.ac.nz> <2895@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu>
Reply-To: gerry@zds-ux.UUCP (Gerry Gleason)
Organization: Zenith Data Systems
Lines: 40

In article <2895@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> cjoslyn@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu.cc.binghamton.edu (Cliff Joslyn) writes:
>In article <523@massey.ac.nz> ARaman@massey.ac.nz (A.V. Raman) writes:
>>The fact that entropy can never be reversed imparts unidirectionality
>>to time.  

>Strictly false: in "real", isolated thermodynamic systems thermodynamic
>entropy cannot decrease. The difference is crucial.

I hesitate to throw my two cents in on this subject since it seems a bit
far from the central concerns of AI, but I think this is relavent.  A
little while back someone posted a review of Penrose' _The_Emporer's_New_
Mind_ on sci.nanotech, and then I posted an article contrasting this
position to the one presented by Paul Davies in _Cosmic_Blueprint_.
Davies spends quite a bit of time on the "arrow of time" issue, pointing
out as Cliff does that the entropy arrow only applies to closed systems,
and then it may not apply to the entire universe as a closed system,
since it doesn't really handle clumping due to gravity (and maybe other
things).  He also explores the idea of a synthetic (my word) arrow of
time as evidenced by the increasing levels of organization that have
emerged over time.

Arguments like the Chinese Room are essentially reductionist, and do
not allow that properties can emerge in a whole system that is not
present or even explainable from the individual components.  If an
artificially intelligent machine is designed and works, it would be
just another example of an emergent phenomenon, perhaps parallel to
the emergence of human intelligence, perhaps at a new level.

These issues are very difficult to analyse, since their understanding
usually requires much level crossing.  QM seems to be dependent on
conscious (or something) observers, QM has implications for cosmology,
and these relate to the arrow of time also (wave function colapse
appears to be non-reversable, so it blows the original poster's
speculation out of the water entirely).  As the measurements of the
cosmic background get better, it's getting harder and harder to
explain how the universe could be as lumpy as it is.

The world is a strange and wonderful place, isn't it?

Gerry Gleason