Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!mtxinu!rtech!wrs!hwajin From: hwajin@wrs.wrs.com (Hwa Jin Bae) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Entropy and the human brain Message-ID: <852@wrs.wrs.com> Date: 10 Feb 90 00:06:53 GMT References: <523@massey.ac.nz> <940@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <538@massey.ac.nz> Reply-To: hwajin@wrs.wrs.com () Organization: Wind River Systems, Emeryville, CA Lines: 19 In article <538@massey.ac.nz> ARaman@massey.ac.nz (A.V. Raman) writes: >By negative entropy, here, I meant the situation where every event in the >universe, started reversing. This includes events in the sub-atomic scale >as well as the macro-cosmic scale. Perhaps, as you say, the word `entropy' >is a misfit here; but the idea was to convey the question that if time >started reversing, would the human mind be capable of finding that out. Entropy is definitely the wrong word to use here if that's the idea you're trying to convey. The classical/thermodynamic definition of the word entropy is a measure of the amount of energy no longer capable of conversion into work. The thermodynamics teaches us that the total energy of the universe is constant and the total entropy is continually increasing. By using the word entropy in your article about the matters of human perception in the event of time-flow reversal, the basis of your proposition is unnecessarily contaminated with the unsound thermodynamic background. -- hwajin@wrs.com (uunet!wrs!hwajin) "Omnibus ex nihil ducendis sufficit unum." Hwa Jin Bae, Wind River Systems, 1351 Ocean Avenue, Emeryville, CA 94606, USA