[Thunderbird]

A Teleological view of Cows, Ice cream, and Memory

A while back a friend and I were discussing why some cultures hold the cow as a sacred animal. My initial view point was that “The dog or horse were better than any ole stupid cow !” My friend who is always willing to challenge my views, said the following; “Think about this, your in a field of grass with nothing to eat, now place a cow in the field you have milk, butter, cheese, and don’t forget Haugen das Ice cream.” { He knows I like Haugen Das} “Wow, I never looked at it that way.” “Well I have to admit anything that can transform a bail of hay into ice cream must be sacred!”

This got me to thinking about energy and how the instructions of DNA seems to keep winding energy up in a secession of progressively finer chains of stored energy, from light to photosynthesis in the grass to hydrocarbons to proteins in the milk, everything having a specialized way to make, store and then provide, its ever finer energy product to an even more complex economic system next in the chain,..... except us, are we really just the top of the food chain, sitting around eating ice cream watching TV. Simultaneously feeding our brains with fat and information, that we can't seem to get enough of, creating a bank of energy as our awareness winds together waves of information into thoughts that then are constructed and stored away as memory.
When I see a movie, read a book, write a book, I’m I, or am I not, participating in this chain of systems by winding another type energy into this field of waves to be stored away as an energy called memory?
Think about a book,.... it contains two types of energy, the simple energy of the paper itself, that I can throw into the fire place to warm my feet, and also the finer energy of the information it contains.
Is information and energy in this context the same thing?
I’m I storing this energy solely for myself, or is my memory creating an energy for some future or unseen higher energetic field?
We trade it, {as in right now} we sell it, compete for it, we even die in attempts to effect its use.
Is memory the real cream of the universe?

[Galapagos]

Thunderbird said:

A Teleological view of Cows, Ice cream, and Memory

A while back a friend and I were discussing why some cultures hold the cow as a sacred animal. My initial view point was that “The dog or horse were better than any ole stupid cow !” My friend who is always willing to challenge my views, said the following; “Think about this, your in a field of grass with nothing to eat, now place a cow in the field you have milk, butter, cheese, and don’t forget Haugen das Ice cream.” { He knows I like Haugen Das} “Wow, I never looked at it that way.” “Well I have to admit anything that can transform a bail of hay into ice cream must be sacred!”

Yes, I believe the Hindu people worship the cow because it produces such a wide variety of dairy foods, which is very useful in the vegetarian diet practiced by many of them.

Thunderbird said:

This got me to thinking about energy and how the instructions of DNA seems to keep winding energy up in a secession of progressively finer chains of stored energy, from light to photosynthesis in the grass to hydrocarbons to proteins in the milk, everything having a specialized way to make, store and then provide, its ever finer energy product to an even more complex economic system next in the chain,..... except us, are we really just the top of the food chain, sitting around eating ice cream watching TV.

I'm not sure I understand any of this. Are you saying that humans can't produce nourishment? All mammals produce milk, and I'm sure you could make human breast milk Hagen Das if you really wanted to.

Thunderbird said:

Simultaneously feeding our brains with fat and information, that we can't seem to get enough of, creating a bank of energy as our awareness winds together waves of information into thoughts that then are constructed and stored away as memory.
When I see a movie, read a book, write a book, I’m I, or am I not, participating in this chain of systems by winding another type energy into this field of waves to be stored away as an energy called memory?
Think about a book,.... it contains two types of energy, the simple energy of the paper itself, that I can throw into the fire place to warm my feet, and also the finer energy of the information it contains.

So are you saying that by arranging ink on paper in a certain way , some form of energy is actually being introduced/produced?

Thunderbird said:

Is information and energy in this context the same thing?

No, how are you detecting this energy? Could you tell me how much energy is in this response I'm typing up?

Thunderbird said:

I’m I storing this energy solely for myself, or is my memory creating an energy for some future or unseen higher energetic field?

Your memories are stored inside your brain, and certain types of memory(long term, short term, etc.) are stored in specific parts of your brain. When these parts of your brain cease to function, your memories are no longer accessible. How would anyone in the future be able to get any information out of your dead and rotting brain?

Thunderbird said:

We trade it, {as in right now} we sell it, compete for it, we even die in attempts to effect its use.

I could say the same thing about cocaine, except for the right now part . I don't think I understand what you're saying.

Thunderbird said:

Is memory the real cream of the universe?

Hmmm... Interesting. I'm going to have to say that cream is in fact the real cream of the universe.

[Thunderbird]

Galapagos said:

Yes, I believe the Hindu people worship the cow because it produces such a wide variety of dairy foods, which is very useful in the vegetarian diet practiced by many of them.

Yes but that's not the point.


I'm not sure I understand any of this. Are you saying that humans can't produce nourishment? All mammals produce milk, and I'm sure you could make human breast milk Hagen Das if you really wanted to.

That was a joke about liking ice cream
So are you saying that by arranging ink on paper in a certain way , some form of energy is actually being introduced/produced?

Information only contains energy as a chain that reacts with something else. This post only has an effect when taken as a chain of related information in context with the other information in the post, and not pieced up like your doing here.

No, how are you detecting this energy? Could you tell me how much energy is in this response I'm typing up? Very little.

Your memories are stored inside your brain, and certain types of memory(long term, short term, etc.) are stored in specific parts of your brain. When these parts of your brain cease to function, your memories are no longer accessible. How would anyone in the future be able to get any information out of your dead and rotting brain?

We have a shared memory, the proof is about two feet in front of your nose.


Hmmm... Interesting. I'm going to have to say that cream is in fact the real cream of the universe.

For a caveman. if that was a joke, if not its called a metaphor.

[Thunderbird]

Galapagos said:

So are you saying that by arranging ink on paper in a certain way , some form of energy is actually being introduced/produced?

No, how are you detecting this energy? Could you tell me how much energy is in this response I'm typing up?
Your memories are stored inside your brain, and certain types of memory(long term, short term, etc.) are stored in specific parts of your brain. When these parts of your brain cease to function, your memories are no longer accessible. How would anyone in the future be able to get any information out of your dead and rotting brain?

I could say the same thing about cocaine, except for the right now part . I don't think I understand what you're saying.

Quote

The Explicate Order, weakest of all energy systems, resonates out of and is an expression of an infinitely more powerful order of energy called the Implicate order. It is the precursor of the Explicate, the dreamlike vision or the ideal presentation of that which is to become manifest as a physical object. The Implicate order implies within it all physical universes. However, it resonates from an energy field which is yet greater, the realm of pure potential. It is pure potential because nothing is implied within it; implications form in the implicate order and then express themselves in the explicate order. Bohm goes on to postulate a final state of infinite [zero point] energy which he calls the realm of insight intelligence. The creative process springs from this realm. Energy is generated there, gathers its pure potential, and implies within its eventual expression as the explicate order."

Will Keepin, David Bohm, Noetic Science Journal

Quote

"You create your own universe as you go along." - Winston Churchill

In the quantum physical universe an individual's function is to inform and be informed. Your reality exist only when you're in a field sharing and exchanging information. You create the realities you inhabit.

Quote

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought." - Buddha

[freeztar]

Your first post is interesting and I have been thinking on it. But now, you say this:

Thunderbird said:

In the quantum physical universe an individual's function is to inform and be informed. Your reality exist only when you're in a field sharing and exchanging information. You create the realities you inhabit.

...and I'm baffled.
It seems like you were originally saying that thoughts are an accumulated energy. Now it seems you are saying that the thought energies manifest physical reality. Am I understanding this correctly?

[Thunderbird]

freeztar said:

Your first post is interesting and I have been thinking on it. But now, you say this:



...and I'm baffled.
It seems like you were originally saying that thoughts are an accumulated energy. Now it seems you are saying that the thought energies manifest physical reality. Am I understanding this correctly?

Memory is accumulated information and potential energy. And yes, thought does create physical reality.

[CraigD]

Thunderbird said:

When I see a movie, read a book, write a book, I’m I, or am I not, participating in this chain of systems by winding another type energy into this field of waves to be stored away as an energy called memory?

In a physically real and (to me) very interesting sense, when you form a memory, write a book, or otherwise represent data, you are not storing energy, but expending it.

The best exploration of this is found, I think, in discussions around a though-experimental machine known as Szilárd’s engine. As this rather off-the-beaten-path link suggests, literature on this is regrettably sparse (a reflection on the laziness of technical wikipedists, I fear). A summary of it, however, is thus:

• It’s possible to perform work (get energy) from a disorderly hot gas through the use of information;
  
• This information must be represented in some “blank media” – if the media must be cleared before use, more energy is required than is gained

So, in an absolute, physical sense, a system can gain energy by storing information – “learning” - while “forgetting” always costs energy.

It’s important to note that I’m using the term “energy” here in a purely objective, physical sense. Energy is that which can do work, sharing the physical units as work (joules, in the SI system). Work has a very simple, fundamental definition: , where is force, and is distance.

It’s common in non-physics contexts (eg: in the Philosophy forum) to use the term “energy” metaphorically. For example, I might “bring positive energy” into a gang of people, motivating us all to get off our butts and gather wood for a fire, for (the example gets unlikely starting here) the boiler of a steam engine to haul a big rock up a steep hill. This latter is a clear, easily calculable example of physical work, which I could reasonably argue resulted from my “positive energy”, but in a physical sense my mental state didn’t create the energy that did the work.

It’s also important to note that what I’ve just said constitutes a philosophical position, physicalism. Though a common position among science enthusiasts, I believe it’s a minority position among humankind as a whole. To its defense, physicalism hasn’t, in centuries of testing, lost a comparison to a non-physicalistic position: many examples of phenomena once explained non-physically (eg: as due to the influence of spirits) have been well-explained physically (eg: as due to chemical processes), while the reverse has not happened. Increasingly, I believe, non-physicalistic (or supernatural) world views require objective physical data to be ignored in favor of subjective, imagined data. Though, as I’ve phrased it, this might seem a bad practice, it’s arguably a pragmatically good one.

[Thunderbird]

Quote

CraigD;206822]In a physically real and (to me) very interesting sense, when you form a memory, write a book, or otherwise represent data, you are not storing energy, but expending it.

We can also look at thermodynamics as a chain of information that contains degrees of higher ordered information and energy in a progressive state.

A hydrocarbon molecule in a carrot for instance bound together as a higher state of organization than its component parts before the process of photosynthesis, and after it is burned during the work that a man does while he is typing information into a computer so on and so forth.

Information and energy are both just degrees of higher order. Energy and information are one and the same.

[CraigD]

Thunderbird said:

We can also look at thermodynamics as a chain of information that contains degrees of higher ordered of information and energy in a progressive state.
...
Information and energy are both just degrees of higher order. Energy and information are one and the same.

This is, I think, incorrect as a general biological and physical idea.

It is true that orderly structures may and typically do contain more energy than disorderly ones - for example, a mass suspended by a rope and pulley has more potential energy than the same material shredded into many pieces – they do not contain more information – the shredded rope, pulley, and mass can hold a lot of information, while the intact apparatus essentially holds only one datum: the height of the mass. Thermodynamic law dictates not progress from less to more ordered, but from more to less ordered information – the apparatus does not fall together, but falls apart.

Thunderbird said:

A hydrocarbon molecule in a carrot for instance bound together as a higher state of organization than its component parts before the process of photosynthesis, and after it is burned during the work that a man does while he is typing information into a computer so on and so forth.

The information density (or information entropy) of plant and animal tissues is low compared to that of a single cell, and the cell low compared to an individual large molecule such as a protein or nucleic acid, and these low compared to smaller subunits within them. Cells and tissues are, in essence, very large collections of nearly identical small things. In short, the information content of a large organism – a carrot, a blue whale, or a 9 km^2 giant honey mushroom – even though its mass is orders of magnitude greater, is not substantially greater than that of a small sample of its molecules, particularly its DNA.

A very large amount of information in a small volume – something with high information entropy - must be very disorderly, absent repeating structures and other “higher organization”. Such a thing, made out of CHON, wouldn’t be very good to eat, or as a source of other sort of energy.

As a general biochemical principle, energy can be stored by restricting molecules to ones that can release energy, ideally in some simple, repeatable reaction, such as carbohydrate metabolism. Such a restriction orders the molecules, but lowers their information entropy.

So, returning to the example of a carrot, by assembling disordered, high-information molecules (from water, air, and dirt) into orderly low-information carrot tissue, it stores nutritional energy. Although they’re not useful, practical information storage media, the main bi-product of using that energy in our bodies, very disordered and , contains much more information than more ordered and precursor molecules that produced them.

They also contain orders of magnitude more information than our brains store while working, or that we store by mechanically typing data into a computer keyboard, speaking it into an audio recorder or to another person, etc. In short, the information we find important is only a very tiny part of the total, ever-increasing information represented by the physical universe.

[Thunderbird]

CraigD said:

This is, I think, incorrect as a general biological and physical idea.

It is true that orderly structures may and typically do contain more energy than disorderly ones - for example, a mass suspended by a rope and pulley has more potential energy than the same material shredded into many pieces – they do not contain more information – the shredded rope, pulley, and mass can hold a lot of information, while the intact apparatus essentially holds only one datum: the height of the mass. Thermodynamic law dictates not progress from less to more ordered, but from more to less ordered information – the apparatus does not fall together, but falls apart..

I speaking of an evolutinary process here. The information in DNA will always by attrition trend toward energetic efficiency and build complexity. This is the reason evolutions arrow moves away from entropy and not toward it, Turning Thermodynamic law on its head!

[Thunderbird]

Foundations of Physics, Life and Cognition: Basic Texts, Reviews, Research Material

The law of entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics, along with the first law of thermodynamics comprise the most fundamental laws of physics. Entropy (the subject of the second law) and energy (the subject of the first law) and their relationship are fundamental to an understanding not just of physics, but to life (biology, evolutionary theory, ecology), cognition (psychology). According to the old view, the second law was viewed as a 'law of disorder'. The major revolution in the last decade is the recognition of the "law of maximum entropy production" or "MEP" and with it an expanded view of thermodynamics showing that the spontaneous production of order from disorder is the expected consequence of basic laws. This site provides basic texts, articles, links, and references that take the reader from the classical views of thermodynamics in simple terms, to today's new and richer understanding.


ENTROPY AND THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

[Pyrotex]

CraigD said:

...very disordered and , contains much more information than more ordered and precursor molecules that produced them.....

Craig, uh... I think you have that backwards? More complex molecules, requiring energy to make, contain more information than simple molecules which release energy when they are made. Cybernetics equated energy and information -- in strictly thermodynamic/entropic terms.

[CraigD]

Pyrotex said:

CraigD said:

… very disordered and , contains much more information than more ordered and precursor molecules that produced them…

Craig, uh... I think you have that backwards? More complex molecules, requiring energy to make, contain more information than simple molecules which release energy when they are made.

Recall that the information entropy of a system is, roughly, a measure of how little you know about it. So, stated very informally, you know less about a system of than you do about one of . The smaller, lower chemical potential energy molecules can be arranged more ways than the larger, higher energy ones.

Pyrotex said:

Cybernetics equated energy and information -- in strictly thermodynamic/entropic terms.

It’s very counterintuitive, but the equation to which I think we’re both referring – , known as Landauer's Principle - increasing the information in an arbitrary system has no minimum energy requirement, while decreasing it does. This is because increasing information is reversible - we can flip information written to a “blank storage medium” back to blank – while decreasing it is not.

Personally, I find the older, less deeply realized, mechanically obvious Szilárd’s engine easier to understand that Laudauer’s principle, though both lead to the same conclusion: to create usable energy from unusable (recall that, in thermodynamics, the total energy of the system is unchanged, while per the 2nd law its usability decreases), information must be created. This information, however, is not the same thing as the usable energy, however, but somewhat the opposite: the energy created by a Szilárd’s engine can do work, while the information it creates – its memory – can’t do work, and requires work (at least as much as the created energy can do) to erase.

To summarize: fundamentally, in a closed system, information can’t be “burned” to do work, but is created when work is done. Information and entropy are the same, and increasing. Energy is constant (conserved). Usable energy decreases (eventually).

[Pyrotex]

CraigD said:

Recall that the information entropy of a system is, roughly, a measure of how little you know about it. ... Information and entropy are the same, and increasing. Energy is constant (conserved). Usable energy decreases (eventually).

Let's see, I got a B in Statistical Thermodynamics in grad school, what..., 37 years ago. And uh... I can spell entropy. That much I remember.

Hmmm. I guess my point was about storing usable information. I can store information by building a complex organic molecule. Any polymer will do if each "unit" in the chain has an isomer or two. Hamlet in a strand of RNA? No sweat, give me a week.
But "burn" the molecule down into random CO2 and H20, and that information is lost.

For the life of me, I cannot reconcile my point with your definitions. I truly do not have a clue what you mean by "information" since it is obviously incompatible with mine.

I sold my college Thermo book decades ago, so I'm at a loss here. You are flying waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over my head, compadre. I bow to the superior intellect.

[Pyrotex]

On the other hand...

I do learn quickly. So if'n you have a mind to esplain to me in simpler terms the difference between YOUR 'information' and MY 'information', I would be deeply in your debt.