This law of nature has been hidden from science - until now | Robert Hazen
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- čas přidán 8. 07. 2024
- This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation.
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You may be familiar with the “arrow of time,” but did you know there could be a second one?
Dr. Robert Hazen, staff scientist at the Earth and Planets Laboratory of Carnegie Science in Washington, DC, thinks that a single arrow of time may be too limiting. A second arrow, which he dubs “the law of increasing functional information,” takes evolution into account. Specifically, Hazen explains that evolution seems to not only incorporate time, but also function and purpose.
Consider a coffee cup: it works best when holding your coffee, but it could also work as a paperweight, and it would not work well at all as a screwdriver. Hazen explains that it appears the universe uses a similar way of evolving not only biology, but other complex systems throughout the cosmos.
This idea suggests that while as the universe ages and expands, it is becoming more organized and functional, nearly opposite to theories surrounding increasing cosmological disorder. Hazen suggests that these two “arrows” - one of entropy and one of organized information - could very well run parallel to one another. If true, this theory could be groundbreaking in the way we perceive time, evolution, and the very fabric of reality.
Read the video transcript ► bigthink.com/the-well/the-sec...
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About Robert Hazen:
Robert Hazen is a renowned American mineralogist and geologist, known for his pioneering work in mineral evolution and mineral ecology. He is a Senior Staff Scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory and a Professor of Earth Sciences at George Mason University.
Hazen has written over 400 articles and 25 books, contributing research as a profound leader in mineral evolution and mineral ecology. His studies delve into the complex interactions between minerals and life, contributing to our understanding of Earth’s history and the potential for life on other planets. Hazen is also a passionate educator and science communicator.
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Note to viewers: The John Templeton Foundation is a religious / spiritual organization.
Do with that info what you will.
that doesn't change anything, if the data is correct
@@BiljanaPetrova LOL
@@BiljanaPetrova no but it does put into question how the data collected is being used along with what methods were used to reach those points.
@@seanoneill9130 don't laugh, speak. If you can't correct the wrong with your own words you're just as laughable.
That does put a different perspective on this video; appreciate the heads up. I did feel at the end that was what he was going for, but did not say outright.
I think this is mainly a demonstration of how difficult it is for humans to comprehend how long the universe has and will exist. Local increases in order due to a star pumping a large amount of energy into its planets is not evidence for a new law of physics.
Do you think that the formation of the star itself is an increase or decrease of order? Do you think the formation of molecular clouds that form starts are an example of increase or decrease of entropy?
@@UntappedAnalysis Perhaps the entire lifetime of a star represents both increase and decrease of order. Think bell curve - beginning with an increase in order, at the apex it changes to a decrease in order. I subscribe to the thought of a "static" universe - it has always been in existence and will always be in existence - it doesn't increase in size and it does not decrease in size. With that in mind, there would be a balance of an increase AND decrease in order.
It is Def increasing in size tho @@davidharrison8975
The second law of thermodynamics doesn't need a second arrow to explain entropy. Earth is not a closed system, thus a highly ordered system like our star provides energy which is borrowed by life on earth to increase in complexity temporarily. This order is created by borrowing more ordered forms of energy and releasing it as less complex and more disordered form of energy.
This video is an overreach to connect some sort of religious beliefs to science, as someone pointed out below, the John Templeton Foundation is often tried to bridge the gap between science and religion.
Life is just energy at higher orders?
Sure.
I have heard some people say that faith is the belief in something that has no evidence. The belief that life could come out of no life without any design or guidance has no evidence.
@@deezynar belief creates kind of focus & attention. just like LLMs
which highly related to Purpose
the second arrow doesn't explain entropy, it explains the second arrow of time.
we as 3 dimensional beings, only can sense linear time going forward.
this is about quantum fields
@@deezynarTryna understand what your getting at but to no avail.
Life is a Higher Order Entropy Pump, the goal is still to increase entropy globally, but it does it via lowering entropy locally. This is compatible with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, just like a Heat Pump is.
I will accept your theory if you can adequately explain to me as to what makes you qualified to postulate one.
>Beef1188 : A theory should be judged on its own merits, not on the characteristics of people who promote it. You committed the "ad hominem" fallacy.
Why do you call increasing entropy a goal? Doesn't a goal require a mind that desires it?
@@brothermine2292no. The language someone uses does not alter the universe.
>julianhirst1886 : I agree that language doesn't alter the universe, but how does your reply relate to the comment or earlier replies? If you're referring to my question about the comment's use of the word "goal," your point is irrelevant, because the comment is trying to accurately describe the universe, not alter the universe.
I learned nothing about science in this video, but I sure learned a lot about how to reframe Intelligent Design to make it look like science without mentioning the mysterious Designer.
Bravo, very intelligent reply. If you want to learn a bit more, probably I can suggest the book - "Theory of Everything in Physics and The Universe"
Well, the designer did a horrible job, at it took us millions of years to arrive to modern humans
Today I learnt:
- Things that last over time, are the things that happen to be in the right configuration to survive their circumstance
- As such, there is an increasing amount of surviving configurations that were best suited to their circumstance
- Coffee cups make for terrible screwdrivers
To me, it sounds like natural selection on a universal scale. Maybe i’m missing the point but i don’t really see where time gets involved
@@matthewmiller3745 Because it changes over time, becomes a force which increases order over time as opposed to entropy.
@armartin0003 Except, who defines what "order" is?
(The very fact anyone can ask that question tells us that the whole concept is completely arbitrary.)
@@tessarnold7597 That's one of those tough philosophical questions. I won't pretend I know much about philosophy, but my first thought is that perhaps that path of questioning doesn't actually lead to greater understanding of the natural world. That's not to say that I think it isn't worth pondering.
@@tessarnold7597 I defined order in this case as opposed to entropy. Words have meanings that are commonly defined within a dictionary. Who decides what goes in the dictionary? I suppose that's a good question. Whether or not you trust it is up to you. However, the value ascribed to the funny mouth sounds contained therein are generally agreed upon.
(Have downloaded the paper on this. So, my criticism is just based on this short video.) One problem with associating time, a physical characteristic of our universe, with functionality is that one is not reversible and the other is. Stars do implode. Civilizations fall. Time, however, never reverses. If functionality is reversible, then, why doesn't time?
(Skimmed the paper.) On page 6, the maximum likelihood estimation for any configuration is: -log(sub)2(1/N) = log(sub)2(N), where N is the number of configurations. If, however, you have a density function where the supremum is infinite, then you can't find the MLE. This isn't just a technical problem with the math. This means that, because there is no discernible way to determine what is functional, then time would not move forward. This obviously doesn't exist in our universe.
that's why we have singularity in black holes
@@BiljanaPetrova Yep... black holes as nature's ultimate 'Trash Compactor', spitting the most basic components of matter and energy back out into the universe as Hawking Radiation, to start the cycle of 'Evolution' all over again.
Except, in pretty much all workable theories of Time, time does not move. We move through it. That's why the laws of physics work the same "forwards or backwards in time." The 3 main theories (philosophical) of Time are: Presentism (only Now exists.) Growing Block (we create time like a boat creates a wake.) And Eternalism (time is a coordinate plane, like Length, Width, and Depth.) Look into it when you get a chance. It's a great mindbender.
@@tessarnold7597 Yes, thanks. Am aware of the theory of general relativity. Was addressing the hypothesis presented in the video of why time moves forward and its forward movement is correlated with increasing functional information.
@@posthocprior And I didn't say anything about the theory of relativity. Did you want to reply to someone else? Also, your comment's construction makes it unclear as to which statements are yours and which statements are being reproduced from the paper. So, maybe we can give each other a little grace about potential misunderstandings?
Coffee cup as a screwdriver would work a treat if the screw heads were also coffee cup shaped. It's usless as a paperweight if there is no paper to put it on. The cup can also hold screws. So it is also a screw holder. A very effective screw holder at that.
Perspective 😉
The whole premise this is based on is false.. the second law of thermodynamics does NOT state that chaos rules over order. It states that energy gets more spread out over time. It also doesn’t mean that locally entropy can not decrease (your car does it all the time), with energy exchanging the system it’s not a violation (only isolated systems increase entropy over time). So the quest starts on the wrong foot.
Rather than just spread out, I would say it's reaching equilibrium. Should the universe stop expanding (or at least the expansion sufficiently slow down), the equilibrium could be reached and then we would end in a fluctuating state around equilibrium (perhaps full of Boltzmann brains).
@@MARKZ137 I think we say the same thing, English just isn’t my native language, so I use simpler words to describe the concept. But fair enough, your phrasing of equilibrium is indeed more accurate.
@@MARKZ137 Equilibrium is a perceived construct that can not and will not exist simultaneously with anything still decaying of entropy. Equilibrium= balance, still, motionless no exchange of energy. This can occur but it's only true in isolation of the observed, in reality there is a huge force still at play upon the apex centre of equilibrium. The thing is that I'm not sure exactly what you mean, as it's so complex it's easy to misscomunnicate what we mean. If your suggesting a point of an optimized universal condition of perfection, perpetuating it's own longevity, that's not at all the reality of the course.
You will find more, further in my comments.
@@mrgoodman6620 I simply see equilibrium as a point of convergence. You argue that equlibrium is but a construct that cannot be reached, yet my original explanation axionomically expect the "final state". The convergence. The Heat Death of the Universe.
It is inconsequential whether we will ever reach such state. What is important is that entropy (in a figurative sense, aka as a process) is not just decay. It is a process of change from less stable to more balanced.
At least, this is understanding based on the most accepted version of entropy; The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Shannon's version is more about information than about energy, yet effectively describes the same phenomen; the most stable/final state is the most common (i.e. highest thermodynamic entropy can be encoded with zero bits of entropy. This is a detail which confuses people a lot as both entropies describe a little different thing.).
The important distintion I'm trying to make here is that this "equilibrium" is not always state of total decay as you most likely are trying to suggest. It is always above absolute zero.
Exactly! If we want to throw the entire meaning of life in too it is simpler to understand. (I think)
From the moment the energy burst out, into the post existing space that has expanded into the "universe", the whole event is an information gathering exercise. It will run it's course and conclude. (collapse) I'm not convinced of the multiverse theory, I'm more drawn to the idea that at the end of this "run" a recurrence of "the big bang" will follow. The unstructured energy expands a space initially the first interaction of two bits, streams, parts???? Of energy a structure forms, and instantly all energy follows, in crystalising replication creating the base building blocks of the coming universe. This time around the carbon based scenario came about! Energy exhaustion and dispersion is end point. This means a massive space with all atomic particles separated and floating independently so as no exchange of energy occurs as it's just a mass of atomic planetary systems representing the exhaustion of the energetic carbon universe!
The whole time energy is finding and creating ways to use the energy through greatest potential to destruction and dispersion.
We humans are great examples of potential..... we waist energy amazingly well gotta give huge credit for our manifestation! LOL
Nothing lasts forever every star will burn out every planet will die every start will end. One day the last remaining black hole will collapse retracting all that was the universe, priming to go again;
Where exactly consciousness, soul, spirit and the designer and information generated, reside is the only mystery!
I didn't hear any science in this. Thermodynamics has already explained evolution, there is no gap that needs to be filled by a second arrow of time.
He's been reading that part in the bible which described quantum theory.
Sounds like a different way to describe it, only. Like different ways to calculate: you can multiply this way or that way, whatever you are more comfortable with. Mathematically it's the same, so it doesn't matter.
On the other hand: maybe it actually does add understanding, I'm not sure yet. Like chemistry and biology at their core are only applied physics, they do have their value, though. And from biology follows intelligence and consciousness, social interaction, diplomacy, etc. By abstracting to higher and higher levels we do add some knowledge.
The science I heard from this was tenure and the dreams of an older gentleman. Hoping there's an afterlife
Huh, it seemed like a phylosophy right? Like all the science before it was measured and calculated? Everything that is science has started as an idea. Look at gravity, or atoms, or even Evolution itself - which is not a science as we can not measure or observe it, it is a phylosophy
String-pusher the original commenter right here :p
"We" think that anywhere where there is a high influx of extra energy there is a likelihood of "higher order". The second law of thermodynamics (entropy) only applies to closed systems. The Earth is NOT a closed system.
What if the concept of closed system is itself a fallacy? What if everything is truly infinite?
@@0FAS1that doesn't make a difference. The law applies only to closed systems. Open and closed are not just true or false, but on a spectrum. A system can be closed enough to be well approximated. And of course physicists are aware of the error introduced by the inspected system not being _actually_ closed.
Physics describes idealised components of interactions. In reality they combine, obviously.
So saying the law applies only to closed systems is in that sense not correct. It applies to the closed _component_ of a system. And then different effects add their own contribution to the outcome.
The second law of thermodynamics also has a special role, as it doesn't describe a force or something. It's actually a consequence of statistics and even applies to the order within a card deck (famous analogy): take a set of cards. It's ordered by colour and value when it's new - or just sort it, doesn't matter. Now shuffle it, throw it in the air, or just put it loosely in your backpack. It has a new, random order now. The likelihood of bringing it into the original order is tiny.
Now imagine particles being the cards. We have way more possible orders with them, and they move around on their own, just because they have energy. Hence it tends towards chaos. Just probability and statistics.
@@karoshi2You explained that really well! We are all just beings in this entropic universe. Everything is relative, and everything is dependant on whether there are positive actions, or negative actions.
College dorm room bong hit level word salad. Good grief... There is no purpose, there is no design. It's just laws of physics naturally unfolding.
I will call thee black sparrow - nice explanation.
For me - the Real Being - reality is best and most interesting.
Fare thee well - in life's journey
How does base 64 digitally encoded information in kilobyte quantities "appear" out of random processes?
One byte of information is 128 bits. Two amino acids in sequence are specified by 1 byte of (thanks, Dawkins!) digital code.
A 50 a.a protein is specified by 25 bytes.
@@glenliesegang233
This window - is where Raja yoga meditation - is researched - in infinite depth.
Method - meditation on the heart. Sorry.
Fare thee well - on life's journey
To much for you to contemplate? Do you not being specially created by jebus scares you?
@@antonjoubert6980 You may have a SA name? Real Being has no name - or form.
One may feel - Real Being - as the Absolute is - absolute infinite subtlety and purity. This is reserved - entirely for the heart -as experience.
This is the work of my Guru and our Masters - Ram Chandra (India)
Q: Who is jebus ? Unknown saint of yours ?
Fare thee well - on life's journey.
he only needs to talk to a philosopher to make his next step
We are all philosophers but people often mistake philosophy with modern academics.
Think, understand why you come to your conclusions and allow your beliefs of today to evolve as evidence reveals its self.
Modern science as a whole should listen to philosophy more to start making sense 😅
@@andriyandriychuk
The purpose of science is not to please the audience and make sense based on their instincts or prejudices. It is intended to help to reveal what we can learn about the universe. If you can't make sense of the results, it's not really relevant.
@@just42tube This also is not the purpose of philosophy. I'm not saying science isn't useful because obviously it is. It is after all an offshoot of philosophy. But let me turn the tables on you and say that scientists are simply philosophers who don't understand, choose to ignore or often downplay their limitations. I think most scientists actually realize they can't actually know anything due to the limitations of humans even if they won't admit it. It's even built into the consensus nature of science, but all too often I think they choose to completely ignore this. It's something that should always be in the back of a good scientist's mind. Basically my point is that science limits itself in ways that philosophy has no obligation to. This is both good and bad but you can't say one is better or more relevant than the other.
@@blackwind743
Using labels like that is fairly stereotypical. Selecting some attributes and using those to describe human activities and even groups are just social games you play.
Science is a set of principles or a method. That is the core principle it can offer.
Philosophy seems to be more like what ever people find useful for their own purpose, but logical reasoning seems to be the most significant contribution it has.
Logical reasoning alone however can easily become misleading, an intellectual exercise without foundation in reality.
Calling people scientists or philosophers is a less relevant or true division.
this is not science
The woo woo is strong with this one.
What he's talking about seems perfectly explainable by existing concepts, like possible states/configurations vs unreachable states. Functional selection? Purpose? Utter woo.
@@Pseudothinkwhat the fk does that even mean
It's entertainment
Dude noticed that entropy sometimes decreases locally and thinks he discovered a new law or something
What if it was science?
3:30 This looks more like a probability take on a outcome of a "goal" or ideal outcome, discarding all other paths that do not lead to it.
If you considered the many-worlds interpretation or the wave function collapse with this missing law, then the outcome includes the information of the discarded outcomes in a information only reality in that outcome, where only the most probable "useful" or "optimal" is the goal, there by limiting Entropy with a unknown "contextual" desired outcome where all the information is concentrated.
Take 2 paths in a maze, 1 takes the shortest path to the exist, that one holds very little information about the maze system, the 2nd one takes all the wrong turns, that one does hold the most information and can paint a very detailed picture about the actual maze and all its limits of that system.
If the purpose is information, the one with all the wrong turns is more valuable, even if the Time is not most optimal.
Now, encoded your findings digitally. No digital information, no life as found on Earth.
Here is why every curious child instinctively knows there was and is a Creative Superintelligence behind reality:
Randomness cannot generate cooperative pieces of matter with precise tolerances which work to acheive a narrow goal, which is also of greater purpose and utility to the larger systems at human scale.
Translation: lumps of clay don't create beautiful castles.
Reality begins with precisely defined interactions of quarks and forces, whose interactions have precision to 8 decimal places.
Look at aluminum and heavier elements and how their s,p,d,f orbitals fill. Examine the quantum properties of water molecules as they make possible living systems.
Look at the digital encoding in base 64 of proteins.
Every layer of reality from smallest to 10 meter scale alternates between order on one level and chaos the next.
Actors and stage, and then their dancing.
Random processes do not produce pieces which cooperate unless the parts of which the pieces are made are not random.
The first step to successful investment is figuring your goals and risk tolerance either on your own or with the help of a financial professional but it's very advisable you make use of professional.
I know Laura, she has really set the standard for others to follow, we love her here in the UK as she has been really helpful and changed lots of lives.
You're right! The very first time I tried, I invested $2000 and after a week, I received $8,400. That really helped us a lot to pay up our bills.
Interesting! But I'm new here. How can I get to this person's guidelines??
SHE IS ON TELEGRAMs
Scientism meets teleology. Not only is this hypothesis unfalsifiable (thereby making it unscientific), it relies on confirmation bias as well as the belief in absolute motion (moments in time coming into existence from previous non existence). Unfortunately the Theory of Relativity demonstrates how the passage of time is an illusion, which means the arrow of time is an illusion from our Time Dependent perspective of The Universe. The passage of time is perceptual, not actual. No need for a second arrow of time.
Studies of dark matter will demonstrate otherwise.
The problem is that saying that "something is unscientific if is it unfalsifiable" is itself unfalsifiable. And therefore unscientific.
This is falsifiable, for something to be falsifiable it has to create testable predictions, testable predictions can be made from this. His flaw is he is adding meaning to this, something that is not inherent to the universe or life but is created by creatures capable of inventing the concept.
@@clwho4652 And what is the testable prediction to prove that anything unfalsifiable is unscientific? If we can't test this statement, then it is also unscientific. Which means the unfalsifiability view is self-contradictory and incoherent.
@@BeatMasterPhil Use the hypothesis to predict organization where there wouldn't organization if the y hypothesis was false. Look for that.
The universe isn’t selecting for function, your subjectiveness does.
You select to pay attention to things that serves a function to you.
There’s a vast amount of meaningless that you don’t subjectively choose to pay attention to.
You got it my friend.
spot on
Raja Yoga says - this is the first state of thinking - discrimination (Viveka)
A man who cannot discriminate - is lost.
Fare thee well - on life's journey
I don't think it can be understood or spoken with words, our language itself being a prison to the creativity required and divergence needed to both experience and translate the experience to others in an intelligible way. Everything IS everything, we merely form a bi-junction and internalize the laws we see to work with our surroundings. I don't see us having gotten very far past the mathematical identity property yet.
@@jigilub You make sense - if you think like this. Densely argued. Detailed. Logical. Have formally meditated - 50 of me 60 yrs.
Think very differently about - everything - waiting/receiving - thoughts become feelings - and heart is obeyed - always.
I hope someone - takes you up communic
Fare thee well - on life's journey.
@@user-hy9nh4yk3p Congratulations on your mental focus and fortitude. Im Honored, I See You, appreciate your wisdom! To you a good life as well ~ Our game, blindly jumping into Everything and surrendering our beloved selves for more understanding and better tools to make ourselves.
Heh, I feel validated! Oh, my "theory" was just a writer's kludge to support the neat multiverse idea, but besides usual Arrow of Change was the Arrow of Chance. Just a wordplay thing, basically chaos bounded by existing odds, links & limits, the results of randomness in existing complexity. Stopped-clock guess on my part.
+1 everything is connected
The arrow of simpleminded derp.
Interesting....🤔
; who is his dealer?
💀😂
All of them
Big think could re brand as over think. I think.
In the present time this theory is as useful as tits on a bull. To use the vernacular of my childhood....time.😂
Overthinking is fine, this is not that. This is belief doing its thing. He's in the throes of forming a belief system (which is control) by projecting humaness onto the universe.
Well put.
I was cautiously into this until the last 45 seconds. The purpose/contextual argument is laughably under developed (or poorly defined) and, 'can I say' , anthropocentric.
A ceramic material merely "is". We ascribe utility/purpose to it when it's shaped into a cup, but importantly, the material properties of the ceramic are nominally identical whether its shaped like a cup, a pile of shards, or a planar slate.
The intrinsic qualities of hardness, low conductivity, thermal capacity, and moderate densitity are all the same, regardless of form. By all metrics, the apparent arrow of time remains unidirectional, but the conflation of 'is' with 'ought' is recursive in human history.
But isn't that increase in information also a manifestation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics? To the best of my understanding, entropy has "three currencies", energy at rest (mass), energy in the form of radiation and the former two in a specific configuration (information). So in a simple way we have mass, radiation and information. If we look at for example, the case of a black-hole, where all three currencies are very much in continuous exchange, we have the following scenario: mass falls into a black hole, the entropy associated with this mass now becomes part of the event horizon, increasing its area. Because of quantum mechanics, all the information regarding the object couldn't have been lost, so it must be encoded in the black hole. Losing information should also mean decreasing entropy too. So mass, turned into information in this 2D region (event horizon). But we also know black holes irradiate, which means information about the stuff contained by said black hole is leaking out (the details of this information are still unknown). So radiation is still being produced as another form of entropy increase. So, to me at least, entropy is a measure of what energy at rest, radiation and their specific configurations (information is measured through bits, which require electrons or photons in a specific configuration/order) can "achieve". That is to say, there is a more likely configuration waiting ahead and that is why "mass" and radiation keep evolving. So, a maximization of information is also aligned with a maximization of entropy.
This is what I love about science. Observe, study, hypothesise, but also admit ‘We could be spectacularly wrong’. However the core driver will persist: We want to understand.
The driver is too strong here, as he is simply misunderstanding what entropy really is.
That _is_ a great thing about science. But what's being presented in the video is not science.
Yeah that happens in science, and yet it also happens in this video too.
Maybe that’s why people have conflated the two.
The core driver of this YT video is to get clicks. That is it's 'purpose'. Mission accomplished.
“Can I use the word purpose?” That’s where this blithering exposes itself!
Well, we are not robots; we have our own biases; even science has a positivistic bias.
The last thing a scientist should do (I think) is to police whose views should be heard and not heard.
Yes, I agree..
As time progresses, entropy in the universe increases, starting with the most unstable elements.
If you squint you could call this selection for the function of stability, but you don't need a second arrow of time for this - it's still a function of entropy, not something separate.
Life is unusual and unique in that it, too, changes with time - it "competes" against entropy. But I really don't see a need for a new law to explain why this happens - again, this seems like a natural result of the progression of time and therefore entropy.
In other words: if you consider what the second arrow of time would have to look like, it's just the inverse, or maybe parallel to the arrow of entropy. It is just a direct consequence of entropy, not an entirely new fundamental law.
I didn't grasp the idea what the functionality of objects, selection bias and hidden arrow of time has to do with each other? I used to think about time not as a line, but as a tree, where we tend to get to the branches which we are more likely to observe.
Everywhere we look from Galaxies to birds in trees - we don't seem to see the universe decaying into chaos. It's so nice to see scientists finally realizing this.
Do we have a purpose?
Yes, to flow forward with time.
Reality simply is.
The price of freedom is the freedom to be lost and the freedom to belive.
I'm not sure if belief is a freedom. It may be an expression or a symptom of emotional immaturity.
This is reminding me a lot of Rupert Sheldrake's theory on morphic resonance
Sheldrake's theory is more entertaining.
To be fair… he did say near the beginning, “One possibility is that we are very wrong.”
That said, all I really heard here… was a very wordy way of asking the question, “Is there a purpose?”
It’s more a philosophical question than a science question.
Yes, the video started with this promising sentence, but after we see again the speculations of well trained academic. If you are interested to find the answer to these questions probably I can suggest the book - "Theory of Everything in Physics and The Universe"
@@valentinmalinov8424 …
Thanks for the recommendation
This mirrors my line of thinking about reality ... up to a point. We need to ask ourselves about definition of existence. Isn't it also contextual? Doesn't it require an arbiter - us to say "I recognize that this notion exists" and yet stays silent looking at randomness. So, "a purpose" is something back-attached to parts of reality which we observe, and then, indirectly, we reconstruct in our imagination some previous moment of sampling for which we can with ample certainty claim that if our brain with senses had been existing back then, it would surely observe the same object notion as existing - hence we conclude that it is "stable", it "exists", it is not in transition, not ephemeral.
I was with him until he introduced the concept of 'PURPOSE'. It works fine without that, at least in the basic concept. Purpose comes from looking BACK not looking FORWARD! In concept the idea that entropy and 'functionality or information' might counteract this is attractive, but I am put off by the use of the catchall term of modern science 'Information'. I wish him well, but I fear that under his current structural hypothesis he is chasing a chimera.
what other would would you use that describes that concept?
It reminds me of creationists who start with an idea - Christianity - and work backwards to find some dubious scrap of science supporting their religious dogma, then insist that it is proof positive of the "truth" of the Bible.
Aristotle is not impressed as this is already contained in his theory of hylomorphism. Over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said that all entities in the universe are a compound of matter (hyle) and form (morphe). Matter is *in*formed and that’s the only way it is real. Reality is hylomorphic. And don’t even get me started on Aristotle’s teleology (or “purpose”).
What is Aristotle's teleology?
@@andriyandriychuk Aristotle conceived of four physical causes: material, formal, efficient (this is the only one that is usually meant today when speaking of cause and effect) and final (telos, “purpose”) cause. The final cause refers to that for the sake of which action occurs. However, when we think of purpose, we usually think of transcendent purpose (e.g. God and the universe). When speaking of Nature, Aristotle did not mean teleology in a transcendent but in an immanent sense. If the first means “outside” or “beyond,” the second means “within” or “inside.” The classic Aristotelian example is the seed which, within itself, already contains the adult tree as an end. Whether it achieves this goal-directed action is different, as conditions must be appropriate (natural selection, we could say). Additionally, whether we want to use concepts such as consciousness, deliberation or intelligence to describe the final cause is really a terminological concern. For instance, haven’t we created such terms in the context of human beings? If so, then the applicability will proceed as long as we do not necessarily say that if something is intelligent that it is human-like. This perspective actually brings about an inversion: if we are going to consider the teleological nature of entities as immanent intelligence, an organizational developmental design within being that is under the other physical causes, then it is not that Nature is human-like, but that humans are Nature-like.
OK! I agree with you! But now I have a problem: In order for this "second arrow of time" to exist, the information has to be stored somewhere. Where is this memory?
The Information is stored in the Universal Consciousness. (The existence of Consciousness is recognized bu modern Quantum Mechanics). In our Universe is only one arrow of Time, because physical phenomena with opposite momentum is annihilating!
Literally listened to a Terence Mckenna interview last night where he explains that novelty increases over time. And the universe is essentially a novelty machine. Essentially, stuff was super basic early on, and the object at the end of time pulls everything towards it. Almost like shells. Some shells go back to rome, egypt, others shells reach out to the evolution of apes, other shells dragges our most ancient ancestors out of the water, and further back another shell of the machine at the end of time allowed the mitochondrea to be swallowed by the cell. My own words butchering his ideas, dude was a genius.
There is no purpose. It just happens, we don't know why. We don't even need to know why. It just happens and it is okay not knowing the exact 'why' it happens.
This may be - your 'why' - explained.
We - others - may be researching differently.
A great yogi - told me - we cannot answer all - 'whys'
On and on
Fare thee well - in life's journey
Entropy has always made me laugh.
Shit escaping? Weird guess
@@user-rj9is1ez9t Daffodils
This really has nothing to do with "arrows of time," it has to do with energy configurations and "forces." Things which are attracted to one another, or which tend to stick together when they meet by chance, are obviously going to become more ordered over time. Entropy is radically misunderstood. It applies to a narrow class of closed systems, essentially those in which things aren't attracted to one another and don't stick together. There are thousands of phenomena we observe all over the universe in which systems become more ordered over time. This isn't caused by laws or arrows, it is caused by the nature of interactions.
I think everything in the universe has order. It is only seen as chaos because we don't see the complete picture or the outcome. What we see looks random and confusing and we interpret it as chaos because it is non sensible. Just because it looks random doesn't mean it is.
@@KristelViljoen The only reason we even care about order is that it is useful to us. Matter and energy don't care about order, they just are what they are, which determines what they will do wherever they find themselves. We classify order vs. disorder according to their relative features, but without sentient creatures to classify things, there are no classifications. Many of the errors in interpretation we make involve forgetting that we are part of the system of knowledge, or forgetting how little influence we have.
@@crawkn thanks for the information.
It's a very interesting concept. One part a can go along with from my own thought experiments is that there appears to be multiple representations of what we loosely call "Time". I have been saying for a while, we need to re-investigate the concept of time, and we need to ditch the old ways of thinking about time and look at it more seriously and what functional roles it plays in the universe.
I conceptually see at a minimum 2 very different representations of time, there may well be more.
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I am glad to see someone brave enough to delve into the time question.
Well, randomness and order are human constructs. They are the byproduct of a brain that wants to represent its environment, but its capacity is limited. We say that something is ordered when we can represent the underlying process, and we say that something has randomness if we cannot represent the process. If we had bigger brains then we would find more order. If we had smaller ones then we would find more randomness. Laws of physics are not flexible like this, they are always 100% true and well-defined.
I don't think the theory is flexible at all.
it's we who are flexible and that creates the confusion
Bingo! The only thing evolving here is another closed minded belief system.
In this case the universe has the biggest brain...as it processes vast amount of information to make a order of energy..thats why universe still survive today...there is another concept of singularity.. Like u said a limited brain can not process the high order thing..there comes in singularity...when too much information for a limited brain in process..it collapses..this does not mean things can not be in high order any more..it is the limitation to process the high order...so i think universe itself is the biggest brain to process the high order energy with all the informations in it...the universe is created from an instruction of information
We're back to the foundational question: what is the meaning of life?
Love. That simple.
Ｗｈａｔ ｄｏｔｈ ｌｉｆｅ？
only you can find your own meaning, your function.
To adapt to the current context
To thrive and reproduce.
This guy speaks in a manner that makes you want to listen.
He's just describing a "simple" version of complexity theory which came about because of the second law of thermodynamics, as did information theory which I think he referenced I'm not too sure because what he called "information theory" is not what I'm familiar with; also, with complexity theory think fractals, they are very chaotic in nature but neatly arranged due to the concept of emergence.
Please stop spreading this pseudoscience.
One challenge can be how you define Entropy. Also, the 2nd law does not disallow in increase in local entropy. Could it be that life is localized decreased entropy but by consuming things, etc. the life decreases entropy in its environment (like when humans burn fuel). Could this result in an overall decreases in entropy?
Great concept. I am design engineer, we have 3 classes of tools that optimised designs.
When you design things you know what you want but you dont know if you can achieve this.
The most basic was my understanding of theory and the goals i envisioned.
The second was following gradients to find peaks or valleys.
The third most powerful but time consuning is random searches.
This is how we manage design. I felt like an explorer in a non material dimension like Platos world of forms. I think of this as the dimension of possibilities. It consists of all things possible.
I also feel the universe is infinite and contains all things possible. As humans it is possible to explore this universe with our minds, computers and tools. This is science, for me it is also very spiritual and that is another discussion as to why, but in short because we are intelligent and in the universe it means the universe must also be intelligent. If you look for it you start seeing it everywhere, atoms are little machines talking communicating with each other, everything can be described in the language of life.
I think this kind of thinking suffers from inductive bias. Just because we have observed, in our tiny window of history, some organized structure of reality, does not warrant generalization of such structures into the future. I mean how many minerals throughout time have been unstable, the stable ones could be outliers for all we know. I understand that he is saying that some structures will always be stable, but I don't see how that becomes a law apart from being an emergent phenomenon. How can there be a law that says that things get chaotic over time and another that says that they don't, or is he saying that before they get chaotic, they enjoy some stability for a short while?
Does time go in a straight line or can it wiggle?
Depends how much space there is.
No, Time is a strait arrow. Time is unaffected by the Physical elements of the Universe, because our Space is inserted into Time. The "Relativity" of Time is because every different object is situated in different position on the Time Arrow. If you are interested to learn more, probably I can suggest my book - "Theory of Everything in Physics and The Universe"
That's a fascinating concept! The idea of a second arrow of time focused on increasing functional information really challenges the traditional view of entropy. If Dr. Hazen's theory holds, it could indeed revolutionize our understanding of the universe. It's intriguing to think that as the universe expands and ages, it's not just moving towards disorder but also becoming more organized and purposeful. This duality of entropy and organized information running parallel is truly mind-blowing and could reshape our perception of reality and evolution.
I am getting flash backs to my first Heroic does of shroom (7 maybe 8 grams) I was looking at a plants and thinking of knowledge and information and listing to Animals as Leaders Parrhesia. And I had this thought about information condensing and making matter. or something... idk shrooms are weird I ended up laying down in my bed and just became a stream of consciousness with out a physical form.
I had a similar thing looking at a fire on shrooms (I "realised" the _edge_ of the flames wasn't physically real so that the fire blended into the rest of the universe, including me, so we were all one - the speech marks aren't to dismiss the _experience_ BTW, which was profound, at the time I genuinely did _realise_ these things. And then a few hours later I _realised_ that yep, shrooms are weird :).
This seems related to the ideas of Ilya Prigogine and negentropy. My understanding is that entropy always increases in systems that are close to equilibrium, but systems that are far from equilibrium can increase in entropy. Physics tends to study systems that are close to equilibrium and therefore almost always misses negentropy.
So in the future, a coffee cup will have value as a screw driver
Very Thought Provoking, thank you! This had me ask of a bunch of thoughts: My Yeast packet, which I use as a tool but is alive itself, doesn't know it makes Red Wine so what kind of tool packet are humans if as above so below? Does information contain mass/volume? Are we becoming heavier as we become more complex? Is gravity a metric of higher order information?
To be fair to the screwdriver, it also makes a good paperweight, but a terrible coffee cup
The real reason why there is an arrow of time is because in each possible time-evolving system there is an a-priori side and a-posteriori side of time (in the most simple scenario. We could also have universes that mandates two a-priori sides, but then this kind of universe is much more unlikely due to the complexity involved in fitting the whole history of the universe together (both sides could lead to contradictions when we try to create a middle algorithmically). The a-priori side corresponds to the past, whereas the a-posteriori side corresponds to the future.
I'm not a physicist, but I think entropy & evolution are two sides of the same coin. Hazen said it himself: So many combinations of minerals don't work out together, & that's entropy. But a few do work, & that's evolution. What we see as entropy is nothing more than the discards of evolution - at least in the definition of evolution that Hazen is discussing here. So I think the question isn't "what's the missing law that accounts for evolution", but is instead "is the second law of thermodynamics complete"?
There are unexamined assumptions baked into those statements, and they could be faulty. I encourage you to see if you can find them.
Not exactly what I thought it was going to be, but interesting. It's just meta-physics at this point though. I was expecting an opposite arrow of time going backwards (from the end to the beginning) through time, where things still go from an organized state to a less organized state (entropy), but coming from the future, and where they meet is the present.
"Functional Information" just sounds like another way of describing the increase in entropy over time. Yes, there are lots of possible configurations for a given set of atoms, and only a few which are actually likely to be expressed. The likely ones are the high entropy configurations. The unlikely ones are low entropy. If the atoms are forced into a low entropy state, it's because energy has been added to the system from outside the system. Expressing the states as a fraction just seems to be a different way of describing the same thing. Functional information will still only ever increase when energy is added from the outside, just as entropy will only decrease when energy is added from the outside.
I don't need sleep, I need answers!
All I can say is bravo!
remember that entropy applied globally, not locally. So local order on earth is compensated by disorder in the sun. An increase in disorder relates to the information needed to describe it, so I'm not sure you have anything new here.
Years ago I did mushrooms, and I asked them what's the difference between something organic and something that is not... And the answer was amazingly similar to this. Beautiful
There have been many attempts, with varying formulations, to postulate a 'law' of increasing information / complexity / order / efficiency, often with reference to entropy, life on earth, and universal evolution. Ludwig Boltzmann, Vladimir Vernadsky, Alfred Lotka, Ilya Prigogine, Howard T. Odum, Rod Swenson, Adrian Bejan etc.
Would such a formulation be a law or a description? If it's a description of a phenomenon, is that phenomenon explainable with existing laws and principles?
I don't know.
If time existed in the first place, then the arrow of time might be meaningful. As it is, there are processes that happen in the universe, and those processes proceed according to the parameters of those processes. We imagine time on top of the system in order to comprehend the order of things happening, but that's on us.
Are you saying those systems would continue and change state regardless of having time being in effect?
@@Rimmsolin What I'm saying is that what we call "time" is just those changes taking effect. We invented a timeline so we could track them, but what we are really tracking is the order in which things occur. Runner gets to the finish line in 5 seconds. Those seconds are just hands on a watch. We compare the order of one set of events with another. It's just easier to compare things when we have an arbitrary standard that we use to compare everything else to.
So tell me if I'm wrong. The second law of thermodynamics has two arrows, one of time and one of energy. Flip either one of those arrows and you will either increased or decreased entropy. So you can make a system more ordered just by putting more energy into it. This can be done with heat and pressure supplied by gravity. Sound good so far?
Was always uncomfortable with the law of entropy exactly because of the ordering/information you pointed out.
The idea that "information" appears contextual feels like how "energy" was perceived in the past. A fire, a falling object, a battery, light, sound, an earthquake, the wind... it was not obvious that these could all be described in absolute terms as exchanges of energy.
If there is something to this information arrow, I suspect we're at a similar level of understanding. It all looks subjective, but there is a yet hidden objective way to describe it.
A lot of these comments seem to be missing the point. At the beginning of time, entropy doesn't just immediately create disorder. There seems to be some organizing principle that 1st creates order. Entropy then picks up and "undoes" this order. It has always seemed to me that we define entropy from the relative perspective of our place in space / time, which isnt an absolute truth. He is just asking the question - are we missing something? Its physics, yes. But also philosophy. Can we prove it mathematically and scientifically? Maybe not yet. But this is how all science starts.
It makes sense that there is a natural selection for stability. It also makes sense that any system won't evolve without variation. I'm intrigued by how chaos theory and concepts such as Lorenz Attractors could explain stable yet mutating systems.
I don't think there is anything Creational in this, just the logical behaviour of chaotic yet stable systems.
the matrix 1,2 makes a great analogy of your last question
I’m pretty sure this is all covered and allowed under the second law of thermodynamics and entropy. The fact that our brains aren’t designed to intuit the implications of entropy doesn’t mean that we need another law.
Has this guy not noticed The Sun? Life and human culture defy the 2nd law because we are bathed in free energy. He said it himself, he could be wrong. Spot on, our kid.
Well, we don't _defy_ it because the 2nd law describes _isolated_ systems (which, as you point out, we're not) so our existence is in perfect accord with the 2nd law.
But yep, the Sun is where _almost_ all the "free energy" lowering our entropy comes from (with an extra smidge from elements undergoing radioactive decay inside the Earth).
@@anonymes2884 exactly. DNA and by extension human culture as a form of complexity are low entropy structures, but require energy to maintain. My stack of old photographs may well save information in a low entropy state but requires me to heat my house, dust and remove cobwebs or they will degrade. Humans have just learned how to bypass the available solar energy and dig it out of the ground to fuel our complexity, the energy ultimately comes from the Sun, but will be our undoing eventually.
The entire observable universe is bathed in free energy from one source or another.
Where are the goal posts for the isolated system ?
I've seen them moved 1000 times in different discussions 😂
SELECTION for function?...
Wrong concept, in my opinion
How about survival
Nice one!! Sceptics should also study more about the ‘hard problem of consciousness’.
So, what you're saying is that digital intelligence is a fundamental process of time and evolution that comes along with increasing information. Resisting it is as futile as resisting the flow of time. The only way to stop it - is to submit to stupidity. Got it. Fully understood.
Great thoughts. Question: What selects for better information? Where does the choice point for what is better occur?
Human beings do the selecting. He forgot that bit.
We may already have that second arrow... When I was a student of Statistical Physics we learned that the entropy can't increase every which way it wants. Existing and known physical laws mandate that if system transitions from state A to state B it must not only increase entropy but, it must do it in a way to maximize number of so-called microstates. There is the second arrow! Already known but misunderstood. More microstates, more complexity. Arrow that mandates chemical evolution, emergence of biology, biological evolution, emergence of technology and technological evolution... And there is the end purpose - make Universe at the end as complex as it can be, just before it disintegrates (renews in BigCrunch?)
I think he has not yet seen the paper on First Law of Complexodynamics by Sean Carroll and Scott Aaronson
Interresting question but a very limited answer. Maybe the time arrow just gows both ways: Entropy Stability
the selection of function goes hand in hand with the section of disfunction. it’s like a fractal of possibilities, for every cup of coffee you brew it increases the likelihood that you spill it. the chance itself may vary, but every action has an equal & opposite reaction. so why would entropy be unbalanced? iron can’t rust if it has yet to form. as our universe expands, so too does the flowchart of options that lay before you. decay & growth are not the only options out there of course, stagnation & difference are always there as well, tho growth & decay are common results of many things
The Circle of Life. The Tree, of Life.
My thoughts:
Physical systems tend to oscillate.
Frequency = 1 / Period.
An increase in frequency is a decrease in the time between the repeating event.
Systems that oscillate are more useful.
Systems that tend to repeat more often are more useful.
Information leads to a useful pattern of oscillation.
There's a limit on usefulness.
Systems that try to oscillate too much become chaotic or saturate or rupture.
A system that does not oscillate is lacking useful information.
A reframe can be powerful, especially if the truth has always been there. If you believe you have purpose, you will create purpose. If you’re good at achieving what you set out to do, people buy into it and your legacy will be perpetuated. It’s that simple.
This is called teleology, after the Greek word 'telos', meaning 'purpose ' or 'goal'. Why should this be a Greek word? Because it was the core concept in the metaphysics of none other than Aristotle. Aristotle's teleology dominated European science for a couple of millennia, until the scientific revolution beginning around 1600 AD. The apparent success of the Aristotilean paradigm held science back. It's why it took us so long to convince ourselves that the Earh revolved around the Sun, not the other way 'round. So I ask myself, do we really want to wind the clock back that far?
BTW, if like this kind of stuff, watch "Aristotle's Lagoon", about his teleolological theories of biology. His idea that chickens make eggs that turn into chickens again because they contain the information needed to reproduce them was astonishingly prescient.
My favourite Aristotelian "whut ?"-ism is his bold claim that men have more teeth than women. Like, dude, you _had a wife_ - did it _really_ never occur to you to just count her teeth ?? And maybe her sister and your mother for a slightly bigger sample size ?
So yep, smart guy, way ahead of his time in many ways. Bafflingly backward in others.
I think the real problem is with "the law of" Entropy itself, and the science community is already aware of that.
My dumb brain thinks that there might be something like a "time particle" at work.
Right on, Robert. Seems like common sense to me. Materialists will kick and scream, but let Nature be the judge.
This sounds like a different way of restating emergence the way people like Cilliers, Bateson, Gell-Man, and Fuller have talked about it for decades. The difference is that this framing states emergence is a law along side Newton's 2nd rather than a (another) phenomenon that disproves Newton.
Wow. Seriously? We need another law of nature to explain life? - Local order, including the complex ability to maintain dynamic equilibrium and adapt, is an obvious consequence of the advantage incrementally confered by each increase in the likelihood that a system can persist. So I would say yes, you are almost certainly “spectacularly wrong.”
pardon me, it is unbelievable hot here so i might have missed it, but did he actually mention some sort of proof for his claims?
For someone who says he loves science i sure missed the actual scince in this video.
Not sure why this is on big think, i kind of liked this channel but this is odd.
No, the evidence seemed to amount to "Things tend towards greater complexity, why is that, this proposed law is why".
And of course that first assertion is _extremely_ questionable - on the scale of 20 billion years ? OK, sure. On the scale of trillions of years though ? No, in fact all our observations to date suggest that thermal equilibrium, "heat death" and effectively _no_ complex physical processes or structures is what the universe is tending towards. In which case there's nothing to explain and no need for this proposed new "law" - "greater complexity" is just a temporary property of the sliver of time and space we happen to find ourselves in.
Brilliant! “The law of the increase in functional information”. I love it. Thank you Big Think 🧠 😎
His functional information idea is probably related to fractal geometry. I got that idea from the Jurassic Park novel by Michael Crichton.
For goodness sake! We’ve had the idea of free energy coupling in open systems to explain order out of chaos for decades. From Iyia Prigogene (Nobel laureate) to Terrence Hill.
Didn’t this use to be called Intelligent Design?
Some psilocybin had me contemplating combining spirituality with science & it was beyond fascinating. Then I realized I wasn’t a scientist so I just danced with the little people and we laughed & laughed….
Purpose of life is to time travel and to do that you have to counter decay. Selecting who you traver with is the most important selection.
LOVE this idea! It's still random outcome of infinite reputations that is likely to come across a good purpose for an element or being.
What is defined as "functional information" seems to be the well-known "physical laws of nature," as it determines how everything gets shaped out of many possibilities.
Information needs to be carried on something. The information stored in something and the environment follow physical laws, evolving things and information.
There are processes in nature, like what is happening in a healthy brain, increasing the order and reducing the entropy.
And no comment for "time."
Ok, I started being skeptical about it but then if functional information is a sort of a mirror of entropy then maybe it makes sense. But then this functronal information is not going to be compatible with scientific materialism because you have to define what information is in terms of mater. But information is not material. Information is a concept that rather relates to interaction and relations between observed phenomena. And observations are done by human minds. Maybe an interracting particle can be defined as "an observer". Not a chonscious observer but a pre-conscious one.
How do we quantify that? Maybe if the universe is smooth then information is one unit, and as different configurations exist then the units of information increase?
This may be the start on exciting new scientific field...or not.
Wow you talked yourself into am hallucination. Amazing. By the end of that i was tripping myself. Thank you.
Beautiful, definitely looking forward to this expanding and seeing in my opinion the eventual use of transpersonal discipline as a ubiquitous tool in understanding and explaining the nuances and shortcomings of science and this “ law of increasing functional information” 🤓🤯🤤