[HN Gopher] A New Physics Theory of Life (2014)
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A New Physics Theory of Life (2014)
Author : DigitalNoumena
Score : 36 points
Date : 2023-08-24 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.quantamagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.quantamagazine.org)
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _A New Physics Theory of Life (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33203733 - Oct 2022 (1
| comment)
|
| _A New Physics Theory of Life (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19453946 - March 2019 (1
| comment)
|
| _First Support for a Physics Theory of Life_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15770011 - Nov 2017 (18
| comments)
|
| _First Support for a Physics Theory of Life_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14858250 - July 2017 (66
| comments)
|
| _A new theory sheds light on the emergence of life's complexity_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14831747 - July 2017 (35
| comments)
|
| _A New Physics Theory of Life (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13103215 - Dec 2016 (31
| comments)
|
| _A New Thermodynamics Theory of the Origin of Life (2014)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859691 - Jan 2016 (2
| comments)
|
| _A New Physics Theory of Life_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8750630 - Dec 2014 (94
| comments)
|
| _A New Thermodynamics Theory of the Origin of Life_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8733759 - Dec 2014 (1
| comment)
| throwaway2562 wrote:
| This is not a new idea, but it is a cool idea. See Kay and
| Schneider on exergy (2002) https://archive.is/jlrpl
| bmitc wrote:
| Do you have a title for the specific resource you're linking
| to? That link isn't working for me.
| xipho wrote:
| Some weeks ago I wrote down some ideas that "feel" like this
| after watching Feynman
| https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/fml.html#5, but before I
| read this (or maybe I did read this, and it's all just latent
| thought, who knows). What the hell, I'll share them here-
|
| * Life "obviously" evolves where heat/energy is isolated into
| packets at some (many) levels * What is the F's 3 gear problem
| with respect to life? * The origin of life as a heat-management
| problem, with time-reversibility, sensu the video. * Life evolves
| in some time-reversible (mostly isolated) system that allows
| energy back and forth, a "DNA molecule" separating, and joing
| back, and separating, and joining back (until there is a little
| moment of chaos, and it doesn't separate, or come back, because
| the process is interrupted), at this point systems that can
| manage heat, i.e. shunt energy packets away, can prevent
| "mutations", at just the right time, so that they continue to go
| back and forth, separate the DNA, bring it back (time
| reversable). * "Shunting energy away" -> moving chaos to another
| place * Life is irreversible, therefor it must be a "machine"
| that shunts energy away * In as much as the collective Earth/Gaia
| "learns" to shunt energy away, then it will become collectively
| "alive" * We are at the point where we need to shunt Energy away,
| therefor the Earth is "Alive" * The earth / heat - at some point
| the finned shaft sensu F has to break through to space, to let
| the heat "out" * Why are trees? Yes this is a complete sentence.
| I.e. if there is some "fractalness"/"modularity" to earth, then
| this heat managing problem should repeat at many different
| levels. What are the "cold" counterparts to trees? If the gear is
| a tree, then what is the "fin"? How does the tree gear energy
| move back to the fin?
| jug wrote:
| So it's like how you inevitably tend to end up with tangled
| headphone cords even if you swear you never tangle them yourself
| and they're just "lying" there? The reason behind it is also a
| simple matter of probability. It's more probable that they'll
| tangle than untangle, so eventually they do. Even with only small
| oscillations or disturbances, like here.
|
| Only this is on a microscopic level where eventually, particles,
| through probability, find _their_ configurations that disperse
| energy (settling where they "want" to be per thermodynamics) and
| in the process form more bonds among the particles. Maybe a tiny
| human diving in to that microcosmos might have found that
| annoying too!
|
| Who would've known, annoying bunched up cords and wires might
| have carried a hint to bunched up complex molecules and genesis
| itself!
| crazygringo wrote:
| At least from the way it's presented in the article, I don't see
| how this makes any sense at all. Maybe someone else here can
| explain it better?
|
| Because the idea the article presents is that if you have matter
| that is being bombarded with energy (e.g. electromagnetic
| radiation) and is in an environment where it can dissipate heat
| (like the ocean), that this leads to self-organization of that
| matter to more efficiently convert the energy to dissipated heat,
| and that this could explain the early evolution of life.
|
| Key quote:
|
| > _" Particles tend to dissipate more energy when they resonate
| with a driving force, or move in the direction it is pushing
| them, and they are more likely to move in that direction than any
| other at any given moment. This means clumps of atoms surrounded
| by a bath at some temperature, like the atmosphere or the ocean,
| should tend over time to arrange themselves to resonate better
| and better with the sources of mechanical, electromagnetic or
| chemical work in their environments," England explained._
|
| But there's zero explanation of _why_. It 's not like the matter
| has some goal of dissipating the energy or becoming resonant in
| order to do so. It seems far more likely that the matter just
| absorbs or reflects or transmits the energy, and that it heats up
| to the extent that it absorbs it (and maybe melts a bit or
| something, e.g. becomes _even less_ structured). But I don 't
| understand what principle would lead the matter to become
| "resonant" or structure itself to "more efficiently" absorb and
| dissipate the energy. Clumps of atoms _don 't care_, do they?
|
| It's like the article is relying on some new physical principle
| of "desire to dissipate energy efficiently" in non-living matter
| but without naming or justifying it. Can someone else point out
| what that principle might be, or if there is one at all? I've
| gone through all the links in previous submissions and can't find
| any mention of it. Or am I misunderstanding or missing something
| here?
| DigitalNoumena wrote:
| How I understand it:
|
| Entropy (according to Boltzmann) is proportional to the number
| of microstates that can give rise to a particular macrostate of
| a system. The macrostate with the highest number of possible
| microstates is the uniform one, where all the accessible
| microstates are equally likely. So if by the 2nd law entropy
| must increase, the system will tend towards the uniform
| configuration.
|
| In other words, if a force is pushing water, the configuration
| with the highest number of states is that where all the
| particles of water are also moving i.e. indistinguishable
| microstates, doesn't matter how you rearrange the moleculles,
| it will look the same as they are all moving uniformly. It
| would be extremely unlikely that there were a pocket of water
| that is mysteriously still in the middle of the stream no?
| Clearly there are not a lot of rearrangements of the mollecules
| that will keep the macrostate the same, so low entropy, which
| tends not to be the case.
|
| (Edit) How this connects to the "desire to dissipate energy
| efficiently":
|
| Essentially, when we talk about "energy" we really mean "free
| energy". This is the amount of work that we can extract from a
| system. This is nothing but a measure of how far a current
| system is to it's maximum entropy state. So dissipating energy
| = increasing entropy.
|
| The mindblowing part for me is the connection that the process
| of extracting free energy is the same process that moves a
| system to its most likely state, uniformity, high entropy. So
| somehow, the ability to _accelerate_ an already inevitable
| process lets us reconfigure other systems _away_ from their
| most likely state!! So if we imagine the arrow of time to
| progress at the average rate of entropic decay, we are
| essentially reversing it for some systems by accelerating it
| for others!!!
|
| Man...
| crazygringo wrote:
| Thanks for writing all that, and the key part seems to be:
|
| > _So somehow, the ability to _accelerate_ an already
| inevitable process lets us reconfigure other systems _away_
| from their most likely state_
|
| But this is exactly the part that doesn't make sense to me.
| Why would it accelerate? There's no principle I'm aware of
| that would prefer or cause this accelerated version. There's
| no such "ability".
|
| Rather, the entropy process just happens in this "already
| inevitable" way you describe, without any self-organizing
| "resonant" structures or anything or the sort. I don't
| understand what would cause anything different.
| bmitc wrote:
| > It's not like the matter has some goal of dissipating the
| energy
|
| Doesn't it, though? Everything is thought to be tending towards
| higher entropy, and the dissipation of heat helps accomplish
| that.
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, because that higher entropy is developing regardless. The
| energy will eventually hit and heat up _something_ , and who
| cares where it does?
|
| There's no reason I can see why atoms would spontaneously
| rearrange to try to help that along in their local spot. It's
| not something that needs any help. Entropy increases, but
| there's no law that says it always increases as quickly as
| possible, as soon as possible.
| DigitalNoumena wrote:
| And a follow up from a few years later:
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/first-support-for-a-physics-t...
| dcre wrote:
| Enjoyable read -- would be nice to have 2014 in the title, it's
| easy to miss.
|
| This[0] is a nice writeup from 2019 that does a better job of
| connecting England's work to contemporary complexity theorists
| like Stuart Kauffman.
|
| [0]: https://qz.com/1539551/is-the-universe-pro-life-the-fermi-
| pa...
| baerrie wrote:
| Prigogine's original work on dissipative structures seems to have
| already "proved" this as much as this scientist. They both are
| hindered by the speculative nature of any abiogenetic theory, we
| cannot go back to the birth of life and prove anything
| bmitc wrote:
| I have also not understood why this theory gets solely ascribed
| to England instead of Prigogine and others. Is England even
| working on this stuff anymore? He left MIT and is a machine
| learning scientist at a massive pharmaceutical company now.
| galenmarchetti wrote:
| This is one of my favorite threads of theoretical physics. An
| entropy modeling of life.
|
| The article says it "underlies rather than replaces" Darwinian
| evolution but I'm not sure that's necessarily the case. Sure
| general relativity "underlies rather than replaces" Newtonian
| gravity, but honestly, the understanding of GR gravity does
| "replace" a pure Newtonian understanding.
|
| Darwinian evolution focuses on survival pressures to force
| natural selection. An entropic basis for evolution can explain
| things other than survival pressures; evolution can occur on a
| basis that rather than "improving survivability" it simply is a
| more functional expression of entropic drive.
|
| How would this change how how we view evolution? It would be
| massive and perhaps explain a lot of the oddities in the
| evolution of very complex features where full functionality and
| marked increase in survivability is very delayed...
|
| Would love to see further research along these lines
| mannykannot wrote:
| Darwinian evolution explains how self-replicating entities can
| evolve into the sort of life we see around us today, but it
| does not explain how those self-replicating entities got that
| way in the first place.
|
| It is not clear to me from the article, however, that this
| theory goes so far as to explain the latter, either. It seems
| to be saying that if you take something like what we believe
| the primordial earth was like, then one might expect life to
| emerge, but it does not seem to have suggested specific
| processes leading to that outcome.
|
| Nor does the article give any example of how it has led to a
| satisfactory non-Darwinian explanation of an allegedly
| problematic case of evolution. If that has changed since the
| article's publication in 2014, I would be very interested in
| hearing about it.
| DigitalNoumena wrote:
| Indeed these are normative claims, not descriptive. The
| emergence of life is is an extremly complex stochastic
| process, and likely impossible to describe. However, it does
| seem plausible that if a) high dissipative systems are more
| likely to perdure in time given the 2nd law, b) self-
| replication enhances the global entropic dissipation of a
| category of systems (because there are more) and c) the
| process of developing such a system is easier done by
| replication than by the same evolutionary pathway that led to
| the appearance of said system in the first place, then given
| enough time a self-replicating system MUST appear. I would
| like to see a formalisation of c) though, my formulation is
| quite tenuous.
|
| I don't see why it would have to lead to a non-Darwinian
| explanation of evolution. As has been said by in the parent
| comment, survivability might just be a high-level
| manifestation of entropic drive of self-replicating systems.
| It's remarkable that this is a claim that can be falsified,
| whereas Darwinian evolution, well..
| DigitalNoumena wrote:
| Quoting England:
|
| > _I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics,
| you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more
| general phenomenon._
|
| I think this is exactly alligned with your Newtonian-GR
| analogy.
| KhoomeiK wrote:
| For those who are unaware, this is the same worldview that
| underlies e/acc thought:
|
| https://effectiveaccelerationism.substack.com/p/repost-notes...
|
| TLDR: the universe's telos is entropy increase, and thus its
| emergent structures like life, intelligence, and capitalism favor
| entropic acceleration
| DigitalNoumena wrote:
| I find too many foundational problems and contradictions within
| e/acc to take it seriously. They are speculating with ideas
| that IMO have potential but the priciples are more a poorly
| though out sci-fi ideological statement than a philosophically
| comprehensive theory. Just the first few points of the
| manifesto make no sense to me:
|
| > _The overarching goal for humanity is to preserve the light
| of consciousness._
|
| If all physical processes are subservient to a thermodynamical
| "telos", how could any manifestation of free will emerge? Not
| even going to get into how problematic it is to cite
| conciousess as a fundamental goal of when we cannot even assess
| its existence in other beings.
|
| > _Technology and market forces (technocapital) are
| accelerating in their power and abilities. This force cannot be
| stopped._
|
| What? Cannot be stoped? How could humanity possibly play any
| role in an unstoppable process? Surely no one can deny
| capitalism to be the result of specific choices in human
| history? Hence why we can concieve alternatives to capitalism
| and can very well choose them over capitalism.
|
| > _Technocapital can usher in the next evolution of
| consciousness, creating unthinkable next-generation lifeforms
| and silicon-based awareness._
|
| Can? How could it not if the claim is that it's unstoppable?
| Concisouness again?
|
| > _HUMANS HAVE AGENCY RIGHT NOW. WE CAN AFFECT THE ADVENT OF
| THE INFLECTION IN THIS PROCESS_
|
| _Scratches head..._
|
| I would love to have a rigorous debate about some of these
| ideas but come on... I was recently in an X space with some of
| the writers of this manifesto and was very disappointed.
| KhoomeiK wrote:
| > If all physical processes are subservient to a
| thermodynamical "telos", how could any manifestation of free
| will emerge? Not even going to get into how problematic it is
| to cite conciousess as a fundamental goal of when we cannot
| even assess its existence in other beings.
|
| Agreed, this is a point which I don't think is empirically
| backed as rigorously as the rest of e/acc. Consciousness
| preservation is a side effect of the currently most
| successful form of life (humans) also evidently having
| consciousness.
|
| > What? Cannot be stoped? How could humanity possibly play
| any role in an unstoppable process?
|
| I take issue with the claim of "cannot be stopped". Certainly
| the extinction of humanity would result in capitalistic
| acceleration ceasing. But we'd simply be knocked a few levels
| down the emergence ladder. Darwinistic acceleration would
| continue to proceed on a biological level, eventually
| begetting a species with the ability to accelerate on shorter
| time-scales (intelligence) and across larger spatial scales
| (culture). I'd say that humanity doesn't play a role, but is
| rather an instrument of this acceleration process.
|
| > Surely no one can deny capitalism to be the result of
| specific choices in human history? Hence why we can concieve
| alternatives to capitalism and can very well choose them over
| capitalism.
|
| I don't think capitalism is necessarily the global maximum of
| economic systems for thermodynamic acceleration, but it is
| certainly the most effective system in existence at the
| moment. We can conceive of alternatives, but if a subset of
| humans were to choose them, historical precedent suggests
| that they would be out-accelerated by capitalism.
|
| > Can? How could it not if the claim is that it's
| unstoppable? Concisouness again?
|
| Given long enough time, it will. But it might need multiple
| reboots and bumps down the emergence ladder if we fuck up.
|
| You do bring up some great points about agency vs
| instrumentality that I'd like to think longer about though.
| uoaei wrote:
| That's not what's being said in this theory, though. It only
| says entropy production happens at an appropriate rate.
| Obviously too much entropy production too quickly will create
| excess heat which is by definition useless energy from an
| information theoretical standpoint.
| skybrian wrote:
| I thought e/acc was some kind of in-joke or hoax? Does anyone
| really believe that stuff? This anonymous Substack isn't
| particularly convincing.
| yedava wrote:
| It's interesting to see how new religions are born after old
| religions are found wanting. Whereas earlier we had a God
| overseeing Earth, we now have Teleological Universe that
| ordains capitalism. But just like old religion, the new
| religion too works purely out of wishful thinking and not on
| evidence.
|
| In a Universe that favors capitalism, you would think there
| would be plenty of evidence of a few entities exploiting the
| rest to drive entropy maximization. Instead what we see is that
| life is scarce, so scarce that we can't even be sure that there
| is other life in the Universe. Where are the Universe's
| capitalistic overlords who can make us pee in bottles lest we
| waste precious time maximizing entropy generation?
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