23 JAN 2014 by ideonexus

 Life Emerges from the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Every species of living thing can make a copy of itself by exchanging energy and matter with its surroundings. One feature common to all such examples of spontaneous “self-replication” is their statistical irreversibility: clearly, it is much more likely that one bacterium should turn into two than that two should somehow spontaneously revert back into one. From the standpoint of physics, this observation contains an intriguing hint of how the properties of self-replicators must be constr...
Folksonomies: life thermodynamics
Folksonomies: life thermodynamics
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Hypothesis that life is the result of needing to dissipate energy that builds up.

23 APR 2013 by ideonexus

 Intelligence as a Response to Entropy

Recent advances in fields ranging from cosmology to computer science have hinted at a possible deep connection between intelligence and entropy maximization. In cosmology, the causal entropic principle for anthropic selection has used the maximization of entropy production in causally connected space-time regions as a thermodynamic proxy for intelligent observer concentrations in the prediction of cosmological parameters [1]. In geoscience, entropy production maximization has been proposed a...
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Researchers create an AI that seeks to maximize its potential future histories and therefore tackles goals like playing the stockmarket and balancing balls on sticks because to let the money run out or the ball drop would reduce its potential future histories. Intelligence seeks to maximize entropy.