An interesting question to ask is how far does it go up the emergence ladder. E.g. do the organisms dissipating more energy have better chances of survival? Or perhaps even whether industries producing more infrared radiation are the most effective ones?
Ultimately (if this is true) - would it be possible to increase efficiency of a complex system (social, financial, computational - doesn't matter) by consciously shifting the radiation it emits to the lower end of the spectrum?
>E.g. do the organisms dissipating more energy have better chances of survival?
in general, no. E.g., a child with a high fever will dissipate more energy than a child without a fever over the same time period. who is more likely to survive?
We can even consider a specific type of dissipation that an organism uses to store memories (longer lifetime of memory = less reversible = requires more dissipation), there's no guarantee that the memories stored will be useful for survival. storing a memory that lasts 100 years costs dissipation that could be better spent elsewhere for an organism that typically lives 1 week...
but with appropriate restrictions on what is meant by dissipation, organism, ... the timescales involved, the driving ... then the reverse statement can be true "more likely evolutionary outcomes" <among all possible trajectories of configurations of 'organisms'> "are going to be the ones that absorbed and dissipated more energy from the environment’s external drives on the way to getting there.”
Let me reframe my question this way: given the child you mentioned, would he/she be better off in life if you construct and provide such a framework where that child could consume and dissipate more energy than other children?
That is, can we control (not just predict) the outcome by manipulating dissipation patterns?
> increase efficiency of a complex system (social, financial, computational - doesn't matter) by consciously shifting the radiation it emits to the lower end of the spectrum
You take energy too literally here. You could say a spoiled child has evolved to be an efficient money dissipation system.
This theory strikes me as teleological rather than explanatory-- it explains phenomena in terms of their effects rather than their causes. Effects come afterwards, so they can't be the explanation for something that's already happened.
Really I do not see what this idea is supposed to add. Darwinian evolution is a perfectly complete, tight, and verified explanation for the existence and complexity of life.
> Effects come afterwards, so they can't be the explanation for something that's already happened.
actually theory of emergence of dissipative structures in the energy flows is kind of showing that the energy flow, i.e. 2nd law is the cause, not the effect
>Really I do not see what this idea is supposed to add.
even without showing it as a cause, there is still important role of these works is to show compatibility at all stages and scales of the life process with the basic physics laws like the 2nd law. We kind of intuitively know that this is true, yet to be shown scientifically true is still a pretty big work.
>Darwinian evolution is a perfectly complete, tight, and verified explanation for the existence and complexity of life.
Does it explain clearly and in all the details why we have RNA and those 20 amino acids instead of some other structure and those amino acids that has recently been and will be more in future synthesized in the lab? "Better fit" is obviously a right answer, yet it doesn't provide any details on what specifically was better "fit" with "what". It is like Archimedes law - we still have huge field of naval engineering resulting in multitude of hulls, etc.. despite the law itself being "complete, tight, and verified explanation".
The first living thing would have to be a self-replicating molecule that uses energy. Different forms of this self-replicating molecule would have different reproductive success.
There is a not-unpopular theory that the original form of life on earth was an RNA molecule. RNA is a special molecule, because it can both act as a store of data, and as an enzyme for catalyzing reactions. According to this theory, specialized data storage in the form of DNA evolved later, along with specialized enzymes.
Jack Szostak at Harvard has a great series of videos explaining this theory, and also a number of experiments that he and his students have performed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPzWrv6l9l0
I suppose it would depend on the context of the discussion.
Evolution can be defined as a gradual development of some thing. This thing does not necessarily have to be defined as life. Since celestial formations develop from a starting state then yeah, they can be considered evolution.
In the context of the conversation as it pertains to life, I would imagine that a discussion of evolutionary life would start at the moment a given thing becomes capable of change as it replicates.
I would say no, because they are not self-replicating things.
A part of the definition of living things is that they reproduce. That reproduction (with variation) is a necessary precursor to evolution. Stars and planets do not reproduce themselves, so they cannot be said to undergo selective evolution.
"A part of the definition of living things is that they reproduce."
Kind of :).
We don't really have a definition for life.
Imagine an alien ship landed, and out popped these things. They said 'hey what's up' in their language. Cool. And as it turned out - they don't 'die' by natural causes, or reproduce. The pop out of some chemical process. It's a little creative, but physically plausible.
We could build 'mechanical wombs' fecundated with ovaries and sperm we farm. Is that reproduction? What if we are able to synthesize sperm and ovaries form scratch? 'Reproduction'? Depends on how you look at it I suppose :)
As the Scientist stated in the article, there really isn't a hard boundary between the living and non-living, because when you reduce our definitions down the level of physics, there is no distinction, at least materialist terms.
'Life' is something we observe, and give a name to, but because of the underlying assumption of materialist science (that the Universe is matter/energy bouncing around randomly) - it really doesn't have any real objectivity. You (or we, collectively) just define it to be what you (we) want it to be and that's it.
We don't have one single definition of life, but we do have _definitions_. There are typically a few properties we think living things share, to rule out things that are not living from those that are living.
For instance, crystals reproduce themselves, but we do not consider them living. So we decide that livings things use energy, which rules out crystals as being alive.
Viruses reproduce themselves-- in fact, using the same information-containing molecules that living cells do, DNA and RNA, but they do not use energy (instead they hijack the metabolic machinery of living cells). So we do not consider viruses alive.
So in various definitions of life, you will find criteria such as "uses energy" (has a metabolic process) and "transmits information" (in the form of DNA).
That we have defined such criteria does not mean we arbitrarily made up such distinctions. Human beings differentiated between mechanical and electromagnetic energy, or had the concept of "species", long before we had strict scientific definitions of these things. It is the same with living and non-living phenomena. The only difference is that we arrived at a chemo-physical definition of living much later than other phenomena.
Saying that life is not objectively real is nonsense. That's like saying there's no objective distinction between mechanical and radioactive energy. They're objectively different phenomena, in theory and in measurement. The ultimate conclusion of this line of reasoning is that any distinction between any thing or phenomenon is not objectively real, just a fancy of the mind (which you will find agreement on with Hindu and certain Buddhist philosophers).
Or perhaps you are actually claiming that rocks are alive? Or there really are no differences between a rock and a lichen? If there is no objective, "real" difference between living and non-living things, then a quartz crystal is actually alive (and perhaps conscious) like new-agers claim?
In the case of your aliens, I would argue they are intelligent, but not alive-- sort of like a robot or AI machine. Those aliens are like a side effect of that chemical process. (Unless they in turn re-created the chemical situation that they originate from-- but then of course, they would be reproducing, and thus, living things).
Your aliens aren't that different from if we sent drone robots that we created to aliens. Those drone robots aren't living, though they may be intelligent, and interact intelligently with the aliens. But they don't reproduce; they are a side effect of another living chemical process-- namely, human beings. Unless, of course, those drone robots managed to re-create themselves, or created humans which in turn replicated drone robots.
In the mechanical wombs thought experiment, we are still alive, because we are reproducing. Your mechanical womb is basically an artificial egg. A chicken is just an egg's way of making another egg, after all.
Would you consider a test-tube baby not to be alive?
A multicellular organism is epiphenomical of the cell, and the cell is epiphenomenal of the replicating DNA molecule. Life doesn't start with complex, conscious multicellular organisms like ourselves; it starts with simple, replicating molecules-- namely, DNA.
"That's like saying there's no objective distinction between mechanical and radioactive energy. They're objectively different phenomena, in theory and in measurement."
Of course they are different material phenom - but I''m indicating that in materialism - you have the problem of only being able to define what life is, in very materialist terms - which will always fail.
So you say: "Life is these properties". Fine.
Now you can go out and measure things.
Some things are 'life' , some are 'not life'.
According to your definition.
But however you chose to define it, materially, it falls apart very quickly.
"In the case of your aliens, I would argue they are intelligent, but not alive-- sort of like a robot or AI machine."
I don't agree with this. How can you say this alien that appears in every way to be intelligent, creative, conscientious, self-aware - 'conscious' - is not 'alive'.
Let me ask you - are you 'conscious'?
Prove it to me!
--> You can't <--
By empirical, objective, materialist measure you are a biological machine - a material process - that's it.
You can say: "I reproduce therefore I'm alive"
The alien says: "I'm as alive as you are, and reproduction has absolutely nothing to do with it"
Or rather: The alien is by all accounts and every reasonable observation - 'alive'- it just doesn't fit into another, narrow mechanical view of what life is.
He makes a pretty good case.
So - however you chose to define life 'materially' - anyone can likely quickly come up with a situation in which you have the appearance of 'consciousness/life' that breaks those rules.
It's because we're trying to define it the wrong way, using a set of rules that won't permit it.
Another hint:
The definition of 'life' that you've just offered is not cannon.
So how is it possible in 2016 that we don't have an obvious, simple, and objective definition of 'life'? How could we possibly even debating this?
... because materialism (i.e. the assumption that the Universe is a big mess of particles interacting randomly according to set of rules) - does not allow for it.
You may chose to identify certain 'patterns' as 'life' - but your choice of what constitutes life is completely arbitrary.
"Saying that life is not objectively real is nonsense. "
Really, this is false. It's only 'real' if you arbitrarily define a set of processes to be 'life'.
You'd basically be defining 'life' as just a set of mechanical properties - that is really insufficient for describing what we all observe in 'life' - which is to say something transcendent.
Trying to define life in material terms is actually, kind of 'ridiculous'. We like to try it, because it's the only way we know how to be objective.
But - I'd argue that 'life' is the expression of something - not the existence of material components.
And I'm not making this argument out of opinion - it's rooted in what any normal person would consider to be 'alive' vs. 'not alive'.
"That which is expressed" - not the mechanical details of that expression.
Biology (and physics) is ultimately a useful tool for some things, but it is not ultimately going to help us find the answer to what 'life' is, in many ways, it will send us in the wrong direction.
Reading this article I realized that entropy is actively eliminating systems that are not efficient enough at compensating (various non-living chemical structures), making it much more profitable to be one of the systems that can compensate against it (living cells). By overcoming this threshold of entropy, life has gained resiliency. Without the constant destructive effect of entropy, probably there could be no life. Life is both created and destroyed by entropy.
On a parallel note, deep learning neural nets rely on randomness in connectivity and order of examples, and sometimes just consumes random numbers and turn them into coherent images or sounds. Entropy/randomness is essential in Reinforcement Learning in the exploration-exploitation dilemma - we need to discover the space of possibilities, and in order to do that we need randomness. Interesting how chaos is tangent with intelligence and life, it is practically creating a space for them.
Evolution is not an entirely objective thing, really, it's the arbitrary theoretical line we draw around our observation of bags of random things bouncing around in a random environment. There is no 'process' per sey, other than somewhat arbitrary means we wish to use to describe it.
So the answer is: 'evolution goes back as far as you want it to' - depending on how you chose to define it :)
Yup, it all depends on which level of abstraction you choose to operate in.
I could describe throwing a ball to you into terms of how the quantum wavefunction evolves over time to produce the end state from the start state, and it would be a perfectly fine description, but for the sorts of things we do, usually a Newtonian physics level of description will do because we're generally concerned with coarse level details, not the momenta of each individual atom involved.
I have my own theory about how life and entropy interrelate. I think total entropy in the universe starts at zero and will end at zero. This is because 'order' must be considered 'negative entropy'. As the universe evolves over time patterns in molecules and behaviors of molecules begin to occur. Starting with particles, atoms, molecules, compounds, planets, solar systems, galaxies, etc. Physics doesn't drive just randomness, but it also drives order.
So you ask what is the ultimate MOST NEGATIVE entropy that exists? Life. Specifically brains. Life forms are the most ordered things in the universe (non-random/order). Brains are massively large negative entropy locations in the universe. If you total up all positive entropy and negative entropy the balance out to zero. The reason is because the laws of physics don't change and DO create patterns.
You can even study this "Zero Entropy" law in Conway's Game of Life. As the randomness increases over time to does the 'order', and i argue that the roughly cancel out. It's a kind of 'information conservation' at work here. If no new information is added into a system, it cannot gain or lose entropy, because all the random events are creating 'patterns' and by definition a pattern is an non-randomness and therefore negative entropy.
What you describe is not your theory, it's pretty much conventional understanding of what life is in terms of thermodynamics -- a local capsule of low entropy. It's just that in formal treatment of thermodynamics, there is no negative entropy, there is just high entropy and low entropy. Also, the total entropy of the universe is largely irrelevant. This view is nothing new. What is new (or claimed to be new) about the work reported here is what drives the emergence of these capsules of low entropy.
Thermodynamics states that in any closed system the entropy ALWAYS increases over time. I think this law works, but they need to stipulate that it's for situations where there is a begin-time and end-time (finite time range), but if you integrate entropy over all time (even in a closed system), you end up with a situation where the total area under the entropy curve is zero. In other words if you sort of 'remove' time from the equation, and only consider a closed system, then all particles are guaranteed to have had time to interact with each other and fall into a well ordered pattern where there is equal order and disorder. This is my belief and it is NOT the 'conventional' understanding, but people are beginning to adopt this idea into their thinking.
> Thermodynamics states that in any closed system the entropy ALWAYS increases over time.
You left out a bit. If we take Wikipedia's definition (I know, I know):
> The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time, or remains constant in ideal cases where the system is in a steady state or undergoing a reversible process.
As far as is currently known the laws of physics are time-reversible, which (ISTM, at least) would imply that the latter clause could very easily apply to the universe as a whole.
(There's also the issue of whether the universe itself is a closed system.)
Yes I left out the part about steady state condition as well as absolute zero temperature condition, because those are boundary conditions (constant conditions) that don't involve time. My point is about an integral over all time.
And yes the definition of "universe" is something I define as "a closed system that doesn't interact with other systems", which is also a consistent definition even if the multiverse theory is correct. If two things interact then they are by definition in the same universe.
“He is making me think that the distinction between living and nonliving matter is not sharp,”
Uhh - that is the basis for materialism. 'We are just particles' - essentially, ergo, we cannot be 'alive'. It's funny that Scientists have to figure this out, when it's the fundamental underlying presumption in their branch of metaphysics ... and frankly why we may very well be able to further refine/understand evolution in material terms, we cannot - by definition - explain 'life' in terms of materialist thinking ... because by definition it is excluded from existence. In materialism, we can really only have 'the appearance of life' or intelligence etc.. Materially, we are just a 'bunch of random noise'. Which is obviously an unfulfilling idea, but one which nevertheless rests at the root of science as we understand it today.
I'm reminding the commenter in the realm of materialism there really is no such thing as life, the universe is just a bunch of random noise including you and it.
If you think life exists you need something other than materialism, like spirituality etc..
It's an important paradox sitting right at the base of our rational world view that few realize exists.
It's actually pretty easy to read and interesting! I first saw this here: http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/how-do-you-say-life-in-...
Nautilus, Quanta Cosmos... all of them great publications for futurists