Towards a P2P Thermoeconomic Theory
marc fawzi
Per Michel's request for implications of thermoeconomics in the context of P2P social theory:
(This is a very rough slice of a much larger future blog post)
---
Premise:
We can come up with a morally optimal model of society with the only constraints being our own conscience and ideas, but if we do not look at the observed laws of nature (and particularly the laws of thermodynamics) that constrain any model that involves physical resources then the model will run aground sooner or later.
This does not make the social model any less relevant than the physical model. They are both equally important to understand, and they can be made to work together in harmony.
Dialog:
I'll start with a useful definition of thermodynamics:
Thermodynamics is a branch of physics which deals with the energy and work of a system. Thermodynamics deals only with the *large scale response* of a system which we can observe and measure in experiments.
1st Law (also related: conservation of energy, conservation of mass, conservation of momentum):
"Within a given domain, the amount of energy remains constant and energy is neither created nor destroyed. Energy can be converted from one form to another (potential energy can be converted to kinetic energy) but the total energy within the domain remains fixed."
2nd Law (as a follow up to the 1st law):
"We can imagine thermodynamic processes which conserve energy but which never occur in nature. For example, if we bring a hot object into contact with a cold object, we observe that the hot object cools down and the cold object heats up until an equilibrium is reached. The transfer of heat goes from the hot object to the cold object.
We can imagine a system, however, in which the heat is instead transferred from the cold object to the hot object, and such a system *does not violate* the *first law* of thermodynamics. The cold object gets colder and the hot object gets hotter, but energy is conserved. Obviously we don't encounter such a system in nature and to explain this and similar observations, thermodynamicists proposed a second law of thermodynamics. Clasius, Kelvin, and Carnot proposed various forms of the second law to describe the particular physics problem that each was studying.
The description of the second law stated here was taken from Halliday and Resnick's textbook, "Physics". It begins with the definition of a new state variable called entropy. Entropy has a variety of physical interpretations, including the statistical disorder of the system (very relevant to thermoeconomic information processing), dispersal of energy, etc, but for our purposes, however entropy may be defined (in different interpretations), let us consider entropy to be just another property of the system, like (not as) temparature, with whatever interpretation you want to use.
What the second law states, is that for a given physical process, the combined entropy of the system and the environment remains a constant if the process can be reversed.
An example of a reversible process is *ideally* forcing a flow through a constricted pipe. "Ideal" means no boundary layer losses. As the flow moves through the constriction, the pressure, temperature and velocity change, but these variables return to their original values downstream of the constriction. The state of the gas returns to its original conditions and the change of entropy of the system is zero. Engineers call such a process an isentropic. Isentropic means constant entropy.
The second law states that if the physical process is irreversible, the combined entropy of the system and the environment must increase. The final entropy must be greater than the initial entropy for an irreversible process.
An example of an irreversible process is the problem discussed in the second paragraph. A hot object is put in contact with a cold object. Eventually, they both achieve the same equilibrium temperature. If we then separate the objects they remain at the equilibrium temperature and do not naturally return to their original temperatures. The process of bringing them to the same temperature is irreversible.
When it comes to bits and bytes some of the the physical constraints that follow from the first and second laws of thermodynamics are:Hardware/Physical Domain:
1. The continuous cost of energy (whatever it is, e.g. near zero) used for powering the hardware (including the cost of maintaining and evolving the capability of the energy generation capacity)
2. The continuous cost of energy used for the maintenance of the hardware at every point, from desktop to network core, mesh infrastructure or the hardware landscape, including the communication channels. This includes energy used in manufacturing of new hardware or replacement parts.
Information Processing/Virtual Domain:
3. The continuous cost of energy for evolving the capacity, scale and quality of the communication/transportation/connectivity
4. The continuous cost of energy to power our "human bandwidth for information process," i.e. the energy we need to power our brains/bodies ...
There is also the 0th, 3rd and 4th laws of thermodyanmics which complete the picture, but it's xmas guys and I have 20 minutes to shower and get to the mall before someone here shoot me.
Anyway, while having an engineer's understanding of thermodynamics I would like to invite a rational dialog that would help to bridge the gap between social and physical theory, which is a process of reconciling two different axiomatic deductive systems :-)
Seems like everything is fractal, with problems expressing themselves in other problems with lower and lower resolution (more wiggle room) as we go down the chain and more resolution (less wiggle room) as we go up the chain, but "reality" operates at all levels in the chain. We just have to recognize the common patterns across all our different deductive systems because its those common patterns that will allow us to build a common picture.
Merry xmas/Happy Holidays :)
Marc
Thanks Marc for your reply.
Hmm, I have been experimenting with such "usership" and "sharist" approaches for the last years. Some platforms, such as hospitality platforms, have huge potential
( couchsurfing - cs, hospitalityclub - hc, bewelcome - bw)
I have been involved with cs and hc and their development models turned out to become closed,
which prompted the development of bw by hc and cs volunteers : http://bewelcome.org
It is realist to believe that there is enough of a critical mass to build up a viable economy with "sharist" types of intentional currencies.
You do not need to have everyone on board. Currencies can be vectors for the emergence of real social networks, and can be combined with other real social networks sharing common intentions, such as a number of individuals relating their lifestyles to hospitality networks.
We do not need to coerce everyone into the systems we develop.
But offer the solutions, and the best designs, for the hundreds of thousands, or perhaps the millions of individuals that are ready to start experimenting with them.
My view.
Writing from a cafe - limited internet access for the moment,
Merry Christmas if you celebrate it,
Greetings
DanteOn Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 6:51 PM, marc fawzi <marc....@gmail.com> wrote:
Dante,
I really like what you're saying.
If I was to support any alternate view on the economy besides the model I'm working with it would be yours because I know it's "all we ever want to do but cannot because of realism"
In other words, I think it's great that you think this way and I think you can get people to follow the message if you keep it succinct as powerful and not get too philosophical with it (going over people's heads)
But for me, I'm looking at a technically radical and philosophically "centrist" solution, not too far to the left or too far to the right. The radical aspect of it is combining energy and economy (which will happen sooner or later) and the philosophical part of it is that it trains people to think different, from "winner takes all" to "winner shares all" ... I like moving in steps not one giant leap. The next step would be to motivate the sharing of land.. i.e. the material basis for the economy, but I haven't thought about it yet.
Good enough?On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 7:52 AM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante....@gmail.com> wrote:
From my current perspective,
- ownership, especially accumulation of ownership,
most often reduces potential for "development" :
the potential to deal with greater complexity to the benefit of the greater self,
with a integral awareness.
For me, a monetary information system based on ownership addiction enslaves transactions into the aim of ownership monopoly.
- usership, and the architecture/modalities of usership processing,
can optimize access to transactions by liberating them from constraint of the promotion of competitive coercive increase of ownership concentration. in other words, liberate it from the aim of a coercive paradigm.
usership architectures, according to their modalities, have the potential to open up access to transactions embodying , instead of coercion, the intention of sustainable processes of cocreative learning paradigms.
---------
As to be able to facilitate meaningful transactions: meaningful transactions being understood and visualized as a creative process from a integral/holistic perspective.
A process dimensions engine can allow the visualization of such development economics: the creation and the opening up of the use of new process objects through 1"increased trust",2 action/love, 3 non-coercive contemplation, and 0 inspiration connecting such dimensions - and at a "shared" meta level ( relation between two meta levels / awareness and brane position at higher level of abstraction then meta level ) :
1 - transcendence ( increase of the overcoming of limitations to greater trust : meta-"increased trust" : "increased trust of increased trust" : increased potential to open up channels that increase the potential to open up channels) ,
2 - care ( meta love )
3 - faith ( meta non-coercive contemplation )
0 : inspiration ( point enabling movement of experience along positions of meta process dimensions )
///////////////////
marc fawzi
Please do send me the paper.
Marc
thanks for the interesting snippet
I published an article that discusses thermodynamics in relation to
digital ecosystems
I am sorry that it is locked, but some of you may acces ieee via their
academic accounts,
let me kno if you are interested, and i ll send you my working copy
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4635217&isnumber=4635078
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>
Bryan Bishop
> Per Michel's request for implications of thermoeconomics in the context of
> P2P social theory:
Before you continue on about thermodynamics, you might want to check
out 'constructals':
http://www.constructal.org/
And Stan Salthe:
http://www.nbi.dk/~natphil/salthe/
And in particular, my archive of complexity-science mailing list emails:
http://heybryan.org/bookmarks/bookmarks-old2//Complexity%20Science/May%2027%20complexity%20digest/complex%20science%20NECSI%20(3001%20to%208278)/index.html#8.1.2
And I guess nearly anything I've ever written about thermodynamics:
http://google.com/search?q=thermodynamics+kanzure
> We can come up with a morally optimal model of society with the only
> constraints being our own conscience and ideas, but if we do not look at the
> observed laws of nature (and particularly the laws of thermodynamics) that
> constrain any model that involves physical resources then the model will run
> aground sooner or later.
"Morally optimal" is ambiguous. What are you actually trying to achieve?
> This does not make the social model any less relevant than the physical
> model. They are both equally important to understand, and they can be made
> to work together in harmony.
<snip>
> 2nd Law (as a follow up to the 1st law):
>
> The description of the second law stated here was taken from Halliday and
> Resnick's textbook, "Physics". It begins with the definition of a new state
> variable called entropy. Entropy has a variety of physical interpretations,
> including the statistical disorder of the system (very relevant to
> thermoeconomic information processing), dispersal of energy, etc, but for
> our purposes, however entropy may be defined (in different interpretations),
> let us consider entropy to be just another property of the system, like (not
> as) temparature, with whatever interpretation you want to use.
Entropy is not disorder:
http://www.entropysite.com/entropy_isnot_disorder.html
Acceptable uses of the word 'entropy' when talking about statistical
disorder usually are talking about the number of positional
microstates or possible configurations of the matter in question. This
is usually some log number based off of Boltzmann. Anyway, one of the
definitions of entropy that I find particularly useful here is the
concept of entropy as "energy unavailable to the system".
> When it comes to bits and bytes some of the the physical constraints that
> follow from the first and second laws of thermodynamics are:
... found in Shannon's 1948 thesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory
> Anyway, while having an engineer's understanding of thermodynamics I would
> like to invite a rational dialog that would help to bridge the gap between
> social and physical theory, which is a process of reconciling two different
> axiomatic deductive systems :-)
marc fawzi
And I guess nearly anything I've ever written about thermodynamics:
http://google.com/search?q=thermodynamics+kanzure
>>
This should be fun... and I mean it in a good way. :-)
"Morally optimal" is ambiguous. What are you actually trying to achieve?
Entropy is not disorder:
http://www.entropysite.com/entropy_isnot_disorder.html
That NASA guys who wrote that (what I was quoting) were saying whether it's degree of dispersal of energy, degree of statistical disorder, or whatever it may be, imagine it to be a property like temperature.
Scientists who argue about meaning of words should be round up and executed.
Etymologists exempted.
Acceptable uses of the word ...
And who made you the Mysterious & Secretive Agency in Charge of Accepting New Word Meanings? :D
Speaking of entropy, what is life? Go define life and when you're done let's have a debate about what life is or isn't. Physical law is an observation of nature, not a definer of words used in some archaic language.
<<
> When it comes to bits and bytes some of the the physical constraints that
> follow from the first and second laws of thermodynamics are:
... found in Shannon's 1948 thesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_in_thermodynamics_and_information_theory
>>
The joke is on Shannon. His theory has been decaying since he typed the last character, 60 years ago.
Michel Bauwens
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Emlyn
>
> Premise:
>
> We can come up with a morally optimal model of society with the only
> constraints being our own conscience and ideas, but if we do not look at the
> observed laws of nature (and particularly the laws of thermodynamics) that
> constrain any model that involves physical resources then the model will run
> aground sooner or later.
I think the thrust of your post was that everything ultimately has an
energy cost.
This doesn't mean that energy can't be so abundant as to be free for
all practical intents. When it's daylight, you can look up and see a
stupendously large fusion reactor, just pouring all its energy into
space. Surely it's a relatively short time between here and when we
finally start gathering orders of magnitude more energy than we can
use from that beasty. Or someone gets local fusion right.
I just don't see thermodynamic constraints as being the defining
feature of a technological economy in our lifetimes. As we learn to
better harness the energy sources we do have, and better harness the
sun, it'll look like just the opposite.
Now, once we enclose the sun in a dyson sphere and convert the rest of
the solar system into computronium, we might start worrying about
entropy in an isolated system. But I'm content to ignore that for now.
--
Emlyn
http://emlynoregan.com - my home
http://emlyntech.wordpress.com - coding related
http://point7.wordpress.com - downshifting and ranting
marc fawzi
Discussion re: P2P Thermoeconomic theory
Emlyn (Open Manufacturing):
<<
I think the thrust of your post was that everything ultimately has an
energy cost.
This doesn't mean that energy can't be so abundant as to be free for
all practical intents.
There is also the energy cost of maintaining and adapting your energy production (you CAN forget sunk costs but you cannot orget recurring costs of maintenance and adapting to meet future needs, i.e. absorbing cost of R&D, e.g. making upgrades.)
But a lot more profoundly than maintenance and upgrade costs, as you connect your energy production infrastructure to a Common Grid (SmartGrid) you absorb part of the cost of maintaining and upgrading the grid.
Or is the world static? does it stop progressing when we feel we had enough? Do we ever have enough? Do we stop the arrow of progress? I assume that progress is part of our struggle against the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and I'm not sure we're will be ultimately successful unless we continue to evolve, which brings us to the energy cost of our evolution as a species, on all levels, which is substantial.
Or someone gets local fusion right.
Per the thermodyanmic model of the world (as explained above) every piece of technology has maintenance (up keep) cost as well as adaptation cost (i.e. R&D cost becomes cost of upgrades)
I just don't see thermodynamic constraints as being the defining
feature of a technological economy in our lifetimes. As we learn to
better harness the energy sources we do have, and better harness the
sun, it'll look like just the opposite.
The argument that I have attempted to make is that we (and everything else) have a continuous struggle against the 2nd law of thermodynamics. If you get your energy from fusion you will still need energy to maintain the fusion technology, and while that energy can come from the fusion reactor itself (since it's so efficient) you still need to move that energy to the farmer who makes the food for the scientist who does the maintenance and upgrades to the reactor. It's the flow of energy that has to be enabled between all nodes within an economy, and the idea of tokenizing a universal form of energy (i.e. electrcity), as we have in the latest P2P Social Currency model (fyi: the concept of energy tokenization has been made as clear as possible in v0.76.0 in Common Energy Bank section) allows us to enable energy to flow from one node to another alongside the flow of goods and services (e.g. fusion reactor maintenance service is paid for with tokenized electric energy that the maintenance crew can exchange with the farmer for food)
The issue in P2P theory as far as Thermodynamic is concerned is how do we assure the flow of energy through all nodes of the economy in such a way that we get maximum "globally sustainable" productivity from every node. My thesis is simple: in order for nodes to have maximum "globally sustainable" productivity they must give and take in equal amount, i.e near unity for exchange ratio (in energy: e.g. providing service, which costs energy, and getting paid back in tokenized form of universally utilitarian energy, e.g. electricity)