alt.fan.pikachu moderation
Wa...@alt.fan.pikachu
Beer, 1978, ISBN 0 471 06189 1
*
* The term 'entropy' began life as a subtle measure of energy flow.
*
* When something hotter is systemically bound to something cooler, the
* greater energy of the hotter stuff migrates---inexorably migrates---
* into the cooler stuff. This is one manifestation of the Second Law of
* Thermodynamics, which everyone of education has encountered.
*
* This is sometimes referred to as 'the universe is running down'.
Okay, 'entropy', yeah I remember that kinda. Keep going:
Our solar system is a lot of matter that is NOT sitting in a situation of
entropy: the sun is radiating heat at the planets. Instead of just matter
smoothing out to a common low-energy state, a burning fireball is at work.
Cybernetics states that under conditions
like this, matter does something special.
* "Platform for Change", by Stafford Beer, 1978, ISBN 0 471 06189 1
*
* If we have a universe, which is improbable though it exists, it is
* because the Second Law of Thermodynamics has two forms. One is concerned
* with the pressure to even out energy; that is the form which belongs to
* our stereotyped conception of the universe. It betokens death.
*
* The other form is about information content, which leads to greater
* organization and increasing complexity. That form betokens life.
What would be a specific example of energy causing matter
to be formatted by information, becoming "more complex"?
* "The Human Use of Human Beings", by Norbert Wiener
*
* A light quantum is a very small thing, but it turns out the energy
* transfer which is necessary for an effective information coupling
* is quite small.
*
* Thus, for the leaf of a tree, photosynthesis uses radiation from the
* sun to form starch and other complicated chemicals necessary for life,
* out of the simpler atoms of water and the carbon dioxide of the air.
*
* An enormous local decrease in entropy may be associated with quite a
* moder
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