Sean Carroll - 2024 Philosophy of Physics Workshop: Foundations of Thermodynamic

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Complexogenesis Increasing entropy is often glossed as increasing disorder or randomness. But in the evolution from the low-entropy early universe to the high-entropy future, complex structures apparently come into existence along the way. This isn’t in violation of the Second Law, as the formation and persistence of complex structures can be entropy-increasing processes; but it does raise the question of whether the appearance of complexity is automatic, and what kinds of rules govern it. I will propose a classification of different kinds of complex physical structures, discuss when and how they arise dynamically in undirected thermodynamic evolution, and relate them to issues of information and statistical physics.

Keywords: Thermodynamic, Complexity, Entropy

Lorraine Ford

(1) I think that the generalised point about cellular automata, in common with real-world life, is that a cell or an entity changes in response to knowledge of its own state:

e.g. (category1=number1 IS TRUE) AND (category2=number2 IS TRUE) AND (category3=number3 IS TRUE),

and knowledge of the state of its surroundings:

e.g. (category4=number4 IS TRUE) AND (category5=number5 IS TRUE) AND (category6=number6 IS TRUE).

(2) However, in real-world life, there is no real-world system-wide computer program making the same type of changes to every cell or entity. In real-world life, each cell or entity is making its own individual on-the-spot changes in response to the abovementioned individual knowledge it possesses.

(3) And in contrast to an arbitrary physical/ mathematical fact:

e.g. category5=number5,

on-the-spot time-place-anchored knowledge is a different thing that is represented as:

e.g. (category5=number5) IS TRUE.

(4) And what overall pattern these changes might create in time, from the point of view of some purportedly-existing entity that purportedly exists outside the real-world system and purportedly observes the real-world system, the pattern created is completely irrelevant. E.g., physicist Stephen Wolfram’s rule 131 is completely irrelevant. These superficial ideas of “complexity” and “complexogenesis’ are completely irrelevant, and misleading.

(5) And the generalised point about cellular automata, in common with real-world life, is that a cell or an entity jumps its own numbers, in logical response to knowledge of its own individual state and knowledge of its own individual surroundings. The numbers are being jumped; the numbers are not smoothly changing in a way that is determined by law-of-nature relationships/ equations; any such relationships/ equations would be a secondary consideration.

(6) So, in contrast to law-of-nature equations which merely represent system-wide static relationships, the generalised point about cellular automata, in common with real-world life, is that they represent:

On-the-spot time-place-anchored knowledge/ information possessed by a part of the system, and
On-the-spot time-place-anchored cause, i.e. number jumps occurring in (logical) response to on-the-spot time-place-anchored knowledge.

Lorraine Ford

Lorraine Ford
Any correct theory of space and time and matter must also contain features that would allow for the arising of life, when and if conditions allow.

Not just the arising of life on a previously lifeless planet, but the reproduction aspects of existing life, where life continually RE-arises, where whole new organs and organisms are built almost from scratch out of low-level components.

So, it’s not just physical matter and the laws of nature out of which life is built: it is the algorithmic aspects, of matter or the system, the algorithmic aspects that are building the life, that have to be accounted for in any correct theory of space and time and matter.

So, it’s great that people are now trying to explain how life could have arisen, but these explanations seem to be incongruous add-ons to other theories, because suddenly algorithmic aspects are appearing that previously were never mentioned.

But these algorithmic aspects, necessary to explain life, are a very different thing to law-of-nature mathematical relationships (which are represented by equations), because these algorithmic/ logical aspects are all about IF, AND, OR, IS TRUE, and THEN aspects of the world.

As opposed to the static relationships represented by law-of-nature equations, statements containing algorithmic symbols (e.g. in computer programs) represent the systems knowledge of its own on-the-spot conditions, and represent the system on-the-spot-moving itself in response to this knowledge. These on-the-spot analytical/ algorithmic/ logical aspects are necessary in order to build life.

It is clear that any correct theory of space and time and matter must also incorporate basic algorithmic features, i.e. basic features that represent a system’s knowledge of itself, and represent a system moving itself.

Lorraine Ford

Lorraine Ford
Out of seemingly nothing, the world moved; and seemingly the only 2 possible types of movement are 1) the creation of structural categories, relationships between the categories, and numbers, and 2) the assignment of numbers to the categories which in turn changes other numbers in related categories, due to the relationships.

But while the categories, relationships and numbers are static things (representable by equation symbols and number symbols), the movement aspects of the world (i.e. the creation and assignment aspects) can only be represented using algorithmic/ logical connective symbols.

I’m saying that movement requires 1) the continual creation of new numbers, and 2) the continual assignment of these numbers to the categories, which has further flow-on effects. And this is what we see in the quantum-level world, when the low-level world is looked at very closely.

So, instead of consternation about the seeming-disorder of quantum-level number jumps, people should instead be detailing THEIR view of how they think number movement works in the world. WHERE is their view of how number movement works in the world? I’m saying that there is no such thing as a perpetual motion mathematical machine where, once initialised at the beginning of the world, some categories of numbers continuously morph into other numbers for ever and ever afterwards.

How number movement works in the world, and what is doing the number movement (presumably matter itself), has implications for the arising of life on this planet.

There is no point in looking for answers in the very superficial ideas of “complexity” and “complexogenesis”.

Jason Wolfe

Lorraine Ford Any correct theory of space and time and matter must also contain features that would allow for the arising of life, when and if conditions allow.

The universe seems to be fine tuned for chemistry. I mean, it's a fact that chemistry exists and chemistry is a prerequisite for life (as we know it). It's that pesky abiogenesis thing that is the minefield. So I'll be careful and just say that I think that consciousness itself is foundational. And given enough time, this consciousness will get bored and want something more interesting to do, like create biology and perhaps even try out the biology just for fun.

Lorraine Ford

Jason Wolfe
First, before brashly asserting that consciousness is a thing that "will get bored ..." (are you talking about your high-level human self?), you need to explain what consciousness is, i.e. what useful or necessary part consciousness plays in the universe, if any. Can consciousness exist if it is merely ornamental, and not useful or necessary in the universe?

And second, before claiming that consciousness is an agent that actually does something in the universe, you need to explain precisely what it means to do something, to be an agent. Agency is completely superfluous if laws of nature are responsible for all outcomes in the universe.

Jason Wolfe

Lorraine Ford I mean consciousness of any kind, from the lowest amoeba who is hungry for a glucose molecule, to human, to advanced aliens, to anything beyond that, even hypothetical noncorporeal life. What they all have in common is the ability to like or dislike what they are experiencing. Enough to take action. Enough to take extreme or ongoing action. If that means that creating a universe will satisfy its need for experience, then it will find a way to do that. I hesitate to refer to religion because this is a physics forum, but nothing reveals the nature of consciousness like religion.

Lorraine Ford Agency is completely superfluous if laws of nature are responsible for all outcomes in the universe.

This is what I think. The laws of nature go deep, all the way down to the foundations of reality, just to establish the metaphysical framework that permits consciousness and memory. I used a < consciousness + substrate = 0 > explanation. That substrate is "memory". As a hypothetical, let's pretend that it's Halloween, and your friends convince you to go to the cemetery. You meet a spooky gooky ghost. And it say "Boo!" and you run away. The hypothetical ghost is non corporeal (not made of atoms). Whatever it is, if it has consciousness, then it has memories that are stored in some kind of substrate that is probably a quantum field of some metaphysical kind. No guarantee it can recall its memories. No guarantee that its memories are accurate. But the substrate itself is expected to exist. That ghost has at least some agency, in as much as it has freedom to make choices. It can choose to spook you or just observe or even depart. Maybe it's a "mean" ghost and thinks it's hilarious to scare the bejesus out of humans who wander into its cemetery. It can certainly make choices. But it is guided by whatever patterns are in its memory-substrate. That is an awkward way to say that we have freewill up to a point. In plain English, we have free will up to a point of our karmic patterns. We are free to fight our karmic patterns or to work with them. It's probably better to find a way to "explode" negative karmic patterns and find better patterns that align with our goals.

Lorraine Ford

Jason Wolfe
What a load of unadulterated stuff and nonsense.

Jason Wolfe

Lorraine Ford What a load of unadulterated stuff and nonsense.

Sounds like you got the basic idea. I think that a consciousness field is foundational to reality. From there, consciousness can subdivide (...etc) and pursue raw instinctual goals. Probably emotions and intelligence come later. It would mean that metaphysics is founded on something real. It would mean that real death doesn't exist at all; death is just a doorway...

Jason Wolfe

Lorraine Ford I don't think a consciousness field as the foundation of reality is as crazy as a multiverse, or time travel, or a universe that runs backwards in time, or cyclic conformal cosmology.