Sic et Non self deconstructs

[_Physics Guy]

I can't really judge Kauffman when I don't have time to read him but from short excerpts like these I have a hard time telling serious scientists from pedlars of woo.

For practical purposes it is absolutely true that there are a lot of things that we limited humans will never predict from pure physics. Heck, we generally can't predict a coin toss or die roll. If we could predict rolling balls on spinning disks we'd all get rich at roulette. Being unpredictable from pure physics in practice is not a special feature of life. Our powers of prediction in practice are weak. That's the whole reason why experimental science is all about working really hard to control variables. We can only predict much of anything if practically everything has been tightly controlled.

So it's misleading to tout the practical unpredictability of biology or evolution or neural networks as some kind of profound special feature of these complex systems. Not even simple things are predictable in practice. But then given that obvious fact, the fact that people are ranting on about the special unpredictability of evolution or whatever as if it were something special makes it hard for me not to conclude that they're talking about something more than just unpredictability in practice.

It would be quite something if the laws of physics really budged and gave way just because a whole lot of big molecules got together in a chromosome or something, like a traffic cop backing off from a crowd. But that just doesn't happen.

"Emergence" is real in the sense that there are lots of important things that really happen in large, complex systems but of which the microscopic mechanisms are currently not understood. And if all you're doing is telling me about examples of such things and inviting me to marvel at them with you then I will listen to you happily all day long. Emergence is not, however, an explanation in its own right. Calling something we don't understand "emergent" does not count as understanding it.

Reifying a name for something we don't understand, and accepting that name as a valid explanation, is what a guy named Henri Bergson tried to do more than a hundred years ago, when he declared that life could only be explained by an immaterial élan vital. And for that matter it's what a guy named Og tried to do ten thousand years ago when he declared that thunder and lightning could only be explained by a god named Big Og. It's a way of thinking whose appeal to human imagination is timeless but it is not science.

[_Res Ipsa]

The part that was hanging me up was the notion that this "emergence" or whatever label you want to give it is somehow incompatible with Newton's second law. As long as there is an external source of energy, entropy in a system can decrease. Discovering the details of how that happens is cool, but it's ordinary cool.

[_Philo Sofee]

Physics Guy
I can't really judge Kauffman when I don't have time to read him but from short excerpts like these I have a hard time telling serious scientists from pedlars of woo.

That's why it is so important to do the scientific thing and actually read them before deciding what it is they are about. Kaufman is not a peddler of woo anymore than Prigogine or Strogatz is. If they have different ideas than what one believes it is not an automatic flag for woo. That is grossly unscientific prejudging and biased I would propose. Examining their claims and evidences is much more in line with a correct scientific approach. Surely physics is not at an end, therefore new information is going to come out all the time. To just ignore it if it differs from what we accept for now at this moment is honestly not a valid approach. Every single one of these gents I am using are either decorated physicists with seriously high honors, or Ph.d published or university retired after dozens and dozens of years teaching physics. These ain't gummy bears man.

[_Arc]

Does he argue that entropy can decrease in a closed system?

I have not seen this claim by Kauffman. That doesn't mean that he has not made it.

I need to make a clarification regarding this earlier exchange. A fair and proper response would have been to say that I have not seen this claim by Kauffman. Furthermore, given his frequent mention of work cycles carried out by biological organisms in open thermodynamic systems, I would doubt that Kauffman has claimed decreased entropy in closed thermodynamic systems.

[_Res Ipsa]

Thanks for the clarification. I read a review of one of his books, and I doubt he makes that claim either.

[_Philo Sofee]

He discusses both open and closed systems and the differences. He is being accurate with Thermodynamics just as he is with self-organization. It takes an open system that is not in equilibrium in order to acquire free energy as he calls it in order for self-organization to occur after the point of bifurcation occurs. The energy MUST be coming in from an outside source in order for the self-regulatory and self-organizing to occur. It cannot do so in a closed system. Our earth, for instance, is certainly an open system as it receives energy from the sun. He takes all this into account. And in several places in his book while he discusses several different kinds of self-organizing systems he has found and experimented with. It really is a nifty book. And yes, I was mistaking who he was. This is Stuart Kauffman, in his book "At Home in the Universe." Another really cool book discussing this theme quite a bit is John P. Briggs, and F. David Peat (passed away in 2017, darn it!) "Looking Glass Universe, The Emerging Science of Wholeness," which is an issue that Roger Penrose in his over the top mind blowing magisterial book "The Road to Reality" discusses a bit. Good Lord that man knows more than we all ever will it seems. Talk about steep! But not too steep..... and all of em are talking about Prigogine's work..... it is a very important thing that caught a lot of people's attention, at least for a decade or so.

[_Arc]

David Chalmers introduced the concept of the “hard problem” of consciousness at a scientific meeting in Tucson in 1994. Prior to that time, and in many ways since, the subject of consciousness has been of more concern to philosophers and theorists than to laboratory scientists. In the opinion of many, the view of Descartes, that God created the human mind as a soul separate from the body, meant that the human mind is not capable of understanding itself or its consciousness.

In the quarter century since 1994, powerful tools have been developed for studying the brain including PET imaging that can track blood flow as an indication of activity in different regions and specialized functional MRI scans that can show brain activity in near real time at the resolution of neuronal fibers and their connections. (See image below).



In the last few decades, the brain’s connectome (the extent and organization of the trillions of synaptic connections and their concerted harmonic function) has become the focus in brain research. (see the Human Connectome Project http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/.)

A quarter century after the statement of the hard problem of consciousness by Chalmers, and based on a lot of detailed analysis of brain responses to stimuli, coupled with self-reported perceptions and feelings of human subjects, Dehaene defines consciousness as simply "brain-wide information sharing”.

When it comes to what David Chalmers has called the “hard problem” of consciousness, Dehaene responds that "mental experience is a pre-scientific concept that will disappear as we better understand the connections in the brain. It is from data on the brain and behavior gathered and reported by researchers like Dehaene and other laboratory scientists that the theorists and philosophers develop their concepts.

Dehaene’s definition of consciousness as simply "brain-wide information sharing” is consistent with the brain imaging data and user reports of the beneficial effects of psychedelics such as described by Michael Pollan in How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

As reported in the journal Nature, advanced MRI brain imaging techniques were used to compare the brain activity of subjects who had taken a psychedelic derivative of LSD to subjects who took a placebo. This detialed double blind study showed that LSD resulted in the “emergence of new type of order in the brain.” This LSD derivative has become a useful tool in the manipulation and study of the human connectome.

Remarkably, this leads to an expansion of the repertoire of active brain states, suggestive of a general re-organization of brain dynamics.

As shown in the imaging studies this re-organization of brain dynamics means that more areas of the brain are active and communicating in concert on LSD than on a placebo. This increased participation of different areas of the brain, resulting from LSD dosing, has proven effective in allowing patients to overcome addition, depression, and improve mood and affect.

LSD microdosing (taking small ~25 microgram doses of 1P-LSD one to three times per week) is becoming more widespread as a safe performance and life enhancing aid, especially in the Bay Area tech community. People who microdose report heightened awareness of their surroundings, especially the natural world, more easily obtained insights, less stress with work issues, and a generally increased enjoyment in living. (Courses of microdosing are normally limited to a month or two.)

The LSD derivative used for microdosing is 1p-LSD or 1-propionyl-lysergic acid diethylamide. It is a legal designer drug for research and industrial use in which addition of the propionyl group probably enhances uptake but has essentially no effect on the drug’s biological activity.

If one of the goals of understanding consciousness is to improve its quality, or to reach a 'higher consciousness', then study of the connectome with advanced imaging techniques, using 1p-LSD as a probe, indicates that solid progress is being made.

[_Res Ipsa]

He discusses both open and closed systems and the differences. He is being accurate with Thermodynamics just as he is with self-organization. It takes an open system that is not in equilibrium in order to acquire free energy as he calls it in order for self-organization to occur after the point of bifurcation occurs. The energy MUST be coming in from an outside source in order for the self-regulatory and self-organizing to occur. It cannot do so in a closed system. Our earth, for instance, is certainly an open system as it receives energy from the sun. He takes all this into account. And in several places in his book while he discusses several different kinds of self-organizing systems he has found and experimented with. It really is a nifty book. And yes, I was mistaking who he was. This is Stuart Kauffman, in his book "At Home in the Universe." Another really cool book discussing this theme quite a bit is John P. Briggs, and F. David Peat (passed away in 2017, darn it!) "Looking Glass Universe, The Emerging Science of Wholeness," which is an issue that Roger Penrose in his over the top mind blowing magisterial book "The Road to Reality" discusses a bit. Good Lord that man knows more than we all ever will it seems. Talk about steep! But not too steep..... and all of 'em are talking about Prigogine's work..... it is a very important thing that caught a lot of people's attention, at least for a decade or so.

Thanks, Philo. His theory that self organization works along side natural selection in evolution is interesting, and may have an impact on the study of abiogenesis. Interesting stuff.

[_DrW]

Thanks, Philo. His theory that self organization works along side natural selection in evolution is interesting, and may have an impact on the study of abiogenesis. Interesting stuff.

We may well discover another example of abiogenesis elsewhere in the solar system in our lifetime. One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has a salty water ocean under its ice surface. This ocean contains the kind of organic compounds, dissolved in water, that are needed for the synthesis of amino acids. These compounds were detected by flying the Cassini probe through the water volcano plume erupting from this ocean at the Encelabus south pole.

https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-revealed-enceladus-really-does-contain-the-building-blocks-of-life

The two leading candidates for environments on the early Earth in which abiogenesis could have occurred are shallow fresh water pools in the vicinity of volcanoes and deep sea volcanic vents. It is likely that the latter environment exists on Enceladus.

When we go back, it will almost certainly be with equipment that can make its way down through the ice to the salt water ocean below and determine if archaea, bacteria, or even multi-cellular organisms are living there.



I would bet that life will be found in the oceans of Enceladus.

[_Res Ipsa]

DrW,

That would be my vote for most likely place in the Solar System to find life. I’d like to see it happen.