So how does one go about destroying information? Is that even a thing that we can comprehend? My understanding is that even a black hole doesn't destroy matter so much as make it infinitely dense and irretrievable.
That's a very good question. Think of it this way. If you whisper a secret in a room, when is that information destroyed? It never is. You'll agree that the form of that information is kinetic energy in the form of sound waves. And we both know that energy can never be created or destroyed.
Whisper bounces off of a wall, some of it is converted to heat, but the pattern of that heat is influenced by the sound, just not in a way that we can retrieve. It has fallen below the noise floor. You can think of noise as just information that is too scrambled to decypher.
The second part about the black hole is actually an extremely contentious area in current QM, because a black hole may theoretically be completely described by only three parameters. Mass, Charge, and Rotational Vector. However, black holes also evaporate via Hawking radiation, which means that the information swallowed must return somehow to the universe eventually. We don't yet know, or have a solid theory. One of the basic premises of most interpretations of QM is information cannot be destroyed, if it could then it would violate unitarity. The most common interpretation of QM is Relational Quantum Mechanics, which is an interpretation based off of Quantum Information Theory, which is entirely concerned about Quantum information and its state. So if black holes can indeed destroy information, then this is new physics and our best models will need to be revisited.
Here's the wiki page on the black hole information paradox:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox
And here's a Google Tech Talk that gives a quick and mostly accurate lay person primer on QIT (the title is slightly clickbaity, but it contains a very good rundown):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaecUuEqfc
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
This talk about entropy, the universe and intelligence reminds me about an inventor who I read about, who said that the universe is the brain of God. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), nobody could understand John Keely, because he was so ahead of his time, so he was considered a fraud. He discovered quantum mechanics in the 1800s by disintegrating water into what he called ether (probably through some kind of cold fusion, because he reported that the water became luminous, like in sonoluminescence and bubble fusion).
With some kind of vibration, he further divided the quantum particles into smaller ones (thought/mind particles?), which allowed him to invent antigravity devices and machines that could be controlled by sound and mindforce (He said: "All motion is thought, and all force is mind force.") and many other things that defy all known physics.
In the quantum vacuum or whatever he discovered (he said the vacuum he created was 987000 times denser than steel; in other words, the opposite of what people consider today, that vacuum is often considered as "empty" even though it has been discovered that it isn't. "Empty space" is the real deal, while matter is the illusion, the nothingness consisting of 99.99% space), he found so much energy that could be utilized, that maybe it's good that he was forgotten and thought of as a fraud.
I think what he discovered through scientific means was literally magic/God, because he harnessed the same mindforce that in ancient times people harnessed through their body, and projected it through their bodies or magic wands/scepters as magic and miracles.
Anyway, from what I understand, his knowledge supposedly came from the infinite mind he was connected to.
Much like the internet, which is a digital network humans have created, God has a natural spiritual network that connects the infinite universe, and records every event, action, thought, everything, in astral light.
John Ernst Worrell Keely wrote:
All sympathetic conditions, or streams of force, are derived (if we dare to make use of such a term in speaking of Deity) from the cerebral convolutions of the Infinite: from the centre of the vast realm of the compound luminous. From the celestial intermediate, the brain of Deity, proceed the sympathetic flows that vitalize the polar terrestrial forces.
I didn't believe it possible for your ramblings to become even crazier, but once again you prove my assumptions wrong and surpass yourself.
Let me guess, you recently stumbled across a new pseudoscientific website or video, and are consuming its contents with passion.
(How long before you start rambling about spirit science?)
I didn't believe it possible for your ramblings to become even crazier, but once again you prove my assumptions wrong and surpass yourself.
lol... thanks, I guess. And what about the things I said about evolution on the previous page? I noticed your lack of response, and I take that your silence means that you agreed with everything I said?
Feel free to correct me if I said something wrong, or if you disagreed with what I said. I'm always open for more knowledge.
Let me guess, you recently stumbled across a new pseudoscientific website or video, and are consuming its contents with passion.
(How long before you start rambling about spirit science?)
Well, I already rambled about spiritual or occult science, which was a feminine competing science in the 1800s until the path of materialistic science was chosen. But no, I haven't stumbled on anything particular. Like I said, that's just something I've read some time ago, and sometimes still study.
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
This thread is a nice demonstration of how differently people can think. It is undoubtedly a richness for us all. Sure, it causes problems, because people don't have the same amount of knowledge about any topic or even the same methods for acquiring information and determining what to believe and what not to believe. That is why it is important that these discussions exist. We can all learn something here. I personally enjoy nfq's wild race of thought, even though I can't make much sense of it. Way to go nfq!
nfq wrote:
until the path of materialistic science was chosen
1. There is no materialistic science. There is just plain science. Science doesn't make any assumptions about material or immaterial whatsoever. We just make observations as well as we can whatever the result turns out to be. 2. No "path of science" was chosen by anyone. The path is what it is only because the stuff on that path turns out to work. We don't pray for electricity, because we can use verified working methods for producing it. The same applies to everything we do. Some stuff works, some stuff doesn't work. Now let's all deal with it and find the next new idea that works.
This talk about entropy, the universe and intelligence reminds me about an inventor who I read about, who said that the universe is the brain of God.
With the benefit of hindsight, John Keely is a nearly transparent charlatan. He led people on with promises, smoke, and mirrors and managed to get away with it for years. I am sorry to hear that you revere this man. I would suggest perhaps that you review his findings with a critical eye.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
On my own I have eventually come into the conclusion that intelligence in a closed system cannot increase, and that it is a natural law much akin the law of entropy.
A closed system can not exhibit more intelligence than what was originally put into it.
The solar system, in most of its history, can be considered a good closed system. Even if evolution is false, we can agree that the total intelligence within this system increased in the last millennia. Not only mankind has smarter individuals (some of them using their intelligence for evil purposes), but the average joe is also smarter (that's questionable). But we can't deny that the total intelligence increased.
Amaraticando: Closed system? Please, do confirm for me where the local information/intelligence had been decreased to allow for our local bursts of information/intelligence. My understanding is that because we can't confirm this, we can't say one way or another if Open System or Closed System is fact.
Me: Open System, Open Canon, Revelatory Religion. I understand on a low level how Conservation of Energy works, thanks to this very thread, and that it's not going to end in the black if this is a closed system.
Amaraticando: Closed system? Please, do confirm for me where the local information/intelligence had been decreased to allow for our local bursts of information/intelligence. My understanding is that because we can't confirm this, we can't say one way or another if Open System or Closed System is fact.
Me: Open System, Open Canon, Revelatory Religion. I understand on a low level how Conservation of Energy works, thanks to this very thread, and that it's not going to end in the black if this is a closed system.
I think there's one possibility that you're overlooking. That the question "Is intelligence an open or closed system?" is ill-formed and devoid of meaning. It's possible to construct sentences that are grammatically correct but carry no coherent meaning, for instance, "My orange taxes bake well," or "How tall is light?"
Intelligence could be said is an emergent property of certain systems, (including those with no living parts), and there is no single valued representation of the amount of intelligence in a system. Or you could say that only humans seem to be intelligent. Or one of many other different claims.
So in order for the question "Is intelligence an open or closed system?" to make sense first we have to rigorously define intelligence, then we have define the ways in which intelligence may be created or destroyed.
In Godel Escher Bach, Hofstadter uses an interesting analogy to illustrate intelligence as an emergent property of systems. In The Ant Fugue, Dr. Anteater tells Tortoise and Achilles of his patient Aunt Hillary, who is the emergent intelligence of an ant colony he tends to, and how at one time this colony had a different identity. It's an interesting if dense read. But it's somewhat analogous to the real life experience of someone having a head injury and his or her personality completely changing.
In these processes is intelligence lost or created? Perhaps, perhaps not, it's difficult to say because we still haven't defined intelligence. Intelligence might not even be a quantity at all, but a process. For instance, if you have a machine that is capable of performing a simple task (such as solving a Rubik's Cube), it can be said to have limited intelligence at completing that task. If you then simply remove the power, the machine seems no longer intelligent, and this intelligence can be switched on and off.
What about humans? Surely a sober, alert human can be said to be more intelligent at solving problems than a sleepy or drunk one. One can lose effective cognitive ability if one is distracted, worried, afraid, or just haven't had their morning cup of coffee. Cognitive ability can be developed through exercises, or it can be diminished through disuse or disease. Is the total intelligence of the universe changed after I've had a good night's sleep?
Any model purporting to answer these questions should be prepared to met with skepticism, and must be much more well defined than I have attempted here to be effective and persuasive.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
Amaraticando: Closed system? Please, do confirm for me where the local information/intelligence had been decreased to allow for our local bursts of information/intelligence. My understanding is that because we can't confirm this, we can't say one way or another if Open System or Closed System is fact.
It's about entropy. When information increases locally in one part of the system, entropy likewise increases by at least that much in another.
This "closed system"/"open system" thing is mostly a red herring at this point. You can consider the entire universe a closed system.
(How long before you start rambling about spirit science?)
Well, I already rambled about spiritual or occult science, which was a feminine competing science in the 1800s until the path of materialistic science was chosen. But no, I haven't stumbled on anything particular. Like I said, that's just something I've read some time ago, and sometimes still study.
So you don't know what it is. Good. Please don't look it up. We don't need any of that BS here.
total intelligence within this system increased in the last millennia. Not only mankind has smarter individuals (some of them using their intelligence for evil purposes), but the average joe is also smarter (that's questionable). But we can't deny that the total intelligence increased.
I disagree. Knowledge has increased, but intelligence has not. People are as intelligent as they were thousands of years ago, if not even dumber.
You underestimate how ingenuine people in the past have been. It is knowledge that has increased, and this has led into an avalance of new ideas and inventions. There are also more people than there were back then, and communicating is much easier, which means that the rate of outstanding ideas confronting an average person has increased.
To explain the sudden burst of technology in the latest century or two, consider that it often takes only one person to think of a new place to look in, for an entire generation to get new ideas. It is much easier to comprehend something and to take it for granted than it is to be the first person to think of it in the first place.
As for the other points raised by people as a response to my previous post, I have to think about it for a while before I reply.
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Bisqwit wrote:
I disagree. Knowledge has increased, but intelligence has not. People are as intelligent as they were thousands of years ago, if not even dumber.
You underestimate how ingenuine people in the past have been. But it's knowledge that has increased, and this has led into an avalance of new ideas and inventions.
As for the other points raised by people as a response to my previous post, I have to think about it for a while before I reply.
You know, to briefly add on to that I'm still amazed at how ancient people constructed things like the Pyramids (both in the Middle East, and the Mayans in the Americas).
They definitely knew some things back in that time.
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." - 1 Corinthians 2:9
I disagree. Knowledge has increased, but intelligence has not. People are as intelligent as they were thousands of years ago, if not even dumber.
That doesn't make much sense. You have no way of measuring the intelligence of people in the past. Even today measuring intelligence is a subjective matter, and that's for living people. How exactly do you measure the average intelligence of people in the past?
What you are doing here is that you are pick&choosing a few of the smartest people from history, and contrasting it to the average person today. In other words, you are engaging in selection bias. That's not a very fair comparison.
I'm convinced that if you had a time machine and could travel to the distant past (like a thousand or two thousand years), and you measured the average intelligence of people using some metric and a very large sample size, you will probably find out that people were not, on average, any more intelligent then than they are today; perhaps even less.
Anyway, even if average intelligence (however you may want to measure it) has dropped, so what? We are talking only about written history of humanity, which is an extremely small period of time. You are extrapolating a small section of time indefinitely into the past. It doesn't work that way. Just because some aspect of some species has become degraded in recent history doesn't mean that it has always been degrading. Features fluctuate, and go up and down over long periods of time.
A closed system can not exhibit more intelligence than what was originally put into it.
How much intelligence is there in the universe? If God is everywhere, omnipresent, does it mean that there in some sense is infinite intelligence everywhere? Because that's what John Keely and other inventors claimed to have discovered by creating a more and more extreme vacuum by disassociating matter and particles into smaller parts. Since God is spirit, the opposite of spirit is flesh and matter, so if you would strip away all flesh and matter, what would remain would be pure spirit and intelligence, right?
Furthermore, if the universe or space is infinite in size, wouldn't it mean that it's an open system? Maybe that would mean that an infinite intelligence would automatically and eternally be present.
1. There is no materialistic science. There is just plain science. Science doesn't make any assumptions about material or immaterial whatsoever.
According to this, it makes some naturalistic assumptions: http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/basic_assumptions
Science today is based on the assumption that matter is the basis of reality, and the mind is a byproduct. Religions, idealism and spirituality says the opposite, that the (infinite) mind is the basis of everything, and matter is generated by it.
Warp wrote:
You can consider the entire universe a closed system.
How would we know though, that it's closed or open?
I think I'm beginning to see why I'm having trouble accepting the assumption of the universe being a closed system.
When I'm imagining the abstraction and getting to the clause "entropy must increase somewhere within the system" my brain is ruling out a local change to balance the first transaction (local in this case meaning "in close proximity to", not "localized"). I keep imagining something farfetched, such as me imagining a thing means entropy out near Neptune is affected.
It doesn't work that way and I need to stop imagining that it works that way. Proximity is just as important, and with that perspective in mind at least now I can understand why "closed system" is the basic assumption. I still don't agree with it, but I can at least understand it.
You can consider the entire universe a closed system.
How would we know though, that it's closed or open?
A reasonable question deserves a reasonable answer.
I'm not an astrophysicist so I don't know these things in detail, but it is my understanding that the current model of the universe is that it's completely closed. In this model there is no "outside" of the universe (that concept doesn't even make sense), so there is nothing to feed energy from the "outside", or for the energy inside this universe to leak out. (In some hypotheses there are other universes, but whether they interact with this one in these models, eg. via gravity, I don't know.)
AFAIK for all intents and purposes the universe can be considered a closed system. The amount of energy within it can be considered a constant. So far this seems to be the case.
It just occurred to me that we're arguing open/closed systems in a religious discussion thread, and that open/closed systems are a perfect way to explain the God/No God debate to someone who doesn't believe in God but does understand astrophysics. And the analogy could even be inverted to explain open/closed systems to someone who has a hard time with that concept but does have some deist beliefs.
(Edit: reordered to open/closed in order to match up with how they'd correspond with God/No God in the hypothetical analogy)
I keep imagining something farfetched, such as me imagining a thing means entropy out near Neptune is affected.
I think you are thinking it too complicated.
Increasing order requires spending usable energy to do it. Thus usable energy was consumed to make that thing happen, and thus there is less of it available.
Increasing order -> Entropy decreased.
Usable energy was used for this -> entropy increased.
Because no process has 100% efficiency, it means that more usable energy will be used (ie. entropy will increase more) than was put into that construction (ie. entropy was decreased). That extra energy will be essentially wasted (which is why total entropy almost always increases.)
I disagree. Knowledge has increased, but intelligence has not. People are as intelligent as they were thousands of years ago, if not even dumber.
I'll accept that an average human now is more or less as intelligent as a human 2000 years ago.
However, the total population of humans is much larger now than it was 2000 years ago. So if intelligence is an additive property, and if you accept that humans are the primary contributor to intelligence on Earth, then you find that the total intelligence of the Earth is around 20x-40x higher now than it was during the time of Jesus, which contradicts your claim that total intelligence is either fading or staying steady.
If intelligence is not an additive property, then please explain exactly how you account the total intelligence of a system.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
