On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Jesse Mazer <laserma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> you could have laws where a large number of initial states can all lead > to the same final state (many cellular automata work this way, specifically > all the ones whose rules are not "reversible"--for example, in the "Game of > Life" > Yes that's what irreversible means, there is more than one way to get into a given state. > there are many initial states you can choose that will lead all the black > squares to eventually disappear and leave you with all white squares). > Sometimes the Game of Life ends up oscillating between 2 states, but the only time it enters a final state is when all the cells have died. Sometimes you might end up with a oscillation between the initial state and some other state but all those examples are trivial and very small (such as 3 cells in a straight line). Sometimes the Life pattern just keeps on growing forever, and sometimes the Life pattern can emulate a Turing Machine. The laws of physics, that is to say the rules of the cellular automation, are identical in all these examples, but the initial conditions are different. If the laws of physics actually make a change in something (and they are pretty lame laws if they don't) and if the initial conditions of the universe were very low entropy, and if there are more ways to be disorganized than organized (and there are) then any change those laws of physics make will almost certainly lead to a increase in entropy. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
