On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 4:13 PM, glen e. p. ropella < g...@agent-based-modeling.com> wrote: A further interesting thing (perhaps only to my self-gratifying thoughts) is that the maximal entropy heat death actually _can_ be described with very little information. All it takes is a uniform RNG distribution. I can write that program in... 5 minutes! ;-)
I guess that's a joke. But to be overly literal minded, one random distribution of elements is not the same as another random distribution any more than one string of random digits is the same as another string of random digits--unless of course they just happen to be identical. Of course they have a lot of properties in common, but one might just happen to be the first n digits of pi, whereas the other might not be. Seriously though, it all depends on what layer, stance, or aspect taken by the observer. And if the universe is in a state of heat death, there is no observer. As I said, I struggle with the notion of entropy, but as I understand it no observer is needed. I think it's well defined in both the information and thermodynamics senses without relying on an observer. Why do you say it relies on an observer? -- Russ On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 4:13 PM, glen e. p. ropella < g...@agent-based-modeling.com> wrote: > Russ Abbott wrote circa 10-07-19 03:54 PM: > > Under the information-based view of entropy a heat death universe >> would have high entropy because it would take a large amount of >> information--a great many bits--to capture it. One would have to say >> where each bit of material is. Since each bit is more or less randomly >> located, there is no way to compress that information. On the other >> hand, if all matter were compressed into a single point, it would take >> very little--very few bits--to record that state of the universe. >> > > You seem to be repeating things I just said. ;-) > > But that's not the interesting part of what I said. The interesting part > is that no work can be done in either case. In fact, neither end of the > spectrum is interesting at all. Interestingness lies between heat death and > singularity. > > A further interesting thing (perhaps only to my self-gratifying thoughts) > is that the maximal entropy heat death actually _can_ be described with very > little information. All it takes is a uniform RNG distribution. I can > write that program in... 5 minutes! ;-) > > Seriously though, it all depends on what layer, stance, or aspect taken by > the observer. And if the universe is in a state of heat death, there is no > observer. So, again, the concept of "entropy" becomes meaningless in heat > death. Entropy is only meaningful in between the heat death and the > singularity. I.e. it's only a relative term. It's degenerate in any > absolute/universal context. > > > -- > glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org >
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