Re: [Fis] Fw: Krassimir's Information Quadruple and GIT. Quintuples?

[John Collier]

Catching up after a myriad of distracting problems.
At 03:51 PM 2014-08-25, Stanley N Salthe wrote:
Bob wrote: 
Recall that some thermodynamic variables, especially work functions
like
Helmholz  Gibbs free energies and exergy all are tightly related
to
information measures. In statistical mechanical analogs, for example,
the
exergy becomes RT times the mutual information among the
molecules
S: So, the more organized, the more potential available energy.

I think not, Stan. Organization requires a middling degree of complexity.
Exergy is maximized when the mutual information is 1, like in a crystal.
Crystals are not highly organized. See Collier and Hooker
Complexly Organised
Dynamical Systems (1999) for discussion.
I happen to be a radical who
feels that the term energy is a construct
with little ontological depth.
S: I believe it has instead ontological breadth!
It is a bookkeeping device (a nice one, of course, but bookkeeping
nonetheless). 
It was devised to maintain the Platonic worldview. Messrs. Meyer 
Joule simply 
gave us the conversion factors to make it look like energy is
constant.
S: It IS constant in the adiabatic boxes used to measure it.
*Real* energy is always in decline -- witness what happens to the
work functions I 
just mentioned.
S: In decline in the actual material world that we inhabit. That
is, the local world -- the world of input and dissipation. I think
the information problem may be advanced if we try to explain why the
energy efficiency of any work is so poor, and gets worse the harder we
work. This is the key local phenomenon that needs to be understood.

Information can be used to improve efficiency.
John





Professor John
Collier
colli...@ukzn.ac.za
Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South
Africa
T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F:
+27 (31) 260 3031

Http://web.ncf.ca/collier



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Re: [Fis] Fw: Krassimir's Information Quadruple and GIT. Quintuples?

[John Collier]

S: In decline in the actual material world that we inhabit.  That is, the local 
world -- the world of input and dissipation.  I think the information problem 
may be advanced if we try to explain why the energy efficiency of any work is 
so poor, and gets worse the harder we work. This is the key local phenomenon 
that needs to be understood.



JC: Information can be used to improve efficiency.



SS: That is not same question.  Which is: Why is any work constitutively poor 
in energy efficiency?  I wrote a little essay ( Entropy: what does it really 
mean?  General Systems Bulletin  32:5-12.) suggesting that it results from a 
lack of fittingness between energy gradient and the system attempting to 
utilize it -- that is, that it is an information problem.


Actually, it is part of the same question. As I have said many times, you 
trivialize the idea of maximum entropy production if you relativize it to all 
constraints. Howard has made this sort of point over and over as well.

But you are right that the important factor is an information problem.

I was once asked to referee a paper that argued that we could get around 2nd 
law degradation by using the exhaust heat in a clever way, and keep doing this 
ad infinitum. I pointed out (sarcastically) that we could do this, but only if 
we could make smaller and smaller people to use the energy (apologies to Kurt 
Vonnegut).

We get much more work out of gasoline engines than we used to, even though most 
are smaller and work harder. So, no, it is not in general true that harder work 
degrades more energy. Clever design (and selection) can make a difference that 
is more significant.

John


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