On 4/15/2015 5:33 PM, LizR wrote:
On 15 April 2015 at 05:40, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com
<mailto:johnkcl...@gmail.com>> wrote:
On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com
<mailto:te...@telmomenezes.com>> wrote:
>> My problem with any view based on entropy is that entropy
doesn't appear to be fundamental to
physics; it is the statistically likely result when objects are put
in a
certain configuration and allowed to evolve randomly.
> There is, however, an interesting parallel to be made with Shannon's
entropy, which is a measure of
information content and not just a statistical effect. Once in the
realm of
digital physics, it becomes questionable if physical entropy and
information
entropy are separate things.
I think the second law of thermodynamics is the most fundamental law of
physics, in
fact it's almost a law of logic rather than physics; entropy will always
increase
just says that there are more ways to be complicated than simple, so any
change in a
system will probably make it more complicated and not simpler. Or to put it
in
Shannon's language, it takes more information to describe a complicated
thing than a
simple thing.
This is my point - it is not a law of physics, it's a law of logic.
To be exact, the second law will almost certainly exist in any universe with any laws of
physics that allow for the existence of complex structures, bound systems, etc.
The second law depends on approximation and ignorance as well as complexity. If the laws
of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric (as MWI advocates suppose) then the second
law works because we never have perfect information (and often we don't even want to use
all the information we have; we're happy with an approximation) so from the information we
have we can only predict statistical regularities. From a Copenhagen perspective QM
prevents us from ever having complete information of the state and so we only have
statistical prediction and retrodiction.
Brent
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