Glen, You and Grant are starting to make my poor=old rejected english major's brain spin: I think I have finally seen the point of this whole discussion about gravity. Let it be the case that everything in the universe is in one spot .... that is low entropy right? And we all agree that the world tends to high entropy. So, what's with this gravity thing, which will, eventually, if allowed to play out, bring everything together in a single lump.
Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University ([email protected]) http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe] > [Original Message] > From: glen e. p. ropella <[email protected]> > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> > Date: 7/16/2010 12:34:15 PM > Subject: [FRIAM] entropic force (was Gravity as an emergent phenomenon) > > Roger Critchlow wrote circa 10-07-13 09:07 PM: > > The proposition of entropy causing action at a distance reminded me of a > > notorious demonstration. A beaker of water and a beaker of sugar > > dissolved in water are sealed together inside a bell jar. Over time the > > level of liquid in the beaker of water will drop and the level of liquid > > in the beaker of sugar water will rise. > > For better or worse, I can't stop thinking about this concept that > gravity is an entropic force... perhaps especially because I'm lacking a > good (any?) understanding of the physics and math. > > It seems to me that entropic forces can be described as the tendency of > systems to move toward, stay in, and return to densely populated regions > of configuration space. I.e. if there's a (small/sparse set of) > configuration(s) that's isolated (in some sense) from larger, denser > sets of configurations, then saying "entropic force" is just a term > expressing that the system is more likely to be found in and move toward > those larger, denser sets. > > And then if gravity were such an entropic force, I would be forced to > think that, somehow, the close proximity of any two bits (pun intended) > of matter allows more configurations than if those two bits are far > apart. That would be why gravity is attractive. There are more ways > for the bits to interact if they're closer together. > > I'm not sure why, but this seems counter intuitive to me. I just > naively assumed that it doesn't matter how far apart two bits of matter > are, the measure of the configurations of the system they constitute is > constant.... like two entangled photons at opposite sides of the universe. > > I suppose my fundamental confusion could be caused by the unnaturalness > of cosmic time scales, quantum entanglement, and action at a distance. > But it seems inverted for me. I suppose having worked in simulation for > so long has brainwashed me. E.g. parallelism can be simulated by > serialism, time can be compressed to make slow interactions equivalent > to fast interactions, occluded interactions can be ignored as long as > there are no side effects of the hidden events, etc. I suppose I've > come to think that the universe really does submit/adhere to the > closures we stamp onto various sub-systems (holons). But if that were > the case, then gravity as an entropic force would not make sense because > the configuration space has a constant size no matter how close any bits > of matter are. > > So my question to y'all is: Am I interpreting "entropic force" > correctly? What have I misunderstood? > > -- > 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 ============================================================ 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
