<snip> [Case] I think you should think about this a while. I have not been very accurate in describing entropy. I was working around the points you were making and taking liberties in the process. But I would say you are getting close. I have always thought your stuff with the sweet spot and coherence and all are close they just need to shift up a notch. What you just said here about boundaries. Boundaries are where things get interesting. For example what is the boundary between the inorganic and biological. I would like to call it carbon chemistry but not all organic chemistry is living. Viruses are seen as the most primitive life forms but they are little more than DNA and protein. Any time you draw a distinction the edges are fuzzy. Mark 04-02-07: Hi Case, On page 119 of John Leslie's, 'Infinite Minds' he suggests that life is parasitical on entropy. I like the way he puts that, but being a parasite is a long way from disobedience.
<snip> [Case] No problem at all. Believe me I understand. Many years ago I read Jeremy Rifkin's book Entropy. I remember thinking, "this is Wrong!" Wrong in a moral as well as actual sense. This is called denial; then came anger. Then I tried to figure a way out of it. Then I was depressed. It took years but I followed Kubler-Ross to the letter and you know, it's not so bad. What's bad is that, all this original source... where did it all come from... seeking after a unity... Perfect order is a single point where all is one and before that point? ...Nothing. From perfect order to perfect disorder; ashes to ashes. But these things are really only troublesome if you insist on thinking in "ultimate" terms. Ultimately, schmultimately! It has been at least 13 billion years since the point of perfect order. The estimated time until perfect disorder is something like 10 with 150 zeros after it. Life as we know it took 4 billion years to get here. That is a lot of time. All we really need to know is that it has been this way a really long time and it is not going anywhere soon. As long as the inorganic level remains static the biological level has something to play with. moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
