Re: [Fis] Fw: Krassimir's Information Quadruple and GIT. Quintuples?
I stand corrected. They produce more work for the same input. I think my point stands, Bob. John At 12:21 AM 2014-09-05, Guy A Hoelzer wrote: John, I think you are misreading Stans comments a little. [Stan: please correct me if I am wrong about that.] I think it would be fair to say that older car engines were less well fit between the energy gradient and the system attempting to utilize it. Another way of saying this is that the older car engine mechanism was less efficient in dissipating that gradient, which translated into low gas mileage. Those engines had to work harder in delivering the same outcome (say driving 1 mile) than the newer, more efficient engines. The capacity of the new engines to work harder than old engines does not mean they work harder to produce the same outcome. I dont see the flaw in saying that working harder to achieve a constant outcome degrades more energy. Clever design and selection can indeed utilize information to yield greater efficiencies, which can only approach the limit imposed by the 2nd law. It looks to me like you and Stan are really in agreement here. Am I missing something? Cheers, Guy On Sep 4, 2014, at 1:06 PM, John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za wrote: 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 ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis 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 ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
[Fis] Informational Bookkeeping
Dear FIS colleagues, A very interesting comment by Bob about energy as a bookkeeping device in the other discussion track motivates these rough reflections. Actually, within the culture of mechanics (following Frank Wilczek) energy appears as the more reliable concept, beyond its cousins force and mass. Mechanics, like most scientific theories, finally is but a method to count upon variable aspects of simplified phenomena and provide inter-subjective objectivity(?). Numbers are due to our mental counting operations; and concepts, formulas and theories become bookkeeping devices to obtain more complex counting that dovetail with more complex phenomena. That our mental counting dovetails with nature's pretended counting is what the experimental side of science tries to establish. It becomes of great merit that energy constructs such as those mentioned by Bob do their bookkeeping accurately, in spite of their intrinsic limitations. My concern with the views expressed in the other track is that informational bookkeeping appears to be rather different from the mechanical physical bookkeeping or counting. There are new aspects not covered by the extensive and inflexible mechanical-dynamic counting, and which are essential to the new informational organizations we are discovering --and practicing around-- and to the new worldview that presumably we should search and promote. Is there bookkeeping in life? Do molecules count? Do bacteria or unicellulars bookkeep--and organisms? And complex brains? And individuals? And social groups? And companies and markets? And cities, regions and countries? Admittedly it is a potpourri; but yes, there are some clear instances where quite explicit a bookkeeping is maintained. It may be about signaling flows, about self production stuff flows, or about their inextricable mixing--involving whatever aspects. But these bookkeepings are made with attentional flexibility and different closure procedures that allow for new forms of compositional hierarchy (informational) not found in the mechanical. They are adaptive, they recognize, they are productively engaged in life cycles where the meaning is generated, they co-create new existential realms... In our own societies, the exaggerated importance of new informational devices (historically: numbers, alphabets, books, calculi, computers, etc.) derives from their facilitation and acceleration of all the enormous bookkeeping activities that subtend the social complexity around. Who knows, focusing on varieties of bookkeeping might be quite productive! best ---Pedro *Pedro C. Marijuán Fernández* Dirección de Investigación Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud (IACS) Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Aragón (IIS Aragón) Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta 1 50009 Zaragoza Tfno. +34 976 71 4857 email. dirinvestigacion.i...@aragon.es mailto:dirinvestigacion.i...@aragon.es www.iacs.aragon.es ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
