[Fis] R: Re: WHY WE ARE HERE? ...AN UNPLEASANT ANSWER?!

[tozziart...@libero.it]

Dear Prof. Ulanowicz, 
thanks for you nice words, and for the amazing material you sent me!
There is a 2005, seminal paper that seems to be the "smoking gun" confirming 
your hypothesis that life increases the entropy production.  
But the key, is rather strangely... the time! 

You can find a summary, more details and the proper references here: 
http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/products/a-link-between-time-reversal-asymmetry-
and-fainting-of-memories-/

Thanks again for your kind response!

P.S.: I go to read better your fantastic, already historical papers!


Arturo Tozzi
AA Professor Physics, University North Texas
Pediatrician ASL Na2Nord, Italy
Comput Intell Lab, University Manitoba
http://arturotozzi.webnode.it/ 



>Messaggio originale
>Da: "Robert E. Ulanowicz" 
>Data: 24/02/2017 18.48
>A: "tozziart...@libero.it"
>Ogg: Re: [Fis] WHY WE ARE HERE? ...AN UNPLEASANT ANSWER?!
>
>Dear Arturo!
>
>Most interesting thesis!
>
>Two paper of mine that touch on this subject:
>
>
>
>
>
>All the best,
>Bob
>
>> Dear FISers, hi!  A possible novel discussion (if you like it, of
>> course!):
>> A SYMMETRY-BASED ACCOUNT OF LIFE AND EVOLUTION
>> After the Big Bang, a gradual increase in
>> thermodynamic entropy is occurring in our Universe (Ellwanger, 2012).
>> Because of the relationships between entropy
>> and symmetries (Roldán et al., 2014), the
>> number of cosmic symmetries, the highest possible at the very start, is
>> declining
>> as time passes.  Here the evolution of
>> living beings comes into play.  Life is a
>> space-limited increase of energy and complexity, and therefore of
>> symmetries.  The evolution proceeds
>> towards more complex systems (Chaisson, 2010), until more advanced forms
>> of
>> life able to artificially increase the symmetries of the world.  Indeed,
>> the human brains’ cognitive abilities
>> not just think objects and events more complex than the physical ones
>> existing
>> in Nature, but build highly symmetric crafts too.  For example, human
>> beings can watch a rough
>> stone, imagine an amygdala and build it from the same stone.  Humankind is
>> able, through its ability to manipulate
>> tools and technology, to produce objects (and ideas, i.e., equations) with
>> complexity
>> levels higher than the objects and systems encompassed in the pre-existing
>> physical world.  Therefore, human beings
>> are naturally built by evolution in order to increase the number of
>> environmental
>> symmetries.  This is in touch with recent
>> claims, suggesting that the brain is equipped with a number of functional
>> and anatomical
>> dimensions higher than the 3D environment (Peters et al., 2017).
>> Intentionality, typical of the living beings
>> and in particular of the human mind, may be seen as a mechanism able to
>> increase symmetries.  As Dante Alighieri
>> stated (Hell, XXVI, 118-120), “you were not
>> made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge�.
>>
>> In touch with Spencer’s (1860) and Tyler’s (1881)
>> claims, it looks like evolutionary mechanisms tend to achieve increases in
>> environmental
>> complexity, and therefore symmetries (Tozzi and Peters, 2017).  Life is
>> produced in our Universe in order to
>> restore the initial lost symmetries.  At
>> the beginning of life, increases in symmetries are just local, e.g., they
>> are
>> related to the environmental niches where the living beings are placed.
>> However, in long timescales, they might be
>> extended to the whole Universe.  For
>> example, Homo sapiens, in just 250.000 years, has been able to build the
>> Large Hadron
>> Collider, where artificial physical processes make an effort to
>> approximate the
>> initial symmetric state of the Universe.
>> Therefore, life is a sort of gauge field (Sengupta et al., 2016), e.g.,
>> a combination of forces and fields that try to counterbalance and restore,
>> in
>> very long timescales, the original cosmic symmetries, lost after the Big
>> Bang.  Due to physical issues, the “homeostatic� cosmic
>> gauge field must be continuous, e.g., life must stand, proliferate and
>> increase
>> in complexity over very long timescales.
>> This is the reason why every living being has an innate tendency towards
>> self-preservation and proliferation.
>> With the death, continuity is broken. This talks in favor of intelligent
>> life scattered everywhere in the Universe: if a few species get extinct,
>> others
>> might continue to proliferate and evolve in remote planets, in order to
>> pursue
>> the goal of the final symmetric restoration.   In touch with long
>> timescales’ requirements,
>> it must be kept into account that life has been set up after a long
>> gestation:
>> a childbearing which encompasses the cosmic birth of fermions, then atoms,
>> then
>> stars able to produce the more sophisticated matter (metals) required for
>> molecular life.
>>
>> A 

[Fis] DTMD 2017 at IS4SI, Gothenburg. Information, Narrative and Rhetoric

[David.Chapman]

Dear FIS member,

You will have seen Gordana's message about IS4SI in Gothenburg in June 
(http://is4si-2017.org) and know that it includes the seventh International 
Conference on the Foundations of Information Science 
http://is4si-2017.org/program/conferences/fis-2017/

I would like to draw your attention to the sixth Difference that Makes a 
Difference conference, DTMD 2017, which also takes place at IS4SI 2017.  The 
theme for DTMD 2017 is "Information, Narrative and Rhetoric: Exploring Meaning 
in a Digitalised Society" and you can see the details of the call for 
participation at http://is4si-2017.org/program/conferences/dtmd-2017/
We are particularly pleased that DTMD 2017 will be opened by our keynote 
speaker, the science fiction writer Ken Macleod. Ken is based in Edinburgh, 
Scotland, and has written many novels which look in various ways at the 
relationship, both utopian and dystopian, between technology and society. He 
has been described as "one of the most consistently interesting authors we have 
in contemporary science fiction". He has been a writer in residence at the 
Genomics Forum and the Creative Writing MA course at Edinburgh Napier 
University.

We have always prized interdisciplinarity within the DTMD group, and have from 
time to time sought to engage with artists to help understand the nature of 
information. A science fiction writer, and especially one like Ken Macleod, who 
uses his stories to grapple with issues arising from technological 
developments, seems to us the perfect way to challenge our thinking around the 
topic of "Information, Narrative and Rhetoric". I hope that you agree and - 
while I don't want to take you away from FIS 2017 - I hope you will also be 
able to participate in DTMD 2017.

Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to meeting you in Gothenburg.

Best wishes,
David

--
Dr. David A. Chapman
Senior Lecturer
School of Computing and Communications
The Open University http://www9.open.ac.uk/mct-cc/people/david.chapman
Intropy blog: http://www.intropy.co.uk/
T. +44 1908 652919  Twitter @dachapman

The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt 
charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

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[Fis] WHY WE ARE HERE? ...AN UNPLEASANT ANSWER?!

[tozziart...@libero.it]

Dear FISers, hi!  A possible novel discussion (if you like it, of course!): 
A SYMMETRY-BASED ACCOUNT OF LIFE AND EVOLUTION
After the Big Bang, a gradual increase in
thermodynamic entropy is occurring in our Universe (Ellwanger, 2012).  Because 
of the relationships between entropy
and symmetries (Roldán et al., 2014), the
number of cosmic symmetries, the highest possible at the very start, is 
declining
as time passes.  Here the evolution of
living beings comes into play.  Life is a
space-limited increase of energy and complexity, and therefore of
symmetries.  The evolution proceeds
towards more complex systems (Chaisson, 2010), until more advanced forms of
life able to artificially increase the symmetries of the world.  Indeed, the 
human brains’ cognitive abilities
not just think objects and events more complex than the physical ones existing
in Nature, but build highly symmetric crafts too.  For example, human beings 
can watch a rough
stone, imagine an amygdala and build it from the same stone.  Humankind is 
able, through its ability to manipulate
tools and technology, to produce objects (and ideas, i.e., equations) with 
complexity
levels higher than the objects and systems encompassed in the pre-existing
physical world.  Therefore, human beings
are naturally built by evolution in order to increase the number of 
environmental
symmetries.  This is in touch with recent
claims, suggesting that the brain is equipped with a number of functional and 
anatomical
dimensions higher than the 3D environment (Peters et al., 2017).  
Intentionality, typical of the living beings
and in particular of the human mind, may be seen as a mechanism able to
increase symmetries.  As Dante Alighieri
stated (Hell, XXVI, 118-120), “you were not
made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge”.  

In touch with Spencer’s (1860) and Tyler’s (1881)
claims, it looks like evolutionary mechanisms tend to achieve increases in 
environmental
complexity, and therefore symmetries (Tozzi and Peters, 2017).  Life is 
produced in our Universe in order to
restore the initial lost symmetries.  At
the beginning of life, increases in symmetries are just local, e.g., they are
related to the environmental niches where the living beings are placed.  
However, in long timescales, they might be
extended to the whole Universe.  For
example, Homo sapiens, in just 250.000 years, has been able to build the Large 
Hadron
Collider, where artificial physical processes make an effort to approximate the
initial symmetric state of the Universe. 
Therefore, life is a sort of gauge field (Sengupta et al., 2016), e.g.,
a combination of forces and fields that try to counterbalance and restore, in
very long timescales, the original cosmic symmetries, lost after the Big Bang.  
Due to physical issues, the “homeostatic” cosmic
gauge field must be continuous, e.g., life must stand, proliferate and increase
in complexity over very long timescales. 
This is the reason why every living being has an innate tendency towards
self-preservation and proliferation. 
With the death, continuity is broken. This talks in favor of intelligent
life scattered everywhere in the Universe: if a few species get extinct, others
might continue to proliferate and evolve in remote planets, in order to pursue
the goal of the final symmetric restoration.   In touch with long timescales’ 
requirements,
it must be kept into account that life has been set up after a long gestation:
a childbearing which encompasses the cosmic birth of fermions, then atoms, then
stars able to produce the more sophisticated matter (metals) required for
molecular life.   

A symmetry-based framework gives rise to two opposite
feelings, by our standpoint of human beings. 
On one side, we achieve the final answer to long-standing questions: “why are 
we here?”, “Why does the evolution act in such a way?”, an answer that reliefs
our most important concerns and gives us a sense;
on the other side, however, this framework does not give us any hope: we are
just micro-systems programmed in order to contribute to restore a partially
“broken” macro-system.  And, in case we
succeed in restoring, through our mathematical abstract thoughts and
craftsmanship, the initial symmetries, we are nevertheless doomed to die:
indeed, the environment equipped with the starting symmetries does not allow
the presence of life.

 

REFERENCES

1)  
Chaisson EJ. 2010. 
Energy Rate Density as a Complexity Metric and Evolutionary Driver.  
Complexity, v 16, p 27, 2011; DOI:
10.1002/cplx.20323.

2)  
Ellwanger U. 
2012.  From the Universe to the
Elementary Particles.  A First
Introduction to Cosmology and the Fundamental Interactions.  Springer-Verlag 
Berlin Heidelberg.  ISBN 978-3-642-24374-5.

3)  
Peters JF, Ramanna S, Tozzi A, Inan E.  2017. 
Frontiers Hum Neurosci. 
BOLD-independent computational entropy assesses functional donut-like
structures in brain fMRI image.  doi:
10.3389/fnhum.2017.00038.  

4)  
Sengu