Entropy, Cows and Dung Beetles

[Mike Oliker]

Nick,
 
Part of the confusion is that thermodynamics deals with energy, not numbers.
A random sequence of specific, unchanging numbers has no more or less
entropy than a series of zeros.  In entropy, we have energy distributed
randomly over a vast number of states, constantly switching from one state
to another (e.g. one specific arrangement of gas molecules to another),
which limits the energy's availability and usefulness.
 
Thermodynamics is a precise accounting for energy.  The food and dung have
free energies relative to being CO2 and H2O in air at a known temperature
and pressure.  Whether we have cows or beetles to do the conversion has no
impact on the calculation.  Gasoline would be poisonous to both, but it has
a precise free energy relative to its combustion products.  It is a
fundamental law of thermodynamics that these calculations are NOT path
dependent, they are functions of state.
 
When entropy is translated to apply it to information, what takes the place
of energy?  What is conserved?  It is worth remembering, that information as
we perceive it, has no thermodynamic significance -- a paper with useful
information will burn and release the same exact energy as a paper with
gibberish written on it, as long as the amount of paper and ink is the same.
 
-Mike Oliker
[phone]
mad scientist
 

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 19:45:54 -0500
From: "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] intentionality and entropy
All,



            But allowing, for moment, for  the world of objects to house  a
metaphor for energy quality, consider the following model.  Ask you computer
to splash out points randomly a long straight line.  For kicks, allow the
line to be of infinite length.   Would you not say that the entropy of the
points along that line  is pretty much a hundred percent?   Ok, now rotate
the line on your computer so that it is end on.  Now all the points appear
on top of one another,  Would you not say that the entropy is pretty near
zero percent?  And couldn't this principle be expanded to more and more
dimensions, so that we could never be sure that above a dimension that we
were currently looking at there might be a dimension from which all the
points might seem to be grouped together and have zero entropy and/or a
dimension in which the points appeared splayed out and therefore had
infinite entropy.  And since the number of dimensions is infinite, could we
not suppose that for any set of objects there will always be one dimension
from which the entropy is zero and one dimension from which their entropy is
maximal?

           I get to this confusion through thinking about the dung fly.  All
the time the cow is wandering around the field it can be thought of as
gathering high quality resources  for itself and degrading them.  The
degraded product is of course  the dung, which is precisely ordered for the
advantage of the dung fly.  So even as the entropy of the stuff in the cow's
gut is being decreased but from the point of view of cow , it is being
increased from the point of view of the dung fly.   If this way of thinking
makes any sense, then entropy is an intentional construct.

Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]  <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/>
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
[hidden email]


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