Milk and dung

[Mike Oliker]

Dear Nick,

We mad scientists never expect anything to stay polished.  Sitting here,
high in the Transylvanian Alps (aka ABQ), waiting on the lightning, I
welcome the interaction.

The free energy per pound of Milk might be higher, and ditto for steak, but
the total free energy of the grass the cow eats is much greater than the
total free energy of the relatively small amount of milk and steak produced.
The cow may be concentrating free energy, but it does so by expending most
of it.  I regret how efficiently my body turns my excess consumption into
body fat, but it is nowhere near 100%  I use most free energy up in the
process of digestion, I would expect, I excrete some, I burn a puny amount
in my muscles,  I keep my body warm, and my brain and body use a great deal
of free energy processing information and resisting the degradation of
information.  And I store maybe a couple grams of fat a day on a long term
average.  Cows grow faster, but they eat tons.

My background is Chemical Engineering, which focusses on chemical
thermodynamics, transport, and kinetics.  I've heard of Shannon et al, but
I'm not at all solid on the analogy.  Perhaps there is a creative
opportunity here.  What is the analogy?  Is there something conserved in the
information world?  In a communication system you might have a finite
bandwidth and a given amount of noise.  Mostly, in complex systems,
information can grow and arise because there is a waterfall of free energy
in the background being degraded.  My mind can juggle a fraction of a
trillion bits of information, while consuming trillions of trillions of
molecules of glucose.  That's why information can seem to multiply and grow
in the mind without limit.

Mike Oliker, mad scientist AND eccentric inventor

Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 00:50:55 -0500
From: "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]>
Subject: [FRIAM] entropy and dungbeetles

Dear Mike (the mad scientist) Oliker,

Answering a question as graciously as you did is like cleaning polishing a
tile counter ... you wouldn't do it unless you expected it to STAY polished
for a bit.  Thus, it seems unkind -- perhaps even disrespectful--   for me
to reply to it so quickly.  Alas......

In my attempts to understand the second law,  think I cottoned to the
information thing early on.  To me the information question is why do laws
about entropy and laws about information have the same FORM.  They clearly
aren't the same THING. Besides, Shannon and Whazzis notwithstanding, I think
of information as it is used in the animal behavior literature is a classic
example of a category error.  Animals interact; they don't pass stuff
around.  

Ok, so you do reassure me that  there is some objective way of ranking cow,
beetle, and fire such that, despite the manner in which the cow strives to
prepare the table for the dung beetle, the meal it leaves behind for the
beetle has less free energy than the meal it devours.  I infer from your
post that one gets more energy per gram if you burn grass and if you burn
cow dung, right?.   Believe it or not I had not thought of the burning
operation when I posed the question.  Sorry.  I guess that settles the
intensionallity question.

I understand that we have also consider all products.  I should not be
surprised if the free energy in  milk is greater than the free energy in
grass, right?  Ditto filet mignon.  Else the notion of trophic level would
have no meaning whatsoever.  

Thanks so much.

Nick Thompson

Soft Scientist








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





------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Friam mailing list
[hidden email] http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com


End of Friam Digest, Vol 17, Issue 25
*************************************

[Russell Standish]

Information is only conserved in reversible systems. Information loss
and creativity imply irreversibility. Since our underlying physical
world is reversible (so the physicists tell us), information,
complexity and entropy are all properties of the emergent world we
live in.

Interrupted by the doorbell ... oh ]well
                            Cheers

On Tue, Nov 23, 2004 at 12:51:10AM -0700, Mike Oliker wrote:

>  I've heard of Shannon et al, but
> I'm not at all solid on the analogy.  Perhaps there is a creative
> opportunity here.  What is the analogy?  Is there something conserved in the
> information world?  In a communication system you might have a finite
> bandwidth and a given amount of noise.  Mostly, in complex systems,
> information can grow and arise because there is a waterfall of free energy
> in the background being degraded.  My mind can juggle a fraction of a
> trillion bits of information, while consuming trillions of trillions of
> molecules of glucose.  That's why information can seem to multiply and grow
> in the mind without limit.
>

--
*PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which
is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a
virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this
email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you
may safely ignore this attachment.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish             Director
High Performance Computing Support Unit, Phone [phone] (mobile)
UNSW SYDNEY 2052                     Fax   [phone] (")
Australia             [hidden email]            
Room 2075, Red Centre                    http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
            International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : /pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20041124/feb12aee/attachment.bin