Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips • Hacker News Board

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#11

Post by nil-sec » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 8:11 AM UTC

tmcb wrote: post #9

captaincole wrote: post #2

I really had fun reading this and thinking deeply about the blurry Ill defined line between things that are alive (an individual) and things that are not. To take this experiment to a conclusion which the author has “left to the reader” as all good texts do, let’s think about a virus. A virus has information, in the form of dna or rna (I believe this is what a coronavirus uses), that it injects into a cell to then ca…

The blog entry is quite good, but it seems to suggest that the breakthrough consists in analyzing living organisms through the lenses of information theory. This is not a mistake in itself, but a shallow perspective nonetheless: information theory is, supposedly, a mathematical representation of the ways our brains make sense of the world around. The blog entry accidentally gives leeway to readers think that there is…

Maybe I misunderstood you here but I don’t think information theory and in particular entropy has anything to do with “our brain”. It’s simply a statement of the number of micro states in a system. There is no requirement for reading them out or having a brain look at it. This value exists without observer. In that sense there is indeed an intrinsic quality to living beings that leads them to have a reduced number of micro states. They spend energy to keep it that way over time.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#12

Post by prescojan » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 8:13 AM UTC

Great sentence. The key is to accept the unfairness, and not be mad about it. Don't hate the player

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#13

Post by nil-sec » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 8:20 AM UTC

bnegreve wrote: post #5

Fun read. But wouldn't we reluctant to change if the only goal of individuals was to preserve/propagate information to the future? Mutations, increase entropy, yet some of them are beneficial. How does it fit in this theory?

It isn’t obvious to me that mutation, in general, would increase entropy. There are mutations that would. For example a mutation that would lead to a random bit flip during cell division would certainly increase entropy of the system. In my understanding such a mutation is also pretty bad for your organism. Its actually a somewhat trivial observation that systems that tend to higher entropy over time, “die” because they tend to a maximally unordered state over time.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#14

Post by op03 » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 8:31 AM UTC

prescojan wrote: post #12

Great sentence. The key is to accept the unfairness, and not be mad about it. Don't hate the player

There are different keys for different people

Know the personality of the person dealing with the "unfair coin flip" and then make a suggestion - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revised_NEO_Personality_Invent...

Agreeable traitholders are more likely to "accept" unfairness.

With others anything can happen, depending on their needs, who they are surrounded by, their interests, health, financial stability etc

Nature ensures we don't have one strategy to deal with roadbumps. Which is why we survive so many.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#15

Post by smoll » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 8:32 AM UTC

I initially read the title and thought this would be about why "[the origin of life, on earth, or in the universe] is the result of a series of unfair coin flips" and got almost too excited, but what the article was actually about is just as interesting! And, if true, it maybe even informs how we might go about answering the origin question too...

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#16

Post by bnegreve » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 8:45 AM UTC

nil-sec wrote: post #13

bnegreve wrote: post #5

Fun read. But wouldn't we reluctant to change if the only goal of individuals was to preserve/propagate information to the future? Mutations, increase entropy, yet some of them are beneficial. How does it fit in this theory?

It isn’t obvious to me that mutation, in general, would increase entropy. There are mutations that would. For example a mutation that would lead to a random bit flip during cell division would certainly increase entropy of the system. In my understanding such a mutation is also pretty bad for your organism. Its actually a somewhat trivial observation that systems that tend to higher entropy over time, “die” because t…

Mutation is a random process, so individuals that can mutate are more entropic than the ones that can't.

If we agree that mutations are desirable (in some cases) then this contradict the idea that individuals are only propagate the information to their future

>Individuals maximally propagate information from their past to their future.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#17

Post by tmcb » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

nil-sec wrote: post #11

tmcb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blog entry is quite good, but it seems to suggest that the breakthrough consists in analyzing living organisms through the lenses of information theory. This is not a mistake in itself, but a shallow perspective nonetheless: information theory is, supposedly, a mathematical representation of the ways our brains make sense of the world around. The blog entry accidentally gives leeway to readers think that there is…

Maybe I misunderstood you here but I don’t think information theory and in particular entropy has anything to do with “our brain”. It’s simply a statement of the number of micro states in a system. There is no requirement for reading them out or having a brain look at it. This value exists without observer. In that sense there is indeed an intrinsic quality to living beings that leads them to have a reduced number of…

I know this is a pretty bold claim, but it is hard to overlook the idea that information theory as proposed by Claude Shannon works as a model of information as related to human cognition, and that it does not imply that information is a fundamental property of the physical universe.

There are several interviews in which he mentioned that the understanding of how the human brain works was one of his main inquiries. His work on AI and the Theseus. And the seminal paper on information theory contains a section in which a fidelity evaluation function is defined with relation to the human ear and brain.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#18

Post by nil-sec » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 9:00 AM UTC

bnegreve wrote: post #16

nil-sec wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t obvious to me that mutation, in general, would increase entropy. There are mutations that would. For example a mutation that would lead to a random bit flip during cell division would certainly increase entropy of the system. In my understanding such a mutation is also pretty bad for your organism. Its actually a somewhat trivial observation that systems that tend to higher entropy over time, “die” because t…

Mutation is a random process, so individuals that can mutate are more entropic than the ones that can't. If we agree that mutations are desirable (in some cases) then this contradict the idea that individuals are only propagate the information to their future >Individuals maximally propagate information from their past to their future.

No it does not contradict it. You can have random processes induce a reduction in entropy of a system (e.g. random bit flips can lead to the sequence 111111 which has 0 entropy) and in particular a random process can increase the ability of a system to maintain low entropy over time (e.g. a mutation that makes dna replication during cell division more accurate), which is the more relevant point in the proposed definition.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#19

Post by nil-sec » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 9:10 AM UTC

tmcb wrote: post #17

nil-sec wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I misunderstood you here but I don’t think information theory and in particular entropy has anything to do with “our brain”. It’s simply a statement of the number of micro states in a system. There is no requirement for reading them out or having a brain look at it. This value exists without observer. In that sense there is indeed an intrinsic quality to living beings that leads them to have a reduced number of…

I know this is a pretty bold claim, but it is hard to overlook the idea that information theory as proposed by Claude Shannon works as a model of information as related to human cognition, and that it does not imply that information is a fundamental property of the physical universe. There are several interviews in which he mentioned that the understanding of how the human brain works was one of his main inquiries. H…

Shannon wasn’t the first to think about entropy. It’s a general concept that is hugely important in thermodynamics and statistical physics. Information theory itself becomes increasingly more important in fundamental physics, see the firewall problem of black holes. It’s even harder to overlook these ideas and claim the human brain and our ears are somehow relevant to the definition of information and entropy.

Re: Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips

#20

Post by tmcb » Sun, Apr 12, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

nil-sec wrote: post #19

tmcb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is a pretty bold claim, but it is hard to overlook the idea that information theory as proposed by Claude Shannon works as a model of information as related to human cognition, and that it does not imply that information is a fundamental property of the physical universe. There are several interviews in which he mentioned that the understanding of how the human brain works was one of his main inquiries. H…

Shannon wasn’t the first to think about entropy. It’s a general concept that is hugely important in thermodynamics and statistical physics. Information theory itself becomes increasingly more important in fundamental physics, see the firewall problem of black holes. It’s even harder to overlook these ideas and claim the human brain and our ears are somehow relevant to the definition of information and entropy.

Indeed, he was not the first at all. The concept of thermodynamic entropy predates, with a huge margin, its information theoretical counterpart.

You make it look like I am saying there is a mystical property of the human brain that backs the validity of information theory, an assertion that has no resemblance at all which what I am attempting to express, and sits in the same category the ones I am trying to debate against do.

What I am trying to say is that there is no meaning in a teleological interpretation of information theory. Things like “the purpose of living organisms is to propagate information” contradict information theory because there is no such a concept as absolute information, you always define it on mutual terms.