41–50 of 87 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree with life increasing entropy; it does do that but it expels the entropy.
Living things are low-entropy internally, but produce higher entropy externally than would have been without life.
This is not a new idea - it's been around for decades now[1] - and the suggestion that it's related to individuality is a distraction that carries a lot of political, psychological, and emotional baggage that is irrelevant to the topic. There is no individuality in information theory. There are only systems. It's been debated whether or not there's individuality in evolutionary theory. You don't lose anything - and y…
I've said before that the most plausible explanation to me for what happens after death is the end of "I," since we as "I's," necessarily cannot comprehend a state of "not-I." We can know it exists, we can experience its effects from others, and we can severely impair it with psychedelic poisons, but to decohere into a state of "!i" is, to borrow from GEB, the song that breaks the record player.
Great post. Alex Danco is consistently good.
So by extension, death is just decoherence? I've said before that the most plausible explanation to me for what happens after death is the end of "I," since we as "I's," necessarily cannot comprehend a state of "not-I." We can know it exists, we can experience its effects from others, and we can severely impair it with psychedelic poisons, but to decohere into a state of "!i" is, to borrow from GEB, the song that bre…
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…
viruses have no agency so they don't attempt to reduce entropy across time. viruses are a reduction of entropy across time, just by being an organized structure (of rna and protein strands folded together) requiring energy to create and maintain. information is encoded in that structure--both in the sequence and in the shape--and that's transmitted through time.
So by extension, death is just decoherence? I've said before that the most plausible explanation to me for what happens after death is the end of "I," since we as "I's," necessarily cannot comprehend a state of "not-I." We can know it exists, we can experience its effects from others, and we can severely impair it with psychedelic poisons, but to decohere into a state of "!i" is, to borrow from GEB, the song that bre…
There's a good quote in this FT interview with Peter Piot, who co-discovered Ebola: http://archive.is/N6fAF “The absence of bad luck in life is the most important thing.”
Paralleling Nassim Taleb's concept of protecting against downside tail risks is of utmost important. Are there ways to protect downside risk in the other areas of life?
A former, more judgemental version of me, used to be highly critical of illogical decisions individuals make. I tend to lack the "feeling / in the moment" aspect that a larger group of humans possess and naturally run everything through the 'thinking, logical, multiple permutation outcomes of a decision'. I used to see consistent decisions impacting people's lives as streams of "I feels" decisions that were suboptimal, and led to poor outcomes - masked as bad luck. (examples abound).
So by extension, death is just decoherence? I've said before that the most plausible explanation to me for what happens after death is the end of "I," since we as "I's," necessarily cannot comprehend a state of "not-I." We can know it exists, we can experience its effects from others, and we can severely impair it with psychedelic poisons, but to decohere into a state of "!i" is, to borrow from GEB, the song that bre…
Can you expand on the concept of what "not-I" is? I am very interested, and maybe it is my coffee just kicking in - but my brain can't comprehend solid examples of it.
So by extension, death is just decoherence? I've said before that the most plausible explanation to me for what happens after death is the end of "I," since we as "I's," necessarily cannot comprehend a state of "not-I." We can know it exists, we can experience its effects from others, and we can severely impair it with psychedelic poisons, but to decohere into a state of "!i" is, to borrow from GEB, the song that bre…
Can't we?
Just think of nothing. Before you were born. Dreamless sleep. The gap of nothing between standing and feeling funny and waking up later on the ground that one time you passed out. That kind of thing.