Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Entropy Is Fatal

kerkour.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–119 of 119 posts

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#111

Post by lazide »

kgwgk wrote: post #110
lazide wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind providing some references as to how removing $1bln of shares from the market doesn’t increase every remaining shareholders value by $1bln, assuming market cap stays the same (which it generally does, independent of another variable)? Even if the shares are not destroyed, the assets of the company now include those $1bln shares and are non-voting. Every other shareholder now has their actual voting power/control/…

> Mind providing some references as to how removing $1bln of shares from the market doesn’t increase every remaining shareholders value by $1bln, assuming market cap stays the same (which it generally does, independent of another variable)? The market cap definitely doesn't stay the same. When $1bn goes out the door (either as a distribution of dividends or to repurchase shares) the value of the company goes down qui…

Just wow. I wish you luck!

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#112

Post by cryptonector »

proc0 wrote: post #73
cryptonector wrote: post #69

https://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question Asimov was way ahead of TFA :) I like to think that life is a thermodynamic mechanism that: - locally reduces entropy by consuming lower-entropy energy and casting out higher entropy stuff - reproduces by which definition stars are almost alive. I say "almost" because stars only manage to keep local entropy from growing ver…

This is negentropy (not my fav. word, but it is the term used). Indeed it's the signature of life, although I think there would be a threshold that all living creatures meet, but non-living systems do not. In other words life produces lots of negentropy, probably exponentially, unlike other systems like celestial bodies.

> In other words life produces lots of negentropy, probably exponentially, unlike other systems like celestial bodies.

Exponentially? I guess, in the sense that from fertilized egg to adult, lifeforms grow exponentially, you're right, but adults usually do not keep growing. So I would say "sustained", and once the negentropy (I don't like that term either) operation is no longer sustained -and so local entropy is once more on the rise-, then the being has died.

For stars, I think the issue is that local entropy does not go down. Collapse is avoided on a sustained basis, and when that stops being so, the star dies (and possibly leads to the creation of new stars, which looks like reproduction). That looks like life, but it isn't because local entropy still goes up.

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#113

Post by cryptonector »

Lichtso wrote: post #81
cryptonector wrote: post #69

https://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question Asimov was way ahead of TFA :) I like to think that life is a thermodynamic mechanism that: - locally reduces entropy by consuming lower-entropy energy and casting out higher entropy stuff - reproduces by which definition stars are almost alive. I say "almost" because stars only manage to keep local entropy from growing ver…

Inspired by Erwin Schrödinger - "What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell" from 1944 ? > Schrödinger explains that living matter evades the decay to thermodynamical equilibrium by homeostatically maintaining negative entropy in an open system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Life%3F

Oh, I'm certain that Asimov wasn't the first to think of it. It could have been thought up in the 19th century, and it would be very surprising if Asimov was the first to write down the idea.

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#114

Post by kgwgk »

lazide wrote: post #111
kgwgk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mind providing some references as to how removing $1bln of shares from the market doesn’t increase every remaining shareholders value by $1bln, assuming market cap stays the same (which it generally does, independent of another variable)? The market cap definitely doesn't stay the same. When $1bn goes out the door (either as a distribution of dividends or to repurchase shares) the value of the company goes down qui…

Just wow. I wish you luck!

Not sure if we disagree. To be clear, in the following scenario

"Alice and Bob are equal shareholders in a company. They agree that the fair value of the company is $20mn. The company pays $10mn to Alice for her shares."

the correct answer is

(a) "Alice has now $10mn in cash and Bob is now the sole owner of a company worth $10mn [their joint wealth is unchanged]".

If for some reason you are under the impression that

(b) "Alice has now $10mn in cash and Bob owns a company worth $20mn [the deal has created $10mn of added value]"

maybe you could try to explain your reasoning.

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#115

Post by kgwgk »

kgwgk wrote: post #114
lazide wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wow. I wish you luck!

Not sure if we disagree. To be clear, in the following scenario "Alice and Bob are equal shareholders in a company. They agree that the fair value of the company is $20mn. The company pays $10mn to Alice for her shares." the correct answer is (a) "Alice has now $10mn in cash and Bob is now the sole owner of a company worth $10mn [their joint wealth is unchanged]". If for some reason you are under the impression that…

Imagine now that the next day Alice regrets selling her half of the company and offers Bob to buy half of his shares from him to get back to the initial situation.

In universe (a) they agree that the company is worth $10mn. Alice pays Bob $5mn and they end both with $5mn in cash and each half of the company is valued at $5mn. Their net wealth is unchanged.

In the nonsensical alternative universe (b) they agree that the company is worth $20mn and Alice pays $10mn to Bob to get back 50% of the company. Alice would be again in the initial situation (no cash and a piece of business worth $10mn) while Bob would have made a large profit ($10mn in cash in addition to half of the company with the same value as before). If all the exchanges between Alice, Bob and the company have been done at fair value how did Bob end in a better situation than Alice? If all the exchanges have been done between Alice, Bob and the company only how can the net profit be explained?

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#116

Post by proc0 »

cryptonector wrote: post #112
proc0 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is negentropy (not my fav. word, but it is the term used). Indeed it's the signature of life, although I think there would be a threshold that all living creatures meet, but non-living systems do not. In other words life produces lots of negentropy, probably exponentially, unlike other systems like celestial bodies.

> In other words life produces lots of negentropy, probably exponentially, unlike other systems like celestial bodies. Exponentially? I guess, in the sense that from fertilized egg to adult, lifeforms grow exponentially, you're right, but adults usually do not keep growing. So I would say "sustained", and once the negentropy (I don't like that term either) operation is no longer sustained -and so local entropy is onc…

Oh, I meant the totality of life. If we consider how life evolved over the 4 billion years, at first it was super slow and then it accelerates into a variety of lifeforms, eventually humans, and then civilization and all its complexities in just a few thousand years.

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#117

Post by Terry_Roll »

lazide wrote: post #58
Terry_Roll wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everything is limited by physics. Everything is controlled by the maths of physics and chemistry.

Some would argue everything fundamentally is physics, including mathematical models of chemistry. I can’t say they are wrong. Physics being math doesn’t quite make sense to me yet, if for no other reason than a large body of physics laws are ‘because that is what happens in real life’ when you get down to it. It’s clear the math is a tool to try to reason about the reality, not the other way around.

Physics is a branch of maths dealing with environmental and/or chemical properties.

Those properties could be constants or additional formulas in their own right, just like a computer program in many ways.

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#118

Post by lazide »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #117
lazide wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would argue everything fundamentally is physics, including mathematical models of chemistry. I can’t say they are wrong. Physics being math doesn’t quite make sense to me yet, if for no other reason than a large body of physics laws are ‘because that is what happens in real life’ when you get down to it. It’s clear the math is a tool to try to reason about the reality, not the other way around.

Physics is a branch of maths dealing with environmental and/or chemical properties. Those properties could be constants or additional formulas in their own right, just like a computer program in many ways.

Hard disagree there. Physics is experimental exploration of fundamental physical rules in the universe, which requires maths to model and further explore. But the reality came first.

Chemistry is ‘higher level’ physics, and similarly the discipline grew out of observed reality far before the maths were used.

Maths were useful tools, and continue to be more and more useful as they are developed and have useful predictive power. But the predictive power (and falsifiability of their predictions) against reality is key.

Re: Entropy Is Fatal

#119

Post by aaronblohowiak »

Lyapunov_Lover wrote: post #39

The author makes a mistake here. It's fine to think of entropy as messiness; that's the Boltzmann picture of statistical mechanics. The mistake is thinking that lowering entropy, or getting rid of the mess, is a satisfactory strategy. Think of it as a negative feedback system, like a thermostat. Keeping entropy low means continually correcting errors. This is a successful strategy only if the world always stays the s…

Another way of wording this / looking at it is in the trade-off between "adaptation" and "adaptability" (cf https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/Conrad.pdf ). Adaptability requires additional energy to maintain that -- in a steady state -- is wasteful. Being highly adapted to a particular niche/circumstance is fragile to change. There is an intrinsic trade-off.

This is also mirrored in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency%E2%80%93thoroughnes...

Post reply on HN