Hi Jonathan and MF
"Jonathan B. Marder" wrote:
> My second post in two days - it's a long time since I've done that.
Me too - and me too.
> To say that the second law is "MERELY" an inorganic manifestation of Pirsig's
> statement is rather cheeky, and if Magnus believes that thermodynamics is
> limited to atoms and molecules, he is mistaken (e.g. Claude Shannon applied
> the equations to the engineering of communications channels, giving rise to
> the new field of information theory).
My apologies, no cheekiness intended. I wasn't aware that everybody on MF realized
this.
However, when you mentioned information theory I got to think about a funny
twitch I read about a few days ago about this second law. Perhaps it's the same
result Shannon gave rise to? Anyway, as time passes, the entropy or disorder of
a system is supposed to increase, and a system with maximum entropy is a system
with only white noise, i.e. no information.
But information theory, or rather compression techniques compresses information
by removing redundancy, i.e. order. So, a maximally compressed system is also a
system with only white noise, but such a system contains a maximum amount of
information.
So, is a system with maximum entropy full of information or empty?
(Didn't some of you discuss this last year? I'm beginning to get a faint recollection.)
> P.S. Magnus, you asked Roger "When we leave the inorganic world and
> enter the quantum level, time does not exist anymore, right?" I don't
> understand your question. Please explain.
I believe the latest experiment I heard about was the energy quanta that was
separated into two quantas with less energy. One was sent to position A and the
other to position B several km apart. Then, when a measurement was made to one
of the energy quantas, the other instantly changed state in order to not reveal
both the position and energy of the original quanta.
Forgive my poor explanation of the example but I think that was the core.
Anyway, the point is that HUP takes precedence over the flow of time (or speed
of light) when quantum particles are involved. I think there are other quantum
particles that jumps back and forth through time quite discretely.
My question, or rather assertion, above that time doesn't exist when we enter
the quantum level is based on such experiments. Quantum particles simply don't
know, nor care, what time is. Time is something that inorganic patterns are
bound by, quantum patterns are not. Just as hunger is quite essential for
biological patterns (to avoid), but for inorganic patterns the concept of
hunger is unknown.
Magnus
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