[ExI] Nature Hates a Vacuum

[Bryan Bishop]

On Tuesday 11 December 2007, x at extropica.org wrote:
> At any scale, what we see is not "expansion", but selection for
> structures tending to increase the rate of increase of entropy in
> their environment.  Note that it's not about simply increasing
> entropy, but increasingly increasing entropy per unit of interaction
> space.
>
> selection for those combinations (and recombinations) which are
> coherent with what came before, and which express novel degrees of
> freedom, ever more effectively dissipating energy in the creation of
> self-similar fractal structures ever more effectively doing the same
> in interaction with their (necessarily local) environment.

Salthe's natural philosophy of entropy,
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/SEED/Vol2-3/2-3%20resolved/Salthe.htm
> So, finally: why is there anything? Because the universe is expanding
> faster than it can equilibrate. Why are there so many kinds of things? 
> Because the universe is trying to simultaneously destroy as many 
> different energy gradients as possible in its attempt to equilibrate.   

See also Leibniz's law of plentitude: the universe is maximally diverse 
at this moment (so there's also some optimism in here). Re: fractal 
structures, throw in some Tegmark, or less applicably, Zindell.

> In this light, and given that interaction volume increases as the
> cube with surface area increasing as the square of distance, what
> should we expect of the geometry of increasingly intelligent growth?

Delicious; would you please expand on this?

And do I get a guess at the mystery poster?

- Bryan