[extropy-chat] something rather than nothing

[The Avantguardian]

--- Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 3/24/07, The Avantguardian
> <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> Yes, Jef. While I respect many of Stephen Gould's
> > ideas on evolution, he is clearly wrong in his
> > assertion that complexity and intelligence are
> > "accidental". I too am a biologist and I see
> extropy
> > as hardwired into the universal evolution. The
> degrees
> > of freedom and dimensionality of the universe
> > increases as a function of time as the result of
> the
> > increasing overall entropy. It is this increasing
> > dimensionality that allows for open systems within
> the
> > universe to iteratively achieve ever increasing
> > complexity- just like an Mandelbrot set. Stephen
> > Wolfram thinks similarly although I am not sure it
> is
> > for the same reasons.
> 
> 
> Is the fact that once a replicator molecule
> develops, it will take hold and
> evolve in response to environmental changes and
> competition from other
> replicators "non-accidental"? That is, could it
> logically have been
> otherwise?

Yes. That is the mathematical truth of chaos theory:
Everything depends on initial conditions and
thereafter unpredictable phenomena can be completely
deterministic and deterministic phenomena can be
completely unpredictable and not even statistics can
tell the difference.

Keep in mind that that jibes with general relativity's
idea of the future simply being a geometrical
dimension of which we are ignorant except in the few
simple cases of gravitational orbits that we can
solve.
 

Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of their substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may be ever new." -Marcus Aurelius, Philosopher and Emperor of Rome.


 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Finding fabulous fares is fun.  
Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097