
A New Physics Theory of Life - epenn
http://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/#ixzz3Lw5rbLPe
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Xcelerate
It's a little disappointing to see so many articles like this voted to the
front page recently. These articles aren't exactly pseudoscience _per se_ (and
indeed they are normally the work of someone at MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc.),
but at the same time they're still kind of outlandish. The articles are all
along the lines of "What if the universe is [random idea here]?" and then some
kind of weird computer simulation or physical analogue (water drop experiment)
is done that supposedly backs the idea up in a way that typically doesn't
convince me very well.

For instance, I feel like I could ask "What if the universe is really a
network of time bundles?" and then I make up a definition of "time bundle",
generate a bunch of fractals, and then loosely say "hey, that looks like a
galaxy". It just isn't very good science to me. It reminds me of that history
channel show "Ancient Aliens" where they keep asking "What if?" Yeah, so maybe
one of those 8,000 theories is actually true, but it's just not all that
satisfying.

I prefer traditional science articles: observation or hypothesis, followed by
direct experiment, followed by conclusion. This type of science makes up 99%
of research today (read any scientific journal), and in my opinion is much
more intellectually interesting. It's like everybody in the media focuses on
the one article on beer carbonation in Physical Review Letters and ignores the
other stuff. Why don't I see many articles on HN about cellular networks, or
fuel cell polymers, or organic photovoltaics? These topics are exciting too.

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ExpiredLink
Technically oriented people tend to believe that science eventually can (and
eventually will) explain everything including life, consciousness, time, ....
They have no understanding for the inherent and insurmountable limitations of
science. I'd prefer more epistemology and less 'science fiction'.

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philh
> They have no understanding for the inherent and insurmountable limitations
> of science.

Suppose that science can never explain consciousness. Can you (or anyone)
explain _why_ science can never explain consciousness?

If not, in what sense do you claim to _understand_ the limitations of science?
It sounds to me like you're just _assuming_ that these are the limitations.

(We know a lot about the limitations of science. Science can't produce a
rocket that goes faster than light, for example. Currently we don't know
enough about consciousness to know what the limitations of science are with
respect to it.)

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collyw
You can't observe an experience. You experience conciseness, you don't observe
it. How can science work with something that you can't observe, and therefore
can't measure?

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noselasd
Why would science never be able to observe or measure an experience ?

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collyw
prove there is no God.

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noselasd
Sorry ? What are you talking about, and why would proving there is no God have
anything to do with that ?

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collyw
Your line of reasoning is pretty much the same as a religious person asking an
atheist to prove three is no God. Of course that will be impossible to prove.

The religious person is the one claiming something without and reasoning or
evidence. Therefore the onus is on them to prove that God exists, rather than
the atheist to prove he doesn't.

There is no evidence to suggest that science will be able to observe an
experience, so the onus is on you to prove that its a reasonable suggestion.

~~~
noselasd
Well, I was genuinely asking what you were talking about since your very very
brief response were really not saying me anything.

This reasoning is nothing at all like being asked to prove there is no god,
the history of science shows that we are able to untangle the mechanisms of
the natural world, and there are no evidence to the contrary.

Now, in the eyes of science it is not the responsibility of a religious person
to prove that god exists or does not exist, it is as much the responsibility
of science - it's just very much a non-topic in science since no evidence have
been found either way.

(And there are a lot of evidence that science will be able observe an
experience - we already can do very basic recognition of patterns in brain
waves based on what the subject is experiencing, we are starting to map,
understand and simulate a human brain. Eventually that might turn into an
engineering problem of hooking up the proper equipment to neurological
pathways.)

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jamesblonde
My biggest issue with Jeremey England is that he's basically rehashing Ilya
Prigogine's ideas. Read Prigogine's books "order out of chaos", " Exploring
complexity: An introduction" (best one), and less so "The End of Certainty".
Prigogine won the Nobel prize for his "discovery" of dissipative structures,
and he was a driving force in the ideas behind complexity theory. Wolfram's
early work was full of references to Prigogine, but then Wolfram decided to
write him out of history. As did England above. Progigine was derided for his
ideas:
[http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notabene/prigo...](http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notabene/prigogine.html)
I think the ideas are great, but we have some work to do.

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hackinthebochs
I'm not sure what your point is. Most ideas have some connection to ideas that
came before. Are you saying England has added nothing to the idea, or that he
is knowingly/intentionally leaving out Progigine as the rightful originator?
If neither of these points are the case then your tone is entirely
unwarranted. Many times ideas get re-discovered until the timing is right for
them to gain wide acceptance. This point takes nothing away from England.

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jamesblonde
You put your finger on it. He's intentionally leaving out Prigogine as the
main thinker behind these ideas. In fact, most of what he is saying is a
rehash from the book. The main contribution by England is his idea of
replicators as entropy minimizers1 in a closed system. However, his proof for
this is a simulation of a simulation. Prigogine came up with the Brusselator,
which is essentially the same theoretical model England is proposing for
chemical systems. His points about the arrow of time are just the same points
Prigogine made, without any attribution. Prigogine's reputation is in tatters
now, and England could help rebuild it. Instead, he's going the non-humble
path....

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throwaway39201
I didn't particularly like the article since I couldn't really tell what the
research was about from it, but I'm enjoying listening to Jeremy England's
(the guy behind the theory the article discusses) talk that it links to [1].
Until at least 19-20 minutes in it's presented simply enough that a 10 year
old could easily follow along with it, then gets into technical stuff that is
kind of going in one ear and out the other for me (as somebody who hasn't
studied physics beyond a college survey course level).

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91D5UAz-f4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e91D5UAz-f4)

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dr_zoidberg
Seeing that nobody has mentioned him, Ilya Prigogine worked on similar ideas
quite a lot before this. Order out of chaos, equilibrium and non-equilibrium
structures, and the emergence of structures in nature are some of the topics
he covered.

Nowadays he's mostly forgotten, but its interesting to take the time to read
his works, specially because it was (and still is) different from the
main/stablished ideas in physics.

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razzaj
It is fascinating how much more information is in the article's comments
section. In fact, I found many of the comments much more informative than the
article itself. I recommend going through those to build a more informed
opinion about the theory being discussed.

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xxxyy
One of the first comments point out that this topic was already covered for
example in the following 2011 paper:

[http://www.earth-syst-
dynam.net/2/37/2011/esd-2-37-2011.html](http://www.earth-syst-
dynam.net/2/37/2011/esd-2-37-2011.html)

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JonnieCache
Darwinian survival is so often co-opted for political ends: generations of bad
people have used it to rationalise their guilt.

If this model of dissipation supersedes it, I wonder what political effects it
will have? What will the dawkins of dissipation persuade/permit us to believe
about ourselves?

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debacle
Darwinian survival exists. It has existed as a natural phenomenon since the
first relics of life ever graced the Universe.

The human question is whether we can develop a better localized system for our
species. The problem is that if you're on top, Darwinian survival is a pretty
sweet gig. That disincentivizes people in power from taking a long-term view.

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zkhalique
I remember reading this before and thinking, if this is so obvious how come
life doesn't exist on any other planets we know of?

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cryptophreak
Possibly because we don't actually know very much about other planets.

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isomorphic
Absolutely. We're not even certain if life exists (or ever previously existed)
on planets that we have hardware on.

The criteria in the article were input energy and a "bath" into which that
energy can be dissipated. Perhaps there is a minimum potential difference
before structures will self-organize--or perhaps the probability of self-
organization is proportional to the difference.

Speculating along this line of reasoning: On Mercury, you have plenty of input
energy, but few options for dissipating it. On Europa, you may have the
reverse problem.

For all we know, however, Europa may actually have life. Our sample set is too
small.

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cromwellian
There was a similar application of thermodynamics some time ago to the problem
of intelligent behavior/artificial intelligence

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT8ZqChv8P0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT8ZqChv8P0)

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andywood
As a whole, I think the article finally provides a fair amount of
specificness, but I was initially struck by how much space is devoted up front
to "he-said she-said". It reminded me of celebrity gossip, sportscasting, and
punditry.

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Animats
It's definitely sensationalized. But the concept that life-type compounds are
in some sense thermodynamically downhill from random molecules is worth
looking at. It's testable, which beats most of what comes out of physics
today.

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mike_ivanov
Source: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-
theo...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-theory-of-
life/)

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mathattack
Is it dangerous when Physicists get too far out of their element?

Physicists promoted some dangerous ideas in Economics, but good ideas in
Chemistry. Where does Biology fit in that mix?

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carapace
Constructal Law
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructal_law)

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deniszgonjanin
Life is merely the Universe's answer to entropy

