(March 11, 2014 at 11:10 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Lots of things are counter-intuitive. The philosophical stance by te physics community that absolute simultaneity is bunk is perhaps more counter-intuitive, yet well-evidenced vis-a-vis Special Relativity and the Michelson-Morley experiment.
But the example you gave has been demonstrated/proven to be true, whereas your assertion that complexity is a result of increasing entropy is just a hypothesis. And if it is counter-intuitive then it means that it does not have a reasonable explanation as to how exactly that happens.
(March 11, 2014 at 11:10 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: But think about it. If I remember correctly, current cosmological models say that that the elements created at the Big Bang were just Hydrogen and Helium, the 2 most atomically simple elements. We didn't get the heavier elements until they were forged in the cores of massive stars and expunged via supernovae. So amongst this entropically increasing system, we get the more complex elements as entropy increases (which itself is how time's "arrow" is determined) and only then. So I think scientists would give the rough answer I have.
Then do you know of any citations or sources which actually indicate that scientists give roughly the same answer as you did? Or did you just think that?
(March 11, 2014 at 11:10 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Because living beings, given the capability of intentionality, can lower the entropy of some particular area, while still increasing the total entropy overall. And in fact, physics defines information as a decrease in the entropy of a particular system (or thereabouts), which creating messages like you did does.
So now you're saying that the lowering of entropy (which means greater order) is possible because of the existence of intentionality. Intentionality creates a decrease of entropy, right?
I don't disagree with that ... but now, given what you said above, wouldn't the same idea apply to things like the earth, the human body, animals, plants, and all the other low-entropy/orderly systems in the universe? Don't all of these things require intentionality as well in order to be in a state of low entropy, even though the overall entropy may increase?
If you think that a decrease of entropy in some particular area suggest the capability of intention, then why isn't the same true for all low entropy systems in the universe?
