5 ms·

hey folks, if this is not ok i'll remove my reply. I just want to post this article I wrote on the subject a few months ago: https://medium.com/for-for-thought

hey folks, if this is not ok i'll remove my reply. I just want to post this article I wrote on the subject a few months ago: https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/life-causes-uncertainty-and-other-problems-7e2e6ee721ef#.sdkrok1iv https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/life-cause... If anyone finds the time and mood to go over it I'd appreciate a discussion :)

lisper 10y ago
You lost me at "Life causes the Heisenberg uncertainty". Actually, you lost me at least a paragraph before that, but this statement is just so flat-out wrong that I stopped reading at that point. Life has nothing to do with Heisenberg uncertainty. Your essay in general is poorly informed and borderline incoherent. But asking for feedback on HN is perfectly OK and you should be downvoted for that. I think it is reasonable to expect people to either give you constructive feedback or STFU.
- grzm 10y ago
  s/you should/you shouldn't/ ?
  - lisper 10y ago
    Um, yeah. Doh!
- andraganescu 10y ago
  hey, thanks for replying. Yep, this is what I find hardest these days, asking for feedback. If you happen to be in a life setting where you don't have direct access to informed opinion you must risk the usual down vote of coming out of the blue asking for opinion on internet forums. regarding the article itself I think you should try to understand I did my best stay away from the horror of the shitty "new age" quantum bullshit interpretation of the measurement problem. it is NOT my intention or idea. my central idea is that maybe life is a property of the universe not a phenomenon, and try to construct something out of it. I wish you'd give the perspective a chance :), beyond the annoying paragraphs, and put up with my lack of coherence as a gentle gesture towards an amateur wrestling with an extremely complicated subject. Thanks again!
  - otalp 10y ago
    >life is a property of the universe not a phenomenon That is a bizarre, quasi-religious assumption. What evidence do have in support of it? I understand that you're making an assumption and proceeding from there, but it seems to revolve around a misunderstanding of what "property" means. If life is a 'property' of the universe, everything else also is, and the word ceases to have any meaning.
    - andraganescu 10y ago
      > If life is a 'property' of the universe, everything else also is, and the word ceases to have any meaning. Why would life be all encompassing? It is just a thing on its own, and quite small in its manifestation. The way I framed the assumption is that life (I know it's hard to dismantle the meaning inside the word and see it separate from us) is just as time woven in, working in the opposite direction of time. I have developed this here: https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/the-meaning-of-life-afeac3662bae#.2q1fcdt4g https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/the-meanin... As for the idea, it is exactly NOT religious I want it to be seen. A property is a characteristic and I don't know if life would be an essential or accidental property of our (this) universe. Awareness, our subjective existence, subjects of religion and philosophy are completely separate subjects from life and the phenomenon of evolution it produces. As for evidence, I would dare quote evolution and the spawning of it. But I can solely produce thought experiment type of evidence :) from my current settings.
      - jhanschoo 10y ago
        For one, you need to better define life. Are you referring to life in the biological sense? You say that it is distinct from consciousness. Will bacteria qualify? What about viruses?
        andraganescu 10y ago
        yes bacteria and viruses qualify. I propose biology is a process made possible by life and evolution a phenomenon inside this process. for entertainment purposes i have an attempt to define life here: https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/the-meaning-of-life-afeac3662bae?source=linkShare-8e7d1e45df9-1482844617 https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/the-meanin...
crasm 10y ago
This is pretty good as far as grand theories of the universe go, which in fine because we're talking philosophy, not science. However, I don't agree with life being an oppositional force to normal increasing entropy. It's probably more like eddies in a current, where life can only exist where free energy / negative entropy / information already exists and can be used. You might be interested in a book I just added to my reading list: "What is life?" (Schrödinger, 1944) The wikipedia articles on it sound fascinating.
- andraganescu 10y ago
  the funny thing is i have a series of "posts" on this subject and while trying to post on r/philosophy i got a ban warn on the reason it is not philosophy :D
GuiA 10y ago
The problem with your article is that it is just based on reasoning in a vacuum. It is not based on any repeatably measurable observations, and it does not allow you to make any predictions about anything, or to meaningfully fill in gaps in existing knowledge. It uses existing vocabulary from physics, but just for superficial discourse. Entropy, locality, the Heisenberg principle, etc are not just concepts, but equations and definitions one uses to measure and reason about the physical world, which your article completely ignores. Tldr it'a woowoo "science"/"philosophy".
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cryptarch 10y ago
What made your article a grind to read to me, was the intermingling of vague understanding of bits of physics and mathematics with personal philosophy, presented under the nomer of "science". It's basically "my beliefs", but with a rationalization based in mostly just namedropping scientific terms. There's no clear structure or method to the reasoning. There are no valid scientific hypotheses in it, and no ideas for scientifically researching parts of your philosophy. There are a lot of assumptions about things you don't seem to know a lot about, and a lot of unfounded, unresearched statements. I'd recommend you study logic, as in the mathematical field, at 1st year mathematics Bsc level, and also get a solid understanding of basic research statistics and hypothesis testing. It'll help you be more precise in your reasoning and get a better understanding of the border between philosophy and science. I'll end with a list of more specific critiques: >> Consider for a moment that life is an embedded property of the universe, just like time and space are. What does this even mean? Spacetime is a construct that combines space and time to make it similar to 4-dimensional Euclidian space, which makes it much easier to reason about physics mathematically AFAIK. Are you suggesting a 5-dimensional model? Or that life is "literally time" travel? Or that entropy can decrease in a closed system, if only for "the life element"? Because any of those interpretations sound a lot like "life is not part of physics" and pseudoscience-based mysticism when not supported by any mathematical rigor. >> Just like time is a property of the time-space continuum, life is a property of a larger continuum space-time-life. What the hell is this continuum you're talking about? This needs references and a thorough definition which does not contain made-up undefined terms. You can't just say a few magic words and call it science. >> Time and life are two opposing fundamental forces of the universe. Time is the global entropy increase and life is the local entropy decrease. I don’t know if they’re symmetric, but they are closely so. It is a fractal who grows the same over and over again, no surprises here. Uh, yes. Why are they opposing? Why are you saying life is "a force"? What do you define as "a force"? How is time global entropy increase? What's this crap about symmetry and fractals? >> "the animus and the tenses" >> "the power of resilience" Define your terms. I could spit through the whole article line by line but I don't have enough battery and I'd end up critiquing every nonempty line. If you want I could help you find some good learning resources on the subject. You're on HN so you probably have access to a modern browser OR a somewhat decent PDF reader, and that ought to do fine.
andraganescu 10y ago
Thanks everyone who took the time :) You've been very helpful and I really appreciate it, A

lisper 10y ago

You lost me at "Life causes the Heisenberg uncertainty". Actually, you lost me at least a paragraph before that, but this statement is just so flat-out wrong that I stopped reading at that point. Life has nothing to do with Heisenberg uncertainty. Your essay in general is poorly informed and borderline incoherent. But asking for feedback on HN is perfectly OK and you should be downvoted for that. I think it is reasonable to expect people to either give you constructive feedback or STFU.

grzm 10y ago
s/you should/you shouldn't/ ?
- lisper 10y ago
  Um, yeah. Doh!
andraganescu 10y ago
hey, thanks for replying. Yep, this is what I find hardest these days, asking for feedback. If you happen to be in a life setting where you don't have direct access to informed opinion you must risk the usual down vote of coming out of the blue asking for opinion on internet forums. regarding the article itself I think you should try to understand I did my best stay away from the horror of the shitty "new age" quantum bullshit interpretation of the measurement problem. it is NOT my intention or idea. my central idea is that maybe life is a property of the universe not a phenomenon, and try to construct something out of it. I wish you'd give the perspective a chance :), beyond the annoying paragraphs, and put up with my lack of coherence as a gentle gesture towards an amateur wrestling with an extremely complicated subject. Thanks again!
- otalp 10y ago
  >life is a property of the universe not a phenomenon That is a bizarre, quasi-religious assumption. What evidence do have in support of it? I understand that you're making an assumption and proceeding from there, but it seems to revolve around a misunderstanding of what "property" means. If life is a 'property' of the universe, everything else also is, and the word ceases to have any meaning.
  - andraganescu 10y ago
    > If life is a 'property' of the universe, everything else also is, and the word ceases to have any meaning. Why would life be all encompassing? It is just a thing on its own, and quite small in its manifestation. The way I framed the assumption is that life (I know it's hard to dismantle the meaning inside the word and see it separate from us) is just as time woven in, working in the opposite direction of time. I have developed this here: https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/the-meaning-of-life-afeac3662bae#.2q1fcdt4g https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/the-meanin... As for the idea, it is exactly NOT religious I want it to be seen. A property is a characteristic and I don't know if life would be an essential or accidental property of our (this) universe. Awareness, our subjective existence, subjects of religion and philosophy are completely separate subjects from life and the phenomenon of evolution it produces. As for evidence, I would dare quote evolution and the spawning of it. But I can solely produce thought experiment type of evidence :) from my current settings.
    - jhanschoo 10y ago
      For one, you need to better define life. Are you referring to life in the biological sense? You say that it is distinct from consciousness. Will bacteria qualify? What about viruses?
      - andraganescu 10y ago
        yes bacteria and viruses qualify. I propose biology is a process made possible by life and evolution a phenomenon inside this process. for entertainment purposes i have an attempt to define life here: https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/the-meaning-of-life-afeac3662bae?source=linkShare-8e7d1e45df9-1482844617 https://medium.com/for-for-thought-for-rainy-days/the-meanin...

crasm 10y ago

This is pretty good as far as grand theories of the universe go, which in fine because we're talking philosophy, not science. However, I don't agree with life being an oppositional force to normal increasing entropy. It's probably more like eddies in a current, where life can only exist where free energy / negative entropy / information already exists and can be used. You might be interested in a book I just added to my reading list: "What is life?" (Schrödinger, 1944) The wikipedia articles on it sound fascinating.

andraganescu 10y ago
the funny thing is i have a series of "posts" on this subject and while trying to post on r/philosophy i got a ban warn on the reason it is not philosophy :D

GuiA 10y ago

The problem with your article is that it is just based on reasoning in a vacuum. It is not based on any repeatably measurable observations, and it does not allow you to make any predictions about anything, or to meaningfully fill in gaps in existing knowledge. It uses existing vocabulary from physics, but just for superficial discourse. Entropy, locality, the Heisenberg principle, etc are not just concepts, but equations and definitions one uses to measure and reason about the physical world, which your article completely ignores. Tldr it'a woowoo "science"/"philosophy".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cryptarch 10y ago

What made your article a grind to read to me, was the intermingling of vague understanding of bits of physics and mathematics with personal philosophy, presented under the nomer of "science". It's basically "my beliefs", but with a rationalization based in mostly just namedropping scientific terms. There's no clear structure or method to the reasoning. There are no valid scientific hypotheses in it, and no ideas for scientifically researching parts of your philosophy. There are a lot of assumptions about things you don't seem to know a lot about, and a lot of unfounded, unresearched statements. I'd recommend you study logic, as in the mathematical field, at 1st year mathematics Bsc level, and also get a solid understanding of basic research statistics and hypothesis testing. It'll help you be more precise in your reasoning and get a better understanding of the border between philosophy and science. I'll end with a list of more specific critiques: >> Consider for a moment that life is an embedded property of the universe, just like time and space are. What does this even mean? Spacetime is a construct that combines space and time to make it similar to 4-dimensional Euclidian space, which makes it much easier to reason about physics mathematically AFAIK. Are you suggesting a 5-dimensional model? Or that life is "literally time" travel? Or that entropy can decrease in a closed system, if only for "the life element"? Because any of those interpretations sound a lot like "life is not part of physics" and pseudoscience-based mysticism when not supported by any mathematical rigor. >> Just like time is a property of the time-space continuum, life is a property of a larger continuum space-time-life. What the hell is this continuum you're talking about? This needs references and a thorough definition which does not contain made-up undefined terms. You can't just say a few magic words and call it science. >> Time and life are two opposing fundamental forces of the universe. Time is the global entropy increase and life is the local entropy decrease. I don’t know if they’re symmetric, but they are closely so. It is a fractal who grows the same over and over again, no surprises here. Uh, yes. Why are they opposing? Why are you saying life is "a force"? What do you define as "a force"? How is time global entropy increase? What's this crap about symmetry and fractals? >> "the animus and the tenses" >> "the power of resilience" Define your terms. I could spit through the whole article line by line but I don't have enough battery and I'd end up critiquing every nonempty line. If you want I could help you find some good learning resources on the subject. You're on HN so you probably have access to a modern browser OR a somewhat decent PDF reader, and that ought to do fine.

andraganescu 10y ago

Thanks everyone who took the time :) You've been very helpful and I really appreciate it, A