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My mission is to gain knowledge in order to understand the world in a new way, and communicate this such that I can do my part to help help Life succeed in the

My mission is to gain knowledge in order to understand the world in a new way, and communicate this such that I can do my part to help help Life succeed in the very long term. I wrote about what I believe the "Purpose of Life" is on my blog, though I haven't publicized it very much yet: https://goose.us/thoughts/the-purpose-of-life/ https://goose.us/thoughts/the-purpose-of-life/ (TL;DR - the purpose of life is to maximize the area under the complexity curve for our enclosing system. I use Sean Carroll's The Big Picture and some MinutePhysics/Earth videos to help make the point.) Right now I'm learning more about complex systems while practicing writing and speaking in order to refine the message for wider consumption. I would love to engage with anyone on the topic who is willing.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>the purpose of life is to maximize the area under the complexity curve for our enclosing system. Can you put this in laymans terms?
- gooseus 9y ago
  That's sort of the work I've been trying to do... if you read through the whole post I give it my current best shot and use graphs and videos that do a good job of setting it up using laymans terms, especially the MinutePhysics series narrated by Sean Carroll. Basically the idea is that life is a process which maximizes complexity as entropy increases, by its very nature... if you consider the whole universe, there are no structures we have observed that are as complex as the structures we observe in living organisms. The complexity of the biosphere would dwarf the complexity of the rest of our entire solar system... as in, the information required to describe the entire solar system and how it proceeds from state to state, including the storms or Jupiter and Saturn, would be trivial compared to attempts to model all the life on our planet, including the mental states of each of the 7 billion humans and the interconnected relationships of all the other bacteria, plant, fungi, etc. This maximization occurs as life seeks to continue replicating and adapts to each other and any environment that it possibly can, even the harshest on our planet. The most advanced organisms on the planet are those which have the most complex nervous systems and thus the most complex behavior, including us (again, the complexity of the human mind most likely dwarfs the complexity of most other organisms... proven simply by being able to occupy states that allow it to understand and communicate the complexity of other organisms). So, my thesis is that the purpose of life is to maximizes complexity, but not as an absolute, since complexity creates fragility and issues with diminishing returns on energy input. This is why I say that it the purpose is to maximize the area under the complexity curve, rather than simply maximize absolute complexity. See this graph - https://goose.us/media/complexity_entropy_graph_filled-920px.png https://goose.us/media/complexity_entropy_graph_filled-920px... Not sure if that was a good or not, but I appreciate any feedback on the attempt!
  - wu-ikkyu 9y ago
    I read your post, and am still trying to wrap my head around the content. The best metaphor I could come up with, given my potentially erroneous understanding of your thesis is thus: The purpose of life is a dance competition, the more novel the performance the better. The beautiful mating dances of exotic jungle birds comes to mind: https://youtu.be/W7QZnwKqopo https://youtu.be/W7QZnwKqopo
    - gooseus 9y ago
      It's not really a competition for complexity within life, complexity arises naturally within life as a product of competition. Sometimes more complexity is more fit, and other times the added fragility makes the organism less fit... during the mass extinctions it was primarily the most complex organisms that died. The purpose of life as a whole is to spread this complexity to all parts of the Universe that can support it, so as to raise the overall complexity of the system. Another way to think about it is that life lengthens the path that energy needs to flow through in order to reach equilibrium (maximum entropy).

wu-ikkyu 9y ago

>the purpose of life is to maximize the area under the complexity curve for our enclosing system. Can you put this in laymans terms?

gooseus 9y ago
That's sort of the work I've been trying to do... if you read through the whole post I give it my current best shot and use graphs and videos that do a good job of setting it up using laymans terms, especially the MinutePhysics series narrated by Sean Carroll. Basically the idea is that life is a process which maximizes complexity as entropy increases, by its very nature... if you consider the whole universe, there are no structures we have observed that are as complex as the structures we observe in living organisms. The complexity of the biosphere would dwarf the complexity of the rest of our entire solar system... as in, the information required to describe the entire solar system and how it proceeds from state to state, including the storms or Jupiter and Saturn, would be trivial compared to attempts to model all the life on our planet, including the mental states of each of the 7 billion humans and the interconnected relationships of all the other bacteria, plant, fungi, etc. This maximization occurs as life seeks to continue replicating and adapts to each other and any environment that it possibly can, even the harshest on our planet. The most advanced organisms on the planet are those which have the most complex nervous systems and thus the most complex behavior, including us (again, the complexity of the human mind most likely dwarfs the complexity of most other organisms... proven simply by being able to occupy states that allow it to understand and communicate the complexity of other organisms). So, my thesis is that the purpose of life is to maximizes complexity, but not as an absolute, since complexity creates fragility and issues with diminishing returns on energy input. This is why I say that it the purpose is to maximize the area under the complexity curve, rather than simply maximize absolute complexity. See this graph - https://goose.us/media/complexity_entropy_graph_filled-920px.png https://goose.us/media/complexity_entropy_graph_filled-920px... Not sure if that was a good or not, but I appreciate any feedback on the attempt!
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  I read your post, and am still trying to wrap my head around the content. The best metaphor I could come up with, given my potentially erroneous understanding of your thesis is thus: The purpose of life is a dance competition, the more novel the performance the better. The beautiful mating dances of exotic jungle birds comes to mind: https://youtu.be/W7QZnwKqopo https://youtu.be/W7QZnwKqopo
  - gooseus 9y ago
    It's not really a competition for complexity within life, complexity arises naturally within life as a product of competition. Sometimes more complexity is more fit, and other times the added fragility makes the organism less fit... during the mass extinctions it was primarily the most complex organisms that died. The purpose of life as a whole is to spread this complexity to all parts of the Universe that can support it, so as to raise the overall complexity of the system. Another way to think about it is that life lengthens the path that energy needs to flow through in order to reach equilibrium (maximum entropy).