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Author here. I would not say I am making the assumption that dualism is true, merely that it is a possible explanation. Given the human mind generates a whole
by yters 8y ago
Author here. I would not say I am making the assumption that dualism is true, merely that it is a possible explanation. Given the human mind generates a whole lot of mutual information, seems dualism might be a good explanation in this case. There are also other possibilities. At any rate, the possibility the mind is a Turing machine is excluded by the premise that it creates mutual information.
- warbaker 8y agoI don't know, it looks like the conservation of mutual information is like the fact that entropy always remains constant or increases. This is true for the overall universe, but not true for individuals. A human isn't some magical entropy reducer -- we reduce entropy in ourselves by increasing it elsewhere. I suspect mutual information works the same way.
- yters 8y agoThat is a good insight. The law does seem similar to the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The form of the free energy formula looks a lot like mutual information. So, this could go two ways. Either humans are not net entropy reducers, and also not information creators. Or, they are information creators, and thus are net entropy reducers. Not sure there is evidence the latter is false. A broader point is that regardless of whether the human mind is an entropy reducer, something in existence is an information creator/entropy reducer, otherwise we wouldn't have information/low entropy to begin with.