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Interestingly, biological beings seems to defy the second law by working to reduce disorder, or surprises, in the sensory system. This is the meat of Karl Frist
by esalman 8y ago
Interestingly, biological beings seems to defy the second law by working to reduce disorder, or surprises, in the sensory system. This is the meat of Karl Friston's Bayesian hypothesis of the brain.
- leni536 8y ago> biological beings seems to defy the second law Well, maybe they seem but they certainly don't. Biological beings are not closed systems.
- saagarjha 8y agoThe second law only applies to closed systems, which living things are not. While they may internally reduce entropy, when you consider them along with the environment they live in, they end up producing heat and other disorder that is far in excess to the small amount of order they have created.
- infinite8s 8y agoYou forgot to include the sun in your analysis.
- carapace 8y agoAnd the rest of the sky. ;-)
- jacobmoe 8y agoThe energy radiated from the earth is in a higher entropy state than the energy it absorbs. If the theory that biological beings defied the second law were true, you'd expect the opposite to be the case. Life is a kind of machine that uses useful low entropy energy to create organisms, emitting less useful high entropy energy as a byproduct. Not all that different than any other kind of energy-using machine.