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I really had fun reading this and thinking deeply about the blurry Ill defined line between things that are alive (an individual) and things that are not. To t

I really had fun reading this and thinking deeply about the blurry Ill defined line between things that are alive (an individual) and things that are not. To take this experiment to a conclusion which the author has “left to the reader” as all good texts do, let’s think about a virus. A virus has information, in the form of dna or rna (I believe this is what a coronavirus uses), that it injects into a cell to then cause the cell to create more virus. The goal of this is to pass “information” to successive versions of the virus which are then programmed to do the same thing. Since they are trying to keep the same information, then they are in fact attempting to reduce entropy across time therefore they are as the author defines, an “individual”. Would love for someone to test that logic train that I just rode

DeathArrow 6y ago
I don't know if the goal of the virus is to reduce entropy. Viruses mutate just like some clever computer viruses. Allowing them to trick immune systems and anti viruses and render antivirals useless. Bacterias are doing that too. I think we can equate too much entropy with danger since cancer cells also mean mutations.
- jpfdez 6y ago
  The viruses themselves do not mutate, it is the genetics of the infected cell that cause mutation.
clairity 6y ago
viruses have no agency so they don't attempt to reduce entropy across time. viruses are a reduction of entropy across time, just by being an organized structure (of rna and protein strands folded together) requiring energy to create and maintain. information is encoded in that structure--both in the sequence and in the shape--and that's transmitted through time.
- Retric 6y ago
  Viruses increase entropy like all life. Their reproductive process destroys a much larger and more complex cell. Plants convert light into chemical energy at low efficiency, the rest goes to waste heat. Animals do the same thing with chemical energy.
  - monadic2 6y ago
    I disagree with life increasing entropy; it does do that but it expels the entropy.
    - selestify 6y ago
      Living things are low-entropy internally, but produce higher entropy externally than would have been without life.
      - hordeallergy 6y ago
        To some degree depending on how productive they are externally, eg bee vs fox.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - monadic2 6y ago
        Hmm, I don’t follow the comparison. How could, for instance, the sun use “life” to generate more entropy than it already does?
  - clairity 6y ago
    yes, as @selestify also noted, that seems contradictory on the surface but actually isn't. the virus itself is a reduction of entropy while it's net existential entropy contribution is positive. where you draw the system boundary matters for defining entropy changes, but long-term we're all bound to increase entropy, otherwise life (and our semi-living cousins) would be violating the laws of thermodynamics writ large.
- ppod 6y ago
  What is the least complex entity that you ascribe agency to?
  - soulofmischief 6y ago
    Not OP, but this is something I spend a lot of time with. I have a pet framework called Zodeaism which means "Living Ideas". In my theory, the real "life forms" are ideas which possess the capabilities of information storage, adaptation, self-repair, and transmission. My own consciousness is mediated by thousands of such ideas, some competing and some working in harmony. One such idea -- Do Good Onto Others As Others Do Unto You -- is an example of an extremely powerful and resilient idea which lives and operates in the brains of billions of individuals. It is powerful enough to ward off weaker ideas and has lived a long time without much modification to its original essence. With that out of the way... I felt it was necessary to reduce agency to ability to use internal energy in order to put oneself in a higher energy state in the external world. This can be observed externally. I am standing next to a rock. I can jump up, spending some of my energy, and fighting against the potential energy well of gravity. I've increased my external energy state at the expense of some of my internal energy. Thus, a living being needs a way to store and use energy. You can observe this externally and conclude that I am alive, while the rock is either dead or inactive. I consider such an act of "living" motion which can take another path than that of least resistance to be a "kin". In other words, any motion which is the result of a physical calculation (Zodeaism is compatible with determinism) and leads to an increase in external energy state. A kin is any such motion, large or small. So now the problem becomes, what is the smallest kin we've observed in nature? Single-celled bacteria can expend energy in order to move through their environment against forces like friction and gravity, but a virus "rides the waves" if you will, never expending energy for things like respiration or locomotion. Any energy which is spent internally is potential energy like chemical or gravitational, released through a physical process without need for computation. I am unaware of anything smaller than a single-celled organism which produces such kins, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Even ethereal life forms such as ideas can produce these kins within the bodies of countless individuals across the planet, so physically local computational circuitry isn't a hard requirement. So, according to this framework viruses aren't alive, however we can make the case that some machines are, except the experience is incomparable because of the advanced circuitry we contain which mediates our experience through things like emotion.
- wnoise 6y ago
  I think it is a mistake to say that agency is a property of a system, rather than a lens through which we can analyze a system. It truly is useful to describe a thermostat and heater as trying to keep a room within a certain temperature range, even though there is nothing actually striving there. Much like anything under evolutionary pressure, the viruses that propagate are the ones that do manage (in their normal environment) to keep entropy across time from exploding. Are they "alive"? Meh. In combination with their environment, they act like it though.
tmcb 6y ago
The blog entry is quite good, but it seems to suggest that the breakthrough consists in analyzing living organisms through the lenses of information theory. This is not a mistake in itself, but a shallow perspective nonetheless: information theory is, supposedly, a mathematical representation of the ways our brains make sense of the world around. The blog entry accidentally gives leeway to readers think that there is some intrinsic quality to living beings that transforms dull matter into information propagation channels. As expected, the article does a better job in setting aside this line of reasoning[1]. What you are really measuring is how information is persisted over time, and over the "background noise" of environment. They specifically talk about viruses at a point, and the usual odd distinction of them being not quite living creatures. When they are found sitting outside their hosts, it is very hard to point out if they actually carry information over time. [1] Disclaimer: I have just skim-read it.
- nil-sec 6y ago
  Maybe I misunderstood you here but I don’t think information theory and in particular entropy has anything to do with “our brain”. It’s simply a statement of the number of micro states in a system. There is no requirement for reading them out or having a brain look at it. This value exists without observer. In that sense there is indeed an intrinsic quality to living beings that leads them to have a reduced number of micro states. They spend energy to keep it that way over time.
  - tmcb 6y ago
    I know this is a pretty bold claim, but it is hard to overlook the idea that information theory as proposed by Claude Shannon works as a model of information as related to human cognition, and that it does not imply that information is a fundamental property of the physical universe. There are several interviews in which he mentioned that the understanding of how the human brain works was one of his main inquiries. His work on AI and the Theseus. And the seminal paper on information theory contains a section in which a fidelity evaluation function is defined with relation to the human ear and brain.
    - 6y ago
praptak 6y ago
How do you define the information-theoretic entropy of a physical object, like a virus?

DeathArrow 6y ago

I don't know if the goal of the virus is to reduce entropy. Viruses mutate just like some clever computer viruses. Allowing them to trick immune systems and anti viruses and render antivirals useless. Bacterias are doing that too. I think we can equate too much entropy with danger since cancer cells also mean mutations.

jpfdez 6y ago
The viruses themselves do not mutate, it is the genetics of the infected cell that cause mutation.

clairity 6y ago

viruses have no agency so they don't attempt to reduce entropy across time. viruses are a reduction of entropy across time, just by being an organized structure (of rna and protein strands folded together) requiring energy to create and maintain. information is encoded in that structure--both in the sequence and in the shape--and that's transmitted through time.

Retric 6y ago
Viruses increase entropy like all life. Their reproductive process destroys a much larger and more complex cell. Plants convert light into chemical energy at low efficiency, the rest goes to waste heat. Animals do the same thing with chemical energy.
- monadic2 6y ago
  I disagree with life increasing entropy; it does do that but it expels the entropy.
  - selestify 6y ago
    Living things are low-entropy internally, but produce higher entropy externally than would have been without life.
    - hordeallergy 6y ago
      To some degree depending on how productive they are externally, eg bee vs fox.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - monadic2 6y ago
      Hmm, I don’t follow the comparison. How could, for instance, the sun use “life” to generate more entropy than it already does?
- clairity 6y ago
  yes, as @selestify also noted, that seems contradictory on the surface but actually isn't. the virus itself is a reduction of entropy while it's net existential entropy contribution is positive. where you draw the system boundary matters for defining entropy changes, but long-term we're all bound to increase entropy, otherwise life (and our semi-living cousins) would be violating the laws of thermodynamics writ large.
ppod 6y ago
What is the least complex entity that you ascribe agency to?
- soulofmischief 6y ago
  Not OP, but this is something I spend a lot of time with. I have a pet framework called Zodeaism which means "Living Ideas". In my theory, the real "life forms" are ideas which possess the capabilities of information storage, adaptation, self-repair, and transmission. My own consciousness is mediated by thousands of such ideas, some competing and some working in harmony. One such idea -- Do Good Onto Others As Others Do Unto You -- is an example of an extremely powerful and resilient idea which lives and operates in the brains of billions of individuals. It is powerful enough to ward off weaker ideas and has lived a long time without much modification to its original essence. With that out of the way... I felt it was necessary to reduce agency to ability to use internal energy in order to put oneself in a higher energy state in the external world. This can be observed externally. I am standing next to a rock. I can jump up, spending some of my energy, and fighting against the potential energy well of gravity. I've increased my external energy state at the expense of some of my internal energy. Thus, a living being needs a way to store and use energy. You can observe this externally and conclude that I am alive, while the rock is either dead or inactive. I consider such an act of "living" motion which can take another path than that of least resistance to be a "kin". In other words, any motion which is the result of a physical calculation (Zodeaism is compatible with determinism) and leads to an increase in external energy state. A kin is any such motion, large or small. So now the problem becomes, what is the smallest kin we've observed in nature? Single-celled bacteria can expend energy in order to move through their environment against forces like friction and gravity, but a virus "rides the waves" if you will, never expending energy for things like respiration or locomotion. Any energy which is spent internally is potential energy like chemical or gravitational, released through a physical process without need for computation. I am unaware of anything smaller than a single-celled organism which produces such kins, but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Even ethereal life forms such as ideas can produce these kins within the bodies of countless individuals across the planet, so physically local computational circuitry isn't a hard requirement. So, according to this framework viruses aren't alive, however we can make the case that some machines are, except the experience is incomparable because of the advanced circuitry we contain which mediates our experience through things like emotion.
wnoise 6y ago
I think it is a mistake to say that agency is a property of a system, rather than a lens through which we can analyze a system. It truly is useful to describe a thermostat and heater as trying to keep a room within a certain temperature range, even though there is nothing actually striving there. Much like anything under evolutionary pressure, the viruses that propagate are the ones that do manage (in their normal environment) to keep entropy across time from exploding. Are they "alive"? Meh. In combination with their environment, they act like it though.

tmcb 6y ago

The blog entry is quite good, but it seems to suggest that the breakthrough consists in analyzing living organisms through the lenses of information theory. This is not a mistake in itself, but a shallow perspective nonetheless: information theory is, supposedly, a mathematical representation of the ways our brains make sense of the world around. The blog entry accidentally gives leeway to readers think that there is some intrinsic quality to living beings that transforms dull matter into information propagation channels. As expected, the article does a better job in setting aside this line of reasoning[1]. What you are really measuring is how information is persisted over time, and over the "background noise" of environment. They specifically talk about viruses at a point, and the usual odd distinction of them being not quite living creatures. When they are found sitting outside their hosts, it is very hard to point out if they actually carry information over time. [1] Disclaimer: I have just skim-read it.

nil-sec 6y ago
Maybe I misunderstood you here but I don’t think information theory and in particular entropy has anything to do with “our brain”. It’s simply a statement of the number of micro states in a system. There is no requirement for reading them out or having a brain look at it. This value exists without observer. In that sense there is indeed an intrinsic quality to living beings that leads them to have a reduced number of micro states. They spend energy to keep it that way over time.
- tmcb 6y ago
  I know this is a pretty bold claim, but it is hard to overlook the idea that information theory as proposed by Claude Shannon works as a model of information as related to human cognition, and that it does not imply that information is a fundamental property of the physical universe. There are several interviews in which he mentioned that the understanding of how the human brain works was one of his main inquiries. His work on AI and the Theseus. And the seminal paper on information theory contains a section in which a fidelity evaluation function is defined with relation to the human ear and brain.
  - 6y ago

praptak 6y ago

How do you define the information-theoretic entropy of a physical object, like a virus?