4 ms·

Sure, but "ageing is a result of increasing entropy" is pretty much the same as saying that ageing is caused by the passage of time. The interesting part here

Sure, but "ageing is a result of increasing entropy" is pretty much the same as saying that ageing is caused by the passage of time. The interesting part here is that they narrow down which loss of information is important.

peteradio 4y ago
Inevitable entropy increasing is a red-herring in the presence of free-energy, no? What you point out though is very interesting, what would it take to inject energy into conserving this information? And what would its effects actually be? Could you pause aging, reverse it? Now this gets hairy, what happens to society? I dare say not everyone can live forever. What are the consequences of having a select few continuing to live youthfully and reproducing? Can we wind up with a loss of genetic diversity in our species? Entropy strikes again!
- DennisP 4y ago
  Since urbanized populations have fewer kids, the world is facing a huge demographic crash that will probably last through the rest of the century. So there's plenty of room to apply this technology broadly. Also plenty of incentive: stock markets won't do well with shrinking populations, and governments will save a lot of money if they don't have to spend as much on treating the expensive diseases of the aged.
ip26 4y ago
Increasing entropy in a system can be avoided with an external energy source.
- amts 4y ago
  > Increasing entropy in a system can be avoided with an external energy source. There was a study probably cited by Sinclair in his Lifespan book with mice genetically engineered to have 0.5-1 degree less than normal body temperature. And they lived like ~30% or more longer. Such hypergeneralised physical thought inevitably leads to necrology in the end-point measurements, rather than biology.
- noworld 4y ago
  So I should thank my uncle for introducing me to licking 9V batteries?
- contravariant 4y ago
  Well what you need is more like an easily accessible source of low entropy. You can substitute a big concentration of energy (the concentration part is important) to some extent. However the energy usage of a computer (the simplest example of a device that lowers entropy in a flexible way) is many orders of magnitude higher than the theoretical limit. So I'm not entirely sure how many bits of entropy it takes to reverse ageing, but just the computational power required may release enough heat to melt a few cities. And that's before figuring out how to practically do anything (though arguably with enough computing power you can probably just do some advanced version of percussive maintenance). Edit: Huh turns out the Landauer limit at room temperature is more or less the reciprocal of Avogadro's constant, so the theoretical limits could be within the realm of what's humanly possible. Still it means you probably need a couple of Watts per bit of information for each molecule, divided by however efficient the system processing the hundreds of zettabytes is.
  - ImHereToVote 4y ago
    Aging is reversed each time a zygote is made. No need for terajoules of energy.
    - contravariant 4y ago
      Fair point, children seem to get rid of the entropy by causing absolute chaos instead.
- nradov 4y ago
  Have you considered exposing your cells to a high-energy gamma ray source?
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  There is no energy source external to the universe.
adrianN 4y ago
Since humans eat food, they are not subject to entropy necessarily increasing over time (as long as food is available).
- nanna 4y ago
  That implies Schrödinger's thermodynamic theory of negative entropy, which involves the holding off of death by means of a metabolic burning of food. At stake in this paper is the cybernetic theory of negative entropy, whereby it is information that is negative entropy (Wieners rather than Shannons definition). Information that sustains life, it's lack which means death.

peteradio 4y ago

Inevitable entropy increasing is a red-herring in the presence of free-energy, no? What you point out though is very interesting, what would it take to inject energy into conserving this information? And what would its effects actually be? Could you pause aging, reverse it? Now this gets hairy, what happens to society? I dare say not everyone can live forever. What are the consequences of having a select few continuing to live youthfully and reproducing? Can we wind up with a loss of genetic diversity in our species? Entropy strikes again!

DennisP 4y ago
Since urbanized populations have fewer kids, the world is facing a huge demographic crash that will probably last through the rest of the century. So there's plenty of room to apply this technology broadly. Also plenty of incentive: stock markets won't do well with shrinking populations, and governments will save a lot of money if they don't have to spend as much on treating the expensive diseases of the aged.

ip26 4y ago

Increasing entropy in a system can be avoided with an external energy source.

amts 4y ago
> Increasing entropy in a system can be avoided with an external energy source. There was a study probably cited by Sinclair in his Lifespan book with mice genetically engineered to have 0.5-1 degree less than normal body temperature. And they lived like ~30% or more longer. Such hypergeneralised physical thought inevitably leads to necrology in the end-point measurements, rather than biology.
noworld 4y ago
So I should thank my uncle for introducing me to licking 9V batteries?
contravariant 4y ago
Well what you need is more like an easily accessible source of low entropy. You can substitute a big concentration of energy (the concentration part is important) to some extent. However the energy usage of a computer (the simplest example of a device that lowers entropy in a flexible way) is many orders of magnitude higher than the theoretical limit. So I'm not entirely sure how many bits of entropy it takes to reverse ageing, but just the computational power required may release enough heat to melt a few cities. And that's before figuring out how to practically do anything (though arguably with enough computing power you can probably just do some advanced version of percussive maintenance). Edit: Huh turns out the Landauer limit at room temperature is more or less the reciprocal of Avogadro's constant, so the theoretical limits could be within the realm of what's humanly possible. Still it means you probably need a couple of Watts per bit of information for each molecule, divided by however efficient the system processing the hundreds of zettabytes is.
- ImHereToVote 4y ago
  Aging is reversed each time a zygote is made. No need for terajoules of energy.
  - contravariant 4y ago
    Fair point, children seem to get rid of the entropy by causing absolute chaos instead.
nradov 4y ago
Have you considered exposing your cells to a high-energy gamma ray source?
slowmovintarget 4y ago
There is no energy source external to the universe.

adrianN 4y ago

Since humans eat food, they are not subject to entropy necessarily increasing over time (as long as food is available).

nanna 4y ago
That implies Schrödinger's thermodynamic theory of negative entropy, which involves the holding off of death by means of a metabolic burning of food. At stake in this paper is the cybernetic theory of negative entropy, whereby it is information that is negative entropy (Wieners rather than Shannons definition). Information that sustains life, it's lack which means death.