Posted by konradx 5 days ago
If you subscribe to the big bang theory (and the idea that the purpose of a system is what it does), then the universe's purpose is to walk a path from low entropy to high entropy. Of what use is life, in such an endeavor? Well, life tends to seek out bits of stuck energy (food/fuel) and release it (metabolism/economy)--moving the universe further along on its path.
This gives a sort of answer to the question: "why bother have live at all?" And so I think the entropy purpose makes sense--moreso than just having it just be a side effect. Nobody will ever be absolutely right or wrong about such things (purposes), but they're handy to have around sometimes.
Absolutely, let's not let thermodynamics be the final word on the topic.
But suppose we did... To anybody who would cite this as a reason to drill more oil, I'd say that part of the equation is that we must also survive. In 10k years there will still be plenty of useful sunlight falling on the planet. Ideally we'll be around then, harnessing it to throw really great parties or whatever. If we aren't choosy about our fuel sources in the near term we might not be around to continue at this purpose in the long term.
I'm just saying that even if the game is merely to contribute as much as possible to this Big Bang that we're living in, we're still gonna lose if we focus on short term gains a the expense of our survival.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
> According to the cybernetician the purpose of a system is what it does...
The "according to the cybernetician" part makes it pretty clear that we're now entering some kind of abstract space that cares not for the stated intentions of humans. It seems that what's "very hot right now" is to ignore the first part.
I think it's an especially reasonable position to take when the system in question has no designer to disagree with anyhow.
But that's the thing about systems: they may involve humans but they don't necessarily reflect the intentions of the individual humans involved. Even when a system is created with a stated intent (i.e. for a stated purpose) that doesn't mean it will actually behave in a way that aligns with this intent. Logically you then shouldn't take the human intent into consideration when analyzing a system's actual effects and outcomes (except to determine whether it aligns with those but that's secondary).
IOW the purpose of a system (i.e. "what it exists for") can be different from the purpose for which it was created (i.e. "what it is meant to do"). I guess "purpose" in this case is an overloaded term because the former more uses a meaning that more closely aligns with "function" (like the function of a predator in an ecosystem may be controlling prey population but that doesn't suggest intent nor design) and the latter uses a meaning that more closely aligns with "intent" (like during wildfires controlled burns are performed with the intent of stopping the spread of the wildfire).
But I'd say it's a stretch to apply this to statements like "the purpose of organisms is to increase entropy" because that strongly implies intent rather than function (because the latter could also be simply expressed as "organisms create entropy").
-Has the System taken (on) a mind of its own?
-What does It want?
-How do we know what It wants?
Generally the point of this observation is specifically about human systems, either designed or evolved. The observation stems from the fact that it's (a) impossible to ascertain what the true intention of a human that designed a system was (they may be publicly lying about it, or even privately, it even to themselves), and (b) any complex enough system has been influenced and possibly "warped" by many more than one human, so the original unique intention, whatever it was, isn't the sole guiding principle behind it.
So, if analyzing a system, rather than trying to dig into its creators' history or anything like that, it's best to just look at what the system is doing and consider that its true current purpose.
It's my, somewhat lazy, philosophical opinion, that there isn't any purpose and there doesn't need to be one.
I don't see why the universe would need a purpose for anything. Things are what they. Things changing state. Entropy.
I see reproduction as more of built in motivation to our system than a purpose as such. But that's semantics, and my purpose in life is not to argue about words! ;-)
Though, I'm not sure if life is the best at it, when compared to say a black hole. Some smart apes burning off fossil fuels seems pretty insignificant in comparison -- or even seeing what our own Sun does in a few seconds.
File that under, "The Earth will be fine in the long run, it's humans that are f'd" George Carlin pov. Maybe when we start building Death Stars (plural)
It gets a bit blurry when you start to substitute "life" for any "complex cosmological system" though...
The statement is a category error, but that criticism distracts from the very valuable insight he does provide regarding entropy, life and complexity.
He did a series on minutephysics explaining it quite well, worth a watch. He does explain why complexity increases as entropy increases (with some additional qualification).
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoaVOjvkzQtyZF-2VpJrx...
It is puzzling why life isn't more common. Perhaps dissipative self-organizing structures are everywhere - stars, solar systems and galaxies themselves maintain their order by dissipating energy. They just don't look like "life" to us.
I presume the end-state of entropy would be the same (excluding ways to escape the universe).
One of the consequences of that extension was a possibility of a cyclic universe. On expansion one sees that classically defined entropy increases but then it will decrease on contraction.
These days that work is pretty much forgotten, but still it showed that with GR heat dearth of the universe was not the only option.
If I had to bet money on it, I would say it's right, especially in light of things like this: https://phys.org/news/2025-03-ai-image-recognition-universe....
So apparent increase in complexity can be attributed to gravity.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.6903
>For example, our universe lacked complex structures at the Big Bang and will also lack them after black holes evaporate and particles are dispersed.
See my comment below for link to Scott's preview.
How would you test for it though? I've seen enough residual data from RL processes to almost see semblences of patterns that could be extracted and re-applied at a macro scale.
A "new force of nature"? It's just so pretentious. Some interesting biases of a selection process driven by copious excess energy doesn't make for a new force of nature. Otherwise we'd be positing all kinds of absurdities that are not directly explained by particle physics are woo woo a new force of nature--fashion choices (hey, copy, select, mutate there too).
[1] And no, I don't think that the computer simulations of evolution they carry out are any additional evidence. So you made a computer program with a copy/select/mutate loop in it. Big deal. I can make a computer simulation about anything.