The Entropy Engine (2 of 3)

The Entropy Engine, Chapter 2

I.

After Hermes’s vision but before he called his craftsmen, Hermes first sought his friend Prof. Dædeleus Metæn. His world was some hundreds of millions of light years distant, not that anyone traveled the long way anymore. So with much to ponder, Hermes began to walk. He stepped through gateways connecting to distant worlds, which were connected to other worlds, and so forth. A half hour later he had arrived.

Prof. Dædeleus Metæn’s labyrinthine workshop defied any kind of order, with half finished projects everywhere, biological, mechanical, artistic. Snarky thoughts about disorder came to Hermes mind, but remained unspoken. Stepping over what appeared to be a pepper plant set in a helmet with neural implants attached, he called to Dædeleus. His son Icariœs lay underneath a heavy piece of equipment, with the sound of loud (but dampened) music emanating from a field near his head.

Dædeleus waved Hermes over, and said, “I got your message. Tell me more about this.”

After Hermes briefly recounted his experience, he said, “I had only considered entropy as disorder, as something to fight against.

I didn’t see the importance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, why increasing entropy was important.

Without an increase in entropy, we could neither exercise our agency, nor could we create new possibilities.

It is a fundamental necessity for creation and of our world. It is not simply our enemy.

I did not comprehend the importance of God as a continual Creator.

II.

Dædeleus pondered his words deeply. “What impresses me is an aspect of your vision you glossed over. You explained the entropy of matter clearly. But you neglected the entropy of information, which the vision also mentioned.

Any amount of information has an entropy, depending on how few bits of data it would take to express it, or in other words, how much unique information it contains. This is called Shannon Entropy, after an ancient Old Earth scientist.

Information is Entropy. If we destroy entropy, as the Entropy Engine appears to be doing, then we are also destroying information. A world without increasing entropy, is a world where you can not learn. And destroying entropy, means any and everything will be forgotten eventually. The Heat Death of the Universe might be hostile to life forcing us to live on less and less free energy, but decreasing Entropy would be Eternal Forgetting. And Death. Death of Life and Death of Mind.”

Hermes retorted, “That is the Dædeleus I know. Worried about what he doesn’t know and forgetting what he does. And of course, there’s always that pesky little matter of Death.”

Dædeleus laughed and gestured at his jumbled workshop, “Yes, Death would be a minor obstacle to finishing all my projects!”

“Truth is”, he continued in a more serious tone, “Information is fundamental to reality. It may be more important than electrons and protons, electromagnetism and gravity. On Old Earth, they said, It from Bit. Or that Reality is fundamentally just information, our entire universe, all matter and energy, is fundamentally just information. That is all it is, not that that is a minor thing! So a device that destroys Entropy is really a positive horror. You can’t do that without destroying the universe.

That is why we call Christ the Truth of the World and why we call him the Master Teacher.

III.

The conversation paused for a moment and Dædeleus’s son interjected, “This discussion of entropy is really interesting, but have you considered how to do this?

The computational and power requirements to do this are insane. Sure, we can create more, but to really do this, we need to have creation at every level. We will need to incorporate truth and computation at every level – every atom, electron and photon is involved. And not just trivial computations either. Landauer’s Principle suggests this entropy, even just as information, takes a lot of energy. That is just what the physical law is. Expect anyone or thing we do this to, to glow like a white hot iron.

We will probably need to incorporate Spiritual truth as well as Physical, not that there is any sharp distinction between the two. So a person’s Spiritual state, what they believe, or accept, will make a difference just how much truth we can incorporate.

So, if we have choice and agency, as well as knowledge and thought, then how is this Creation Engine distinct from Life? Is Life fundamental to existence? Science often discuss things as though the universe is only matter to be acted on. But life thrives in regions with limited stable disequilibrium – I mean to say, a consistent energy flow, like sunlight on watered soil. In which case, maintaining a degree of disequilibrium will be vital.”

Both Dædeleus and Hermes pondered silently until Hermes finally responded, “Perhaps the only difference, is that we are creating life. Not ex nihilo, of course. And we are incorporating it into things we normally think of as inert and lifeless, like rocks and perhaps even stars. We will be expanding the definition of Life to include forms we were not familiar with before. We are enabling the possible life already within it.”

Icariœs responded, “Can inert matter do that? I suppose, if water and earth obey God when He speaks, then they must have both knowledge and will, and some capacity to act, even if they are at infinitesimal levels. What distinguishes an electron in a living body, from one in a rock? Or a water molecule inside a body from one in the ocean? The body gives it a greater opportunity to act, I suppose. And even a lone isolated electron still has entanglement entropy. So, we will not need to make this ex nihilo, we will need to amplify and organize what is there so it can act.

I see, then Christ really is the Life and Light of all Worlds.

Notes:

The Hebraic poetic structure is twofold. It is first an extended alternate parallelism, in three sections. Each section has a similar structure. Second, these are contrasting sections, with a synthesis. This usually (but not always) takes the form of Temporal/Spiritual or Spiritual/Temporal. Often with a third section as Synthesis. This is particularly common in Psalms and Isaiah. This is present in the Creation Account, with a Spiritual part (Gen. 1) and a Temporal part (Gen. 2). Even Laman and Lemuel ask Nephi about this. 1 Ne 15:31. See also 1 Ne 22:3. This structure, two contrasts and synthesis, is also seen with multiple chiasmuses (chiasmi). These contrasts are also a Hebrew literary form. When two extremes are mentioned, then they are undesrstood to encompass those extremes and everything in between.

Entropy does not only govern physical systems. It also governs information and the capacity to learn information. These are two different forms of entropy. Both are quite real and both have physical effects. In addition to regular physical entropy, we also have the entropy of information, or Shannon Entropy, after Claude Shannon, the Father of Information Theory.

For instance, we can see the importance of information entropy as the resolution of the Maxwell’s Demon thought experiment or in the Landauer Principle, where there is a minimum amount of energy required for any change in information due to entropy. Just to be clear, erasing information locally, as in a computer, is not fundamentally destroying it.

The other important point is the fundamental indestructibility of information. is what is behind the Black Hole Information paradox. In this paradox, even matter consumed by a black hole must retain information. This has profound implications, because if information is not eternal, and entropy could be destroyed, then that could mean the destruction of reality itself.

Regarding Information being the fundamental building block of reality, even more fundamental than electrons and protons, appears to be true, though admittedly that is a bit in excess of our current knowledge. It was first proposed by the famous John Archibald Wheeler with his pithy phrase, It from Bit, meaning that reality is based on bits, the basic unit of information. Modern physics appears to back this up, but I wouldn’t say it has definitively proven it either.

A world without increasing entropy, would be a world where learning, understanding and thought are impossible. It is increasing entropy that make choice and agency possible. Without it, all outcomes would be predetermined, and no real choice or growth would be possible. This aligns with the idea that truth is eternal and that creation is a continuous process. In this sense, the increasing entropy of the universe reflects the divine process of creation, where new possibilities and choices emerge.

We could also look at this in terms of Revelation as an input to an otherwise closed system. If we cease to receive new truths and learn new things that do not fit in our paradigms, then we reach a point where we can no longer progress.

Life, in some ways is trickier. We can see life around us and we know we are alive, yet defining it has been fraught with difficulty. Finding the dividing line between alive and dead on the microscopic scale is unclear. If a bacteria is alive, is a virus or a prion? Is a molecule alive inside a cell but dead outside of it? These are where biologists struggle and argue about the definition of life. How do we define these complicated structures that exists between sterile order and deadly chaos?

This is a deep subject that can not adequately be reviewed in a single essay, much less a few paragraphs. But scripture describe the world in terms of things like light, spirit, matter and law.

First, we see that life is fashioned from pre-existing materials, not created ex niliho.

Likewise, we see Christ command both the wind and the waves and they obey. We also see the earth anthromorphisized and personified. Is life then, a property of matter, that exists to a greater or lesser extent?  This is interestingly close to the position called Pan-psychism.

Second, what is a spirit? I truly do not know. Is it distinct from information and truth and learning? All we know is that it is more fine matter, but if I had it point to one known physical quantity that fit it best, it would be information.

Now, a minor point for the pedantic, I haven’t concretely proven here that these Creation Engines would yield usable free energy, instead of just energy in general. But if we have regions where entropy moves energy in either direction, then it should be possible to keep the universe in perpetual disequilibrium. That may sound bad, but life in general, exists where there is disequilibrium, as long as it is not too extreme. For instance, sunlight warming cold ground is good, but fire is bad. It would just be important to keep things within certain bounds.