Whether or not intelligence violates the entropy accountancy required by 2LoT, what it certainly can do is repeatedly and unpredicably create regions of indefinitely large amounts of low entropy, of arbitrary character. Undirected nature can’t

That’s what I wanted to say but I guess I didn’t find the right words. I consider repeated and unpredictable creation of large regions of low entropy to be a violation of 2LoT. If a glass of water becomes warmer by sucking heat out of a cooler surrounding environment that’s the creation of a region of low entropy – whether permanent or not it’s a violation of 2LoT. Similarly, if a DNA molecule becomes more complex by sucking information out of a less information-dense environment that also is a violation of 2LoT. The difference is that you will never see this kind of violation in heat transfer and aside from living things you won’t see this violation in information transfer either. We know intelligent agency routinely causes large regions of decreased information entropy. The big question then becomes whether any unintelligent process can create large regions of decreased information entropy. Granville Sewall says there are none and I agree with him.

There also appears to be a lot of confusion between order and information. An example of increased order is wind ripples on sand. But order is not necessarily information in information theoretic terms. There’s no specific information in those ripples. No message (or at least no message we know of). The information contained in them is objective, quantifiable, and not different in kind or quantity than the information contained in unrippled sand. What the ripples have more of is order, not information. Contrast this with the digitally encoded information on the spine of the DNA molecule. There is specified information quite different in kind and quantity from the order you see in crystals or the objective information seen in an unspecified arbitrary string of nucleic acids of similar length. Digitally encoded information that’s meaningful to a ribosome in building hideously complex self-replicating protein machines is a class of information apart from mere ordered arrangements of matter and energy. The class of information is complex specified information. Physicists don’t deal with this kind of order. This is information theory not physics but as Shannon has demonstrated information follows thermodynamic principles. But as Dembski and Sewall and others are attempting to show, when it comes to living things the thermodynamic principles that apply to information are evidently violated.

But 2LoT may not be applicable to QM, or otherwise may not be universally valid. If it’s not, then it’s moot.

Dave,

Do you have any justification to offer for either of these “laws”?

Of course. The first law is more controversial. In a deterministic universe information is never created or destroyed. In principle sufficient knowledge of the state of any closed system enables perfect prediction of its past and future. Before you say the universe is not deterministic I suggest you at least know that it is perfectly deterministic at larger than quantum scales as far as physics informs us and at quantum scales the jury is out on whether quantum uncertainty is an artifact of not having complete knowledge such as a theory of quantum gravity. Dembski proposes a law of conservation of information but I didn’t know that until just now when I googled it. I figured it out on my own long ago as it’s an obvious logical consequence of a deterministic universe. The only question is whether the universe is truly deterministic. I suspect that it is deterministic with the sole exception that intelligent life is non-deterministic. In other words “free will” exists and that, and that alone, can break the law of conservation of information.

There is little controversy about the second law in information theory.

Now I have a question for you. Why did I have to give you this information when it’s freely available on the internet with a simple google? I’m not here to do your homework for you. Next time you question me I expect you to have done a little reseach youself first or you’ll be asking questions on a different blog.

Your “1LoT” is not true. Information can be destroyed (and is destroyed all the time). Logically irreversible processes destroy information. For example, a three-input OR gate destroys information — you cannot reproduce the values on the three inputs from the value on the single output.

John von Neumann suggested, and Rolf Landauer proved, that there is a minimum entropy increase (and hence energy cost) associated with the destruction of information by irreversible processes. The field of reversible computation theory is aimed at reducing the entropy increase by making the logical processes reversible, thus preventing the destruction of information. Our three-input OR gate becomes a three-input, three-output gate in a reversible computer.

Regarding your “2LoT”, what do you even mean by an “information gradient” or the “diffusion of information”?

Again, a simple google for information gradient and information diffusion. Start reading. -ds

Woody

Thermodynamic entropy = Boltzmann’s constant x Shannon (information) entropy, or, S = kH

Energy = Boltzmann’s constant x temperature, or E = kT

Hence, thermo entropy is to info entropy as energy is to temperature
__________

The entropy rate balance for a control volume (CV) is as follows:

[rate of change of entropy within the CV] =
+ [rate of entropy transfer associated with heat transfer across boundary] (1)
+ [rate of entropy transfer associated with mass transfer into the CV] (2)
- [rate of entropy transfer associated with mass transfer out of the CV] (3)
+ [rate of entropy production within the CV due to irreversibilities] (4)

(1) is positive when heat is transferred in, negative when heat is transferred out.
(2) and (3) are zero for closed systems (mass is not transferred into or out of a closed system).
(4) is always positive.
__________

Now, some of my musings:

By analogy, since the First Law of Thermodynamics is basically the Law of Conservation of Energy, perhaps the Law of (Imperfect) Conservation of (Thermodynamic) Entropy (i.e., 2LoT) is better thought of as the First Law of Infodynamics? (Jaynes suggested something similar in 1957.)

For a closed system, if more entropy is transferred out than is transferred in, and if this rate is greater than the rate of entropy production due to irreversibilities, then entropy will be reduced within the system. With undirected natural processes, “self-organizational” phenomena (e.g., the formation of ice crystals, vortices in flowing water, ripples on sand dunes) can reduce entropy faster than irreversibilities generate it for limited periods of time and space. But such phenomena are necessary, rather than contingent; Also, they just don’t have the same “character” as the low entropy phenomena in living things. E.g., they can’t create novel cell types, tissue types, organs, or body plans (credit: ds). (Things to ponder: Why are there self-organizational tendencies of matter? From where do they originate?)

The following two considerations suggest how the Second Law of Thermo may be violated: Consciousness (which would appear necessary for true, original intelligence, rather than stored intelligence as in computer programs) seems to be associated with quantum mechanical phenomena; there are “two unwritten assumptions about Shannon’s definition of information that may make it inapplicable as such to quantum mechanics: (1) The supposition that there is such a thing as an observable state (for instance the upper face a die or a coin) before the observation begins (2) The fact that knowing this state does not depend on the order in which observations are made (commutativity).” ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy in thermodynamics and information theory ) Or, perhaps the Second Law is not universally valid, as Stephen Wolfram suggests.

Whether or not intelligence violates the entropy accountancy required by 2LoT, what it certainly can do is repeatedly and unpredicably create regions of indefinitely large amounts of low entropy, of arbitrary character. Undirected nature can’t.

“Physicist, Do you somehow calculate any reasonable possibility that nature, absent intelligence, could have created the information in your computer’s memory subsytems? Do you think nature, absent intelligence, could have created the information represented by the particular arrangement of atoms in the chair you’re sitting in? 2LoT applied to information would have virtually denied the possibility of chance assemblage of that information. Intelligent agency routinely overcomes virtually impossible odds. That is the hallmark of intelligence. ”

I find your statements here completely unchallenging. This is because the intelligence you are referring to in making computers and chairs is human intelligence, and humans are a part of nature.

So essentially your statement comes down to: `if there were no humans, would you be surprised if things that are made by humans are no longer found?’

My answer is no, and moreover there is no challenge here to the second law.

“Physicist–If you can give me a clear and precisely worded example of an `intelligent’ agency causing a violation of the second law, please do.

Davescot–Me writing this sentence.”

No, as other people have pointed out, the overall entropy will have increased as you think about and write this sentence. One would need to take into account the very complicated system of your brain, which probably none of us have a desire to do!

If you want to convince any physicists, you should come up with a precise example where you can do the calculations and show that entropy has decreased in a closed system. I am skeptical.

I’m guessing, but it sounds like what you actually want to do is isolate the entropy in that sentence, call it information entropy and then say it has clearly decreased as the sentence is typed. Well, fair enough, but unfortunately this does not violate any statement of the second law!

Of course, if you want to invent a new law, which is routinely violated, well no one will be impressed when it is…routinely violated. I think you need to think more clearly about exactly what `law’ you are violating, and exactly who thinks this `law’ is a physical law.

“But this has nothing to do with blackbody radiation. You cannot multiply the blackbody temperature of radiation by Boltzmann’s constant to find out how much energy there is per photon.”

No—basically, you can. In blackbody radiation characterised by temperature, T, the total (averaged in the grand canonical ensemble) number of photons is:

N ~ V*T^3

while the total energy is:

E ~ V*T^4

Hence the energy per photon does indeed go like E/N ~ T. The dimensionful part of the constant of proportionality is k_B, as usual. I might be misunderstanding what your point was but you seemed to be saying the energy per unit photon in BB radiation *didn’t* grow linearly with the temperature of the radiation, which is wrong. Any stat mech book will have this calculation.

Maybe you just mean that there is a dimensionless number, too, which I agree with, but I think the question was more about units.

So Davescot was correct, unless I am misreading what you are both saying. However, I think it’s off the main topic of this debate!

How does it sound supernatural when he gives himself typing a coherent sentence or a human manufacturing a chair as exampes of the difference intelligent input can make? Perhaps we can use the example of a beaver building a dam. Nature on its own would not form the dam, but the beaver is certainly part of nature.

It seems to me physicist and Valerie are focusing on the heat exchange and pressuring DS to agree that he does not get away without increasing entropy while inputting information. I don’t think that DS is really attempting to state that he can avoid the normal entropy of physical processes while engaging in intelligent input, rather he is stating that the very same minimal entropy increase to the environment that is involved in typing a sentence is about the same whether he types nonsense or very valuable and coherent words with meaning.

In other words, you get more value for your money.

In fact, I’m thinking this should probably be included as part of the definition of information, if it hasn’t already been.

I have been meaning to ask this for some time. What makes intelligence exalted from nature so much that we can reccon it not to be a part of it? Because that is what you seem to be implying with posts like these. You are making the creating intelligence supernatural and that is not what ID should be doing if it wishes to be scientific. Because, as you no doubt know, any appeal to the supernatural destroys the scientific value of a theory. A dichotomy with intelligence on one side and ‘nature’ on the other reeks of supernaturalism. What can you do to overcome that barrier?