John, This is so profound I don't even know how to comment intelligently. They need to have a new Academy of Philosophy of Science and make you the founding member. Would be appropriately circular. Thanks for this. Will have to reread more-than-once, I expect, to get all the under-the-covers thinking.
A lot of 90s physicists turned into mystics. You wouldn't be the first. If you don't want to go down that path you should avoid Herman Hesse novels, acid, and ancient Taoist texts. Imagining the noosphere as part of a physical deterministic universe (especially one with sympathetic vibration) is putting your toe in the water of metaphysics. This is not a criticism it's a cautionary tale.
bitches be like, errrrr science says the earth is a fluke and life is just something that happend, buncha chemicals zappin' each other for no good reasons
true science be like, bro, you are the means by which the entire universe comes to know and love itself
Jul 18, 2022·edited Jul 18, 2022Liked by John Carter
Extraordinary stuff, John. The subject matter was wholly unexpected and the article was really, really good. There is something about physics, traditionally the most mechanical of disciplines, that reaches beyond itself.
Your account of Vernadsky brings to mind Georges Bataille's theory of the accursed share. It has been years since I read it, so my memory may be faulty, but Bataille posited that complex life was simply the means by which the cosmos discharged or spent the surplus energy of the sun. Bataille was strange and he took his thinking about surplus energy into bizarre places (he was a surrealist, after all).
There were an awful lot of people in the late19th c and early 20th doing very bold, very creative thinking. By comparison the last few generations have been pathetic. My guess is that it is a combination of world wars killing off the best men, together with the deadening effects of mass society, above all dumbed down and ultra-utilitarian mass education.
Dang. I understood most of what you said, John, but I still want to reread this article a few times this week, I need to assemble--as best I can-- the Big Picture of what you’re saying. The universe is gloriously complex,we all know that. And yet you are suggesting (correctly, I hazard to say), it is also gloriously simple. I need to digest that a bit, get my grey head around it. Back in a bit.
Oct 16, 2023·edited Oct 16, 2023Liked by John Carter
You're somewhat off in equating energy with information. In the same way that there is a matter-energy equivalence, there is an information-energy equivalence. But this does not imply they're the same thing. Encoding and decoding requires energy, but the information yielded by this process is not itself energy.
Energy is the potential of matter to undergo state changes, and information is encoded in particular states, and matter is the stuff which exists in one particular state or other.
It's subtle but important: matter, energy, and information are three distinct and codependent domains.
New agers make the error of thinking of energy-as-stuff when only matter has the character of being stuff. You're making a similar category error of information-as-energy, but information does not have the character of being energetic. Encoded information on its own does nothing and has no potential; without a decoder and an expenditure of energy, it might as well not exist.
Edit: which is all to say, I like the direction you're going with this and think it will go farther if you avoid the subtle trap of this category error.
I am going to push back a bit, specifically on foot note 1.
Many fish die shortly after spawning, or in the process of doing so. Salmon, for a famous instance. Some species of octopus die after laying eggs because they sit and care for their eggs while starving to death until they hatch.
Some insects and crustaceans essentially allow their young to cannibalize them as their first meal. Certainly many mate once then are consumed by the female.
Angler fish males are basically tiny scrotes swimming around until they find a female, then attach and get absorbed into her body for long term use.
Even with mammals and birds reproduction is about the only thing driving intra-group or intra-species killing, and many have "mate, then die or whatever" dynamics (usually just the males).
So, claiming that animals wouldn't understand that reproduction is the point of their life is... sort of strange. For many it is the primary thing they fight for, the last thing they do, and something they willingly die for.
And then you have to consider how serious many species are about protecting their young.
For all your other arguments, claiming that reproduction, the continuation of life, isn't super important to organisms is a very strange claim. I have other problems with the essay, but this one is a bit beyond the pale.
It is such a privilege to have access to your written thoughts. I don't have the capacity to comment on this. I am just in awe and appreciation. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expanding your ways of communicating to include mid wits like myself.
I saw a 20 minute YT doco on the stages of the Universe. "Life" will exist for a cupla billion "years", the gradual merge of ALL black holes, long afterwards, is a figure so large that "life" is like 0.0000000000000000000 (long time LOTS & LOTS more zeros) .1 of the entire period. It's just the sturm undt drang... so really, we should enjoy it!🤣
I absolutely loved this article I did have some trouble with some words and or some sentences but as a layman I understood the body of your work! Great job
Upon second spaced read, it sank deeper in and disturbed comatose silt: While a live body is essentially food rearranged in chemical sense, to stay alive it has no option to pause and ponder over what all this is about. Keep busy converting/transforming—or else (the most grim else, equalling to a decay to poo). Energy-information content establishes a natural hierarchy ‘within the increasingly elaborate, intricately baroque architecture of the biosphere’. Now, we the human pinnacle could use a little help from the Universe teaching itself to give this remarkable artistic project a licence to continue on the profoundly beautiful course. In the form of figuring out a breakthrough energy-dense source to tap into.
Btw, ty for stretching the perspective horizon. I find it strangely reassuring that shit is cosmic in its ultimate origin, and a repository of information to boot. Dignifies things somewhat 😊
Good article, John. Doesn't really fit with the type of things I normally link, but am going to link tomorrow @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/ anyway because it's definitely a good read. Maybe I need to add a philosophical category to my site or perhaps create another site altogether. Just don't have the time,
John, This is so profound I don't even know how to comment intelligently. They need to have a new Academy of Philosophy of Science and make you the founding member. Would be appropriately circular. Thanks for this. Will have to reread more-than-once, I expect, to get all the under-the-covers thinking.
A lot of 90s physicists turned into mystics. You wouldn't be the first. If you don't want to go down that path you should avoid Herman Hesse novels, acid, and ancient Taoist texts. Imagining the noosphere as part of a physical deterministic universe (especially one with sympathetic vibration) is putting your toe in the water of metaphysics. This is not a criticism it's a cautionary tale.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/ba/DrawingHands.jpg/270px-DrawingHands.jpg
LOVE IT
bitches be like, errrrr science says the earth is a fluke and life is just something that happend, buncha chemicals zappin' each other for no good reasons
true science be like, bro, you are the means by which the entire universe comes to know and love itself
Extraordinary stuff, John. The subject matter was wholly unexpected and the article was really, really good. There is something about physics, traditionally the most mechanical of disciplines, that reaches beyond itself.
Your account of Vernadsky brings to mind Georges Bataille's theory of the accursed share. It has been years since I read it, so my memory may be faulty, but Bataille posited that complex life was simply the means by which the cosmos discharged or spent the surplus energy of the sun. Bataille was strange and he took his thinking about surplus energy into bizarre places (he was a surrealist, after all).
There were an awful lot of people in the late19th c and early 20th doing very bold, very creative thinking. By comparison the last few generations have been pathetic. My guess is that it is a combination of world wars killing off the best men, together with the deadening effects of mass society, above all dumbed down and ultra-utilitarian mass education.
Dang. I understood most of what you said, John, but I still want to reread this article a few times this week, I need to assemble--as best I can-- the Big Picture of what you’re saying. The universe is gloriously complex,we all know that. And yet you are suggesting (correctly, I hazard to say), it is also gloriously simple. I need to digest that a bit, get my grey head around it. Back in a bit.
You're somewhat off in equating energy with information. In the same way that there is a matter-energy equivalence, there is an information-energy equivalence. But this does not imply they're the same thing. Encoding and decoding requires energy, but the information yielded by this process is not itself energy.
Energy is the potential of matter to undergo state changes, and information is encoded in particular states, and matter is the stuff which exists in one particular state or other.
It's subtle but important: matter, energy, and information are three distinct and codependent domains.
New agers make the error of thinking of energy-as-stuff when only matter has the character of being stuff. You're making a similar category error of information-as-energy, but information does not have the character of being energetic. Encoded information on its own does nothing and has no potential; without a decoder and an expenditure of energy, it might as well not exist.
Edit: which is all to say, I like the direction you're going with this and think it will go farther if you avoid the subtle trap of this category error.
Moar on noospheres plz!
I am going to push back a bit, specifically on foot note 1.
Many fish die shortly after spawning, or in the process of doing so. Salmon, for a famous instance. Some species of octopus die after laying eggs because they sit and care for their eggs while starving to death until they hatch.
Some insects and crustaceans essentially allow their young to cannibalize them as their first meal. Certainly many mate once then are consumed by the female.
Angler fish males are basically tiny scrotes swimming around until they find a female, then attach and get absorbed into her body for long term use.
Even with mammals and birds reproduction is about the only thing driving intra-group or intra-species killing, and many have "mate, then die or whatever" dynamics (usually just the males).
So, claiming that animals wouldn't understand that reproduction is the point of their life is... sort of strange. For many it is the primary thing they fight for, the last thing they do, and something they willingly die for.
And then you have to consider how serious many species are about protecting their young.
For all your other arguments, claiming that reproduction, the continuation of life, isn't super important to organisms is a very strange claim. I have other problems with the essay, but this one is a bit beyond the pale.
It is such a privilege to have access to your written thoughts. I don't have the capacity to comment on this. I am just in awe and appreciation. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expanding your ways of communicating to include mid wits like myself.
i prefer vernadsky's concept of the noosphere to teilhard de chardin's...
an evolution of the biosphere rather than something superadded to it.
macrocosm/microcosm
the anthropos - the cosmos as superorganism, reflecting in macro what we are in micro
your writing gels well with a lot of the best of the perennial philosophy.
cheers!
I saw a 20 minute YT doco on the stages of the Universe. "Life" will exist for a cupla billion "years", the gradual merge of ALL black holes, long afterwards, is a figure so large that "life" is like 0.0000000000000000000 (long time LOTS & LOTS more zeros) .1 of the entire period. It's just the sturm undt drang... so really, we should enjoy it!🤣
Loving your work here. Thank you.
I absolutely loved this article I did have some trouble with some words and or some sentences but as a layman I understood the body of your work! Great job
Upon second spaced read, it sank deeper in and disturbed comatose silt: While a live body is essentially food rearranged in chemical sense, to stay alive it has no option to pause and ponder over what all this is about. Keep busy converting/transforming—or else (the most grim else, equalling to a decay to poo). Energy-information content establishes a natural hierarchy ‘within the increasingly elaborate, intricately baroque architecture of the biosphere’. Now, we the human pinnacle could use a little help from the Universe teaching itself to give this remarkable artistic project a licence to continue on the profoundly beautiful course. In the form of figuring out a breakthrough energy-dense source to tap into.
Btw, ty for stretching the perspective horizon. I find it strangely reassuring that shit is cosmic in its ultimate origin, and a repository of information to boot. Dignifies things somewhat 😊
Good article, John. Doesn't really fit with the type of things I normally link, but am going to link tomorrow @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/ anyway because it's definitely a good read. Maybe I need to add a philosophical category to my site or perhaps create another site altogether. Just don't have the time,