C: You heard it, e/acc isn’t about maximizing entropy [no shit?!]
B: No, it’s about maximizing the free energy
C: So e/acc should want to collapse the false vacuum?
Holy mother of bad faith. Rationalists/lesswrongers have a problem with saying obviously false things, and this is one of those.
It’s in line with what seems like Connor’s debate strategy—make your opponent define their views and their terminal goal in words, and then pick apart that goal by pushing it to the maximum. Embarrassing.
I agree with you that Connor performed very poorly in this debate. But this one is actually fair game. If you look at Beff’s writings about “thermodynamic god” and these kinds of things, he talks a lot about how these ideas are supported by physics and the Crooks fluctuation theorem. Normally in a debate if someone says they value X, you interpret that as “I value X, but other things can also be valuable and there might be edge cases where X is bad and I’m reasonable and will make exceptions for those.”
But physics doesn’t have a concept of “reasonable”. The ratio between the forward and backward probabilities in the Crooks fluctuation theorem is exponential in the amount of entropy produced. It’s not exponential in the amount of entropy produced plus some correction terms to add in reasonable exceptions for edge cases. Given how much Beff has emphasized that his ideas originated in physics, I think it’s reasonable to take him at his word and assume that he really is talking about the thing in the exponent of the Crooks fluctuation theorem. And then the question of “so hey, it sure does look like collapsing the false vacuum would dissipate an absolutely huge amount of free energy” is a very reasonable one to ask.
Yes. I think Beff was speaking imprecisely there. In order to be consistent with what he’s written elsewhere, he should have said something like: “maximizing the rate of free energy dissipation”.
I agree with you that Connor performed very poorly in this debate. But this one is actually fair game. If you look at Beff’s writings about “thermodynamic god” and these kinds of things, he talks a lot about how these ideas are supported by physics and the Crooks fluctuation theorem. Normally in a debate if someone says they value X, you interpret that as “I value X, but other things can also be valuable and there might be edge cases where X is bad and I’m reasonable and will make exceptions for those.”
But physics doesn’t have a concept of “reasonable”. The ratio between the forward and backward probabilities in the Crooks fluctuation theorem is exponential in the amount of entropy produced. It’s not exponential in the amount of entropy produced plus some correction terms to add in reasonable exceptions for edge cases. Given how much Beff has emphasized that his ideas originated in physics, I think it’s reasonable to take him at his word and assume that he really is talking about the thing in the exponent of the Crooks fluctuation theorem. And then the question of “so hey, it sure does look like collapsing the false vacuum would dissipate an absolutely huge amount of free energy” is a very reasonable one to ask.
Wait, what? This is literally the opposite of what thermodynamics does though?
Yes. I think Beff was speaking imprecisely there. In order to be consistent with what he’s written elsewhere, he should have said something like: “maximizing the rate of free energy dissipation”.
Free energy is energy available for work. How do you harness the energy released by vacuum decay?