Thanks for providing this writeup; I’ve been reading some popular-level material on dissipative adaptation and this post was a great way to get a glimpse at the actual mathematical claims and how they are being interpreted.
Just a thought on how one could interpret this a bit differently than you have done:
The claim about the transition probabilities to different states applies to any system which satisfies your initial set of assumptions. In the examples that you provided, there was always some object (e.g., the earth), which was more or less capable of absorbing the driving force and generating entropy. But it seems that there are other ways to define the system which A) still satisfy the assumptions, but B) cannot efficiently couple to the driving force.
Like suppose that instead of drawing my box around a tree and the surrounding soil/earth, I draw my box around some region in space 100m above the ground. Most of the energy in the form of incoming sunlight is passing straight through this system, without being dissipated to create entropy. If it were possible for this system to achieve a state which dissipates the energy better, we’d interpret this state to have a selection advantage, despite the fact that all of this energy might be even more effectively dissipated 100m below when it reaches the ground.
Of course, one could draw other boxes that might better reflect presumed scenarios of life-origin.
Generally, the error that I think you could be making is to cherry-pick a few systems for which the entropic balance doesn’t seem to play in the favor of emergent structure. But in fact, we should be asking whether within the vast power-set of all systems that satisfy the assumptions, are there exists a system in which the balance tilts in favor of emergent structure.
As I’m re-reading portions of your write-up, it seems like your response to this would be something like “That’s true enough, but if we are required to apply the theory in this hyper-local fashion, it doesn’t have much explanatory power at these large scales.”
Thanks for providing this writeup; I’ve been reading some popular-level material on dissipative adaptation and this post was a great way to get a glimpse at the actual mathematical claims and how they are being interpreted.
Just a thought on how one could interpret this a bit differently than you have done:
The claim about the transition probabilities to different states applies to any system which satisfies your initial set of assumptions. In the examples that you provided, there was always some object (e.g., the earth), which was more or less capable of absorbing the driving force and generating entropy. But it seems that there are other ways to define the system which A) still satisfy the assumptions, but B) cannot efficiently couple to the driving force.
Like suppose that instead of drawing my box around a tree and the surrounding soil/earth, I draw my box around some region in space 100m above the ground. Most of the energy in the form of incoming sunlight is passing straight through this system, without being dissipated to create entropy. If it were possible for this system to achieve a state which dissipates the energy better, we’d interpret this state to have a selection advantage, despite the fact that all of this energy might be even more effectively dissipated 100m below when it reaches the ground.
Of course, one could draw other boxes that might better reflect presumed scenarios of life-origin.
Generally, the error that I think you could be making is to cherry-pick a few systems for which the entropic balance doesn’t seem to play in the favor of emergent structure. But in fact, we should be asking whether within the vast power-set of all systems that satisfy the assumptions, are there exists a system in which the balance tilts in favor of emergent structure.
As I’m re-reading portions of your write-up, it seems like your response to this would be something like “That’s true enough, but if we are required to apply the theory in this hyper-local fashion, it doesn’t have much explanatory power at these large scales.”