Replying to LO28658 --
Dear Organlearners,
Dan Chay <chay@alaska.com> writes:
>Some learners will be interested to read the essays on energy,
>entropy, and entropy production by Swenson at this site
> http://www.entropylaw.com/index.html
(snip)
>At, I'll be curious if you have comments about Swenson's site,
>particularly what he refers to as the Law of Maximization of
>Entropy Production (LMEP).
Greetings dear Dan,
Swenson's site is definitely one of the better sites.
Swenson's concept LMEP is actually true and false. It is true in the sense
that LMEP applies to the system for an emergence to happen. LMEP is
necessary to get the bifurcation on the ridge of chaos. But it is false
when trying to apply it for system in it digestive mode. It is what
actually underlies the parable of the boiled frog.
LMEP does not apply to any isolated system. Nor does it apply to the
universe UN itself. Here LEP applies in the sense that /_\S(un) > 0
(entropy has to increase)= (entropy production) /_\/_\S(un) < 0 (entropy
production has to minimise) This has a most important consequence.
The maximisation of entropy production in one system so as to have a
bifurcation has to be balance by a greatly reduced entropy production in
some other system(s) of it surroundings because the entropy production of
the universe must stay minimised. I know that this is very difficult to
understand, but it is crucial to understand it. So let me try to
illustrate it with pure numbers
Think of a whole with two parts. Let the following sequence of
numbers represent LEP for the whole.
10 19 27 34 40 45 49
Each number is greater that its precessor. This what
/_\S(un) > 0
means. But the difference between two consequtive numbers decrease.
This is what
/_\/_\S(un) < 0
means.
Now think of one part which must have a bifurcation.
Its entropy has to grow
4 9 15 22 29 35 40
where the bifurcation is reached at 4th number (18). Subtract this
sequence of numbers for the part from that for the whole to get the
sequence of numbers for the other part. Watch what happens
6 10 12 12 11 10 9
At the 4th number (12) that part's entropy stopped to grow. It has been
forced into an equilibrium state just like what would have been for an
isolated system (6 10 12 12 12 12 12 ...) But since it is open, it now
begin to decrease (..... 11 10 9). What does this mean? Remember that
entropy is a measure of organisation, process and structure as well as
chaos and order. That part's organisation, whatever it entials, begins to
decrease from the 4th number.
Allow me to give you a real example. Dan, you live in Alaska. Rick and
many other fellow learners live in the rest of the USA much lower. A
pipeline carries oil from Alaska to the USA where it is needed for entropy
production to sustain bifurcations. So what happens to Alaska up north?
Here is a copy of part of a report which Daan Joubert sent to me recently.
~~~~Begin Quote~~~
Now, in Alaska, Even the Permafrost Is Melting
By TIMOTHY EGAN
NCHOR POINT, Alaska, June 13 - To live in Alaska when the average
temperature has risen about seven degrees over the last 30 years means
learning to cope with a landscape that can sink, catch fire or break apart
in the turn of a season.
In the village of Shishmaref, on the Chukchi Sea just south of the Arctic
Circle, it means high water eating away so many houses and buildings that
people will vote next month on moving the entire village inland.
In Barrow, the northernmost city in North America, it means coping with
mosquitoes in a place where they once were nonexistent, and rescuing hunters
trapped on breakaway ice at a time of year when such things once were
unheard of.
>From Fairbanks to the north, where wildfires have been burning off and on
since mid-May, it means living with hydraulic jacks to keep houses from
slouching and buckling on foundations that used to be frozen all year.
Permafrost, they say, is no longer permanent.
Here on the Kenai Peninsula, a recreation wonderland a few hours' drive from
Anchorage, it means living in a four-million-acre spruce forest that has
been killed by beetles, the largest loss of trees to insects ever recorded
in North America, federal officials say. Government scientists tied the
event to rising temperatures, which allow the beetles to reproduce at twice
their normal rate.
(snip)
~~~~~END QUOTE~~~~
I have snipped the rest because it has too much criticism on the Bush
administration which might distract the attention. The demise of nature's
organisation in Alaska is striking.
Dan, you are in a much better position to tell us more what happens there,
especially to its peoples and not merely nature.
I can only tell why it happens. It is confusion on LEP such as the
LMEP of Swenson or "living on the edge of chaos" which is driving the
world into a catastrophe. If one part of the USA wants the sequence
4 9 15 22 29 35 40
then Alaska as the other part of the whole gets the sequence like
6 10 12 12 11 10 9
since the sequence of the whole must be like in
10 19 27 34 40 45 49
Obviously, I am over simplifying things since the USA and Alaska are not
the whole world. But let us make it a little bit more complex by taking as
one part the 10 richest countries of the world and as the other part the
10 poorest countries of the world. Do any fellow learner think that the
pattern will be any different? Shall I tell what happened the past 10
years in Nambia north-west of South Africa and to its north-east in
Mosambique?
The problem of humankind is that it uses too much external sources of free
energy rather than its own free energy to drive emergences -- free energy
vampirism. It knows too little of openness -- the joker in the pack of
7Es. It does not know when to give back what has been taken and what to
give in relation to what has been taken. That is why misery increases
among the many when the few want to enjoy unsustainable priveledges.
Dear Dan, try to understand the necessity of digestive and bifurcative
phases having to follow each other up and how openness works in each
phase. Please try to understand the importance of a creative collapse when
the digestive stage has reached maturity.
A creative collapse means to correct the pattern
4 9 15 22 29 35 40
in the one part so that the die-off pattern
6 10 12 12 11 10 9
in the other part stops AND provision is made for a bicurcation in
it. In other words, it will have to change like in
6 10 12 12 11 10 9 * 10 12 15.....
Since the whole must (LEP!) increase like in
10 19 27 34 40 45 49 * 52 54 55....
it means that the other part has to be corrected like in
4 9 15 22 29 35 40 * 42 42 40....
Is this not a die-off too? No, it is a creative collapse in the full
knowing (learning is creating!) what deeds like the beneficial, altruistic
and even sacraficial it will take. Next time I will give an example from
history (which I do not now have with me) which illustrates what I mean.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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