The Physics Of Life (active Matter)

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haidut

haidut

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jaa said:
post 118452
hmac said:
post 118434
jaa said:
post 118392 Yeah consciousness seems like a weird thing to infer from that.
Perhaps it is a weird thing to infer - but to me the spontaneous coherence and expression of patterns of movement (swirls and bands) that the matter forms are an intimation of consciousness. To me, the implication is that all matter is inherently conscious. Haidut has framed the post in the context of the "spurious mind-matter duality", which I take as meaning there is no division between living and non-living matter. If we accept this notion this leaves us a choice of two inferences; either all matter is dead (not conscious) including organisms, or all matter is alive (conscious); as there is no division between mind and matter then all matter must possess mind. I think this is an idea that Peat has expressed himself a number of times.

So a rock has consciousness? I don't believe that. All matter is made up of the same type of stuff and adheres to the physical laws of the universe or this part of the universe. But consciousness is not defined as all matter. It's a particular property of certain sets of organized matter whose basic definition is something like the ability to sense the universe. We experience consciousness thanks to our nervous system. It is possible to imagine something can be alive (replicating thing that reacts to it's environment), without having consciousness.

I think Peat has implied several times that indeed all matter is conscious. He even quotes Blakes famous poem on all dust particles being alive. I posted a study a while ago showing that mainstream physics is getting more and more aligned in the general direction of panpsychism. See below for more info:
viewtopic.php?t=4334

I think Peat said in one of his interviews that all matter is conscious and there are only degrees of intelligence depending on metabolism. A yeast, surviving on fermentation, is not as intelligent as an ape.
 
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haidut

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In what is rather fortuitous event considering this thread, I received a notification today that one of the articles that I posted on the forum more than year ago had been updated. Here is the original thread:
viewtopic.php?f=246&t=5396

Aside from the fact that the article read as if Ray himself wrote it, including references to Prigogine's work, the most notable concept in the article is that scientists at MIT have arrived pretty much at Peat's conclusions - i.e. that life is a natural evolution of matter such that it optimizes heat dissipation of energy acquired from the environment. Also, matter favors structure in order to be able to increase the dissipation of energy, and exhibits increasing complexity even in the absence of natural selection.
And, perhaps, even more relevant for the discussion in this thread is the statement of one of famous physicist at Cornell that living and non-living matter are probably not that different.

"...Besides self-replication, greater structural organization is another means by which strongly driven systems ramp up their ability to dissipate energy. A plant, for example, is much better at capturing and routing solar energy through itself than an unstructured heap of carbon atoms. Thus, England argues that under certain conditions, matter will spontaneously self-organize. This tendency could account for the internal order of living things and of many inanimate structures as well. “Snowflakes, sand dunes and turbulent vortices all have in common that they are strikingly patterned structures that emerge in many-particle systems driven by some dissipative process,” he said. Condensation, wind and viscous drag are the relevant processes in these particular cases. “He is making me think that the distinction between living and nonliving matter is not sharp,” said Carl Franck, a biological physicist at Cornell University, in an email. “I’m particularly impressed by this notion when one considers systems as small as chemical circuits involving a few biomolecules.”

"...Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural selection doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has recently studied."

And here is the article that claims the increase in organismic complexity over time is the primary (and perhaps the only true) law of biology.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20130716 ... omplexity/

"...Unlike standard evolutionary theory, McShea and Brandon see complexity increasing even in the absence of natural selection. This statement is, they maintain, a fundamental law of biology—perhaps its only one. They have dubbed it the zero-force evolutionary law."
 
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jb116

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I do not see anything that suggests everything has consciousness. I am seeing a mixing of terms suggesting interchangeability which doesn't seem accurate to me. Everything is alive but this doesn't conclude that everything is conscious. Yes living and nonliving things are more alike than not, with varying degrees of complexity but it isn't consciousness that is the similarity. In fact that leaves too many discrepancies. That's all I'll say for now.
 
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haidut

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jb116 said:
post 118473 Everything is alive but this doesn't conclude that everything is conscious

Do you have an example of something that is alive but not conscious?
 
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Suikerbuik

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jb116 said:
Everything is alive but this doesn't conclude that everything is conscious.

I'd say all everything possess consciousness (to varying degrees) but not everything is alive.
 

hmac

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jaa said:
post 118452
hmac said:
post 118434
jaa said:
post 118392 Yeah consciousness seems like a weird thing to infer from that.
Perhaps it is a weird thing to infer - but to me the spontaneous coherence and expression of patterns of movement (swirls and bands) that the matter forms are an intimation of consciousness. To me, the implication is that all matter is inherently conscious. Haidut has framed the post in the context of the "spurious mind-matter duality", which I take as meaning there is no division between living and non-living matter. If we accept this notion this leaves us a choice of two inferences; either all matter is dead (not conscious) including organisms, or all matter is alive (conscious); as there is no division between mind and matter then all matter must possess mind. I think this is an idea that Peat has expressed himself a number of times.

So a rock has consciousness? I don't believe that. All matter is made up of the same type of stuff and adheres to the physical laws of the universe or this part of the universe. But consciousness is not defined as all matter. It's a particular property of certain sets of organized matter whose basic definition is something like the ability to sense the universe. We experience consciousness thanks to our nervous system. It is possible to imagine something can be alive (replicating thing that reacts to it's environment), without having consciousness.

Perhaps my definition of consciousness was poor - forgive me, it's not the easiest thing to succinctly define. I don't believe that a rock is considering how best to adapt itself to it's environment, that is one of the things that distinguishes it from an organism - I don't even necessarily believe that 'the rock' is conscious but the particles it is composed of are. Because the rock is not metabolising it lacks the intelligence to make coherent unified consciousness from its constituent conscious particles; this would be another distinction between it and an organism. I get your point, i suppose I just see things differently.
Suikerbuik said:
post 118477
jb116 said:
Everything is alive but this doesn't conclude that everything is conscious.

I'd say all everything possess consciousness (to varying degrees) but not everything is alive.

Or even that consciousness possess everything...
 
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hmac

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haidut said:
post 118470 life is a natural evolution of matter such that it optimizes heat dissipation of energy acquired from the environment.

This is also reminds me of Viktor Schauberger's ideas
 
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dfspcc20

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Suikerbuik said:
I'd say all everything possess consciousness (to varying degrees) but not everything is alive.

hmac said:
Or even that consciousness possess everything...

Or, getting away from subject-object duality, everything *is* consciousness.
 

jaa

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haidut said:
post 118459 viewtopic.php?f=246&t=5396

Thanks for the links. The CTMU theory looks like it will be fun to dive into.

I'm still at a loss for how all matter can be conscious by any normal use of the word. I don't think electrons or quarks or gluons or anything even more fundamental experience the universe. Sure, they can all be part of a system that becomes conscious under the right conditions. But the fundamental particles themselves? I don't see that being possible. They follow the laws of the universe. They cannot adapt in response to stimuli. There is no point for them to have consciousness. It's a waste of energy. Even the the living cells in my conscious body I don't think you can say are conscious.

Could you briefly explain what you mean when you say all matter is conscious?
 
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jaa

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hmac said:
Perhaps my definition of consciousness was poor - forgive me, it's not the easiest thing to succinctly define. I don't believe that a rock is considering how best to adapt itself to it's environment, that is one of the things that distinguishes it from an organism - I don't even necessarily believe that 'the rock' is conscious but the particles it is composed of are. Because the rock is not metabolising it lacks the intelligence to make coherent unified consciousness from its constituent conscious particles; this would be another distinction between it and an organism. I get your point, i suppose I just see things differently.

I think I understand what you're saying, and I would agree with that. All matter has the potential to be conscious under a certain set of conditions. That does not mean that all matter is conscious. I think they are two very different things.

Suikerbuik said:
post 118477
jb116 said:
Everything is alive but this doesn't conclude that everything is conscious.

I'd say all everything possess consciousness (to varying degrees) but not everything is alive.

Or even that consciousness possess everything...[/quote]

I have no idea what you guys mean when you talk about consciousness. It seems very different than what I mean when I use the term. I've somewhat (poorly) explained what I mean when I use it. Could you explain what you mean by the term so I can zero in on the disagreement if there is one at all?
 
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milk_lover

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haidut said:
post 118422
milk_lover said:
post 118359
brandonk said:
Such_Saturation said:
post 118322 I think Gilbert Ling or Gerald Pollack will get Nobel later this century.
Gilbert Ling did, in effect, get the Nobel Prize in 2003, since his work was plagiarized by the apparent recipient. http://www.physiologicalchemistryandphy ... 9_ling.pdf

I googled his ex student Chris Miller (http://www.hhmi.org/scientists/christopher-miller) and this is what he "thinks" of Gilbert Ling:

"As a senior, a biophysics course offered him weekly visits to scientists in the Philadelphia area. At one session, he met his future mentor, Gilbert Ling. Ling's radical ideas challenging the very existence of cell membranes appealed to Miller in that authority-questioning milieu of the '60s. With time, though, Miller's graduate research in muscle physiology convinced him that Ling's ideas were wrong. Ling felt betrayed by Miller's "defection," yet allowed him to obtain his Ph.D., which a departmental committee without Ling approved. While such an experience might have soured others for science, Miller recalls his grad-school years as an enlivening time that produced a healthy distrust of personal attachment to theories."

If you believe the MRI machine works then you must believe Ling is right. Damadian had just such "personal attachment" to Ling's theory in order to invent the MRI. GE promptly took on infringing on Damadian's patents and refused to answer questions about what is the implication of MRI's effectiveness for biology and the cell. To this day, if you ask a neurologist how the MRI works they will give you a blank stare.

I read Ling's AI Hypothesis (association induction) in his website and I was fascinated by it to say the least. I liked his gelatin analogy and "living state" definition. It all makes sense. I also read about the history of MRI and the huge clash between Damadian and the two other scientists over the 2003 Nobel prize for the discovery of the MRI. Damadian exploited Ling's theory (in a good way) to make MRI possible. All they taught me in high school was the pump theory and they didn't give us alternative theories. This was in the UAE. So I don't think there is a conspiracy theory or anything, they might have been simply misinformed, they just copy the american biology books.

The links I read are:
1- http://www.gilbertling.org/lp6c.htm Gilbert Ling's theory
2- http://www.economist.com/node/2246166
 
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Peatit said:
post 118569 In a (perhaps) related vein, I remember Ray Peat talking about the work of Sydney Fox about the "thermal model" origin of life.
I just stumbled upon this article deconstructing quite convincingly this elegant model:
http://www.icr.org/article/life-fox-the ... igin-life/
But I am maybe a little off topic here :oops:

I love the "evolutionist" criticizing the random combination of events :ss also

Chemistry and physics, just like monkeys, are dumb things, and have no ability to arrange subunits in any particular order.

:hairpull
 
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