>On Tue, 4 Feb 1997, Dave Pape wrote:
>> >I have reservations about "previously non-existent order": I'd prefer
>> >"previously unobserved order" [Never mind that this isn't Quantum
>> >Politically Correct].
>>
>> Well, sorry. But you can't have it.
[KLIP]
>I *can* have it! You enable an "entropy pump" [mythically DNA, above]
>like that, apply it for 1 billion years, and "of course" there will be
>"more order" in the system: the "disorder"/entropy that vanished got
>converted into heat and radiated into vacuum.
What was the entropy pump before DNA? Because if we call the time when DNA
first appeared T(1), and the time of the Big Bang T(0), I'd argue that,
starting at T(0) with an expanding mass of subatomic bits and bobs, and
ending at T(1) with discreet-ish planetary bodies hosting self-reproducing
chemicals, there's an increase in orderedness, because typically I've been
told that clouds of gas are less ordered than chunks of rock with
self-reproducing chemicals on them.
This isn't meant as an aggressive post, so sorry if it comes across that
way... I'm just maximally interested in... what I want to call Ecogenesis.
I think that evolutionary processes (interaction of
self-reproducing-with-variation units producing ecologically related groups
of descendant units) are a subset of the ecogenetic processes, which are:
All processes of interacting units which give rise to structured,
interdependent metasystems of groups of those units.
I think that memes interact evolutionarily, because they self-replicate,
mutate, and interact with each other, giving rise to large-scale (now,
global-scale) memetic ecolgies.
But I think that non-memetic (personal) ideas, such as quite simple
perceptual ideas, can interact to form meta-ideas which can form a cognitive
ecology, WITHOUT those ideas self-replicating.
Similarly, I think that molecules (pre-DNA) interacted ecogenetically, in
that they didn't self-replicate, BUT they did interact with each other to
produce a global dynamic equilibrium of molecules, which was comprised of
sub-equilibria which were smaller in scale.
And, I believe that accretion discs are ecogenetic systems, because they
give rise to planets with moons and suns with planetary systems and galaxies
of suns.
Or... am I talking out of my chocolate starfish?
Dave Pape
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If you mapped memespace onto a 2D plane, then made a 3-D graph with
Activation Level as the vertical axis, and animated shots of the graph over
time, it'd look like the progress of some crazy Hokusai ocean.
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