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Could Potential Energy Be Intelligent?

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posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 04:48 PM
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Potential Energy- The energy possessed by a body as a result of its position or condition rather than its motion. A raised weight, coiled spring, or charged battery has potential energy.

As per my understanding viewing from a broad perspective, the most amount of concentrated potential energy existed prior to the big bang. Pre Big Bang, potential existed for every possible outcome, and every possible future outcome of this universe. Is that true? Can potential energy be traced back that far and imply future kinetic energies?

If it's true then the outcome of intelligent life was one potential that pre-big bang potential energy possessed. Therefore, potential energy would be intelligent.

For two, if you have a coiled spring in your hand, isn't there information within that coiled spring that says, "When I press this button that releases the latch keeping the spring coiled, the spring will jump off the table." That is a form of information and therefore intelligence, yes?

If potential energy is intelligent, then the Universe is of intelligent design.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 04:52 PM
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reply to post by smithjustinb
 


Your question is way beyond what our scientific knowledge is but it's kinda neat to think about. Really there is no answer yet to what you are asking though.

Maybe in a few hundred years we will know more to attempt to find answers to these types of questions.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 04:53 PM
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reply to post by kro32
 


I think if it is true, then the information is available now.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 04:55 PM
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Intelligent energy creates intelligent lifeforms. It sounds perfectly reasonable.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 04:57 PM
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Originally posted by smithjustinb

As per my understanding viewing from a broad perspective, the most amount of concentrated potential energy existed prior to the big bang. Pre Big Bang, potential existed for every possible outcome, and every possible future outcome of this universe. Is that true? Can potential energy be traced back that far and imply future kinetic energies?

I think so, yes.


Originally posted by smithjustinb

If it's true then the outcome of intelligent life was one potential that pre-big bang potential energy possessed. Therefore, potential energy would be intelligent.


Not necessarily. If X possesess many possible outcomes and one of them is Y, this does not mean X = Y. This is true for any X and any Y, including in your example, where X = energy and Y = intelligence.

I think you are onto something important here but you need to refine your logic. Otherwise thanks for the interesting ideas.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 04:58 PM
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Devil's Advocate.

That takes "chance" out of play. There is a certain element of "random" involved in the universe as well. Or isn't there?

Nice thread.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 04:59 PM
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Another random idea...what if its not a matter of intelligence, creation, design, etc. but just simple becoming or metamophosis? Like a bean sprout growing into a bean-stalk or something oozing, manifesting, growing, pulsing, organic, etc.

And another thought: What if instead of "intelligence" we should be looking at a slightly different but somewhat similar idea like "consciousness," "awareness," or something else?



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 05:05 PM
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reply to post by smithjustinb
 





Potential Energy- The energy possessed by a body as a result of its position or condition rather than its motion. A raised weight, coiled spring, or charged battery has potential energy. As per my understanding viewing from a broad perspective, the most amount of concentrated potential energy existed prior to the big bang. Pre Big Bang, potential existed for every possible outcome, and every possible future outcome of this universe. Is that true? Can potential energy be traced back that far and imply future kinetic energies? If it's true then the outcome of intelligent life was one potential that pre-big bang potential energy possessed. Therefore, potential energy would be intelligent. For two, if you have a coiled spring in your hand, isn't there information within that coiled spring that says, "When I press this button that releases the latch keeping the spring coiled, the spring will jump off the table." That is a form of information and therefore intelligence, yes? If potential energy is intelligent, then the Universe is of intelligent design.


First off, the big bang is just the discovery of self awareness. So in essence, there is no big bang, because once you discover yourself, you always were. Get it?

Life was never not intelligent. Explain unintelligent?

I know where your at with this bout of creativity. But there is one common factor in all of this. It is called observation. All of these things you are using to explain what you are experiencing exist in your mind as a construct of reality. Information isn't real because it is ever evolving into something else. Information is just a word.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 05:07 PM
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Yeah, in fact I have thought along similar lines myself, in fact I would even go as far as to say, that perhaps it has a conciousness too ?

Possibly a little too outlandish



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 05:09 PM
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reply to post by solargeddon
 


Not really, if you consider that what it is you are observing is apart of your mind. I mean seriously, it is a part of your mind because in order to interface this aspect of reality your mind needs to be able to experience it within itself.

So it is literally conscious because it is literally apart of your mind.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 05:31 PM
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reply to post by onequestion
 


I know what you mean onequestion, all is one and all that, and i agree. I'm just trying to entertain a physicists perspective, as that is more popular around here. Instead of trying to teach metaphysics to physicists, I'm trying to arrive at physical explanations for things metaphysical and philosophical. Does that make sense? When I get on here and say things like, "all is one", the people that agree with me already know this. I want to reach an audience who is skeptical and make them believe, but sometimes I think it is necessary to approach it from a physicist point of view.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 05:35 PM
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reply to post by smithjustinb
 


But it is physics, and its biology.

The reality of information is interfaced through your brain functions as neural nets and what have you. This is how we explain to ourselves what it is we see (experience). So this goes beyond metaphysics. This is reality. Reality is observed through the process of our brains. If my brain stops working, so does the interface function i use for reality. At least.... from a physics perspective. But there is more to the story which would then begin our metaphysical conversation.



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 05:38 PM
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Originally posted by intrepid
Devil's Advocate.

That takes "chance" out of play. There is a certain element of "random" involved in the universe as well. Or isn't there?

Nice thread.


Maybe the 'random' is what made fish - fish and birds - birds and insects became insects...

The way i picture it is like this:

The spark of life, or energy or single celled life form began adapting to the elements. Evolutionary life divided into species and sub-species as a result of environmental challenges - some became resistant to hot water, salt water etc - then they realised they could 'absorb' each other, taking valuable proteins and as a result predator and prey became the next cycle of life, constantly growing or failing, slowly this intelligence began perfecting its form(s) and developed into basic creatures, adapting to their own lives so to speak?

Just a thought


We all came from the same soup and crawled off in a thousand million different directions , some got further than others and learned to fly, reproduce, swim, walk etc



posted on Jun, 4 2011 @ 05:51 PM
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Originally posted by intrepid
Devil's Advocate.

That takes "chance" out of play. There is a certain element of "random" involved in the universe as well. Or isn't there?

Nice thread.


I'd say anything apparently random is a result of the interaction of kinetic energies from two or more sources, like if a gust of wind were to randomly blow and force the spring to land in a different spot that it was "supposed" to.

From another perspective, maybe those kinetic energies had potential energy to interact before either occurrence happened. You know what I mean? Kinetic energy comes from potential energy without potential energy, there is no kinetic energy. My question is, given the environment, is the potential energy of the spring and the potential energy of the wind one potential energy to bring about a kinetic energy of the one occurrence of the spring moving?



posted on Jun, 5 2011 @ 08:36 PM
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reply to post by smithjustinb
 


Ok, the short answer to your question is: "No".

I'm sorry, but you have some... well, a physicist would describe it as a "classical" understanding of energy, by which they would mean it reflects the ways people thought about energy in the late 1800's. Energy isn't a "substance" that an object "has" or "doesn't have". A simple way to express this is to ask "What's my kinetic energy, right now?". "Well, I'm at rest, right? So it's 'zero'." No. The earth is spinning. The earth is revolving. The solar system revolves about the galaxy. The galaxy is moving in many interesting ways. The point being, "Energy is relative to reference frame from which it is measured".

Another, more clear way to put it is, "energy", in and of itself, doesn't matter -- only _differences_ in energy matter. To me, a spaceship whizzing by has a large amount of kinetic energy while I have none. To the spaceship, the opposite holds true. But the _difference_ in energy levels will be the same.

Potential energy is just a way to describe a system with an energy difference encoded in its structure. If the system is "me on a hill" + "the gravity field of the Earth", the difference in energy is that between the top and bottom of the hill. It's not like at the top of the hill energy is just "sitting" "out there" in the field to be scooped up. No, that idea is 100% completely wrong (treating it that way makes the math a lot easier but it's NOT a description of any physical reality). It's this arbitrary nature that lets us usually treat potential as a negative quantity, even though "negative energy" is a forbidden concept in most of physics.

Again, it all comes down to the fundamental primacy of energy differences -- hot air has a lot of energy in it, but you can't make it "do" anything -- you can't "extract" that energy -- unless you put it next to something cold. You need a difference to make it work.

Now, you're starting to get somewhere when you start talking about information. Information, along with matter/energy, is the other fundamental constituent of the physical world. Modern physics has shown it to be just as real and non-abstract as the chair you're sitting on. Your spring doesn't store any such thing as "I'll pop out when released!", but it _does_ encode information about the positions of every particle in it. In the context of our universe's physical laws, those bits says "electrons will repel eachother with such a strength in such a way". Those two things combined jump Jack outta the box. You change the geometry of the system when you remove the latch, and those electrons just keep doing what comes naturally.

Is Mind contained in the processes that encode and process information? That's a tough question to answer. And it's one I've spent a LOT of time and skullsweat on. (Wrote a few papers on the subject for my Philosophy of Physics class, as well as a lot of outside study for my own edification.) At present, the evidence points to "Probably, yes." The other option is asserting that Mind/Spirit/"That Which Turns Meat Into Subjective Experience" is something that is neither matter nor information, the only evidence for which is that subjective experience itself". I see no need for such an assertion.

For example, if I could replace one of my neurons with a computer program -- say, I put small sensors on each side of every synapse it connected to, and connected them to a computer with wifi, then cut out the neuron -- and that program _perfectly_ replicated the neuron's responses to inputs, I see no reason to think my mind would be altered. If I then replaced EVERY neuron similarly, one by one, I find no reason to think I would be conscious one moment and a zombie only pretending to have consciousness the next. As near as I can tell, consciousness is a particular kind of information processing and it will arise whenever information is processed in that fashion, whether it be through electrobiochemical connections or electricity manipulated in silicon or even the quantum chitchat occuring in a stone next to me. I'm pretty sure Mind is exclusively a question of information.

I'd check out Landauer's Principle, "It From Bit", Seth Lloyd's book "Programming the Universe", and James Gleick's book "The Information" if this line of argument seems interesting.



posted on Jun, 6 2011 @ 01:45 AM
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Yes, out of infinite possibility, or complete potential, that which forms structrure does so due to the existence of a structuralising principle, or intelligence. Only that which is structured can exist in a stable state, however that which exists as awareness exists concurrently to the development of the universe, and this is essentially infinite.



posted on Jun, 6 2011 @ 02:25 AM
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Potential energy is a mathematical abstraction, not a living organism.



posted on Jun, 6 2011 @ 02:37 AM
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reply to post by Partygirl
 


Yeah I'm with you on this one. The universes is cognitive. But I reckon to understand this it requires us to be aware of all that is behind the programmed cells of all life structures. Considering many of these programmes are set in place to actually serve something other than the person or thing is that is consciously aware at the time. There appears to be many levels of consciousness and dimensions. As we are aware of further dimensions, be it macro or micro, the greater our awareness is.

Each of us think we are here to serve or be served yet within each of us are colonies of bacteria, viruses and nano particles Prions (these, like viruses,aren't considered as life as we know it) that deposit info onto our genes which have the ability to make us very sick with one disease or give us immunity from another. These time travellers that morph into the next mutation at warp speed hardly ever cross anyone's mind but they have the ability to cut you down in no time or incubate over periods of years. Scientist create prions but.... They created the synthetic particles but not the cognitive ability of the original.


This awareness thing... akin to having a receiver/transmitter or radio/tv inside. What frequency you are programmed to or have trained yourself in being able to receive may be the same as with someone else's radio frequency. Some people are more like TVs as they are able to receive a broader band of info. Others can receive and transmit... while some are still labouring with the ol' telegraph line or just plain ol' smoke signals.

Hhhmmm Much to ponder on this subject. As for the spring thing... well anything we observe has some form of info/energy regardless if we have the ability to perceive it. What amazes me is the stuff we don't see but the energy is felt and causes a subject/thing or an individual to respond. 'Unseen forces'... I believe this was the original meaning for the word 'angels'. What motivates nano particles to insert their info packet into a cell... could be scent on the atomic level. Never mind I'm going off on a tangent here.

edit on 6-6-2011 by LexiconV because: added a link




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