Evolution and the Memory of the Universe

BOMBSHELL ALERT! BOMBSHELL ALERT!

Evolution has to be tied to Quantum Mechanics and the memory of the universe.

The universe has a memory and this is tied to the increase in entropy. Here's a study:

Real-world events always proceed in the direction of increasing entropy, even though the laws of physics don’t require it. The reason we never see events that reduce entropy is that they cannot leave behind any evidence of having happened, according to a new theory.

The mathematical laws of physics work just as well for events going forward or going backward in time. Yet in the real world, hot coffee never unmixes itself from cold milk. A theorist publishing in the 21 August Physical Review Letters offers a new explanation for this apparent conflict between the time-symmetry of the physical laws and the forward “arrow of time” we see in everyday events. When viewed in quantum terms, events that increase the entropy of the Universe leave records of themselves in their environment. The researcher proposes that events that go “backward,” reducing entropy, cannot leave any trace of having occurred, which is equivalent to not happening.

physics.aps.org...

So the universe keeps a record of everything that has happened. From a leaf falling off of a tree to a guy walking across the street and this is tied to entropy and the arrow of time.

On a side note, this is close to what Rupert Sheldrake has been saying about Morphic Fields.Here's an article from Sheldrake.

In the hypothesis of formative causation, discussed in detail in my books A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE and THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST, I propose that memory is inherent in nature. Most of the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.

www.sheldrake.org...&Papers/papers/morphic/morphic_intro.html

Interesting stuff and one of the key components of intelligence is memory. Whether it's writing a paper and remembering a quote or building an invention and remembering something you did 2 years ago that may work now.

This process can be reversed though but it easier for this to occur on a quantum level. Here's more fom the article.

In the quantum world, an entropy-lowering demon would have a different chore, because in the quantum mechanical version of entropy, it isn’t heat that flows when entropy changes, it’s information. Lorenzo Maccone of the University of Pavia, Italy, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes a thought experiment to illustrate the consequences of reducing quantum entropy. An experimenter, Alice, measures the spin state of an atom sent by her friend Bob, who is otherwise isolated from Alice’s laboratory. The atom is in a combined state (superposition) of spin-up and spin-down until Alice measures it as either up or down.

From Alice’s perspective, her lab gains a single bit of information from outside, and it’s then copied and recorded in her memory and on her computer’s hard drive. That information flow from atom to lab increases entropy, according to Alice. Maccone argues that because Bob doesn’t see the result, from his perspective the spin state of the atom never resolves itself into up or down. Instead it becomes quantum mechanically correlated, or “entangled,” with the quantum state of the lab. He sees no information flow and no change in entropy.

Bob plays the role of Maxwell’s demon; he has total control of the quantum state of her lab. To reduce the entropy of the lab from Alice’s point-of-view, Bob reverses the flow of that one bit of information by removing any record of the atom’s spin from Alice’s hard drive and her brain. He does so by performing a complicated transformation that disentangles the lab’s quantum state from that of the atom.

Maccone writes that such a reversal violates no laws of quantum physics. In fact, from Bob’s perspective, the quantum information of the atom plus Alice’s lab is the same whether or not the two are entangled–there is no change in entropy as viewed from the outside. Such reversals could happen in real life, Maccone says, but because the Universe–like Alice–would retain no memory of them, they would have no effect on how we perceive the world. His paper goes on to show mathematically how this reasoning applies in general, with the Universe taking the place of Alice.

This is where things tie in to evolution and the universe in general.

Natural selection occurs on a phenotype level when a fit gene reaches the environment. Now this gene will have an advantage and grow via reproduction or it has a disadvantage and may die out due to lack of reproduction. So there's trial and error on a phenotype level when a fit gene has reached the environment.
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You don't see any trial and error on a genotype level. DNA transcribes, translates and does error correction to produce a fit gene. This is because on a quantum level different probable states can occur without increasing entropy.

When a probable state reaches the phenotype as a gene and interacts with it's environment, then entropy increases and DNA and the universe has a memory of which DNA letters produced which result. This is why you see intelligence with things like transcription, translation and error correction. It's because the universe has a key component of intelligence which is memory because of the increase in entropy and the arrow of time.

WOW!!!

reply to post by neoholographic

I stopped reading at 'Rupert', naturally. As to the first part of your post, the postulate offered for the apparent unidirectionality of time may or may not be correct; even if it is, the record of past events is ultimately effaced by quantum uncertainty and random noise, so if the universe has a memory, it's a very forgetful and unreliable one.

reply to post by Astyanax


This is why you needed to actually read what I said before posting. Simply put, you saw the name Rupert and your brain shut down and you used the name Rupert as an excuse to remain ignorant.

Again, as long as Entropy increases and there's an arrow of time, the universe records every event that occurs. The only way to erase these events is to reduce entropy and essentially these events would have never occurred. So it would be silly to talk about memory at all if entropy decreased because there would be no record of any events.

The universe records every event that occurs and has a memory of that event. This goes a long way into explaining evolution and other aspects of the universe. So as long as entropy increases and there's an arrow of time, there's a record of every event that occurs.

Again, the universe has memory just like we do. When we build a building the builders have a memory on how to construct a building. If they didn't they would have to learn how to build structures from scratch over and over again.

The universe has a memory of every event that occurs and this means the universe doesn't have to expend energy going through every configuration of matter, energy and information. It remembers how to produce stars, planets and life. It remembers which configurations of DNA letters produced which genes.

Without this memory, the universe would have to expend energy blindly going from one configuration of energy, matter and information to the next.

This is why you needed to actually read what I said before posting. Simply put, you saw the name Rupert and your brain shut down and you used the name Rupert as an excuse to remain ignorant.

No, I saw the name Rupert (as in Sheldrake) and knew that scientific detachment and common sense would be on vacation for the rest of the post. I don't need to re-read his maunderings to reconfirm that they are nonsense.

Again, as long as Entropy increases and there's an arrow of time, the universe records every event that occurs.

Do you know what entropy is? It is a measure of the disorder of a system. Yes, every event in the universe leaves its mark in an increase of entropy. Unfortunately, this only tells us that something happened – not what it was, when it occurred, how it progressed, or anything else that will help us understand the event. Those things we read in whatever is left of order (the opposite of entropy) following the event. And eventually, even these clues to what occurred are dispersed and swallowed up by the random dance of quantum events.

Take sound, for example. Sound is air vibrating. You speak, and the motion of your vocal apparatus causes the air surrounding it to vibrate. Now these vibrations reduce in intensity over time, but they never actually cease altogether. The words you spoke last night are still vibrating in the atomosphere. So, for that matter, are the words of Socrates. Yet, no matter how sensitive a microphone you use, you will never pick up those words. Why not? Because the amplitude of the acoustic vibration has fallen below the average amplitude of Brownian motion, the random movement of air molecules. Those words are lost for ever. The record of them has been erased by the fundamental randomness of reality at the Planck scale.

The same is true of all events in time. Consider the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which some have called the echo of the Big Bang. By investigating the variations in its intensity across the sky, and so on, we can infer a surprising amount about the Big Bang – but most of what we see is white noise, random hiss that tells us nothing. Entropy is about dissipation, my friend. If it were otherwise, nothing in history would ever be lost to us.

reply to post by Astyanax


This is just pure hogwash.

Show me the peer reviewed paper that says this.

You're just making it up as you go along.

Again, because entropy increases and the arrow of time every event is recorded. The only way it can be erased is if entropy is reduced. Quantum mechanics doesn't erase any memory of these events. If that was the case, we couldn't remember anything.

The quantum dance you speak of doesn't erase an event after that event is entangled with an observer. For instance, if you carry out the double slit experiment and you measure which path information an event has occurred and becomes entangled with the observer. Entropy increases and you can't erase the memory of this event. Again, that's just stupid for lack of a better word.

Again, a subatomic particle is in a state of superposition until it takes an position and is measured. When this occurs entropy increases and this event is recorded.

Show me the peer reviewed paper that says a quantum dance can erase the memory of an event after it has already occurred.

reply to post by neoholographic


Life is an activity of reducing entropy.

reply to post by ImaFungi


Nope.

Life exports entropy it doesn't reduce entropy. Entropy still increases it's just we can export entropy and avoid equilibrium long enough to do things like build cities or go on vacations.

reply to post by neoholographic


Life takes reverses entropy and creates order. If you make the statement the entropy of the universe is constantly increasing, in the case of life, that would be false, because life is an activity of reversing entropy. Its the creation of complex order, is the creation of complex order over time an act of entropy?

reply to post by neoholographic

This is just pure hogwash. Show me the peer reviewed paper that says this.

Says what?

That entropy is the measure of disorder? You don't need a peer-reviewed paper for that, it is the definition of entropy.

That sound diffuses as it moves through a medium until its amplitude falls below the ambient noise level and ultimately below the level where it is indistinguishable from red noise? That's basic acoustic physics, a consequence of Stoke's Law.

That erasure of information causes entropy to increase? Here.

You're just making it up as you go along.

reply to post by ImaFungi

Neoholographic is right in saying that life exports rather than decreases it.

Life takes reverses entropy and creates order.

Locally, yes, it does. However, the creation of that order demands the dissipation of energy through heat, causing the entropy of the universe as a whole to increase.

If you make the statement the entropy of the universe is constantly increasing, in the case of life, that would be false, because life is an activity of reversing entropy.

The statement applies to the universe as a whole, not to selected parts of it.

Its the creation of complex order, is the creation of complex order over time an act of entropy?

I don't know what you mean by 'an act of entropy', but all energetic processes (including those associated with the origin and continuance of life) ultimately end in converting potential energy (structure) into heat (disorder). Heat, by the way, is the stochastic motion of particles.

The 'record' events leave behind in the universe is ultimately just changes in temperature. And yes, as the OP quoted article states, that is sufficient to establish an arrow of time. What is in doubt is whether events that result in a total decrease in entropy can occur. Of course, none of this has the slightest to do with the universe having a memory, or being conscious. That really is hogwash.

reply to post by Astyanax


This whole post is a bunch of White Noise that has nothing to do with anything I have said. This post has nothing to do with some quantum dance erasing the record or reducing entropy. you said:

And eventually, even these clues to what occurred are dispersed and swallowed up by the random dance of quantum events.

This is just pure nonsense and has nothing to do with anything I have said. Again, it's just a bunch of White Noise. Look at the abstract of the paper you quoted.

In 1961, Rolf Landauer argued that the erasure of information is a dissipative process1. A minimal quantity of heat, proportional to the thermal energy and called the Landauer bound, is necessarily produced when a classical bit of information is deleted. A direct consequence of this logically irreversible transformation is that the entropy of the environment increases by a finite amount. Despite its fundamental importance for information theory and computer science2, 3, 4, 5, the erasure principle has not been verified experimentally so far, the main obstacle being the difficulty of doing single-particle experiments in the low-dissipation regime. Here we experimentally show the existence of the Landauer bound in a generic model of a one-bit memory. Using a system of a single colloidal particle trapped in a modulated double-well potential, we establish that the mean dissipated heat saturates at the Landauer bound in the limit of long erasure cycles. This result demonstrates the intimate link between information theory and thermodynamics. It further highlights the ultimate physical limit of irreversible computation.

Again, this has nothing to do with the reduction of entropy or any quantum dance that will erase the record.

Where's the peer reviewed paper that supports your assertion that a quantum dance will erase everything, reduce entropy and reverse the arrow of time?

This paper you linked to has everything to do with computer science, information theory and ultimate physical limit of irreversible computation.

It's really a joke because you have no answer so you're making it up as you go. Here's more about Landauer Principle that has nothing to do with the reduction of Entropy, the arrow of time or erasing memory through some quantum dance as you stated earlier.

Landauer's principle, first argued in 1961[1] by Rolf Landauer of IBM, is a physical principle pertaining to the lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of a computation. It holds that "any logically irreversible manipulation of information, such as the erasure of a bit or the merging of two computation paths, must be accompanied by a corresponding entropy increase in non-information bearing degrees of freedom of the information processing apparatus or its environment". (Bennett 2003

If no information is erased, computation may in principle be achieved which is thermodynamically reversible, and require no release of heat. This has led to considerable interest in the study of reversible computing.

en.wikipedia.org...

Again, you're just grasping at straw because you have no answer. Maybe if you take the time and actually look for a response you might find one.

So please, can we see a peer reviewed paper thats supports your assertion that a quantum dance will erase any record of an event after it has occurred.

reply to post by Astyanax

Take sound, for example. Sound is air vibrating. You speak, and the motion of your vocal apparatus causes the air surrounding it to vibrate. Now these vibrations reduce in intensity over time, but they never actually cease altogether. The words you spoke last night are still vibrating in the atomosphere. So, for that matter, are the words of Socrates. Yet, no matter how sensitive a microphone you use, you will never pick up those words. Why not? Because the amplitude of the acoustic vibration has fallen below the average amplitude of Brownian motion, the random movement of air molecules. Those words are lost for ever. The record of them has been erased by the fundamental randomness of reality at the Planck scale.

"Let there be light".....

But that utterance couldn't be sound, it would have to vibrate on a level that would make strings oscillate through the universe.


The vibration would be organized for a time.


The words spoken would be there, but diffused.


No matter how sensitive the instrument, it would never by powerful enough to detect those words......

reply to post by neoholographic

Oh, I see. The phrase you object to so much was just a metaphor for the heat-death of the universe.

Everything I said is correct from a scientific point of view. You do need to learn some physics if you plan to talk about it, you know.

Just skimmed this due to time restraints but nice to see Mr. Sheldrake getting some attention and his work being under focus.

reply to post by Astyanax


Nothing you have said has anything to do with my post.

You haven't shown how a quantum dance or any other dance reduces entropy, reverses the arrow of time after an event has occurred or erases any record of that event.

reply to post by neoholographic

All I have said is perfectly relevant, as well as true. You are simply ignorant of the subject. 'Bye now!