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cypress

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  1. Through deterministic processes, though these higher elements are not complex in the same sense as functional information, so other than as a logical fallacy I don't see your attempted point. Are you suggesting that these deterministic physical processes generate functional information and information order? It is incorrect to describe these demonstrations as violations of entropy. It is well known that mathematically probability distributions broaden as sample size is diminished, not only is it important for very small boxes, small sample sets are a prerequisite. The law of entropy has probability as its basis. As the sample size is diminished, variation increases. Here is what your link says: Note that the FT does not state that the second law of thermodynamics is wrong or invalid. The second law of thermodynamics is a statement about macroscopic systems. The FT is more general. It can be applied to both microscopic and macroscopic systems. When applied to macroscopic systems, the FT is equivalent to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Here is a much more accurate description of what is occurring than the fallacy you have attempted to present in your post. It would be interesting to see how one could demonstrate that a process involving even small sample sets could "run in reverse" for any period of time or in a continuous unbroken sequence greater than the one or two apparent broken event chains demonstrated (apparent because each demonstration seems to involve external energy sources,and numerous artificial interventions) so that net system entropy drops. It would be even more interesting for someone to demonstrate that these theorems apply to presumed evolutionary processes given the posited long time scales, macro population sizes and presumed unbroken stepwise pathways . His statement regarding life appears to be an opinion in scientistic prose,and I would welcome factual confirmation. Returning to your claim directly, FT does not apply to the situation Edtharan described and I contested. The wiki article you offered contradicts your claim as does the link I offered. Your counter is not supported.
  2. The article establishes that searches require information and that typically the designer imports that information into the search. Your quote refers to the hypothetical situation where a designer does not import information into the search and thus the system will have to search for a search (S4S) since it has been established that "a good search [that is not designed] is one that generates the active information necessary for success". They then proceed to show that S4S are no easier and on average exponentially more difficult than a blind search for the primary target in the original search space. Nowhere do they establish that a blind search for a search can or will turn up a good search. They do not show that searches that are not designed in actual terms generate active information,on the contrary they show that they can't generate active information. The authors say: Needle-in-the-haystack problems look for small targets in large spaces. In such cases, blind search stands no hope of success. Conservation of information dictates any search technique will work, on average, as well as blind search. Success requires an assisted search. But whence the assistance required for a search to be successful? To pose the question this way suggests that successful searches do not emerge spontaneously but need themselves to be discovered via a search. The question then naturally arises whether such a higher-level “search for a search” is any easier than the original search. And the conclusion is: The Horizontal NFLT illustrates the law of conservation of information by revealing that unsubstantiated arbitrary assumptions about a search will, on average, result in a search with less than average performance as measured by the search’s active information. This results from the average active information, e.g., the active entropy, being negative. The Vertical NFLT establishes the troubling property that, under a loose set of conditions, the difficulty of a Search for a Search (S4S) increases exponentially as a function of minimal acceptable active information being sought. The article does not show that random processes generate what they term the endogenous information available to a blind search. What is the source of this information and how is it formally made available? You have made this claim on several occasions and once offered an article raising informal objections, but you have not offered formal proof. How though did natural selection obtain the information you claim is endogenous? This was the question I asked, could you answer it please? Your hypothetical example addresses how adaptation does locate local optimums but to show that natural selection acting on a random walk (random genetic errors) can account for all diversity, you must demonstrate that natural selection contains information on how to guide the random walk over or around vast crevasses of low fitness via long evolutionary pathways involving many countless steps. You must also show that there are in actual existence such pathways. I think we are saying the same thing, and that is why I previously said I am consistent with this article. The peer reviewed articles from Evolutionary Informatics Lab, including the one you previously cited do demonstrate a limit on the net total amount of information in relation to the probabilistic resources (and information) brought to bear plus the quantity of active information imported. Read my statement again. I used the word import. You committed a logical fallacy by assigning a word with a very different meaning. As I previously said, the designers admit they designed the algorithm, and the design documents and links you provided make it clear that the evolutionary algorithm was designed. The human designers designed a system that designed an antenna. without the humans, the antenna design would not come into existence so the humans were a necessary component of the design. They designed the design. They caused the design. Cited above and here. The list of papers are a specific list and these papers collectively and a couple individually demonstrate my claim. I am at a loss to understand how I can be more specific in terms of what list of papers was intended by my statement other that the list I provided. If your personal opinion contradicts the conclusions of these papers, so be it, I am not likely to change your opinion with a different list. On the other hand if you find the conclusions to be factually in error, I would be interested in the factual errors. It is very relevant because it specifically addresses functional information, prescriptive information and biological information. It is also peer reviewed and the conclusion supports my claim. As a bonus, many of the 335 citations in this paper also serve to support the claims I have made in this thread.
  3. As I mentioned previously, publications form Dr. Marks and Evolutionary Informatics Lab. also this publication from the International Journal of Molecular Science
  4. The causal agent for an organism is the parent from which the organism was derived. Life's known causal agent life. Information's known source is information. Your proposed solution is a logical fallacy because it moves the goal post. It answers a question I did not ask. The sun provides a source of thermal energy and order to power biological systems through the irreversible thermal cycle under which they operate. This is the question you answered, but was not asked of you. You have not provided a source of functional, prescriptive information and order to power biological systems through the cycle of net gain in functional information and information order necessary to generate observed diversity. Evolutionary theory posits that all biological diversity is a result of observed evolutionary processes. But these processes do not explain or account for a source for this information. Yes I have, there is no indication whatsoever that any physical only process can increase information without a source of information. Functional, prescriptive information is formal, as opposed to physical, though a representation of information can be stored in, transported, transcribed and processed by physical systems. Every attempt to generate prescriptive information from physical only systems greater than what the probabilistic resources import, has failed. The second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, is against this argument.
  5. I am another that sees this line of belief as counter productive. Other than incorrect answers though, it certainly acts to further a prior commitment to a particular agenda.
  6. A fair question. Here is one testable prediction from design: Intelligent agents are known to be capable of producing functional prescriptive information. Physical processes alone do not produce novel functional prescriptive information. Biological systems will contain components and processes that are produced by design processes and are not producible by any known physical only processes without benefit of pre-existing functional prescriptive information. I suspect that most who support the idea that known evolutionary processes account for all observed biological diversity, do so because of a prior commitment to a materialistic worldview. I doubt it is because of the strength of evidence, it can't be because there is no compelling evidence that known evolutionary processes are capable of producing observed diversity. Richard Lewontin provided excellent support of my point when he said this: "Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." Thank you for the suggestion, I've read this book and I found it interesting in some ways but I also found the arguments to be far from compelling. Most of them were compelling arguments that organisms are similar in some ways and different in others. There was no compelling scientific argument for how the differences and similarities came to be, just that they are. He did not show how the proposed processes actually produced any of the differences. It does because Genetic engineers provide testable repeatable designed processes that produce novel form and function in organisms that lack them. Do you intend to claim that the several thousands of accumulated examples of novel form and function each involving hundreds to many thousands of point level differences in the genome are insufficient to make a general prediction of diversity? If so then consistency in your argument implies that evolutionary theory with zero examples of evolutionary pathways greater than three steps (and thus fewer than even ten point level differences) should be considered a failure. I will come back to this when I have access to my notes. There is no disagreement between this article and my claim. This is one of several papers (including the others on Marks' website) I intend to offer above. The paper demonstrated that designed evolutionary algorithms could make use of imported information to insert information into a component of a system when the designer provides prescriptive information. My statement was in reference to the known physical evolutionary processes of mutation and selection and not to an evolutionary algorithm that we know is designed. The paper did not show that natural selection holds or receives any information/knowledge of search space, and though we might speculate that it does, the question becomes from where did it originate? It did not demonstrate the knowledge of natural selection nor that there even exists a fitness function that stepwise genetic errors are capable of traversing more than just a few steps before encountering a harmful gap too broad for the step distance. You did not reach your conclusions from the information provided in this paper. This is consistent with my arguments as well. Physical systems do not produce information order (more accurately, transfer information to a subsystem) greater than the information order that is input into the system as a whole. Also consistent. Random processes can import a small amount of information with each random step commensurate with the nature of the probabilistic resources involved. I have made this point repeatedly so I am surprised you have not picked up on it yet. The antenna example made use of a designed evolutionary algorithm and information imported by the designer, these are facts that the designers admit. The antenna example is not an example of the known evolutionary processes of which I was speaking here and the previous time you raised this logical fallacy. Do you mean to dispute the fact that the pre-existing genetic sequences represents prescriptive information and that this sequence is the input on which mutative processes act? For which part of this claim do you request support so I can locate an appropriate reference?
  7. Genetic engineering have successfully demonstrated that design is capable of generating new form and function in a population that previously lacked it. There are countless published examples of this. I have little doubt that in the near future, genetic engineering based on design processes will generate novel life forms. Do you doubt this? There are several published papers in information theory and molecular biology that shows how and why evolutionary algorithms based solely on physical systems do not and cannot account for prescriptive information required for designed systems. We don't have any unambiguous evidence that evolutionary processes alone accomplish anything more that rearangement of existing information to produce adaptations of existing function. There is no confirmation that evolutionary processes produce evolutionary pathways greater than three selectable steps. There is no confirmation that evolutionary processes produce novel form or function. There is no confirmation that evolutionary processes drive an evolutionary algorithm in the sense you mean to imply. Every example where evolution does produce an adaptation, pre-existing information of equal or higher order was required so your statement is false. These evolutionary processes do require other information and even then they have not accomplished anything like what an evolutionary algorithm is posited to produce. The only Evolutionary algorithms known to function in the sense you mean are designed by an intelligent agent and use information provided by the designer, so I wouldn't say such a thing. However there are no known evolutionary algorithms based solely on physical processes without use of prescriptive information as an input that can produce functional systems.
  8. I use those terms to make it clear that these are opinions and interpretations as distinct from fact. If I were able to offer an paper or two that support design would you change your view?
  9. Biological systems contain functional prescriptive information from inception passed to them by the causal agent of that biological orgnaism and this information is indeed needed to allow for cell function, development and growth. It is not just a belief, it is a fact that this process requires and has a source of functional prescriptive information passed to it by its cause. No, sorry the modern theory of evolution is described as being driven by a random, unmanaged, undirected process of genetic error acted on by natural selection. Cell processes are carefully managed, and highly controlled. They include signal induction circuits, feedback and feed forward controllers, error correction circuits, inventory and expression control, transportation, messaging and transcription, and adaptive repair. All of this and much more is coordinated by a complex set of molecular controls and all of it is performed guided by functional prescriptive information. I do not deny that change can occur somehow, I question how this functional information was derived and how large scale change occur given that new form and function requires large coordinated increases in functional prescriptive information. The evolutionary model has no answer for this and no wonder, because functional and prescriptive information is formal but it is not physical and it seems not possible to demonstrate that physical systems generate functional information. Yes, as described above the source is the cause of that organism. The photographic film is not a closed system so inputs and outputs must be included. The specific light patterns encountered by the film through the exposure cycle is a relevant part of the equation. When inputs and outputs are included, there is no apparent net change in information. Also, since the light patterns are deterministically generated (P=1), it is unclear how much information if any is transferred to the film. To compute the probabilities, and thus information content, I need background information and boundary conditions as previously requested. If you will kindly provide it, I can answer your question.
  10. The answers to your questions are not known. Clearly human capability is markedly different than other species as you have noted, and our current level of understanding is not sufficient to provide scientific answers to them. The general observations that other species exhibit behaviors that one might consider similar leaves the question wanting. The only good answer to your questions at this time is that humans are indeed very different in the areas about which you asked.
  11. Try this thought exercise to help you see why it is not the same: Imagine that the 20 kg block is hung on a rope fastened securely to the celling. I am fairly certain you will agree the force/tension on the rope is 20*9.81 N right? But cut the rope so the block is accelerating downward at 9.81 m/s2 Now what is the tension on the rope? Now consider the rope is wrapped around a winch that is capable of maintaining fixed tension so that the block is accelerating downward at 4.905 m/s2. What is the tension on the rope (being maintained by the winch)?
  12. I wouldn't be too quick to apologize for mixing up the numbers. Swansont seems to somehow think that 8% of Germany's 2008 total electrical output of 544.47 Billion KW-hrs or 43.558 Billion KW-hrs meets my 5% threshold for reduction in total fossil fuel energy consumed, which for Germany in 2008 was 2,571.61 thousands of bbl oil, 3,461 billion SCF gas, and 267.882 million short tons of coal, or 12.499 Quadrillion BTU's. Unless I too have the numbers wrong, 43.588 Billion KW-hrs is less than 1.2% of the Germany's fossil fuel consumption. I agree John, Germany's renewable electricity is a start, but it is not a "massive overhaul".
  13. I don't see how Krauss implied anything that could be seen as support for your initial posit that different or even more accurate treatments (though it is not known if gravity is negative energy in an absolute sense) of gravity would have any influence on entropy laws. Can you give me an indication where your posit could be seen as supported?
  14. There is a difference in net force acting on the 30Kg mass. In case a the tension on the rope is given. In case b it is not given and the tension is not the same. Do you see why?
  15. One, more subtle challenge to your target change proposal is that many or most of the thought leaders and promoters of the current plan seem to have multiple goals. I'll mention two of the more questionable goals of which your proposal does not address. Many see using fear of climate change uncertainty as an opportunity to make fundamental shifts in worldwide social parity. Your target change would make energy cheaper for the poor in developing countries, but would also make it cheaper for the wealthy in developed countries so that the gap between poor and wealthy could rise further. The current plan includes a redistribution of energy rights and thus wealth and it places the power to enforce this redistribution in a binding world treaty enforceable by a world governing authority. It is essentially a shift from free a free market energy economy to a socialist energy economy. The second goal is to put humans more in parity with the balance of the biosphere. By restricting energy, one restricts productivity and the ability to use technology to further human society above other populations. Your target of clean cheap energy, does not aid the primary but questionable drivers for these two additional goals.
  16. The probabilities though are specific. In thermal entropy the probability refers to the probability of the discrete thermal energy states. I suspect you are aware that the formula is also written as a function of heat content and temperature while information entropy is a function of information content. The problem with the abstract and title is that it makes the incorrect claim that information was "converted" to [higher] energy [states]. The information was not converted. Absolute values for information and information entropy have never been an issue. The change in information content and information entropy of a particular system is the question at hand. Thus far, the source of this change in information order for abiogenesis and diversity of life has not been identified nor has the mechanism for how the change was transfered into the patterns present in DNA. Most often when an attempt is made to explain this, the response is that thermal entropy accounts for these changes. However as this discussion demonstrates, it is unknown how thermal order substitutes for molecular and information order. When noise is added to the film, by exposing it to random light patterns, probability of man or all of the discrete information states rise and entropy increases. The information is not "destroyed" per se since the discrete information states still exist, but the high degree of order of the information is altered. It was false to say "it would be best to say the data strings were generated by some unknown process". It is not best to change the problem in midstream. I don't find anything best about this shift to a different and hypothetical example. It is moving the goal post. , and that is what I meant by false. I believe I could generally describe net entropy change for each case and rank them. I have previously mentioned the difficulty in calculating absolute values for entropy of any kind, however, in this thread I am primarily concerned with changes in information and entropy, so this is not an issue for the broader topic. Here you want me to tell you the absolute values and now you want the case to be hypothetical as opposed to actual. When one asks a question that involves probability, the system generally must be described. Thermodynamics problems involving entropy provide sufficient background to enable a solution. You are effectively asking me what is the probability of the three strings without describing the system. When someone asks "What is the probability of thus and such?" one generally responds "What are the givens?". It would be like asking a student, for a particular undescribed heat engine to calculate the the net thermal entropy rise per cycle. Failure to describe the actual situation makes the problem hypothetical since the solver must make up a hypothetical system. The issue I have is that hypothetical examples have a way of making the impossible seem probable, the probable seem likely and the likely seem actual.
  17. It is surprising you would offer an article you didn't read and can't defend. It follows from the formulas. Information entropy has information content as a component and thermal entropy has heat energy content as a component. It is you who has made the mistake not the scientists who derived the formulas. Actually you offered it to counter my claim that information order cannot be substituted or converted into thermal order. Regardless of what you think you said, your attempt to counter my claim failed. The present state of the universe is a function of the prior state. The information came from the previous state of the universe. Entropy (order) is a function of the initial state of the universe. It was always there. When the image on the undeveloped film is overwritten by noise from random sunlight, order is reduced, probability is increased and entropy rises, so it is difficult to see how I am wrong. But this would be false, I suspect you are quite aware of the processes by which the strings were generated. Are you suggesting that we instead switch to a hypothetical example? This is moving the goal post and a site rule violation. I think it would be more useful to stay with the real example.
  18. I addressed this article and the implications in a short discussion on the previous several posts. The fact that di and tri peptides form deterministically from reaction kinetics does not extend to formation of irregularly sequenced, long chain long chained proteins with stable tertiary structures. Our only experience with formation of these molecules is by use of pre-existing information in the form of biological information stored within the molecular patterns of DNA, which includes a very low entropy sequence on a very high entropy carrier. Please explain in precise terms why you conclude that self-initiation is highly disfavored by entropy. Are you implying that it contradicts molecular or thermal entropy constraints? If so please explain in precise terms how this is so. As I understand the research, the process simply follows and complies with the mechanisms of chemical reaction kinetics including both the random nature imposed by Brownian motion and the deterministic nature imposed by physical laws. I don't see any obvious contradiction to probability theory and the entropy considerations that are derived from probability theory. Please help me see what it is you think I am missing. In response to my statement that complex biomolecules (biomolecules imply biological activity, activity implies stable tertiary structure and appropriate binding sites) containing irregular sequences don't seem to form by the typical chemic processes, instead they form using a transcribed blueprint and a carefully managed and controlled set of processes and molecular machines, you replied "Nothing could be further from the truth". Then you offered a this example of generating regularly sequenced polymers using what amounts to nano templates, superstructures or molds. I don't see how these two examples are in the same class. They are not irregularly sequenced. They do not use an information blueprint. They do not make use of a control system. They do not make use of molecular machines but instead use a template or superstructure. As for organization, they take on the organization that was determined by the superstructure or template and the template was deterministically formed in some cases and formed by a purposed plan in other examples, so i am loath to understand what introduction of long periods of time would do to this process. since they are formed deterministically based on the template, it seems time would not change that. What am I missing? I'm sure you would and could site many similar examples as the three you have, and I quite agree they are interesting and relevant for what they do demonstrate, but I don't see how they provide much, indeed if any, insight into the issue being discussed here. If you could instead help reveal how these examples are more similar than they appear, I would be grateful.
  19. Observation seems to contradict your conclusion that anything useful would be selected or that evolutionary processes would make useful traits universal. One could speculate endlessly about what may seem like universally useful functions, but on closer evaluation may involve compromises and tradeoffs with other competing functions. It could be that telepathy is not as useful as you might think, or that there are tradeoffs and competing functions, or that telepathy (in whatever form you see it) is not derived by evolutionary processes. How can we know which is correct?
  20. In the research I offered, I don't see how the researchers relied on outcomes of the counter hypothesis that mind is a product of the brain. Instead they noted the direct evidence that patient reaction was consistent with predictions from dualism and inconsistent with predictions derived from the materialist hypothesis. I m not sure we can know what the larger part of the scientific community believes. However this appears to be an appeal from authority, a logical fallacy, which I am told use of is a violation of site rules. This appears to be an opinion you personally hold. The research demonstrated patient reactions that are consistent with dualism and inconsistent with reductionism. They are enough to demonstrate your previous claim, that tests for dualism are intractable to scientific research, was incorrect. We can't accurately asses the probability of other life forms without awareness of the configuration, without this background knowledge we can't estimate probability and permutations and thus cannot make any meaningful estimates of information entropy. Since my argument is a probability argument, we cannot currently extend it to the posit of alien life. This is the point I am making. I don't understand how design processes must be outside of science. Can you explain how design is not testable or not falsifiable? It seems very obvious that design is both testable and falsifiable, again as John has noted previously.
  21. I don't suppose you will answer the questions regarding change in information and energy values of the feedback controller. I does not accomplish what was advertised apparently because it is constrained by physical law. Apparently information is not energy and cannot substitute for energy indicating also that information order is not thermal order.. No information was created. What information there was, previously existed in the configuration of the physical surroundings. The information was copied into the configuration of the reflected and absorbed light and then transfered onto the photographic paper. Correct me if I am wrong, but when order present in the undeveloped film is reduced by overexposing it entropy is increased. Capt'n Refsmmat and I discussed the difficulty of calculating absolute values for probability measures including information and all forms of entropy a few times now. Since information is a measure of probability elimination, the measure of information is not separable from the circumstances surrounding the process by which the information was obtained and recorded because probability measure are influenced by the process and constraints. Therefore more information is needed to calculate probability and permutations for the outcomes you listed. When the processes are not known then one must postulate the processes and constraints and develop measures based on those postulates. In estimating information changes by evolutionary processes in biological systems, or the information gain in life from non-life, the processes (but not the intent, if any) are relevant and are postulated, then based on those processes, it is possible to have a meaningful discussion of information content. What processes generated the data strings you provided and what were the constraints?
  22. What objective values of probability do you place on these two scenarios and how are they derived? The researchers showed how these patients reactions contradicted the posits derived from the materialism view and confirmed the posits from a dualism view. the research also confirms that dualism makes testable predictions. The research provides and the book explained additional scientific evidence. That you are unconvinced is likely not a good indicator of the strength of the evidence given your preconceived notions about this world. It was. It seems I misplaced it. As you say, prejudging books is often not fruitful. They demonstrate that dualism makes testable predictions. Thermal entropy is not the issue. Biological systems on earth contain highly ordered information and molecular configurations that, at this time, defy a source for this order except by design. We don't know if a presumed alien necessarily must contain similar configurations. A material only hypothesis that you imply does seem have this infinite regression problem. Cause and effect, mass/energy balance, and entropy laws all seem to indicate that matter/energy/space/time all must have a source. Can you explain how this is resolved?
  23. Let's review what it does and does not do: 1) Contrary to the title of the article and contrary to your introduction of it, it does not convert information into energy. Instead it employs (but does not consume) information and consumes energy in one subcomponent (the feedback controller) in the process of isolating discrete energy states of another component. 2) It does not alter information entropy and it does not substitute information entropy for energy entropy, which is the challenge I requested. You offered this example as an answer to the challenge, but it is not an answer to the challenge. Instead it raises thermal entropy of the feedback controller and slightly raises net thermal entropy of the system. Summary: Information is not converted to energy. Information entropy is not substituted for thermal entropy. Neither of those. To the extent that the photograph is a lower resolution representation of the light pattern at the time, location and orientation, net information entropy rises in this process just as does thermal entropy. The light pattern prior to capture of the light by the photographic paper contains both energy and information. Energy is transfered to the paper and information is transfered to the paper, there is however no substitution of energy to information or visa versa. The full text of the article makes it clear that only di and tri peptides formed, and because they are so short, I continue to wonder how this could be evidence that natural processes are capable of generating irregular polymers that form stable tertiary structures such that the probability of the set of polymers the specific ones are contained by is small relative to the combinations possible. Low probability is the benchmark of low entropy. Recent studies indicate that the probability of obtaining a protein with a stable tertiary structure is less than 1 in 10^78 for even a short 150 amino acid chain. How is it known that these proteins were formed by natural selection? Do the cysteine residues alter the basic shape and primary function or do they primarily serve to stabilize the proteins for higher temperatures?
  24. I spoke of this in another thread, now repeating it here: Dualism predicts and can test these: 1) There will be some mental phenomena without brain function 2) As brain function is altered, the mind will not necessarily be altered 3) If the brain is damaged, then mental function will not necessarily be damaged 4) Brain development will not necessarily correlate with mental development 5) We will not always be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity In this article several of the dualist predictions are confirmed. Owen's study indicates that normal consciousness is present in some patients who have met the clinical criteria for persistent vegetative state, which is defined as a state lacking consciousness. The study shows that methods of assessing brain state and function (e.g., MRI, EEG, clinical examination, fMRI) can differ profoundly in their assessment of consciousness. Resulting in very different conclusions. And it demonstrates that an indirect assessment of brain function (fMRI, which measures regional blood flow and brain metabolism), may reveal evidence for consciousness when more direct methods (clinical examination, EEG) fail to detect consciousness. Benjamin Libet, a neurophysiologist at UCSF one of the first in the scientific study of the relationship between the brain and the mind. Neuroscientist Jeffery Schwartz, has shown there is substantial evidence that mental changes can induce measurable changes in brain function. I made reference to this work previously. I was saying that the researchers testing predictions from dualism are using the scientific method. We can't use my argument with any degree of confidence with respect to alien intelligence since we don't know if their forms have these same biological characteristics. Speculation is interesting this way.
  25. When one speaks of conversion, as in converting kinetic energy converted to thermal or potential energy, the kinetic component must be reduced. How is the the energy converted if it is not reduced in any meaningful way by the feedback controller? If it is not reduced then it is not converted or consumed. Instead the information use along with energy consumed by the controller seems to be used to catalyze the realignment of energy from one state to another consistent with the postulated solution to Maxwell's demon whereby no net free energy is produced. Isn't whatever information entropy contained in the reflected light is simply transfered to the paper when the paper absorbs the light?
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