The laws of physics and chemistry do not evolve

Kev.

I agree with that part of what you said, but note that human intelligence's understanding of the subtleties of the laws - and our understanding of the models we have of the framework for the laws - does 'evolve' in the sense that we usually replace parts of the models over time with better understandings. So there is a form of evolution towards improved models. Certainly in fields like chemistry where periodically we overturn previous theories as we discover they were too coarse, or incorrect.

I figure the meaning of the word evolution differs between individual knowledge frameworks and certainly it depends on the nature of the substrate being evolved.

Kevin,

I don't know where you studied evolution but it almost sounds like it must have been at a fundamentalist christian school.

All systems evolve for the exact same reason: to maximize the degradation of energy and structure. Star systems go about their Newtonian and Relativistic motions purely because these apparently curved paths are the straightest line towards the maximal dissipation of energy. It is called the fall line, it is what all things do and what all things only do… fall down. It causes a cloud of interstellar dust to collect into stars and planets and it causes these collections to spin and orbit each other's center of gravity (maximal warp of spacetime). It is why the laws of chemistry and the elements exist in the first place and dictates how they will decay. Chemistry itself is the native domain of thermodynamics. None of these systems are static. They are in constant and directed flux.

Chemistry and physics are at base either the causal dynamics of physical systems or the abstractions we have constructed to describe them. The abstractions, the maths, the logic, the "laws" are obviously only loosely linked to the causality they describe. The causality itself is not a static system. The dynamics we observe today didn't exist at some time in the past. Go in close to the big bang (increase the temperature and pressure to the craziest levels), and you find that the physics of today's "baryometric" universe simply has not had time to evolve to its current state. Go in even tighter and you find behaviors and structures so foreign the descriptions have to take on bizarre attributes like vibrating strings and universe wide generative fields and infinite simultaneous budding universes??? Chemistry is a science of electrodynamic dictated interactions between atoms. That means atoms themselves have to exist, and in our universe, it meant that the the whole shebang had to be cool enough and disperse enough that these rather weak forces would not be overruled by gravity, heat, and pressure that existed for the first million years and continue to exist inside of stars and black holes. As the universe ages, even chemistry and physics will begin to decay and change.

The "laws" of physics and chemistry had better evolve because the dynamics and structure they describe is a necessarily evolving target.

To get some idea of how stars and planets and atoms and subatomic particles evolve, please try the easy to read cosmology primer, "The First Three Minutes".

Randall Reetz

I figure the meaning of the word evolution differs between individual knowledge frameworks and certainly it depends on the nature of the substrate being evolved.

Bert,

You are half way there. It is only our naive view of evolution that varies with domain. Evolution itself is not a different process in different domains. We humans seem to exhibit a great range of understanding (and misunderstanding) of the concept of evolution. Many people have a rough sense of evolution as it applies in the specific domain of the biotic. But evolution is a universal process, has nothing in particular to do with biology and the reason it happens is absolutely the same in any and all domains.

It is not "metaphorical" to say that ideas or mathematic or logical or philosophical systems evolve. They evolve by the same meta dynamics as has been well described in biological systems. What has clouded our understanding of Evolution with a capital "E" is our single-domain myopic application of its concepts to the domain of biology. We do so want to see our selves as unique in some important way. Since Copernicus leveled the heavens, and Darwin democratized the animals, we have clung to the notion that our specialness in the universe has something to do with "being alive" and so we have had a tendency to reform evolution into a life-specific honorific bestowed only upon things in the membership only club of life. As that status fades with the understandings bestowed by thermodynamics and information theory, we then retreat to the specialness of "intelligence" and "sentience" and "consciousness". Bestowing onto these categories a sort of exclusive secret sauce that is qualitatively different than the physics by which all other systems are shackled

I watch in dismay as the good people of this group grapple with this final illusion of ego.

The how and why of evolution are extremely easy concepts to grasp. The unity these understandings provide are revolutionizing our understanding of Process. What gets in our way of doing so is a need to feel special even if that specialness gets in the way of seeing the truth.

Kevin,

I don't know where you studied evolution but it almost sounds like it must have been at a fundamentalist christian school.

As an atheist since a child and having never been in any religious school I don't know where you would get that idea.

All systems evolve for the exact same reason: to maximize the degradation of energy and structure. ...

Chemistry and physics are at base either the causal dynamics of physical systems ...

The "laws" of physics and chemistry had better evolve because the dynamics and structure they describe is a necessarily evolving target.
....

Randall Reetz

The laws underlying the universe's structure are (by any theory I know) fixed. Human attempts to approximate them may still be evolving. [I did a couple of years of physics at university.]

If you are defining evolution as: "change over time", well yes entropy does that for most things. For the purposes of this discussion (about PolyWorld and AIs) I think we are limited to: "descent with modification" as the definition. Stars don't do the latter, and I don't think the (normal) rules of physics apply in PolyWorld anyway.

Kev.

Kevin,

I made the comment about your education because I can't for the life of me figure out how you learned science without understanding that the physical universe (and all of its so called "laws") evolved and are still evolving. Yes, you are correct, if you take a snapshot of the present baryometric subsection of the universe, i.e. that portion of the universe cool enough for atoms to exist, you will see the laws that make up the standard model hold true no matter where you are. But that is true because of other "laws" that built up the causal hierarchy of physical interaction at more energetically dense environmental conditions. And, it is worth noting that a quite different set of "laws" hold sway when you reduce the energy density below Plank scale threshold (near absolute zero). And that place exists if not in theory, then at least exclusively in the distant future and is probably apparent in what we call the zero point or dark energy state of "empty" space. So, you can see that the physics of the past were different than the physics of today, and the physics of the future are different than the physics of today. The process that dictates this shift in deltas is dictated by the dissipation of energy and structure… evolution.

The notion that the physical laws are static throughout time was shattered by the first measurements of deep space (red-shift) that allowed astronomers to see how different the early universe was vs. the more recent one we inhabit. The rest has been revealed by smashing particles at increasing energies and the resulting correlation between the results and early universe radio observation.

The laws of physics are transitive across any distance where energy is similar. That is the best we can say about the regularity of the universe. But these laws are not applicable across the whole energy/density spectrum. And because the one thing that can be said absolutely of any universe (that it will move only from higher to lower energy density, one can say that physical law must keep pace with the physical changes that transpire as energy density moves from big bang and black hole levels on down to the middle where we live, and then on to near perfect vacuum and near zero energy, where strange things like bose einstein condensates emerge.

Yes, both physics and chemistry evolve.

Your comments indicate that you have a hugely naive understanding of evolution itself. Don't be dismayed. Most people do. The laws of thermodynamics and information theory that dictate the absolute truth of increasing entropy are domain independent. The rule over physics and chemistry and over the spectrum of biology and culture and computing. There is not outside of, no escape from, that which is dictated by the law of increasing entropy.

Randall Reetz

...
Yes, both physics and chemistry evolve.

Your comments indicate that you have a hugely naive understanding of evolution itself. ...

Randall Reetz

A fixed law can have time varying factors, but the laws of physics (and chemistry which is derivative) do not evolve.

You seem to be confusing your sciences, maybe you've been watching too much Star Trek.

So please disambiguate your meaning of "evolution" from the list here:
http://en.wikipedia.o...

As I said previously, I'm taking the meaning from Darwin/Biology ("descent with modification").

If the orbits of the planets or the decay of the universe have anything to do with PolyWorld I'll be interested to hear your argument.

Kev.

Kevin,

Physics itself evolves. So the laws that we build to abstract its behavior have to account for this evolution. One need not look deeper than the current (100 year old) frustration that is an attempt to rectify relativistic and quantum descriptions under a unified theory that can explain the causal physics from which both low and high energy systems precipitated (evolved).

Kevin, I hate to sound insulting but your understanding of evolution is late 1800's at best.

Since then, a revolution in causality understanding has slowly supplanted domain specific theories with a single unified understanding of thermodynamics that itself has been generalized away from heat to any form of energy and then generalized further with the insights of information theory, to structure as well. This energy/structure dissipation super-theory holds forth as the supreme law and sits below and informs all domain specific laws and theories (including, physics, chemistry, and yes, biology's incarnation of evolution). The result is an insight that there is no difference between what you call "cause and effect" and "evolution"… that they are in fact the exact same mechanism (qualitatively identical). The domain differences are only quantitative and reflect the structural differences between any two systems. Your narrow view of evolution (life domain) is just cause and effect played out through the complexity of the incredibly rich and layered hierarchy of grammars that is biology. It is exactly the same base process that causes stars and atoms and is why physics itself (what you call the laws) evolves as energy and pressure decreases through phase boundaries.

Biology has no special hold on evolution. Evolution is not more than cause and effect. Cause and effect always results in a loss of energy or structural density. That is why it happens.

Randall Reetz

Kevin,

Why don't you attempt to show the physics community (and me) how stellar evolution and the evolution in PolyWorld happen outside of the "descent with modification" mechanism you so want to assign exclusively to biology.

Or, if you choose, you may instead show me the opposite; how cause and effect are somehow violated, suspended, supplanted, or sidestepped in biological evolution.

Randall

Kevin,

Why don't you attempt to show the physics community (and me) how stellar evolution and the evolution in PolyWorld happen outside of the "descent with modification" mechanism you so want to assign exclusively to biology.
...
Randall

I see you are refusing to disambiguate your use of "evolution".

There is no "descent with modification" when stars collide, the rules of physics do not change. The term comes from biology, but can be applied to any system where a new generation is created from the old by making some (random) modification, and that is not restricted to biological systems (and I didn't say it was). The physics of the system is irrelevant, it can be an abstract mathematical model like PolyWorld.

Kev.

There is no more clear a def of evolution than: the structures that result from things falling down and the way some structures cause more to fall down faster and are as a result more likely to determine the steepest topology of energy throughput. The dribble in bio-evolution books overly emphasize the structures that result in the specific domain of biology. The definition I have shown here is the one that best matches THE process (domain independent). I don't know what game you are playing, but you will not be able to trip me up. In evolution, I know my stuff. Instead of offering up arguments, why don't you try to tell me what evolution is, and back it up with theory. Remember that the universe is different now in respect to any past. The difference is not random. There is a direction to the increase in energy diffusion capacity. A one way arrow. The stuff you learned in engineering is a lie. It was simplified to solve problems in the here and now. Assumptions were made in the interest of simplification and efficiency of the engineering process. Nature is evolving. All of it. All of the time. Same process always. Same reason always.