Re: Kay & thermodynamics, freezing

["Tim Gwinn" <***>]

Hi Dan,

See interposed.

Regards,
Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Dan
> Fiscus
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 7:54 AM
> To: ***
> Subject: Re: Kay & thermodynamics, freezing
>
>
> Tim,
>
> I must respectfully and humbly challenge the freezing experiment as
> anything
> definitive, or perhaps even showing the opposite of what you suggest it
> shows.
> I may be missing something or not know enough about it, but re: your post:
>
> Tim Gwinn wrote:
>
> > Now comes the freezing experiment I mentioned previously. The
> core idea is
> > that the freezing experiment shows that the life processes of
> an organism -
> > its "livingness" - is not tied to dynamical considerations. Freezing the
> > organism to near absolute zero removes all the dynamics - the molecules,
> > etc. cease to move, and their velocity vectors go to zero. The life
> > processes, or aliveness, is not tied to the dynamics of the
> molecules and
> > other structural pieces that comprise it. This can be restated
> as that the
> > life processes cannot be described by state/phase sets (either
> classical or
> > quantum). All that state information is lost when it is frozen,
> and when it
> > is reheated, the molecules would only take up random state values unless
> > they are somehow otherwise constrained. However, Newtonian physics
> > (including extensions to QM) are based on states and
> state-descriptions. As
> > such, the life-process of an organism are not describable within the
> > paradigm of Newtonian/QM physics.
> > [George Kampis gives a good description of all this in his book
> > "Self-Organizing Systems in Biology and Cognitive Science", sec. 5.3.4].
> >
> > In regards to Kay, his notion of "self-organized" is similar to
> Bak's, in
> > that it is catastrophe-based. [see
> > http://www.iaia-wnc.ca/pdf/Kayetalpaper.pdf ] By freezing an
> organism, any
> > thermodynamic gradient disappears, the dynamics disappear, and
> the results
> > should be truly catastrophic!! However, this is not what
> actually happens,
> > so this is why previously had said that these experimental results
> > "obliterate" Kay's argument.
>
> I would say that this experiment is of very limited value and generality,
> mainly because of the short duration of the "stasis" relative to time
> scales involved with any organism that might be frozen and thawed.



The length of time for which it is frozen is not central to the argument.
The idea is to take a dynamical system - a living organism - and remove its
dynamics, via the freezing. If the process of living were governed by its
dynamics (i.e., by state-based Newtonian descriptions of its parts), then
removing those dynamics should wipe out all the relevant information for the
organization of that process. However, because the organism can resume
living upon re-warming, this indicates that the organizational information
is held in some non-dynamics form within the organism. Instead of being
stored in dynamics, this information is stored apparently in relative
internal configuration. Kampis goes on to describe that Rosen and Pattee
conclude that non-holonomic constraints are key - constraints that are not
tied to dynamics.

(Perhaps Judith has a copy of the Rosen article that Kampis refers to?:
1986, "Causal Structures in Brains and Machines", Int. Jrnl. General
Systems, #12 p107-126.)


I agree, as you point out below, life-processes are necessarily
context-sensitive. Organisms need a compatible ecosystem to live,
particularly long-term. The idea of the examination of the freezing
experiment is to rule out purely dynamical information as the source of the
internal organizational "information" necessary for an organism to live.
This also means that externally imposed "forcings" which might control those
dynamics are not directly relevant to an organism's organizational
information. This in no way obviates or relates to the additional need for
an organism to have a compatible context (ecosystem) within which to exist.



> For
> example, if you tried to hold an organism in frozen stasis long enough
> that its environment changed in the mean time, the necessary
> environmental context for that organism's "life itself" would be altered
> and to me there is then no guarantee and in fact low odds that the
> organism could "pick up where it left off" and really live, as in
> succeed in
> open-ended evolution, which I take to be an ecosystemic property (not
> an organismal one at all).
>
> The links to environment = context must stay relatively "online" and
> active, since life evolution and environmental (physical) evolution are
> inseparably entangled. You may be able to "pull the plug" or cut the cord
> temporarily for some (probably more primitive organisms), but not
> indefinitely and not in general for all organisms.
>
> This relates to other experiments of "pulling the plug", like
> trying to get
> any organism to exist in isolation (removed from all other life forms, an
> organismal part removed from life's ubiquitous ecosystemic wholeness),
> which I predict could never succeed unless the organism in question could
> quickly differentiate into two functional types (autotroph and
> heterotroph).
>
> Linking back to intelligence as an ecological property at the core...
>
> It also relates to a ecological generalization of the Turing test, which
> says
> that if one cannot decide if a computer is human/intelligent or not based
> on interactions, question and answer style, then that machine is de facto
> intelligent. The normal, current Turing test is highly restricted
> in what is
> OK for interaction in seeking to decide - the human is only allowed to
> type questions on a keyboard and can only use information returned on
> a computer monitor. If we remove all restrictions and allow any form of
> interaction, experiment or query, the first test I would do would
> be to look
> for a plug into a physical context - energy and/or matter supply
> lines. If I
> can pull the plug and the computer cannot answer, then I can tell that it
> is not as intelligent as I in that it does not have the same robustness of
> integration with an environmental context. On the other hand, if I can
> pull the plug and the computer "player" or AI program does not notice,
> that is another clue - the stopping and starting, freezing and thawing of
> the system and/or its link to physical basis is too easy, a real life form
> ought to feel some stress, ought to notice, complain, change. Try cutting
> off any of the major links to physical/ecological context and see if it
> isn't
> highly noticeable and relevant in any interaction you might have with an
> interviewer - hold your breath (O2 link), stop drinking water (H20 link),
> or fast (organic C, N, other nutrient links).
>
> Some more to consider...
>
> Dan