Evolution: theory of functional information (Evolution)

by David Turell , Thursday, October 19, 2023, 19:47 (190 days ago) @ David Turell

Hossenfelder comments:

https://quizwithit.com/start_thequiz/1697366102073x432282544378655300

"There was not one but three papers that put forward new laws of nature and they were all pretty much on the same topic, the growth of complexity.

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"The three papers are of very different quality. The first one is about something the author calls “the second law of infodynamics”. It’s an idea he proposed in an earlier paper. In the new paper he claims that this law is fulfilled and that supports the idea that we live in computer simulation.

"The problem is the way that he defines his new law it’s just identical to the second law of thermodynamics. It’s not wrong but it’s not new either and it’s nothing to do with computer simulations.

"The second paper comes from a group of philosophers. On the upside it makes more sense that the first paper, because it’s specifically about systems that undergo some kind of evolution. On the downside it’s mathematically vague.

"They propose to measure complexity by a quantity called “functional information” that was introduced by another author about 20 years ago. It tells you loosely speaking how good a system is at fulfilling a certain function. In the new paper they now call their idea the “law of increasing functional information”. So, systems improve how they fulfil certain functions.

"The problem is, as they write themselves, that this functional information can only be calculated when you specify the function of a system, which moves the burden from figuring out what complexity is to figuring out what a function is.

***

"The authors of the third paper don’t explicitly claim they introduce a new law of nature, they’re a little bit more modest, but address the same question. They do it with an idea they call “Assembly Theory”.

"The idea is that the complexity of an object can be measured by how difficult it is to assemble and how well it can make copies of itself. The good thing about this idea is that it’s mathematically well-defined. You can actually compute this quantity, at least theoretically. They look at some examples from chemistry to explain how it works.

"But just because you have a mathematically well-defined quantity doesn’t mean it explains anything, so we’ll have to see if this idea is actually good for something."

Comment: she doesn't discuss a relationship to living evolution. It is all highly nonspecific ruminations.