Maxwell's demon: Does life violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics? | Neil Gershenfeld and Lex Fridman

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GUEST BIO:
Neil Gershenfeld is the director of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

PODCAST INFO:

SOCIAL:

[LexClips]

Guest bio: Neil Gershenfeld is the director of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

[ozachar]

A commonly missed aspect of life is that it's surface stability is maintained by non-stop repair and replenishment. Our present human made mechanical machines break down with a single faulty part. Life functions by constantly having the machine in the repair shop, continuously discarding cells and assembling new minute parts (cells) which are all in multiple degeneracy so that they can be temporarily discarded while the machine continues to function

[prashkd]

I've been carrying this question in my mind ever since I did got a glimps of Maxwell equations of thermodynamics in my highschool. Thanks for tackeling such profound questions on your channel.

[Fabianvolf]

Maxwell: "I have an idea for a hypothetical engine that will never exist!"
People from the past: *Time to take our lives*

[cdenn]

I dont understand the argument that life seems to violate thermo. The 2nd law applies to a CLOSED system. But life isnt closed. Life is basically a process that increases total entropy by breaking down clumps of free energy. No free energy => no life

[bchearne]

Not sure we got to the thumbnail point, but it’s pretty obvious that entropy isn’t an issue because of the massive fusion reaction in the sky supplying us all the energy we need. Earth isn’t a closed system, and life isn’t a perpetual motion machine. It doesn’t have to be

[davidminken]

Life tacks against entropy like a ship sailing against the wind.

[mistertaylor]

At first I hesitated to publish my theory of the
reversibility of the universe; but I was encouraged on
discovering the quotation from Lord Kelvin above
mentioned; so that now, knowing that this is not the first
time that it has been suggested that life is a reversal of the
second law of thermodynamics, I have decided to publish
the work and give my theory to the world, to be accepted
or rejected, as the case may be.
WILLIAM JAMES SIDIS
January 6, 1920.

[MrSanford]

Basically, the flesh is in a state of entropy, but mind is abstract-so it is not

[jrbling]

It is a breath of fresh air to hear when people acknowledge the whole being of an organism with regards to consciousness and intelligence, not just the information processed in a brain.

[sscalercourtney]

This reminds me of a decades ago discussion with a philosophy major. Our synapses can only fire so many times and then they fail. Say hitting a white and black button side by side. Do it enough and at some point you will hit the same color twice no matter what your brain is seeing.
Thus when you brain does the right thing and gets the wrong result, it must free think. Something is wrong with standard conditioning. It suddenly doesn't work. And thus freedom of thought is born. Just a proposition to consider.
Like Maxwell's Demon can't go backward. Thus a failure in a synapse can cause thought beyond conditioning. Hope you can see the relationship.

[Blsnro]

The year is 2100. An international group of scientists asks for a meeting in his laboratory with God and he agrees. There, they take a handful of dirt and put it in a complicated machine. After a series of complex procedures, the machine gives rise to a baby. Scientists say to God, "Now that we've managed to create life, you can retire into your retirement, we don't need you." God replies, "Very impressive what you have managed to do. Congratulations. Next time, use your own dirt."

[michaellowe]

As the heat builds on one side of the door, the probability goes up of a fast-moving molecule going back through the door the other way while the demon opens it. When heat builds up enough, it will be unavoidable for heat to escape back through the door faster than it comes in. This at least limits the effect of the demon. In addition, to make the demon more effective at higher heat potentials, the demon must open and close the door faster. This would make it require more energy to operate. All of our current electrical and electrical-mechanical systems are too inefficient to not lose more energy than could be segregated by the demon.

[godzilko]

Why am I watching something that I can't comprehend?

[osamauremama]

lex is the only podcast that teaches me about life. thank u lex❤

[_kopcsi_]

the entropy law (2nd law of thermodynamics) can be locally violated. why? because it is a global description. just like the law of energy conservation can be locally violated. e.g. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is also valid for the time-energy conjugate dual which actually describes quantum fluctuation. this quantum fluctuation is the local violation of the conservation law of energy. and what is most interesting and ironic of all is that the exact same logic and mathematical structure causes the local violation of the law of conservation of energy, which also ensures the conservation principle itself on a global level. the Noether principle, which can be derived from the (stationary) action principle, is based on the same conjugate duals as the Heisenberg principle, which can be derived from the Fourier principle through the Planck relations.

[kipling]

Sorry, the door opening and closing equates to the energy traps of anabolic reactions (- delta G) allowing the formation of complex molecules, for example in photosynthesis. So how can you say “thermodynamics doesn’t do that.” It happens all the time.

[sudarshanbadoni]

....the out put is us is amazing as be considered successive stages of improving the output within ourselves perhaps if not certainly. Thanks to such approaches and telling us about them though not competent to even understand them.

[_kopcsi_]

1, the 2nd law of thermodynamics is for CLOSED systems only. e.g. Earth is not a closed system.

2, even for closed system the 2nd law of thermodynamics is a statistical (more precisely a combinatorial) description of reality which should not be surprising since entropy itself is a statistical/combinatorial concept. this law simply says that entropy GLOBALLY and IN THE LONG RUN increases. why? because entropy and probability and inversely proportional. the 2nd law of thermodynamics is a combinatorial and so statistical necessity.

3, but it doesn't mean that even in a closed system entropy cannot decrease. it can, but it is improbable. just like the emergence of life (and the emergence of conscious life is even rarer). in a sense, the more complex a structure is, the higher the level of synergisation, the lower the entropy of this structure. therefore we can be considered extremely low entropic islands of a cosmic high entropic ocean.

4, all of this leads us to the realisation that entropy has a meta-structure, so we can define meta-entropy (entropy of entropy). and although the increase in entropy really has a dominance in space (additive dominance), the decrease in entropy has a dominance in time (multiplicative dominance). the former is formulated through the 2nd law of thermodynamics, while the latter is still ignored. indeed, the two are related, and both are a consequence of the fact that meta-entropy is decreasing on the entire scale of the cosmos. this meta-entropic decrease means that the globally dominant entropy decrease in the space is necessarily accompanied by local entropy decreases, and where this entropy decrease has taken off, e.g. in the form of the emergence of life or the emergence of consciousness at an even higher synergy level, low entropy is already able to locally further reduce the entropy of itself and its environment, thus creating a self-exciting dynamic (and this is exactly the property that means temporal dominance).

ergo: the old, apparent contradiction/paradox that evolution and thermodynamics are not consistent is bullshit. this common fallacy is the consequence of the wrong interpretation of the entropy principle (related to the 2nd law of thermodynamics) and the fact that science still ignores the complementary aspect of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (the inevitable local entropy decrease and its self-generative nature). in other words, it is actually as if we only see half of the whole truth all the time, while in topics belonging to the other half of the truth we scratch our heads in confusion due to the apparent contradiction.

[BenWilson]

Life doesnt violate any laws of thermodynamics... Entropy can decrease locally without issue. If ice freezes in a freezer, the entropy decreased locally but it's not a violation as energy is provided to the freezer to make that happen and the freezer wastes some of that energy as well. Just like earth, which has some energy onboard and gets more energy from the sun. Eventually, the sun will burn out, and life will die off, just like the ice would eventually melt if you unplugged the freezer