Edward Wohlman
2013-06-17 10:06:48 UTC
Can life or any physical action effect the future outcome of the universe's structural physical development and final course.
Could life drastically change the course of the universe and stop the heat death.
I do think life (intelligence) can change many things but can life steer the universe into a different end? Is a supertask impossible?
I have just barely grasped "background independence" and it has made me more likely to accept things happening beyond human conception and reality being much larger since everything is a process. Which is saying to me everything is software and there is no hardware.
Lastly is there any physical transformation or physical processes that cannot be visually represented? I have been thinking about this for a long time.
Didn't Asimov already answer this quite nicely in "The Last Question"?Could life drastically change the course of the universe and stop the heat death.
I do think life (intelligence) can change many things but can life steer the universe into a different end? Is a supertask impossible?
I have just barely grasped "background independence" and it has made me more likely to accept things happening beyond human conception and reality being much larger since everything is a process. Which is saying to me everything is software and there is no hardware.
Lastly is there any physical transformation or physical processes that cannot be visually represented? I have been thinking about this for a long time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm
Seems to me that at all levels Life is a process that makes small pockets of order out of chaos, but requires an externally generated energy gradient to operate. A biological process can never be 100% efficient, so it will always consume more energy than it can generate.
The question is can a biological process create a non biological process that approaches 100% efficiency, which can then manipulate the universe to make itself sustainable.
Which is the question Asimov answers, in a nice way.
Edward
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