Magnetism is brought about by the lining up of unpaired electrons in atoms by use of an electric field. Electrons in atoms usually exist in pairs, one with an up and the other with a down spin. If unpaired electrons can be lined up, the material will exert an electromotive force, with a north and a south pole. This force is known as magnetism.
Although it is not the only material from which a strong magnet can be made, the material that we most associate with magnetism is iron. Steel is iron with carbon added to make it stronger. Other elements that can be alloyed to make strong magnets are nickel and cobalt.
Iron is a really interesting element. We tend to take it for granted because it is so common, it is the most common element on earth by mass. But the reason that it is so common is the same reason that makes it so interesting.
As we know the nucleus of an atom is held together by binding energy. This is necessary because the nucleus is composed of protons, which have a positive electric charge, and, since like charges repel each other, the nucleus would not be able to hold together unless it was held by binding energy. What happens is that some of the mass of the nucleus is converted into binding energy by the nuclear force, which is one of the fundamental forces of the universe.
Not all elements have the same amount of binding energy per nucleon in their nucleus. A nucleon means either a proton or a neutron. Beginning with the lightest element, hydrogen with one proton in the nucleus, the binding energy per nucleon reaches a peak, and then begins to decline. This is known as the Binding Energy Curve.
At the very top of that peak is iron. This means that iron has the most stable nucleus of all elements because it has the most binding energy per nucleon.
The reason that iron is so common is because the ordinary fusion process in stars only goes as far as iron. This is because the iron nucleus is so stable that it requires more energy to break it apart, entering the plasma state so that it can fuse into heavier nuclei, than is released by breaking it. This means that fusing iron into heavier elements, by the tremendous heat and pressure in the centers of stars, requires an input of energy rather than giving off energy.
This is why the ordinary fusion process in stars only goes as far as iron. When a large star explodes in a supernova it scatters it's component matter across space. Some of that matter typically falls back together by gravity to form a second-generation star and, maybe, planets. That is how our Solar System formed and is why iron is so common.
Elements heavier than iron require an input of energy to form. These elements only form when energy is being released by the explosion of the large star in the supernova, only the largest stars explode in a supernova. This is why elements up to iron are exponentially more common than those that are heavier than iron.
If you have ever wondered why carbon, oxygen, copper and, iron are so much more common than silver, gold and, uranium, this is why.
What I find to be so interesting, yet unexplained, is that iron is both the element most associated with magnetism and also the element with the most stable nucleus. The other two elements associated with magnetism, nickel and cobalt, are near iron at the top of the Binding Energy Curve.
This seems to make it very clear that there must be a link between magnetism and the stability of the nucleus. But, as of now, we cannot see what it is.
Magnetism is a property of the electron orbitals in an atom, and have nothing to do with the nucleus. Nuclear stability, the Binding Energy Curve, has nothing to do with the electrons. The binding energy in a nucleus has no effect on the electric charges of the protons, which is what affects the electrons in their orbitals.
But yet there must be a connection between the two, even if we cannot see it now. This cannot be a coincidence that the elements at the top of the Binding Energy Curve are the same elements that are associated with magnetism.
My information theory explains the connection in terms of information, and it is simple.
Iron atoms, fused in stars from lighter elements, have the most stable nuclei. But stability represents a lower information state than instability. Indeed the very definition of stability is that it must be the lowest information state. We know that the universe both seeks the lowest information state and also prefers stability to instability.
Stability is some kind of equation, while instability is an inequation. An equation is a lower information state because it only contains one piece of information, while an inequation must contain more than one.
A equals A must be a lower information state than A does not equal B, because we would only have to define A, instead of both A and B.
But if iron atoms are fused together from lighter atoms, and has a nucleus with more stability than the nuclei from which they were fused, that must mean a loss of information somewhere. The trouble with that is that information cannot just be lost, it must go somewhere.
The electrons in the atoms have nothing to do with the stability of the nucleus, at least as far as we can see now. But the atom is an informational unit and information cannot just be lost.
Magnetism is actually information because a magnet has to have a north pole and a south pole. Magnetism is a higher information state than non-magnetism because it must be defined which is the north pole and which is the south pole, and where on the magnet the poles will be located.
This information theory thus enables us to "see ahead". Clearly magnetism must somehow be related to the stability of the nucleus of the atom, but we cannot see the physics of how this happens as of now.
31) HYDROGEN BONDING AS INFORMATION
There is a similar example to magnetism of how information is manifested in the electrons of an atom because of greater stability, which is a lower in state, in the nucleus.
This similar example is Hydrogen Bonding. Hydrogen Bonding is extremely important to us because it is why water can exist in a liquid, as well as ice, form. Without Hydrogen Bonding water would only exist in the form of vapor.
A water molecule consists of one oxygen atom and two hydrogen atoms, with the familiar chemical formula H2O. But the oxygen atom is much larger than the hydrogen atoms, which both attach to the same side of the oxygen atom.
What this does is makes one side of the water molecule more positively-charged and the other side more negatively-charged. Since opposite charges attract, water molecules tend to line up negative-to-positive. This is known as Hydrogen Bonding and water would only be able to exist as a vapor without it.
Water is lighter than air by molecule, which is why water evaporates, but with Hydrogen Bonding holding the molecules together, liquid water is about 800 times as heavy as air at sea level. Water is not the only compound in which Hydrogen Bonding takes place, but it is by far the most familiar and important to us.
Hydrogen Bonding is actually similar in principle to magnetism. But where magnetism works by atom, Hydrogen Bonding works by molecule. Whereas magnetism is the result of the special nature of iron, Hydrogen Bonding is the result of the special nature of oxygen.
But the special natures of both of these elements are rooted in the exceptional stability of their nuclei, but shows up in the electron orbitals in ways that, according to my information theory, transfers the lower information state of the nucleus, due to it's increased stability, to produce a higher information state in the electron orbitals due to creating defined dimensions, such as the north and south magnetic poles, which wouldn't exist otherwise.
We usually think of oxygen as a special element due to it's reactivity. This makes it suitable as an oxidizer for burning and digestion, and we are completely dependent on it to live.
But reactivity is not the reason that oxygen is important in my information theory. The reason is the same as for iron, the stability of it's nucleus. In both elements, this exceptional stability of the nucleus represents a lower information state. But information cannot just be lost and is transferred to the electron orbitals. This additional information in the orbitals shows up as defined dimensions, a north and south pole in magnetism and one side of the water molecule being more positive and the other more negative in Hydrogen Bonding.
The exceptional stability of the iron nucleus is that it has the highest binding energy per nucleon of all elements. The exceptional stability of the oxygen nucleus is that it requires the lowest neutron-to-proton ratio of all atoms except hydrogen, which has no neutrons.
As we might expect, this additional stability should make both iron and oxygen very abundant. Indeed iron is very common in the inner Solar System and is the most common element on earth by mass. Oxygen is the most common element in the universe, by mass, after hydrogen and helium. Oxygen also makes up so much of the earth, not only in air and water molecules but rock is basically a compound of silicon and oxygen.
In the fusion taking place in the centers of stars, light atoms are being crunched together by the tremendous heat and pressure into heavier atoms. Heavier atoms generally require more neutrons per proton, to convey the binding energy which holds the positively-charged protons together against the mutual repulsion of like charges. Neutrons are created in fusion by crunching an electron and a proton together, the process known as K-capture.
If a nucleus, such as that of iron or oxygen, has more stability than the two or more lighter nuclei that were crunched together to create it, that represents a loss of information since stability is a lower information state than instability. This information cannot just be lost so, although neither magnetism or Hydrogen Bonding seems to have anything to do with the nucleus, the entire atom is still an informational unit and the missing information gets transferred to the electron orbitals and shows up as the defined dimensions of magnetism in iron and Hydrogen Bonding in water molecules.
Both iron and oxygen have two elements next to it on the Periodic Table that also undergo magnetism or Hydrogen Bonding. Cobalt and nickel, next to iron, also undergo magnetism. Fluorine and nitrogen, next to oxygen, can also undergo Hydrogen Bonding.
This exceptional stability of the oxygen atom is also part of my cosmology theory, but for a different reason than in this information theory. In the cosmology theory, "The Theory Of Stationary Space", the matter of our universe is scattered over four dimensions of space, one of which we perceive as time. There are two opposite directions in each dimension. This means that the oxygen nucleus, with eight protons, fits neatly into the space, one proton to each direction, and space itself contributes to holding the nucleus together and making it require fewer neutrons. This is described in 1g) of "The Theory Of Stationary Space", July 2017.
32) THE HUMAN COMPLEXITY RATIO
Out there somewhere is a very important number. Complexity, which is simply an amount of information, can be quantified, meaning that a number can be put on it.
We usually describe complexity in subjective terms, such as "less complex than" or "much more complex than", but, if complexity is a volume of information, it must somehow be possible to put a quantitative number on it.
My information defines the quantity of information as the numerical value of the denominator when something is expressed as a fraction or ratio. Complexity is always expressed as a dimensionless whole number.
Now we know that we, our bodies and brains, are more complex than our inanimate surroundings, even though we are made of the same kinds of atoms. But if we are more complex than our inanimate surroundings, and complexity can be expressed as a number, then there must be some number that expresses how many times more complex we are than our inanimate surroundings.
Since complexity, the amount of information, is so primary to us, and since we interact with our surroundings in all we do, we should expect that this number would be very important and would show up in so many things that we do.
We can see this difference in the two complexity levels, our higher complexity level relative to the lower complexity of our inanimate surroundings, in many ways.
Having free will would not make any sense unless we were more complex than our surroundings. Free will means that we can be wrong and can make mistakes. But we can only be wrong about anything if there is not enough complexity in our surroundings to manifest every arrangement that our minds can conceive of. This can only mean that we must be more complex than our surroundings.
We can see this difference in complexity in what I will call "Identifiable Dimensions". With planets, for example, there is no identifiable top, bottom or, sides. The same is true of an ordinary rock, it does not have an identifiable top or bottom or sides.
But when we come to living things, beginning with plants, this changes. Unlike inanimate matter, such as a rock, a plant has a definable top and bottom. When a living thing has free will, unlike a plant, it will also have a definable front and back.
This is the complexity of a thing, whether living or not, showing up as the number of definable dimensions.
0 = inanimate non-living
1 = living but no free will, such as plants
2 = living and with free will
We have one dimension remaining that is undefined, our sides. We are essentially the same from one side to the other. If there was a being a major step above us in complexity we could expect that, unlike us, it would be different from one side to the other.
But while our lateral, side to side, dimension is undefined, there are a couple of interesting things about it.
First, our hands are our side-to-side feature that is the most guided by our brains, according to our will. But, since our brains are more complex than our bodies, this does impart a degree of definition to our lateral dimension. This definition shows up as handedness, with people tending to be either right- or left-handed.
Second, our internal organs are not quite symmetrically arranged from side-to-side. It is the organs involved in the processing of food and distribution of nutrients, the stomach, intestines, liver and, heart that break the side-to-side symmetry. But remember that all of our food is ultimately based on plants, and we saw that plants have one definable dimension. This break in our lateral symmetry of the digestive organs is the information of the definable dimension in plants showing up.
If our brains were not more complex than our bodies, we would not be able to recognize each other. We would be able to recognize another human being, but not to tell one from another.
We can tell that our bodies are more complex than our surrounding inanimate environment because, when a person dies, the environment breaks down the complexity of the body to it's simpler level.
The more complex something is, the more possibilities there are to go wrong. A medical textbook shows all that can go wrong with the human body and can be taken as a representation of how much more complex we are than our inanimate surroundings.
When we use technology, we are imposing our higher level of complexity on our inanimate surroundings. A cup, for example, may seem like a simple piece of technology. But to really understand a cup, it would be necessary to understand why we would make it. How we can get materials from the earth to make the cup, how we would hold the cup with our hands, why we would need to drink the water or other liquid that the cup holds.
We know that energy can never be created or destroyed, but only changed in form. But, if this is true then why can't we reuse energy? It is because we are at a higher level of complexity than our inanimate surroundings, and when we use technology we are imposing our complexity on our inanimate surroundings. Once we use energy, it goes back to the surrounding environment, with it's lower level of complexity. We, with our higher level, cannot get it back in useful form.
So we know that we are more complex than our inanimate surroundings, and we know that complexity is quantifiable, meaning that we can put a number on it. The conclusion is this number, which I am calling the "Human Complexity Ratio", must be a very important number that we can expect to show up all around us.
Having a look at how this number might show up can help us to determine what it is. Following are some ways I have tried to do that.
The first thing that we might look at is the human body. If the body was homogeneous, the same throughout, it would be no more complex than it's surrounding inanimate environment. But that is not the case, the body has multiple organs that work together. We could expect that, the more separate organs the body has that work together, the more complex it will be. I think the number of major organs comprising the body must be equal to the number of times more complex the body is than the surrounding inanimate environment, which I define as the Human Complexity Ratio.
In my complexity theory plants are more intricate than the surrounding inanimate environment, meaning that they have more complexity per mass, but are actually no more complex, contain no more information, than the surrounding environment. That is why plants do not require free will. But we depend on plants for food and my thought is that the number of plants that we need for an optimum balanced diet, either directly or indirectly through meat, should equal the Human Complexity Number. Remember that much of the crops today have resulted from cross-breeding different plants, and the number would be the total number of those plants.
There is a temperature range on earth, from cold to hot. While we may be able to survive anywhere on earth, we are comfortable in only a narrow fraction of that temperature range. Since we have more complexity than the surrounding environment, this is what we should expect and the ratio of the total range to our comfort range is equal to the Human Complexity Ratio. This is about only the temperature range on earth, our environment, and not the range of temperatures in the universe, or down to absolute zero.
Humans can sense only a limited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that comes from the sun. As with the temperature range, this is what we should expect if we are more complex than our inanimate environment, and the ratio of the total solar spectrum to the visible light that we can see and the infrared that we can feel as heat is equal to the Human Complexity Ratio.
Whenever we make or build anything, we are imposing our higher level of complexity on our surrounding environment, and we can expect that the Human Complexity Ratio will show up there also. If a house is built, without financial constraints, my feeling is that the optimum number of rooms, without being too many, will be equal to the Human Complexity Ratio. We build houses to shield our higher complexity level from the surrounding lower complexity level, and we can expect that the house will reflect this complexity. This is why things that we make or build have a tendency to decay, break down or, malfunction. The lower level of complexity in the surrounding environment is trying to equalize the higher level that we have imposed on whatever we make.
If our houses reflect our higher level of complexity, but we have to be able to operate in each room of the house, obviously our houses must be a scale larger than us. But this scale difference should reflect the complexity difference. I got the idea that the ratio of the width of all doors of a house should average out to be the reciprocal of the Human Complexity Ratio, relative to the total circumference of the house. This, of course, only involves the first floor of the house.
We see and interact with our surrounding environment at our higher level of complexity. What I am thinking is that the number of broad classifications of labor and the number of broad classifications of education subjects should generally be a reflection of the Human Complexity Ratio.
The number that I finally decided on as the value of the Human Complexity Ratio is 18. This means that we are 18 times as complex as our surrounding environment, and the answer to all of the above examples is either 18 or 1 / 18.
33) MEET THE UNIVERSE
I have an idea to explain how the universe operates. Suppose that the universe could be transformed into a human being. What would the universe be like?
Have you ever known anyone who has difficulty making decisions? Do you sometimes have difficulty making decisions? You would actually have a lot in common with the universe.
If there is one thing that the universe cannot stand, that it will do anything to avoid, it is making a decision.
People used to believe that the earth was flat. Indeed a flat earth would require less information than a sphere, so that would seem to make sense.
But the earth is in space. This means that, if the earth was flat, it would have to be aligned in one particular geometric plane in space, to the exclusion of all other possible planes. But then that would involve deciding which plane the earth would be aligned in, and if there is anything the universe cannot stand doing it is making a decision.
So the universe simply doesn't decide on one plane. It chooses all possible planes. A sphere actually is flat, but it is flat in all possible geometric planes rather than just one. Each point on the surface of a sphere can be considered as a flat surface aligned in one plane.
Just imagine the universe going shopping. Since it would be unable to decide what it wanted in the store, it would just buy everything in the store to avoid having to decide. Even if there was a particular product that the universe wanted from a display, such as a can of drink and there were multiple cans, the universe would have to take all of the cans to avoid choosing one.
Now that the earth is a sphere, the universe is faced with another decision. How will the sphere be aligned in space? So that, for example, the sun will be at the 7 AM position in Toronto.
But the universe simply cannot decide. So what it does is makes all possible choices about how the earth will be aligned. The earth cannot be at all possible choices at once, so it goes through all of the choices. This is why the earth rotates.
If you ever meet the universe, after it has been transformed into a human being, be sure to never take it out for dinner. The universe would be unable to choose what it wanted from the menu, so it would just order everything on the menu. It certainly wouldn't be able to choose one restaurant over another, so it would have to be taken to all restaurants.
But when the earth, and other planets and stars, rotate, there actually is decisions that have to be made. For a sphere to rotate, it must rotate around an axis. For that to happen a decision must be made as to which direction in space the axis will be aligned. Also, it must be decided in which direction the rotation will be.
So we have gotten the universe to make decisions. It is actually energy that forces the universe into making decisions. But so resistant is the universe to making decisions that, even when it does make a decision, it counteracts it's choice by also making the opposite decision.
The way that our Solar System came together, by some of the matter of the star that preceded the sun coming back together by gravity to form the sun and planets, meant that one orbital plane, out of all possible geometric planes in space, would have to become predominant. This would be the primary factor in determining the rotational axes of each planet but would be, once again, a choice. Another choice would have to be in which direction the planets would revolve around the sun.
If our Solar System was all that there was to the universe then it would have been forced to make these choices. But the universe just cannot stand to make choices and it has found a way around this by making all possible choices.
The universe is so large, and has so many solar systems, that it is able to negate the choices that it has to make for each solar system by spreading all possible choices, of orbital plane, rotational axes and rotational direction, over all of it's solar systems.
This also applies to something like the rotational planes of spiral galaxies.
It is kind of like, when the universe went shopping, it simply bought everything in the store to avoid having to make any decisions. This means that all of the orbital planes of planets in solar systems in the universe must ultimately balance out equally in all directions.
To have it any other way would involve the universe having to make a decision, and we can see that the universe does whatever it can to avoid making decisions. So, even if we cannot see the far reaches of the universe we can be sure that all orbital planes and directions of rotation must ultimately balance out.
Every gravitational sphere, stars and planets and moons, that we can see are all different from one another. No two are alike. We can be sure that this must be true across the universe, no two spheres of matter that form by gravity can be exactly alike.
Suppose that a million gravitational spheres have formed, and are still forming and, thus far, no two are exactly alike. For any two gravitational spheres in the universe to be exactly alike, the universe would have to make a choice as to which one to replicate first.
Now we know how the universe just cannot stand to make decisions so the only way to avoid making such a decision is to have every gravitational sphere in the universe be different from every other gravitational sphere, no two being exactly alike. This is a lower information state than having some exactly like others, because choices would have to be made as to which ones, and choices are information.
So this gives us some insight into what the scale of the universe must be. Spheres are the default form for when gravity pulls matter together into stars, planets and, moon's. This is because the sphere is the 3D geometric form with the least energy and information.
But every gravitational sphere must be different from every other gravitational sphere, because that requires the least information and involves no choice as to which one to replicate first.
If gravity were stronger it would take fewer atoms to form a gravitational sphere and so the number of gravitational spheres that the universe could contain before they started to replicate would be reduced.
Heavier elements are produced by fusion of lighter atoms in stars. If there were fewer different atoms then the number of possible gravitational spheres in the universe, which have to be different from each other, would be reduced. This fits well with the formation of planets, which orbit second-generation stars and require a first-generation to first produce heavy elements by fusion and then explode in a supernova, because the supernova increases the number of different atoms in the universe and the planets increase the number of gravitational spheres.
This means that there must be a balance in the universe between the strength of gravity, which governs how many atoms are required to form a gravitational sphere, the number of different atoms and, the number of gravitational spheres in the universe.
34) THE ROLE OF ART, MUSIC AND, SPORTS
The role of those human endeavors that are not the "real world", particularly art, music and, sports, is they transmit patterns while allowing us the chance to work out the complexity that is then applied to the "real world". It is much like how children's games work out how the "real world" actually works.
Meanwhile, art and music is pleasing to us because we are more complex than our inanimate surroundings and is a reflection to us of our own higher level of complexity. Art and music can be defined as a form of mathematical expression using graphics or sound, in that the position of every element is defined relative to every other element. Again, we are imposing our higher level of complexity on our inanimate surroundings.
Before we had the complex modern technology, science and, society that came with the Renaissance, we had to work out and learn to use that complexity through art. Realist painting and sculpture had to come before modern design. As for the operation of modern society, we had to produce complex paintings, with all of the many parts "working together" to convey the meaning of the painting, before we could produce the "real world" constitutions that govern how society operates.
We certainly could not have the complex circuit boards in modern electronic devices without first working out the complexity in painting. Every part of the circuit must support all of the other parts, just as in the painting.
Surrealistic, or non-realistic, artwork gets us thinking outside of our vision, or "outside the box", and this gets us in the frame of mind to invent, to come up with new ideas, and to discover things that we cannot see with our vision.
Many early paintings and sculptures involved great anatomical detail. We had to become intimately familiar with anatomy through art before we could effectively apply it to medicine. In the same way we had to master rendering buildings, and their spatial relationship to each other, before we could have modern architecture.
Likewise the rhythm of poetry, and of music, is reflected in the rhythm of machines. Have you ever noticed the similarity between a song and the operation of an internal combustion engine?
The musical instruments, percussion, string, wind and, singing, work together in exactly the same way as the several systems of the engine. A song is usually led by a singer just as the thrust-generating system is the primary system of the engine. This is supported by the cooling, lubrication and, charging systems in exactly the same way that the musical instruments support the singer.
The engine's valves have to open, and spark plugs have to fire, according to a rhythm that is identical to that of a song. We definitely could not have had cars without music. We had to work out the complexity of the engine in songs first.
Any machine with moving parts, the gears in a clock for example, must work together like "clockwork", but this precise rhythm is just like that of a song and it was through music that we worked out the complexity that made machines with many moving parts possible.
Sports is where we work out the complexity and strategy involved when there is opposition to what we are trying to do. Ball games against a similar team in a different uniform have always been used as preparation for, and to work out the patterns of, warfare. On another level, games like chess have been used to work out the strategies that might be involved in war, just as card games allow the working out of strategies that might be applicable to either war or business in peacetime.
As always, as the old saying goes, "Art imitates life imitates art". We are at a higher level of complexity than our inanimate surroundings and it is where we can master and work out that complexity before applying it to the "real world". That is the purpose of art, music and, sports.
Would you like to read my story about imaginary space aliens who came to earth several times but never saw a human being However they found examples of human technology and, knowing that humans must replicate their own patterns in their technology, pieced together what humans must look like.
http://markmeekpatterns.blogspot.com/2009/07/reverse-archeology.html?m=0
35) THE SIMILARITY OF TASKS
Humans are at a higher level of complexity, containing more information, than our inanimate surrounding environment. When we alter our environment, such as creating technology or building settlements, we are imposing our higher level of complexity on the environment.
Our higher level of complexity does have it's disadvantages. It is why things that we make and build, and also our bodies, tend to break and deteriorate. The surrounding environment is trying to pull us down to it's lower level of complexity. Even though we know that energy can never be lost or destroyed, but only changed in form, we cannot get energy back, at least not in any useful form, once we have used it.
Energy and information is really the same thing. We can see this in how we cannot add information to anything without applying energy to it, and we cannot apply energy to anything without adding information to it. Another way we can see that energy and information is really the same thing is the way we can make our lives physically easier by technology, but only by making them more complex. We can never, on a large scale, make our lives both physically easier and also less complex.
We are at a higher level of complexity than our surrounding inanimate environment. We have to sustain that higher level with an intake of information. It seems to us that food gives us energy but remember that energy and information is really the same thing. Food is actually the input of information that we need to sustain our higher level of information over our surrounding environment.
We perceive our need for food so that we have the energy to move but movement contains more information than remaining still and the food actually contains information. Our digestive system destroys the information in the food, which is the information in plants but since energy, and thus information, can never be created or destroyed the information is transferred to us. The surrounding environment is trying to pull us down to it's lower level and our food sustains our higher level of information, at least for a while.
Just as we can never create energy out of nothing so we cannot create information out of nothing.
As human knowledge and technology increases society gets ever-more complex. There are more and more different job descriptions and tasks that we do. Even though we are imposing our own complexity on our environment it seems that eventually we would reach a point where the society that we have created is more complex than we are.
But yet that would have to be impossible because it would be creating information out of nothing, and we know that can never happen.
So here is what does happen. There is a principle that I will call the "Similarity Of Tasks". This principle ensures that the society that we create can never exceed our own complexity, so that information is never created out of nothing.
Many of the things that we do are very similar to other things. Humans have been hunting and fishing for thousands of years. Shopping today is very similar to hunting and fishing in that shoppers "hunt" for bargains while stores "fish" for customers. Investing money, in anticipation of getting a return, is likewise very similar to planting seeds in anticipation of reaping the harvest.
This similarity lowers the total complexity. When we have two objects or systems the more similarity there is between them the less total information there is. An equality contains less information than an inequality because we are only dealing with one piece of information, rather than two. So we should expect that the closer to an equality we are, the more similarity, the lower the total amount of information.
So we can be sure that no matter how much knowledge we gain, and how far we progress in technology and society, there will be more and more similarity between the tasks and things that we do so that the total information in all that we have created will never exceed the amount of information in ourselves.
36) THE NATURE OF THE INANIMATE UNIVERSE
One way to define life is by what it is not, by pointing out the differences between living things and inanimate matter. Also I believe that the way to understand the inanimate universe is to be sure that we are seeing it the way it really is by separating out our own nature from what the inanimate universe is without us.
Color is the first thing which comes to mind that does not really exist in the inanimate universe. There is really no such thing as red or blue or green outside of ourselves. Color is just the way our eyes and brains interpret different wavelengths of the visible light that we can see. Have you ever seen anything that is color-coded, such as signs or wires? Well, the way we see it, everything is actually color-coded.
Optical illusions, of course, do not really exist. There is really no blue sky or rainbows or sun dogs. Optical illusions are even less real than colors.
Words do not exist at all outside of our vocabulary. Everything is really numbers being manifested. Numbers do exist but words don't. Words are just a high-level perspective view of ours.
What I refer to as "Truth Pairs" do not exist outside of ourselves and other living things. There is no such thing as true or false, negative and positive, good and bad, or right and wrong. There are the electric charges that we refer to as positive and negative, but that is just a matter of our definition. True and false is just a matter of our perspective. We are more complex than our inanimate surroundings and so there is not enough information there for everything that we can conceive of to be true, so we perceive true and false. But, outside of living consciousness there is no such thing as false.
The peak, or optimum, factor is seen only in living things. It does not exist in the universe of inanimate matter. Living things have optimum conditions and amounts of such things as temperatures, food, physical activity and, sleep. This optimum tends to reach a peak, after which it declines. Processes in inanimate matter, such as flames and stars, just have a condition of the more matter, fuel or oxygen the better, which is an upward slope and not the peak pattern.
Quality and quantity is often referred to in human dealings. But in the universe of inanimate matter there is no such thing as quality, there is only quantity. Quality is just a perspective of living things.
Beauty is a form of quality that absolutely does not exist in the universe of inanimate matter. There is only numbers being manifested. There is no such thing as verbal description or quality or beauty.
In the universe of inanimate reality there is no such thing as a coincidence. This is just a random reduction in apparent complexity, as seen from our perspective. You see a person at the bus station on one side of town, and then just happen to run into them in the store on the other side of town. In the inanimate universe there is no such thing as a coincidence because it is only something that is perceived by beings of higher complexity than our surroundings, such as ourselves.
Sometimes we hear a saying like "It's an art not an exact science". This represents what I refer to as "realm sets". I define realm sets as either simple or complex. Simple and complex realm sets tend to exist in pairs. A simple realm is where a statement has to be either true or false. A complex realm is where two opposite statements can both be true. An obvious example of a simple realm is mathematics. An example of a complex realm is politics or economics, two opposite opinions can both have some validity, and the best position may be a compromise between the two. Mathematics is a simple realm not only because a mathematical statement must be either true or false but because we must completely understand something to describe it with numbers. Science is related to mathematics but we can use words, instead of numbers, to describe something that we do not completely understand. Art is a more complex realm than science because, unlike science or mathematics, art cannot really be "wrong" or incorrect. It is an expression of the effect that something has on the artist, rather than precise facts or measurements about it.
Entropy is often cited as a primary principle of how the universe operates. Entropy favors one direction over the opposite direction, the breaking down of the complex into the simple. An often-cited example of entropy is the placing of an open bottle of ink in an aquarium full of water. The ink will gradually disperse throughout the water. The principle of entropy is that it is a lot easier for the ink to disperse from the bottle throughout the water than it is for the ink to go back into the bottle. But every meaningful example of entropy that I have ever seen involves either living things, such as the complexity of a body being broken down after death, or things that have been made by living things, such as the bottle of ink and the aquarium. There is no meaningful examples of entropy in the universe of inanimate matter.
Negative numbers do not really exist. Our number system has a number line of positive numbers in one direction and negative numbers in the opposite direction. By convention two negative numbers multiplied produces a positive number, a positive and a negative number multiplied produces a negative number and two positive numbers multiplied produces a positive number. Adding a negative number to a positive number is the same as subtracting the number from the positive number. But my conclusion is that negative numbers do not exist in the universe of inanimate reality. Negative numbers have a starting point of zero and there cannot be less than nothing. Negative numbers exist only in things of human creation, such as debt. Temperature scales have below zero temperatures but these scales are of artificial human creation. A correct scale of temperature, in line with how the inanimate universe operates, begins at Absolute Zero so that there is no negative temperatures.
In the inanimate universe there is no such thing as top and bottom, front and back, or left and right. Planets and stars rotate, with a north and a south pole. But neither pole can really meaningfully be said to be the "top" or the "bottom" of the planet or star. It is only living things, or things made by living things such as houses, that have a definable top and bottom. The same can be said for front and back. No star or planet or galaxy has a meaningful front and back. But it is only living things with free will, including humans, that have a meaningful front and back. Plants have a definable top and bottom, but not a front and back. There is no such thing as the front and back of a tree. Left and right, of course, is meaningless in the universe of inanimate matter because defining it requires a front and back. I see the fact that people tend to be left- or right-handed as a matter of complexity. Left- or right-handedness is information and is a result of the brain being more complex than the body.
Alphabetization, as I refer to it, does not exist in the universe of inanimate matter. Alphabetization means something that doesn't make sense except as a subdomain of a larger whole. Consider a human foot, for example, a foot by itself doesn't make any sense, except as part of the human body. But that is not true at all of an inanimate object, such as a rock. A rock makes just as much sense whether it is within a planet, on the surface of the planet, or floating around in space.
37) THOSE WHO HAVE IT MADE
What would have to happen for us to "have it made"? We usually think of having enough money so that we could buy whatever we wanted and would never have to work again.
But we wouldn't completely "have it made" because there would still be work that we had to do, such as taking care of our bodies. We would still have to move from one place to another.
What "having it made" really comes down to is complexity. We are more complex than our surrounding inanimate environment so we must exert energy, doing work, in order to survive. Whenever we alter our environment, such as building settlements or creating technology, we are actually imposing our higher level of complexity on our environment.
Living in an environment that is less complex than our own complexity also means that we must have free will. The fact that our surrounding environment cannot hold all of the complexity that our more-complex brains can conceive of means that our necessary free will has the possibility of being wrong.
So to really "have it made" we would have to live in an environment that is just as complex as we are.
If we lived in a "paradise" environment, that was just as complex as we are, we would have no need to move or think to get what we needed to live. We would truly "have it made".
What about plants? Living things that are more complex than their surrounding environment require free will. Living things that are not more complex than their surrounding environment do not require free will. This means plants. In my information theory plants are of far higher intricacy, meaning complexity per mass, but of overall complexity that is not higher than the surrounding inanimate environment.
This means that plants are really the ones who "have it made". Plants require sustenance to live, since they do have higher intricacy than the surrounding environment, but they do not have to exert any effort to get it, since they are of no higher complexity than that environment.
Everything that plants need is delivered right to them by the surrounding environment. They get water and nutrients from the soil. All of the energy that they need comes to them from sunlight. They take molecules of carbon dioxide that the air brings to them and use the energy that sunlight brings to them to split the molecules. The leaves or needles of the trees return the oxygen to the air and use the atom of carbon to build up the structure of the plant.
From the plant's own perspective it "has it made". Everything that it needs to survive is brought right to it. Plants must be doing something right because there is only a certain limited number of bioatoms on earth, atoms that are necessary for living things, which living things compete for. It is believed that there are about a thousand times as many bioatoms in plants as there is in all living things that can move and have free will, including all microscopic creatures.
In the competition for bioatoms plants win easily and beings with free will are essentially parasites that are dependent on plants. This is yet another way that plants really "have it made". Plants are by far the dominant form of life on earth.
Plants cannot move. But why would they need to move? Everything that they need is brought to them by their surrounding environment. We can move but it is because we have to be able to move to get the things we need to survive.
Plants do not have senses. But why would they need to have senses? They do not have to seek anything that they need to survive because it is brought to them by their surrounding environment. We can see because we have to be able to in order to get what we need to survive.
Plants cannot think. But why would they need to think? They don't have free will because, although of higher intricacy, they are of no higher complexity than the surrounding environment. But why would they need to think? Since they are not of higher complexity than the surrounding environment, that environment is able to deliver to them all that they need to live.
Plants do not have civilization or great cities. But they have no need of civilization. Our civilization began when humans began to live in settlements, instead of a nomadic way of life. The reason for fixed settlements is that humans had learned to plant seeds to grow crops. The reason that humans needed a reliable supply of crops is that we are unable to digest grass. If humans could digest grass then civilization would have been unnecessary and of no benefit to us.
Aside from us not being able to digest grass another way we see that civilization is actually a sign of our weakness is in the places where civilization began. Humans are utterly dependent on water. So why then did the early civilizations begin in places that are dry? It doesn't seem to make sense.
The reason is that, in wet places, humans could survive by hunting and gathering and did not need civilization because wild foods were plentiful enough. But in dry areas people had to congregate around rivers to ensure a reliable supply of water. This weakness is why civilization began around major rivers like the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates and, Indus Rivers, which flow through areas that are usually dry. Further east the same principle applies to the civilizations that formed around the Hwang-Ho, Yangtze and, Pearl Rivers, that united to become China.
So the much sought after "having it made" comes down to complexity. The only way to truly "have it made", meaning that no work or effort is necessary to survival, is to not be of higher complexity than our surrounding environment. But then there would be no reason to have free will or the ability to move.
The earth is thus a paradise, but only for plants.
