14: Entropy is in the Eye of the Beholder - An Artifact of Conscious Agents Downsampling Reality

This is the reading of a written piece making a case for increasing entropy as an artifact of the way conscious agents apply serial lossy downsampling of an infinitely complex reality, rather than as a trait inherent in the universe.

Essentially, entropy is a measure about the information we have about a system, which is always subject to the bandwidth constraints of consciousness. These bandwidth constraints result in continual downsampling or compression of reality from moment to moment, resulting in a compounding loss of information. This results in the perception of increasing entropy as experienced by the observer. This perception is largely consistent between observers, since we as observers are part of the system being observed, and therefore experience a certain measure of consensus reality. I then argue that entropy actually decreases for the observer with injections of information about the system, which appears as increasing the bandwidth which is dictating the downsampling or compression of reality. This occurs through evolution, as well as through the arc of one's life from newborn to adult, but can also occur by increasing one's state of awareness through practices like meditation. I argue that within idealism, there is no such thing as a closed system.

Link:

Substack Link - https://mormonsmysticsandmuons.substack.com/p/entropy-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder

Essentia Article - https://www.essentiafoundation.org/entropy-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction

01:31 Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

04:18 Objections to the Second Law

05:17 Sabine Hossenfelder's Perspective on the Second Law

08:21 Stephen Wolfram's Cellular Automata

10:24 Stephen Wolfram's Ruliad

11:39 Stephen Wolfram's Perspective on the Second Law

15:25 Stephen Wolfram's Perspective on Quantum Physics and Consciousness

16:30 Donald Hoffman's Interface Theory of Perception

18:30 Donald Hoffman's Model of Conscious Agents

20:23 Donald Hoffman's Markovian Dynamics and Entropy

22:28 Intersubjectivity

24:07 Bernardo Kastrup's Analytical Idealism as a Model for Intersubjectivity

27:00 QBism as a Model for Intersubjectivity

28:26 Overcoming Entropy

32:28 Conclusion