CitationsAdd new citationList by: CiterankMap Link[1] Does a Computer have an Arrow of Time?
Author: Maroney, O.J.E. - Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Ontario Cited by: Peter Baldwin 7:21 AM 25 August 2011 GMT Citerank: (1) 112950Landauer's principle reversesThe author of the paper cited below examines the derivation of Landauer's Principle and finds that the physical assumptions required for an entropy decreasing universe reverse the result so that logical operations require entropy decreases rather than increases - the reverse of the usual case.13EF597B URL: | Excerpt / Summary The existence of Non-Equilibrium Steady States (NESS), on the other hand, are not time symmetric. Complex biochemical structures that arise in far from equilibrium conditions are associated with fundamentally time asymmetric, entropy increasing processes. The time reverse of these processes in entropy decreasing universes will lead to a different sequence of NESS, entropy decreasing processes. These complex structures are also the building blocks from which the biological processes are constructed that are necessary to house the information gathering and utilising systems.
A generalisation of this may be conjectured: any time asymmetry that is supposed to be a consequence of the thermodynamic time asymmetry, cannot be expressed solely in terms of sequences of QSES. If we are to find stable states whose time asymmetry is a consequence of thermodynamics, their properties must come from NESS, not QSES. This suggests that the ideas of complexity, rather than information, are needed.
The suggestion is made that an entropic arrow of time will never be found in processes that can be defined solely in terms of a succession of Quasi-Static Equilibrium States. Information processing can be so defined. If the psychological arrow of time is to be aligned with the thermodynamic arrow, it cannot be through the information processing properties of the brain. It may be through the biochemical structures that arise in Non-Equilibrium Steady State processes, but if so, it is certainly not through any information processing characterisation of such structures. This would seem to imply that at least one aspect of conscious experience cannot be logically supervenient on the states of a computer. If instead the psychological arrow of time does indeed arise out of information processing properties, this would mean that the psychological arrow is logically independant of the thermodynamic arrow of time.
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