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Layers of Information Continually Accumulate *Within* Objects Over Time
Summary:
Information can be shared between objects as evidence of a common history, indicating that objects are deeply rooted in time.
As the biosphere has evolved, it has increased the layers of information processing and abstraction, resulting in the generation of objects that are deeper in time. Consequently, some features of these objects appear less physical and more abstract.
Each individual accumulates information over time, making parts of them brand new and parts billions of years old.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
And so information we talked about has a sort of interesting property that seems very abstract. And it seems to be that information can move between objects, like we're speaking the same language, but when you can share information between objects like you and I speaking, what That is is evidence of a common history. These things that we call information and abstractions, I think, are just evidence that these objects are actually deep in time. So things look more abstract, the deeper and timely are. And it's one of the reasons I think that as the biosphere has evolved over time, it's increased the layers of information processing and abstraction that it's built. But really what it is is you're generating these objects that are deeper and deeper in time. And so some of their features look less and less physical because they're not physical now, they're physical in the structure that's extended in time.
Speaker 2
You have a lovely line in one of your papers where you say that each of us are our own age, but in many ways, we're thousands and thousands of years old because we have accumulated all that Information instead of genes to be who we are today.
Speaker 1
That's right. So parts of you are brand new. And parts of us are all brand new from this conversation because we've exchanged information and generated new structures. Parts of us are billions of years old.
Big Ideas — Time
Simplifying Complexity
Why Bigger Animals Live Longer: The Relationship between Size, Energy, and Longevity
Summary:
The larger an animal is, the more efficient it becomes in terms of energy consumption.
This is because the self-similar fractal structure of larger animals allows them to save energy. Bigger animals require less energy proportionally to run their bodies due to the massive amount of tissue per gram or per cell.
As a result, bigger animals experience less wear and tear and live longer than smaller animals.
The reason for less wear and tear is that bigger animals use less energy and create less damage, reducing entropy.
This principle can also be observed in machines, where those subjected to less stress and driven at lower revs per minute tend to last longer.
Transcript:
Speaker 2
So that's why we don't need to double our metabolism when we double our weight. It's that fractal like self similarity that allows us to get these essentially efficient savings in the amount of energy we need. So it's better to be bigger, isn't it? Because you don't need as much energy proportionally to run yourself. Correct.
Speaker 1
So you need massive tissue per gram of tissue or per cell. You need less energy, the bigger you are. And by the way, this has huge consequences throughout all aspects of biology and life. And maybe one just to tie it back to the beginning of this discussion where we started out by talking about aging and mortality. This means that the bigger you are, the less hard your cell is working. The bigger you are, there's less wear and tear the longer you live systematically. So this is the origin of why bigger things live longer than smaller things.
Speaker 2
And why is there less wear and tear if you're bigger?
Speaker 1
You're using less energy and creating less entropy. That is you're creating less damage the bigger you are because simply you're using much less energy if you have an engine, an automobile and you insist on racing it at 10,000 revs per Minute every time you drive it, I can assure you that car will not live as long as a car that's driven by a little old lady or a little old man like me who keeps the revs at about two or three Thousand revs per minute. So you know, cars and machines last much longer, the less stress you put on them.
Scaling 2 — You and I Are Fractals
Simplifying Complexity
Balancing Intellectual Exploration and Action
• There is an anti-pattern in certain podcasts that overemphasizes intellect and underemphasizes action.
• Consuming knowledge from brilliant people can be stimulating, but it may lead to overthinking and under-practicing.
• It is important to balance intellectual comprehension with taking action, initiating projects, and practicing.
• Encouraging agency, initiative, entrepreneurship, and proactive energy is crucial.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
One piece of the puzzle, I think, is that there's an anti-pattern of podcasts, especially in the game, B space and related sort of sense making intellectual philosophical spaces, Which is I'm concerned about an overdoing the intellect and an underdoing the action. You know, there's all of the people that you interview on your show. They're brilliant people. You know, and it's like, every time I can get a new episode of my favorite podcast and listen to this person and be like, wow, they're so smart. And it's really stimulating to listen to these smart people that can communicate really clearly. And the concern that I have is that people get into a habit of just consuming knowledge, just listening to more and more different people and assembling this sort of like pristine map Of how they think reality works. And maybe they start a little bit to think about how they might initiate some kind of community or some project or something that they're interested in, but still they do this thing of Like way over engineering and overthinking it and under practicing, under experimenting. And so my energy is to try and interfere with that tendency and push people more towards their agency, more towards their initiative, their entrepreneurship, their get up and do it Kind of energy.
EP51 Richard Bartlett on Self-Organizing Collaboration
The Jim Rutt Show
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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