physical economics

Economics can be given solid roots in physical-science with a bit of help from modern-day information theory. This lets one assign objective (long-term exchangable) value to assets, thereby adding stability to markets otherwise based on media-manipulated confidence, computerized trading-algorithms, and e-trader typos.

For instance, in this context the objective physical-assets (as distinct from credit-assets) that humans offer to the layered niche-network that they comprise are their knowledge and their ability to do work.

Similar KL-divergence based yardsticks for the value of other physical assets (relative to ambient or expected) may be developed and applied:

• to energy assets (like gasoline & food) in context of their available work (with or without considering their surprisal on other levels),
• to mineral assets in terms of their utility and abundance,
• to information assets (including species diversity) in terms of their accessibility as well as the time and effort needed to acquire them,
• and what else?

In this same context money, "assigned property", and even some types of "assigned responsibility" may be in essence credit for prior work i.e. a different type of information in structure. Like all forms of subsystem correlation, the value of these things is also delocalized (i.e. removable on either side of the correlation) and by the second law unlikely (but still able) to grow by accident.

Translating the physical assets mentioned in paragraphs 2 and 3 above into (i) other physical assets, and (ii) into liquid and/or long-shelf-life credit assets, may be positive-sum (correlation enhancing) objectives. Finding ways to latch onto credit generated others with minimal constructive effort on your own part may be zero-sum or negative-sum instead.

hoop-hopping hoots

We occasionally bring up the subject here of broadcasts that reduce others to code by pandering to our primate instincts for gratuitous cartoonification. Hoot hoot!

But of course, us primates didn't evolve with an internet that could mindlessly broadcast hoots willy nilly to play with the feelings of millions. Is this a potential concern?

Would a program of hoot-stamps help to let consumers know which, if any, hoops hoots have hopped through before they were broadcast? This might for instance help folks filter toots and tweets too according to their own niche, rather than being beset with broadcasts informed to their listener's species alone.

non-zero-sumness

Robert Wright in his book Non-Zero discusses the relationship between "non-zero-sumness" and evolving organic & social correlations. Non-zero-sumness arises whenever mutual information (I_AB) is used to measure the correlation between two systems A and B. This is because uncertainty about the whole (S_AB) becomes less than the sum of uncertainties about individual parts (namely S_A+S_B), since I_AB = S_A+S_B-S_AB ≥ 0.

The practical bureaucratic need for categorization notwithstanding, putting others in their place via "in the box" cartoonification may remove the sense of collaborative perspective (e.g. over time) from the interaction between organisms. This could well threaten non-zero-sumness, negatively impact niche-network layer-multiplicity (NNLM), and eventually take its toll on life's future standing crop.

These insights also relate to the logos of evolution's direction. The natural and physical sciences on many levels confirm that complexity in the form of layered subsystem-correlations depends on a source of available work (or more generally on KL-divergence). Hence increasing complexity is not the inevitable destiny of any physical system. It's instead a delicate opportunity that might be enjoyed if and only if we: (a) work at it, and (b) are gifted with continued blessings from the world around.

cost/benefit change

E-communications have preferentially increased the manipulative impact of, and funding for, non-local appeals to fear, anger & xenophobia.

There is multiplicative (i.e. runaway dI/dt ∝ I) potential here, particularly when such non-local appeals seize on this opportunity to warn you vociferously about other non-local appeals, as when the lawless rail against evil, bigots against totalitarians, etc.

Constructive local action (e.g. washing dishes, or developing locally-relevant resources not accessible to the open web) might be one way to minimize the number of your clock cycles wasted on long-distance cartoonification.

What are some other tools that might help us mitigate this corollary effect of rapid information flow?

food and fuel

Decreases in locally-available free-energy/capita often result in loss of niche-network layer-multiplicity & genetic/memetic diversity.

Key elements to counter the impact of such reductions in the short term (likely to take place on a myriad of time scales), as well as the eventual global collapse likely in the long run, include:

• targeted support of subsystem correlations on multiple scales of space, time, and organization,

• constructive development of information resources in concert with collaborative action,

• and what else?

modernized maxim

There is no sustainably free lunch, i.e. all net surprisal extracts a cost in thermodynamic availability.

What's new here is that:

• we've added sustainably, since in the short run free lunches can be obtained from time to time but not in a steady-state fashion,

• thermodynamic availability (e.g. in bits) and net surprisal (KL-divergence) are used to restate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in way which applies nicely to complex non-equilibrium systems,

• and what else?

starsmoke droplets

Tiny interstellar-onion spaceships were filled with unlayered sheets of fresh-baked carbon atoms & delivered to our corner of the Milky Way.

This tasty tweet refers to recent laboratory study of micron-sized starsmoke spheres whose carbon atoms were cooked up in red giant stars across the early galaxy, condensed in those cool star atmospheres, and delivered to earth by primitive meteorites to be extracted by cosmochemists at U. Chicago and studied in labs of the midwest.

Many of your carbon atoms also arrived here in spaceships like this. Recent developments suggest a role for supercooled liquid carbon droplets in their process of formation.