Recent content by Robert Webb

Everything is quantised when you look at it close enough. What about quantum probability waves themselves? If the quantum multiverse interpretation were true, then each quantum decision leads to a splitting of the universe. But this isn't a binary choice, it's a probability distribution. For...

I wrote a program called Stella4D (http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php) for investigating polyhedra and 4D polytopes (it's commercial software FYI). It has a little-known feature to build new polyhedra using a spring-relaxation system, from a description of its topology alone. I used it...

My point was that WE decided what counted as important macrostates. We could have found something else significant, eg doubles (1+1, 2+2 etc), in which case we'd get different results. This is what I mean about apples and oranges. If we're allowed to count ordered states of the Rubik's cube...

Thanks for the link. It uses rolling a pair of dice as an analogy, but this is just an analogy, right? If entropy in physics is measured by the amount of useful energy, then all dice rolls would be equal. Entropy is meaningless without an agreement on what counts as ordered. Eg rather than...

OK, thanks for the Maxwell's Demon reference, that helped. I was viewing order as "meaningful" (depends on your point of view) subsets of state-space and their ratio (or some function of it) of the total state-space. Now I see alternative definitions which tie the 2nd law specifically to...

Really? Do you really disagree that the 2nd law, which explains increasing entropy, is based on the assumption of random state-change? I thought that part at least was uncontroversial. If I'm wrong, that's fine, but I'm here to understand why I'm wrong and gain a better understanding, which...

Something I've always wondered: why do we measure the amount of disorder (entropy) rather than the amount of order? We don't measure brightness by the amount of "dark". Surely order is the thing of interest, so why don't we measure that rather than measuring the absence of it? And in...

Sorry to come to this discussion late, but I'd like to expand on the original question. I don't buy the quantum argument, but I do think life (and computers and solved jigsaws etc) "seem" too ordered to say they took that order from the sun. My answer involves looking at the 2nd law itself...

Hi, bit late, but couldn't resist commenting on this. I was interested to see Grinberg's theorem, which I wasn't aware of. The wikipedia page shows an example of a non-Hamiltonian graph, so I wondered what this would look like in 3D as a polyhedron. As it happens I wrote a program called...