More on What is Life?

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January 21, 2010 by styagi68


I am continuing from the thought of “Life is Free Choice.”  This actually has interesting implications.  If life is free choice, then it must be connected to a source of infinite and spontaneous energy.  Wo, wo, wo! Where did that come from, you ask.
Well, consider this.  Imagine a pool table with all the balls.  Let us say that we shook the table hard and the balls start moving around.  Now the balls willl keep moving around in accordance with the Newton’s laws, unless someone (a cue or hand) injects energy to change their direction or velocity.  This can’t be done without exerting energy.  So if any of the balls has free will and wants to change its direction or velocity, it will have to get energy from somewhere (an external source of energy). 
There is another way to look at it.  Think of free will as a state machine that can move to 0 or 1 based on all the inputs it observes coming into it.  If there is a deterministic way to predict whether it will be in 0 or 1 based on all the inputs then the state machine has no free will.  If however independent of the inputs, the statemachine could be in 0 or 1 then it has free will.  If it is not dependent on the inputs, then it must draw energy from an external source to go to state 0 or 1 in addition to what is the resultant of all the inputs.  Again this implies an external source of limitless energy. 
This works fine when we are dealing with a pool table or a statemachine.  However, if we think of the whole universe and imagine all the things in it as the pool table balls, from any of them to change direction or velocity, they will need energy, and that would imply an external source.  But what is external to the universe. 
So free will, which is by some argument the essence and differentiating factor of life, can’t be explained without imagining a limitless, spontaneous source of energy.

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