Thread by @0x49fa98

Temperature is the average energy of a population of molecules by virtue of their motion. More motion => higher temperature. Pressure is the average degree that a population of molecules pushes on its container.

It is tempting to define temp. and pressure as merely kinetic energy, but they are not, because they are a process of objective averaging that takes place spontaneously. In this sense they are "emergent":

If you join two bodies of water with different temperatures, energy will flow from the high temp one to the low temp one. The difference in temp will display a tendency to average itself

Temperature is "irreducible" in the sense that there is a mechanism by which it emerges, and the mechanism is not present in the subcomponents of the system. Understanding this mechanism, however, requires us to switch scales and focus on a lower level

We can understand the emergence of temperature by imagining a high and low temp body of water that come into contact. At the start there is a high degree of order, with high and low energy molecules arranged in a statistically unlikely way

A disordered state is one in which a large number of changes to the molecular distribution would leave the bulk state essentially unchanged. A much larger number of mutations to state result in the same warm body of water than in the initial hi/lo distribution.

The mechanism of emergence described for temperature is also true of pressure, density, and other "intensive" properties of molecular populations. Intensive properties create spontaneous (i.e., automatic) energy flows and in so doing fuel more complex processes

Intensive differences collapse, but if a difference is continuously refreshed, e.g., by placing one population near a fire, then the whole formed by the hot and cold populations can become a component part of a larger whole, playing a role like a battery in an electric device

The capacity of an intensive difference to act as an energy storage mechanism to a larger process is critical to understanding emergence at different levels of abstraction, so we will call these types of intensive differences as gradients (∇ is a nabla, read it as "gradient")

If a ∇ is intense enough & it persists it is also an engine, and it can cause a molecular population to self-organize into a circular motion pattern called a convection cell. The cell forms as the ∇ to cancel itself out even as its external constraints prevent it from doing so

A rainstorm is an emergent system. A temperature ∇ forms between the ocean surface and the atmosphere. The vertical ∇ causes air and vapor to flow up, forming half of a convection cell. Warm air moves up and becomes cooler => phase transition, water droplets suspended in air

The latent heat of the phase transition increases the temperature of the air current and propelling it further up. This self-stimulating is repeated several times allowing the updraft to reach great heights. When the water gets cold/heavy enough it falls as rain and hail.

Gradients exist every scale of physical reality; kinetic energy ∇s give rise to chemical ∇s, wherein "ordered" distributions of different substances give rise to convection cells powered by chemical reactions, such as the reactions of acids and bases, or oxidation-reduction

Chemical ∇s give rise to biological ∇s. (Creationists, look away) Amino acids form bonds to create proteins, cooperating networks of catalytic polymers act as proto-metabolisms, eventually giving rise to self-replicating convection cells.

When a convection cell creates conditions that refresh its own causative gradient, this is called an auto-catalytic loop. A biological cell is an auto-catalytic chemical loop. such loops still rely on outside energy sources in order to execute.

Biological ∇s give rise to intelligence ∇s: Convection cells form auto-catalytic loops between biological cells, yielding multicellular life. ∇s within bodies give rise to cephalization, harnessing information integration via perception into the service of auto-catalysis

Intelligence ∇s give rise to sociological ∇s. Cephalized biomasses develop ways to coordinate with each other via signalling. Convection cells between agents and groups of agents become societies; societies generate surpluses in the form of idle intelligence

Sociological ∇s give rise to technological ∇s. Social entities use biological capital to make technology the way biological entities use chemical capital to intelligence.

https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1030443960295022592

At every level of the process of emergence, efficient auto-catalytic loops generate energy surpluses which bubble up into higher layers of emergence. In a sense, capital IS energy surplus, specifically the surplus that layer N uses to realize layer N+1

When a new layer emerges we call that a singularity

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying. There is nothing necessary about any "higher" level that it should flow inevitably from a "lower" level, there is no sense in which higher levels are morally better, most of all, there is no "arc of the universe"

The critical thing to understand is that capital is polymorphic, it isn’t a specific thing, it’s a gradient in a lower level of emergence that fuels the layer above it. It’s a tendency of intensive differences to fulminate into new STRATA of being

To a plant, hydrogen and water are capital and photosynthesis is labor. As plants grow they inevitably form ecosystems which are convection cells that create selective pressures that produce intelligence

In the same way, human projects cannot succeed without producing society. Any time you do anything competently you are creating orderly intensive differences in the social stratum and that powers the social convection that gives rise to technology

Mao Zedong had the notion that capital springs up like mushrooms everywhere. He hated capital but he recognized that you need a constant permanent revolution to suppress it

Full communism is the only true anti-capitalism because it deliberately lobotomizes all human activity in an attempt to realize a steady state of humanity, a state of infinite stagnation

https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1024462262038224896

Any time you do anything that produces an economic surplus, you are abstractly doing capital. The question becomes how to suppress capital accumulation.

You can’t do anything self-reinforcing, anything that funds itself over time. You can’t have any successful organization or social structure. All successes are always “capitalism” because capital is a systemic property of emergent systems