Merlinnz Blog | Thinking creates wealth | Page 2

 

 

“Intelligence should be viewed as a physical process that tries to maximise future freedom of action and avoids constraints in its own future.”

~(Alexander Wissner-Gross)~

Merlinnz Blog | Thinking creates wealth | Page 2: Alexander Wissner-Gross developed a single equation to explain intelligence, he calls it, “the closest thing to an E=MC2 for intelligence.” In the equation, F is a force that acts so to maximize future freedom of action. It acts with some strength, T with the diversity of possible accessible futures, S, up to some future time horizon, Tau. In short, intelligence maximizes future freedom of action and keeps options open. Intelligence not only correlates with the production of long-term entropy, but actually emerges directly from it.



Throughout history, poets, philosophers and heretics of all kinds have tried to express the kind of openness of mind that leads to reliably good outcomes. In the 70s Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics introduced a generation to the intersection of science and Eastern thought. Now, we can add Alexander Wissner-Gross, a computational physicist to that crowd.



As Anthony Kosner explains in his Forbes article, “It may be that it has taken us more than century to acclimate to the intellectual disruptions set in motion by Einstein. In classical physics, entropy is the enemy, something that tears down what we build up. But in the quantum world, the chaos of entropy is the vitality of life. And it reveals itself not in grand historical revolutions or world wars, but in our casual, everyday activities. We cultivate open minds not because we are liberal or conservative, young or old, but because we understand intuitively that it is a matter of survival—physically, emotionally and intellectually—to maximize access to future possibilities.”