On the thermodynamics of prediction under dissipative adaptation

TL;DR

This paper explores how thermodynamic principles underpin the emergence of complex, predictive information processing systems from simple dissipative structures, highlighting the role of efficiency and hierarchy in this transition.

Contribution

It combines thermodynamic and information-theoretic perspectives to explain the evolution from simple dissipative structures to complex, predictive systems.

Findings

Dissipated heat bounds non-predictive information.

High efficiency drives systems towards predictive capabilities.

Hierarchy of dissipative systems facilitates complexity emergence.

Abstract

On the one hand, the dissipated heat of a thermodynamic work extraction process upper bounds the non-predictive information, which the associated system encodes about its environment. Thus, emergent information processing capabilities can be understood from the perspective of a pressure towards high thermodynamic efficiency. On the other hand, the second law of thermodynamics plays a crucial role in the emergence of complex, self-organising dissipative structures. Such structures are thermodynamically favoured, because they can dissipate free energy reservoirs, which would not be accessible otherwise. Thereby, they allow a closed system to move from one meta-stable state to another meta-stable state of higher entropy. This paper will argue, that these two views are not contradictory, but that their combination allows to understand the transition from simple self-organising dissipative structures to complex information processing systems. If the efficiency required by a dissipative structure to harvest enough work from the channeled flow of free energy to maintain its own structure is high, there is a drive for this system to be predictive. Still, the existence of this dissipative system is thermodynamically favoured, compared to a situation without any dissipative structure. Due to the emergence of a hierarchy of dissipative systems, which by themselves are non-equilibrium structures that can be dissipated, such a drive develops naturally, as one ascends in this hierarchy further and further away from the initial driving disequilibrium.