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As Anonymous Monk said, thermodynamics is one aspect. There are others.

One could say that life is a state machine. If an event leads to an unresolvable state, the engine stops, and after consuming the timeout - if any - exits, if no outside event comes in which resolves the state at hand.

Looking at the case of somebody with a heart attack: does some help from outside come in (0|1)? Does it come in time to avoid damage (0|1)? As time progresses, so does the damage (think last loop of DESTROY), until the state machine finally exits.

There's the famous psychologist Victor Frankl who coined life (and reality, irreality and future, past, present) in terms of decisions. Life is a constant call for decisions. Among all the possibilities for decisions at hand, only the chosen one can become a reality; all others are irreal after the decision making. So reality is the sum of all decisions taken; and when there are no more decisions available, life ends.

And that's what's pretty binary: either you decide yourself, or you don't (in which case other parts of the state machine might or not carry out the choice for you).

Of course the engines of the layers physics (time, space, matter, energy) and psychics (configuration of the former) are intertwined, so there is never a clear binary state except the last, which has been one, and now and then is zero (apologists of reincarnation object, of course).

Third, if dimensions are quantised, so must be time, energy, and gravitation, since they are intertwined. This resolves the race of Achilles and the tortoise. Even if we give in to Zenon and trade division for time, there is no infinite (=eternal) division: it stops at the quantum level. Either Achilles passed the tortoise, or didn't (0|1). That's a quantum leap in space and time. Of which we can conclude that both Achilles and the tortoise are bucking in their advancement - as we all do. *sigh*

perl -le'print map{pack c,($-++?1:13)+ord}split//,ESEL'

In reply to Re^6: Rand'n'Brand by shmem
in thread Ayn Rand vs. Stewart Brand by nysus

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