This is an automated rejection. No LLM generated, heavily assisted/co-written, or otherwise reliant work.
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My research didn't start with fMRI scans or wetware biology. It started with a fundamental physics question: What is the actual dynamics of thinking?
When we say we "understand" something, or when we have a sudden "realization," what has physically occurred in the universe? We usually treat thoughts as abstract software events—ghostly patterns floating above the biological structures. But if we shift to a physicalist perspective, "thinking" must be a mechanical process. It must occupy space, occur over time, and—crucial to my research—it must obey the laws of thermodynamics!
I wanted to know how "understanding" sits in this universe. Specifically, I wanted to know if the transition from confusion to clarity has a metabolic basis. If yes, what does it cost?
1. Defining the Microstates, Chaos v/s Crystal
To model this, I had to strip away the mysticism of psychology and define cognitive states using Information Thermodynamics. I utilized the Boltzmann definition of entropy:
S = k_B ln Ω
Where Ω represents the number of accessible microstates consistent with the macrostate.
The State of "Confusion" (Chaos):
Thermodynamically, we can define confusion as a High-Entropy State. The probability distribution of potential beliefs is flat and wide (you don't know what is true, so p(x) approx. 1/N for all possibilities). Neural firing is stochastic, uncorrelated, and explores a massive volume of state space. Basically just a random, messy construct state.
The State of "Understanding" (Crystal):
Insight is a Low-Entropy State. It is a rigid structure where probability distributions collapse into a narrow peak (p(success) → 1). The system has "frozen" into a specific, highly correlated configuration.
Omega_crystal → 1
Therefore, the act of thinking—the transition from Confusion to Insight—is literally a phase transition. It is the collapse of high-entropy into a low-entropy manifold.
2. The Thermodynamic Tax
Once you define thinking as "local entropy reduction," you immediately run into the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You cannot simply reduce entropy for free.
Landauer’s Principle dictates that the erasure or manipulation of information comes with a minimum energetic cost. The formula is:
E ≥ k_B T ln 2
If the brain acts as a thermodynamic engine designed to extract entropy from sensory data, a conservation cycle must occur:
Internal Entropy Drops: The brain performs work to reduce its local entropy (ΔS_brain < 0) to create the "Crystal."
External Entropy Rises: To satisfy the Global Second Law (ΔS_total ≥ 0), the brain must export that entropy into the environment!
But how?, The brain exports this entropy as Heat (Q_heat). This led to the core hypothesis, almost like a 'motto',
"To learn is to burn energy; to understand is to cool the resulting chaos into a crystal".
The "Focus" you feel when studying isn't just mental effort; it is the subjective experience of the brain generating metabolic heat to force local entropy to decrease.
3. The Paradox, why do we not cook!?
This creates a critical biological problem. If every major realization releases latent heat (analogous to the "heat of fusion" when water freezes into ice), why doesn't the neural tissue overheat and denature during intense problem-solving?
I hypothesized that the brain utilizes a specific thermodynamic mechanism to handle this load, which I termed the "Cold Body" Subconscious.
We physically defined the subconscious not as a hidden psychological space, but as a High-Inertia Thermal Reservoir.
Active Inference Connection: In Karl Friston’s framework, a strong prior belief is one with high "precision" (γ). Thermodynamically, high precision equals high rigidity—it refuses to fluctuate.
The Heat Sink: This "Cold Body" utilizes hemodynamic perfusion (blood flow) to absorb the entropy discharge. When the "flash" of realization occurs, this sink clamps the temperature rise, preserving the integrity of the neural manifold.
To prove this wasn't just a metaphor, I simulated it using rigorous biophysics.
4. The Simulation: The Pennes Bioheat Equation
I utilized Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to model a volumetrically discretized neural domain. Instead of simple topological models, I used the Pennes Bioheat Equation, which is the gold standard for heat transfer in perfused biological tissue.
The governing equation for the temperature field T(x,t) is:
Here is the theoretical mapping of these terms to cognition:
Diffusion: The spread of information/energy through the tissue matrix (White/Gray matter).
The Perfusion Sink. This is the physical mechanism of the "Cold Body." It represents the blood supply actively removing the heat of computation.
Q_insight, The Cost of Ordering: I modeled "Insight" as a transient metabolic power surge (5 x 10^5 W/m^3). This represents the massive ATP hydrolysis required by GABAergic interneurons (specifically Parvalbumin+ fast-spikers) to "clamp" the neural noise and freeze the system in order.
5. The 29 mK Signature
I ran the simulation on a spherical manifold (r=1 cm) representing a cortical node. The crystallization event (the insight) was triggered at t=0.5s.
The Thermal Flash:
Upon initiation, the system didn't explode. Instead, it exhibited a rapid, non-linear thermal excursion.
The local tissue temperature rose from a baseline of 37.0000℃ to a peak of 37.0286℃.
This gives us a specific, quantifiable number for the "heat of thought": ΔT of approx. 29 millikelvins.
The Return to Equilibrium:
Immediately after the event (t > 0.7s), the temperature decayed exponentially! This validates the "Cold Body" hypothesis: the blood perfusion effectively acted as a heat sink, "clamping" the thermal escape before it could cause macro-scale damage.
6. Theoretical Implications: Entropic Enactment
The results got me curious, simulation suggests that Intelligence is fundamentally limited by cooling. That means, we cannot process information infinitely fast because we cannot dissipate the "entropy heat" fast enough!
The "mental fatigue" we feel is likely the subjective experience of the system reaching its thermodynamic capacity to dissipate this heat.
But there is a second, more radical implication I call Entropic Enactment.
If the subconscious acts as a "Cold Body" (a rigid, low-entropy system), it creates a thermodynamic anomaly..!
The Environment is a "Hot Body" (High Entropy/Stochastic).
The Agent is a "Cold Body" (Low Entropy/Rigid).
In classical thermodynamics, heat flows from Hot to Cold (analogous to, the environment warming the agent → The agent becomes confused).
But if the Agent maintains high Precision (emotions as a catalyst, such as "faith"), it refuses to warm up. It refuses to accept the entropy!
To satisfy the Second Law, the interaction must reverse. The Agent becomes a Heat Pump. It performs Work (W) on the environment to pump disorder out of its vicinity.
Cognitive Translation: The agent stops updating its beliefs (Perceptual Learning) and starts acting to change the world (Active Inference) - probabilistically on events.
Physics Translation: The "Cold Body" forces the information entropy-based stochastic environment to align with its internal crystal structure.
This validates the idea that "manifesting" or "enacting" isn't magic—it is the thermodynamic necessity of a system that refuses to increase its own entropy.
7. Final Thoughts: Defining "Existance" with "Life/Being Alive."
Now, this led to a profound shift in our perspectives, opening a door to an Avalanch of questions. For, instance, with this understanding, what can we define "Life" as?
A primary factor in our definition of an intelligent being was consciousness or subconscious for the capability to "think/reason", but this journey proposes its physical process, discarding any mystic action.
Then, can we define everything in the Universe with the capability to or is "sequentializing", that is, against natural entropy by paying a cost, as something that "thinks" but isn't a "being" in our definition due to the lack of external supporting systems? But then, another perspective of this could be that - anything that "exists" is literally a "sequenced" form from the natural entropy defining its very existence as "thinking" (or a new term to be defined for it)..!?
Data & Code Availability:
I believe this physics should be open.
The Paper: You can read the full dissertation and derivation on Zenodo
The Simulational data: You can replicate the FEA simulations (Poisson & Heat Diffusion solvers) using the Python scripts in my repo
I am very curious to hear from the LessWrong community—Maybe the feeling of "cognitive dissonance" is actually just the subjective experience of a high-thermal-gradient state! This could shift paradigms on our understanding of "existence"..!
With that, it's time for us to leap To The Beyond!
My research didn't start with fMRI scans or wetware biology. It started with a fundamental physics question: What is the actual dynamics of thinking?
When we say we "understand" something, or when we have a sudden "realization," what has physically occurred in the universe? We usually treat thoughts as abstract software events—ghostly patterns floating above the biological structures. But if we shift to a physicalist perspective, "thinking" must be a mechanical process. It must occupy space, occur over time, and—crucial to my research—it must obey the laws of thermodynamics!
I wanted to know how "understanding" sits in this universe. Specifically, I wanted to know if the transition from confusion to clarity has a metabolic basis. If yes, what does it cost?
1. Defining the Microstates, Chaos v/s Crystal
To model this, I had to strip away the mysticism of psychology and define cognitive states using Information Thermodynamics. I utilized the Boltzmann definition of entropy:
S = k_B ln Ω
Where Ω represents the number of accessible microstates consistent with the macrostate.
The State of "Confusion" (Chaos):
Thermodynamically, we can define confusion as a High-Entropy State. The probability distribution of potential beliefs is flat and wide (you don't know what is true, so p(x) approx. 1/N for all possibilities). Neural firing is stochastic, uncorrelated, and explores a massive volume of state space. Basically just a random, messy construct state.
The State of "Understanding" (Crystal):
Insight is a Low-Entropy State. It is a rigid structure where probability distributions collapse into a narrow peak (p(success) → 1). The system has "frozen" into a specific, highly correlated configuration.
Omega_crystal → 1
Therefore, the act of thinking—the transition from Confusion to Insight—is literally a phase transition. It is the collapse of high-entropy into a low-entropy manifold.
2. The Thermodynamic Tax
Once you define thinking as "local entropy reduction," you immediately run into the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You cannot simply reduce entropy for free.
Landauer’s Principle dictates that the erasure or manipulation of information comes with a minimum energetic cost. The formula is:
E ≥ k_B T ln 2
If the brain acts as a thermodynamic engine designed to extract entropy from sensory data, a conservation cycle must occur:
But how?, The brain exports this entropy as Heat (Q_heat). This led to the core hypothesis, almost like a 'motto',
"To learn is to burn energy; to understand is to cool the resulting chaos into a crystal".
The "Focus" you feel when studying isn't just mental effort; it is the subjective experience of the brain generating metabolic heat to force local entropy to decrease.
3. The Paradox, why do we not cook!?
This creates a critical biological problem. If every major realization releases latent heat (analogous to the "heat of fusion" when water freezes into ice), why doesn't the neural tissue overheat and denature during intense problem-solving?
I hypothesized that the brain utilizes a specific thermodynamic mechanism to handle this load, which I termed the "Cold Body" Subconscious.
We physically defined the subconscious not as a hidden psychological space, but as a High-Inertia Thermal Reservoir.
To prove this wasn't just a metaphor, I simulated it using rigorous biophysics.
4. The Simulation: The Pennes Bioheat Equation
I utilized Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to model a volumetrically discretized neural domain. Instead of simple topological models, I used the Pennes Bioheat Equation, which is the gold standard for heat transfer in perfused biological tissue.
The governing equation for the temperature field T(x,t) is:
Here is the theoretical mapping of these terms to cognition:
Diffusion: The spread of information/energy through the tissue matrix (White/Gray matter).
The Perfusion Sink. This is the physical mechanism of the "Cold Body." It represents the blood supply actively removing the heat of computation.
5. The 29 mK Signature
I ran the simulation on a spherical manifold (r=1 cm) representing a cortical node. The crystallization event (the insight) was triggered at t=0.5s.
The Thermal Flash:
Upon initiation, the system didn't explode. Instead, it exhibited a rapid, non-linear thermal excursion.
The local tissue temperature rose from a baseline of 37.0000℃ to a peak of 37.0286℃.
This gives us a specific, quantifiable number for the "heat of thought": ΔT of approx. 29 millikelvins.
The Return to Equilibrium:
Immediately after the event (t > 0.7s), the temperature decayed exponentially! This validates the "Cold Body" hypothesis: the blood perfusion effectively acted as a heat sink, "clamping" the thermal escape before it could cause macro-scale damage.
6. Theoretical Implications: Entropic Enactment
The results got me curious, simulation suggests that Intelligence is fundamentally limited by cooling. That means, we cannot process information infinitely fast because we cannot dissipate the "entropy heat" fast enough!
The "mental fatigue" we feel is likely the subjective experience of the system reaching its thermodynamic capacity to dissipate this heat.
But there is a second, more radical implication I call Entropic Enactment.
If the subconscious acts as a "Cold Body" (a rigid, low-entropy system), it creates a thermodynamic anomaly..!
In classical thermodynamics, heat flows from Hot to Cold (analogous to, the environment warming the agent → The agent becomes confused).
But if the Agent maintains high Precision (emotions as a catalyst, such as "faith"), it refuses to warm up. It refuses to accept the entropy!
To satisfy the Second Law, the interaction must reverse. The Agent becomes a Heat Pump. It performs Work (W) on the environment to pump disorder out of its vicinity.
This validates the idea that "manifesting" or "enacting" isn't magic—it is the thermodynamic necessity of a system that refuses to increase its own entropy.
7. Final Thoughts: Defining "Existance" with "Life/Being Alive."
Now, this led to a profound shift in our perspectives, opening a door to an Avalanch of questions. For, instance, with this understanding, what can we define "Life" as?
A primary factor in our definition of an intelligent being was consciousness or subconscious for the capability to "think/reason", but this journey proposes its physical process, discarding any mystic action.
Then, can we define everything in the Universe with the capability to or is "sequentializing", that is, against natural entropy by paying a cost, as something that "thinks" but isn't a "being" in our definition due to the lack of external supporting systems? But then, another perspective of this could be that - anything that "exists" is literally a "sequenced" form from the natural entropy defining its very existence as "thinking" (or a new term to be defined for it)..!?
Data & Code Availability:
I believe this physics should be open.
I am very curious to hear from the LessWrong community—Maybe the feeling of "cognitive dissonance" is actually just the subjective experience of a high-thermal-gradient state! This could shift paradigms on our understanding of "existence"..!
With that, it's time for us to leap To The Beyond!