论文标题
物理代理
Agency in Physics
论文作者
论文摘要
从物理学的角度来看，我讨论了代理概念的三个方面：（i）是什么使物理系统成为代理； （ii）代理时间导向的原因； （iii）选择动作时生成的信息的来源。我观察到代理是破坏动力学封闭的近似值的破坏。我区分了代理的不同概念，并观察到上述问题的答案在不同的情况下有所不同。我注意到代理和内存之间的结构相似性，使我们能够建模代理，追踪其时间不对称性与热力学不可逆性，并确定代理在熵增长中产生的信息的来源。因此，代理是一种物理机制，可将低熵转化为信息。这可能是生物学构建的整体信息来源的一般机制。
I discuss three aspects of the notion of agency from the standpoint of physics: (i) what makes a physical system an agent; (ii) the reason for agency's time orientation; (iii) the source of the information generated in choosing an action. I observe that agency is the breaking of an approximation under which dynamics appears closed. I distinguish different notions of agency, and observe that the answer to the questions above differ in different cases. I notice a structural similarity between agency and memory, that allows us to model agency, trace its time asymmetry to thermodynamical irreversibility, and identify the source of the information generated by agency in the growth of entropy. Agency is therefore a physical mechanism that transforms low entropy into information. This may be the general mechanism at the source of the whole information on which biology builds.
