One of the Vedanta people recently stated:
1) Energy is the potentiality and the power to generate matter, informaton and feeling. The physical energy is related to material transformations, obeying dynamical forms/regularities that involve the information aspect. Therefore, physical energy is PART of E; the first law of thermodynamics should not be applied to physical energy alone, but to E (as argued in my draft and in my recent JCS paper with colleagues);
My reply:
You are defining the word "energy" in a very broad way. (I do not waste time arguing over definitions!!! It is good that you begin by telling us what you are talking about.)
Would it be acceptable to use the letter "H" to refer to the specific aspect you call "physical energy"? Both in Einsteinian physics and in quantum physics, the "physical energy" H is simply the "sum" (integral) of a mathematical function H, the "energy density", over all space. It is just a function of the values and fluxes of the force fields at each point in space. What makes this particular function so important is that H does not change over time; it is conserved. Because it is conserved, we tend to budget it... and it directly effects what kind of emerging patterns can persist in our cosmos.
Regardless of whether we believe in Einsteinian realism or in David Deutsch's broader concept of multiverse realism, the "first law of thermodynamics" (that H does not change with time) applies directly to H, period. I don't think you are disagreeing with that.
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But: is there an absolute conservation law of other kinds of energy?
But how could we even define other energy variables which are also conserved?
Since childhood, I was deeply interested in Sigmund Freud's concept of "psychic energy." His concept makes sense even in understanding how ordinary brain consciousness works in real life.
Ironically, the clearest explanation of that concept appears in a paperback book by Barrett and Yankelovich
which attacks psychoanalysis in general, and attacks Freud. They argue that Freud's concept could not be turned into anything mathematical and tractable and usable as a predictive, quantitative model. In the worlds of "the new AI" (really just neural networks reinvented and at times sanitized), I am best known for the algorithm "backpropagation" which I derived exactly by translating Freud's concept of psychic energy into something quantitative and usable.
(At scholar.google.com, that work is what has the most citations under my name; at youtube, a search on werbos pulls up some of the history.)
BUT: that type of energy is NOT strictly conserved, and the lack of strict conservation is extremely important, both at a mundane level of life and at a samadhi level (which Vinod has no direct understanding of whatsoever, except perhaps for some distant subjective memories which he forcibly represses).
It WOULD be conserved if we or our local noosphere had perfect knowledge with no uncertainty or stochastic aspects, embracing everything. We don't. Only the energy of the cosmos itself, H, is strictly conserved.
For us humans ... even in mundane life, people have ups and downs in their levels of psychic energy. A textbook discussion of "personality disorder" ( a huge part of modern life on earth!!) talks about how some folks can lose affect, and become rather zombie-like in behavior. Yesterday I finished watching a little Disney movie, "frozen," which is wonderfully insightful about some of this -- and it really worries me that there are communities who feel deeply threatened by that movie!! I think of ancient priest kings who tried to repress literacy, science AND spirit, and everything which might empower the people they want to turn into obedient robotic slaves. On the positive side, I am reminded of an old Quaker song: "Love is like a magic penny. When you give it away, you end up having more."
I claim (based on direct experience and direct observation, but also following my noosphere-species theory) that the exact same kind of mathematical/computational mechanism as what Freud described ALSO applies at the noosphere level. This implies that "spiritual" psychic energy, sometimes called qi or mana or charisma, follows the same mathematics, and is not conserved.
In ancient days in Hawaii, political leaders came to believe that mana must be conserved, just by analogy to physical energy. Thus they felt it could be stolen or stored, and that it can be increased by engaging in acts like human sacrifice. That belief, based on a simple cognitive, conceptual misunderstanding, led to all kinds of horrid behavior at high levels of society. In fact, whole societies and nations can go through ups and downs in their total, overall level of qi. This is an extremely important fact of life.
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