CAS GE 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Pareto Efficiency, Negative Feedback, Positive Feedback
19 Jan 2018
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You can predict the climates of places you"ve never been because of the patterns/predictability in climate systems. Physical patterns of weather circulation driven by energy gradients create a local pattern-- cannot be judged as good or bad, they just are. Biological behaviors: goal of life is reproduction. Activities that limit reproduction will be eliminated over time, and vice versa (natural selection) Economic behaviors: people behave rationally; firms maximize profits; people maximize utility. ^takeaway: all of these systems generate order and some can be judged as good or bad based on that order. Energy gradient: difference in order between high and low entropy. 2nd law: things flow spontaneously from low to high entropy. Nerve cells: use energy to pump sodium ions into/out of the cell. Can only fire a nerve cell a finite # of times/minute- needs time to pump ions back out (there will be no gradient otherwise)
