Dear Friends, On Thursday, June 20, there will be an ITAMP topical lunch discussion. Tea Room (P-226) @ CfA (60 Garden Street) Time: 12:00-1:30 As always pizza will be served. Speaker: Alexander D. Wissner-Gross Title: Does Cosmology Hint At How To Build Artificial Minds? Abstract: Recent advances in fields ranging from cosmology to computer science have hinted at a possible deep connection between intelligence and entropy maximization, but no formal physical relationship between them has yet been established. We recently explicitly proposed a first step toward such a relationship in the form of a causal generalization of entropic forces that we found could cause two defining behaviors of the human "cognitive niche" -- tool use and social cooperation -- to spontaneously emerge in simple physical systems. Our results suggest a potentially general thermodynamic model of adaptive behavior as a nonequilibrium process in open systems. Looking forward to seeing you there, Misha Lemeshko -- Dr. Mikhail Lemeshko Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics (ITAMP) Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics MS-14 60 Garden St. Cambridge, MA 02138 U.S.A. mlemeshko(a)cfa.harvard.edu http://sites.google.com/site/mishalemeshko/ Tel. +1 (617) 496-7610 Fax +1 (617) 496-7668