The Law of Entropy

Cheese · Mar 10, 2006

Quote from andrasnm:
Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, allows that the amount of energy in a closed system will decline over time. This also applies to human social systems. Entropy causes everything to go from what may have been a tight-knit beginning to utter chaos in the end. We have seen this happen with the birth, advance and death of civilizations. We see it in polar shifts which cause the breakup of continents in which the tectonic plates split apart and join with others to form new continents. We observe it in politics, religion and family life. In fact, the earth and itâs humanity also operates as a closed system.

To combat entropy, organizations try to re-invent themselves, develop new goals, revitalize the membership, even crash and burn so, like the Phoenix, they can start over anew from their own ashes. People do the same thing.

Every social structure, every person, anything with energy, ultimately decays. If this is so, what is the purpose of evolution? Are we as a people doomed to the hard life of the Phoenix? The fact is, every day we demonstrate that we really do not know the purpose of evolution. If we knew the purpose of evolution we would know that living life in a mode of "business as usual" is impossible; that evolutionary change is the order of the day, yea the minute and the second. But even change as we know it in life, i.e., physical regeneration, within a closed system, is doomed to ultimate entropy. Therefore, in order to understand the purpose of evolution we have to begin by understanding that there is no past and no present, just the future.

If we turn our thoughts to the future, then we should begin to understand that there is more to life than physical evolution. In physical evolution, the one who dies with the most toys wins. Thus all physical life is concentrated on the accumulation of toys, toys being whatever cannot be taken with us when we die. The attention humanity gives to making of life a toy store is a dynamic formula for the constant presence of entropy--everywhere and in everything.
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Entropy .. thats a good picture of things.
But wrong conclusion.

Trading is a game of accumulation. 'Adding to' is the antithesis of entropy.

Physical life and toys. Be irreverent .. thats good. But thats all anyone gets and with toys that is as good as it gets. How good? Damn good.

There is the end of each persons life. So what. End means end.
If you need some horsesh*t crutch so you can jack around in some never-never lalaland after death .. well, take your choice from the cults, religions and other mental lalaland fantasies available.

LowRisk · Mar 10, 2006

Quote from hirsch.im.wald:

Agreed. By the way Heinz von Foerster, who is a genius physicist, describes organic self-regulating systems - like humans for example - as entropy retardors.
And - entropy itself is a misnomer because the physicists who discovered it where too dumb to translate a simple term into plain greek and mixed it up. Intended meaning was inability to change ( in the transitive sense, not the intransitive... For all science major analphabets: the transitive meaning of inability to change translates into inability to perform work.).

It has NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING to do with energy. Even though it is permissible to say that the entropy of energy is increasing.
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A more relevant word for energy in thermo is Enthalpy. It means heat or kinetic energy and it's ZERO at 0 degrees Kelvin which is minus 273 degrees C. How cold is that? Well it's so cold that nothing moves, not even subparticles.

Thunderdog · Mar 10, 2006

Quote from LowRisk:

...it's ZERO at 0 degrees Kelvin which is minus 273 degrees C. How cold is that? Well it's so cold that nothing moves, not even subparticles.
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Hmm. I imagine that would put a crimp on volatility.

kalzayani · Mar 10, 2006

Try...General Equilbrium Models with one data Point...
U would run

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The Law of Entropy

Cheese

LowRisk

Thunderdog

kalzayani