Entropy Is Fatal
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Entropy Is Fatal
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Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#2With respect to the author, the article fails to show that in fact “entropy” is related to “complexity” and how the two are related.
Entropy should not be thought of as “overhead” or “wasted energy,” which is what I believe the author is getting at. Instead, entropy is the tendency to disorganization. So, the analogy could be the more stuff you have, the more disorganized it becomes; but this is a weak analogy in my opinion.
Here is a link to another article that discusses the link between complexity and entropy. The two are indeed related: entropy is necessary for complexity to emerge. Entropy is not, as this author suggests, a result of complexity.
https://medium.com/@marktraphagen/entropy-and-complexity-the...
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#3I'm not sure "Entropy" is the right word for what the author wants to talk about, but the article raises some interesting points
> 1st poison: Unlimited and uncontrolled growth
IMO this is by far the biggest poison, and the one our society is most prone to ignoring. Every company, government budget, population, etc is considered "successful" if it's growing, and "failing" if it's shrinking. And the growth is always measured in terms of percentage, meaning the growth is compounding/exponential.
Sustainable living means getting comfortable with flat or even negative growth.
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#4With respect to the author, the article fails to show that in fact “entropy” is related to “complexity” and how the two are related. Entropy should not be thought of as “overhead” or “wasted energy,” which is what I believe the author is getting at. Instead, entropy is the tendency to disorganization. So, the analogy could be the more stuff you have, the more disorganized it becomes; but this is a weak analogy in my…
> entropy is necessary for complexity to emerge.
Something about this particular line does not sit well with me.
How would we define the relationship between entropy, complexity and information?
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#5I'm not sure "Entropy" is the right word for what the author wants to talk about, but the article raises some interesting points > 1st poison: Unlimited and uncontrolled growth IMO this is by far the biggest poison, and the one our society is most prone to ignoring. Every company, government budget, population, etc is considered "successful" if it's growing, and "failing" if it's shrinking. And the growth is always m…
Growth is possible by increasing outputs from the same level of inputs. Certain types of growth are unsustainable, yet other types of growth, e.g. productivity growth, is definitely sustainable.
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#6I'm not sure "Entropy" is the right word for what the author wants to talk about, but the article raises some interesting points > 1st poison: Unlimited and uncontrolled growth IMO this is by far the biggest poison, and the one our society is most prone to ignoring. Every company, government budget, population, etc is considered "successful" if it's growing, and "failing" if it's shrinking. And the growth is always m…
From the article:
>> ...a program with more lines of code is better...
Immediately reminded me of Bill Gates' comment on how measuring progress on a designing and building a software project by using a Total_Lines_Of_Code metric is about as dumb as measuring progress on designing and building an airplane using a Total_Weight metric.
What you want in both is the least amount of code/material that will actually do the job, and being smarter than a simple "more is better"approach. Yet so many supposedly intelligent managers use such approaches...
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#7I'm not sure "Entropy" is the right word for what the author wants to talk about, but the article raises some interesting points > 1st poison: Unlimited and uncontrolled growth IMO this is by far the biggest poison, and the one our society is most prone to ignoring. Every company, government budget, population, etc is considered "successful" if it's growing, and "failing" if it's shrinking. And the growth is always m…
Growth is possible by increasing outputs from the same level of inputs. Certain types of growth are unsustainable, yet other types of growth, e.g. productivity growth, is definitely sustainable.
In the long run, most J curves are actually S curves
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#8I'm not sure "Entropy" is the right word for what the author wants to talk about, but the article raises some interesting points > 1st poison: Unlimited and uncontrolled growth IMO this is by far the biggest poison, and the one our society is most prone to ignoring. Every company, government budget, population, etc is considered "successful" if it's growing, and "failing" if it's shrinking. And the growth is always m…
Growth is possible by increasing outputs from the same level of inputs. Certain types of growth are unsustainable, yet other types of growth, e.g. productivity growth, is definitely sustainable.
It seems that productivity growth is still necessarily limited in the end by physics.
Remove the unnecessary actions to produce X, and you're down to the bare minimum set of actions. Now speed up those actions and you'll eventually reach some minimum time requirement, and the output of X is a function of Required_Actions * Required_Time and how many Producing_Units you have and available time.
Seems it'd be asymptotic
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Growth is possible by increasing outputs from the same level of inputs. Certain types of growth are unsustainable, yet other types of growth, e.g. productivity growth, is definitely sustainable.
It seems that productivity growth is still necessarily limited in the end by physics. Remove the unnecessary actions to produce X, and you're down to the bare minimum set of actions. Now speed up those actions and you'll eventually reach some minimum time requirement, and the output of X is a function of Required_Actions * Required_Time and how many Producing_Units you have and available time. Seems it'd be asymptoti…
Everything is limited by physics. But I think the limit is not close to where we are right now. Consider a smart phone. Physically, what is it? Some silicon, glass, a lithium-ion battery, and some other trace metals. If you were to have the raw inputs in front of you, it would be a small pile of dust. Yet, with just that small amount of material, a person can get access to a near infinite amount of information and entertainment. And smartphones can run software, which allows the phone to be updated for near-zero marginal cost. And this is only something invented in the last few decades. There are so many amazing things being created around us all the time. I don't know how you can look at this situation and think "yup, we've reached the end of human ingenuity."
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#10I'm not sure "Entropy" is the right word for what the author wants to talk about, but the article raises some interesting points > 1st poison: Unlimited and uncontrolled growth IMO this is by far the biggest poison, and the one our society is most prone to ignoring. Every company, government budget, population, etc is considered "successful" if it's growing, and "failing" if it's shrinking. And the growth is always m…
I don't agree. Growth is not the only thing valued. Value companies are a big part of the US Markets for example. Dividend stocks are a thing.
But growth isn't about one company ever increasing. It's about new companies innovating and taking over old ones. As long as there is innovation, there will be growth.
Change should be embraced. I personally see no reason to advocate for stagnation of human progress with the same handful of companies serving humans for all time.