Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
I guess my point (wrt corporations) is that companies should turn from Growth into Value a lot sooner. E.g. I would have preferred Google to become a Value company once it became the dominant search provider, instead of constantly looking for new revenue streams.
Entropy Is Fatal
41–50 of 119 posts
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#42Counterpoint, "Entropy is Life": Diffusion is an entropy driven process, and is fundamental to most biological processes. Plus other more specific entropy driven reactions [0 + google it]. Lazy metaphors... [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep04142
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Entropy is a "term-of-art" that has a specific meaning that differs from that in the general populace or in thermodynamics. Would you care to explain that? The term ‘entropy’ originates in statistical mechanics / thermodynamics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy
There are many more definitions of entropy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(disambiguation)
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#44With 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
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I question the "most" here, rather than "all". Examples of J curves that aren't S curves?
>Examples of J curves that aren't S curves? Reindeer population growth in Alaska.
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 en…
Everything is controlled by the maths of physics and chemistry.
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#47The author makes a mistake here. It's fine to think of entropy as messiness; that's the Boltzmann picture of statistical mechanics. The mistake is thinking that lowering entropy, or getting rid of the mess, is a satisfactory strategy. Think of it as a negative feedback system, like a thermostat. Keeping entropy low means continually correcting errors. This is a successful strategy only if the world always stays the s…
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#48Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#49The author makes a mistake here. It's fine to think of entropy as messiness; that's the Boltzmann picture of statistical mechanics. The mistake is thinking that lowering entropy, or getting rid of the mess, is a satisfactory strategy. Think of it as a negative feedback system, like a thermostat. Keeping entropy low means continually correcting errors. This is a successful strategy only if the world always stays the s…
Re: Entropy Is Fatal
#50The author makes a mistake here. It's fine to think of entropy as messiness; that's the Boltzmann picture of statistical mechanics. The mistake is thinking that lowering entropy, or getting rid of the mess, is a satisfactory strategy. Think of it as a negative feedback system, like a thermostat. Keeping entropy low means continually correcting errors. This is a successful strategy only if the world always stays the s…
noise is the way out of local optimums ?