What Is Entropy? A Measure of Just How Little We Really Know.

[erronis]

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-entropy-a-measure-of-just-how-little-we-really-know-20241213/

I've always had a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of entropy. This article points out that my problem is not unique but there may be some coalescing of thinking.

Exactly 200 years ago, a French engineer introduced an idea that would quantify the universe’s inexorable slide into decay. But entropy, as it’s currently understood, is less a fact about the world than a reflection of our growing ignorance. Embracing that truth is leading to a rethink of everything from rational decision-making to the limits of machines.

Life is an anthology of destruction. Everything you build eventually breaks. Everyone you love will die. Any sense of order or stability inevitably crumbles. The entire universe follows a dismal trek toward a dull state of ultimate turmoil.

To keep track of this cosmic decay, physicists employ a concept called entropy. Entropy is a measure of disorderliness, and the declaration that entropy is always on the rise — known as the second law of thermodynamics — is among nature’s most inescapable commandments.

I have long felt haunted by the universal tendency toward messiness. Order is fragile. It takes months of careful planning and artistry to craft a vase but an instant to demolish it with a soccer ball. We spend our lives struggling to make sense of a chaotic and unpredictable world, where any attempt to establish control seems only to backfire. The second law demands that machines can never be perfectly efficient, which implies that whenever structure arises in the universe, it ultimately serves only to dissipate energy further — be it a star that eventually explodes or a living organism converting food into heat. We are, despite our best intentions, agents of entropy.

“Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics,” wrote (opens a new tab) Seth Lloyd, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There’s no sidestepping this directive. The growth of entropy is deeply entwined with our most basic experiences, accounting for why time runs forward and why the world appears deterministic rather than quantum mechanically uncertain.

But despite its fundamental importance, entropy is perhaps the most divisive concept in physics. “Entropy has always been a problem,” Lloyd told me. The confusion stems in part from the way the term gets tossed and twisted between disciplines — it has similar but distinct meanings in everything from physics to information theory to ecology. But it’s also because truly wrapping one’s head around entropy requires taking some deeply uncomfortable philosophical leaps.

[cachukis]

1. Isn't the conflict the point.

You know you've made it when the only thing you buy is what you need.

[EYESORE 9001]

2. It's enough to drive a science-type guy to the point

that I strip naked and run through the streets yelling ‘ENTROPY! ENTROPY!’ Thankfully, I’m nearly finished with community service.

[Shellback Squid]

3. This story by Asimov always chokes me up

https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html

I understand it relates little to your question

[erronis]

6. Thanks for that Asimov reference - always welcome, especially in these Twilight Zone times.

[SCantiGOP]

9. Thumbs up, Squid

A great story. I have a link to it in my computer Home Screen, and probably read it every year or so.

[marble falls]

4. An example of it might be having to ask, "what is entrophy?"

[The Unmitigated Gall]

5. Unmitigated's Laws of Thermodynamics:

First Law: There is no Free Lunch.
Second Law: When you buy your lunch, you'll never get what you paid for.
Third Law: Eat your lunch before it freezes into a worthless brick.

[NNadir]

7. The Second Law of Thermodynamics Isn't Popular Around Here.

Last edited Fri Dec 13, 2024, 06:04 PM - Edit history (1)

It's why we have so many people acting as if batteries, and worse, hydrogen are "green," when in fact, the opposite is true.

I recall one undergraduate text that remarked in the text that this question reverberates through every introductory PChem class in the the world.

For me, when it finally sunk in was when I set aside some time to embrace, from a purely historical perspective the definition via the laws of statistical mechanics of gases.

It is a beautiful thing, I think, to recognize the state of the ensemble of velocity vectors, rotational states and positions of the air molecules of every room I've ever been in is so improbable as to be impossible, and yet, as impossible as it is, it exists in every instance just so, never to be repeated.

It is awful to consider that the man who gave us this ineffably beautiful insight, Boltzman, killed himself.

Entropy is a marvelous thing to embrace. For me, it gives my life, which will soon surrender to Entropy, meaning.

[erronis]

8. Beautiful piece, NNadir. I agree with your acceptance of entropy as the final ending.

Of course, we spend most our lives denying and fighting it - which paradoxically, also increase it.

Enjoy what you can while you are cognizant and then subsume into that unknown. Heaven and hell and infinite limbos forever.