Monday, June 30, 2008

Entropy

One of my grand Pet Peeves ( Bête Noires ) is the idea of Entropy.

i just don't believe that there is such a thing.

One major problem that i have with it is, Is that it's often defined in terms of 'Order',
And when you go to the dictionary and look up what Order really means—
Each Definition requires a Subjective Observer to come in and declare what is Orderly or DisOrderly.
There's no Objective Criteria for Knowing if Something is Orderly or Not.

One Potential Definition for Orderly is whether or not you can -Compress- the Information in a Particular -Thing- into a smaller Set, And retain all the original information.

If you can do this; Then you're exploiting a facet of the original systems order.

The problem with this is that there are many cases in which by all appearances,
Something may seen very, very disorderly, Completely random--
And yet; There may well be a PseudoRandom Number Generator that can reproduce that system,
And as evidence that this is almost certainly possible—
It is quite easy to make any number of PseudoRandom Number Generators that will produce 'Other' seeming Random sets that display all the artifacts and apparent patterns or lack of patterns, as the original set.

But i was just thinking of a Case Explanation this morning...

Take the case of The Egg that is pushed off the table,
And Entropy allegedly causes The Egg to break,
And become a Broken Egg.

These are just labels that we attach to things
So that we can more easily identify things for no good reason.

The Universe;
Looking down upon us, and seeing The Egg or Broken Egg
Just sees different States that The Atoms in The Egg have arranged themselves into.

The Universe doesn't really make a Qualitative Distinction Between
The Egg & The Broken Egg.
They are essentially The Same to The Universe.
They are just Arrangements of Atoms.

Another way to see this is to think of Eskimos.
They are supposed to have 147 words for Yellow Snow...
Depending upon the time of day,
or how yellow it is,
or if it's sweet or too sweet,
or if it's a little bloody
or if semen is mixed in with it...
Each particular case has a distinct word,
And many of them don't even sound at all alike.

So with Our Egg Example.
We have a Word or Technical Description for The Egg,
And another Technical Description for The Broken Egg.

But if you take The Broken Egg,
Scoop it up and set in back on The Table And push it back off,
It will have inflicted into it,
All the Energy and Kinetic Force that The Egg Endured on it's first Trip down...
But We don't really have a Term for Broken Broken Egg,
Even though it will have twice the amount of Disorder ( So Entropy Claims ) as The Simple Broken Egg.

Each time you redrop The Egg,
It's going to CHANGE again,
And while it may never again resemble The Egg,
It will no more resemble The First Tier Broken Egg Either...!

The Distinction that we make between The First Tier Broken Egg
And The 20th Tier Broken Egg
Will; According to the limits of our language,
And The Observational Limits of The Way that Western Civilization has taught us to See Things, Will forever limit our ability to See The Distinctions between The 1st & 20th Tiers of Broken Egginess.

All The While;
The Universe isn't seeing Order or Disorder at all,
It's just seeing Different Atomic Arrangements.

It not making Value Judgments at any Itineration.

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