No bullshit, this morning my wife asked me why the water heater wasn't working. I said, "I don't know, probably because entropy makes everything go to shit." Then I opened your email.
Lovely way to start my morning off lmao. In all seriousness, great mini-essay! I was interested in economics (Thomas Sowell has excellent books) before being interested in evo psych. Funny how economics is known as the "dismal" science when evo psych appears to explain much of what people find dismal about economics. It's honestly a miracle that "free markets" (to the degree we have them) can exist at all, given that we are comically unfit to coordinate for these larger, misaligned goals. It all just seems like a happy accident.
EDIT: I know you yourself wrote "LOCAL" exceptions. But my point is that, even though it probably sound surprising, planetary system only SEEM to reduce entropy, but their formation actually increases it.
I found the paper I linked particularly enlightening because it gives a plausible explanation of "why" three different concepts of the "arrow of time" (which could be in principle unrelated) actually "converge" pointing in the same direction: time as measured "from the big bang", as measured as "the direction where entropy increases" and as "CP violation" (e.g. decays involving weak interaction)
I was going to post a note on this exact point then saw the above comment. I’d say something like “when viewed locally, processes like gravity and natural selection can appear to be exceptions to the second law (but actually aren’t when viewed globally).” Ie the exception to the law isn’t “local”, but a “local” perspective can give the impression of an exception.
The entropy of gravity is very confusing (to me at least), and may be better to just avoid it. But here's my attempt: In a purely thermal system particles are moving randomly and clumping represents lower entropy. But in the presence of gravity a uniform distribution has high potential energy and when the clumping happens it reduces potential energy and gives off heat (say, photons).
So in a way it's kind of like life in that it creates local complexity by emitting heat into the environment. It should also be noted that other forces can do something similar.
As for other ways to say it, Schrödinger used the concept of life surviving by "feeding on negative entropy".
It sounds strange but actually it was (is) something that perplexed me for many years. Shall I dump a wall of text? ;)
.
The question is, we all have a naive intuition of what time (singular) is, but it is very naive indeed.
In Galilean and Newtonian physics, time is just a coordinate, like the three spatial axis x,y,z. Doesn't matter where you conventionally put "the origin", all is flat, and you just measure "distances" in space and time (but you call the latter "intervals") between two events. Yes, there is this strange thing that time, unlike space, "flows", but it's not actually considered in any particular way. All the laws of motions are symmetrical under time reversal.
.
Then Boltzmann showed a way to connect microscopic concepts with macroscopic ones: entropy increase is related to the configurations of molecules, and in such a way an arrow of time is introduced. There is a "preferred" direction: the time "flows" in the same verse as the entropy increases (you observe a glass falling from a table shatter into pieces, you don't observe the pieces condensing together).
.
Then you have Einstein's General Relativity, and you can write "simple" solutions for the equations of the entire universe under certain assumptions (e.g. matter is scattered uniformly). This introduces a concept of "proper time" that is different from the previous one. (Per relativity, time is measured differently by different observers, but then what does it mean to say the universe is ~14 billion years old? This is time as measured by an observer that was "at rest" with the universe, being "dragged" by its expansion but not being accelerated in other ways). So of course there is an arrow of time: the one that points "away" from the Big Bang instead of "towards" it. Why should this arrow be the same as the one defined by entropy?
If it seems natural to assume they are the same, it's only because you are already assuming there is "a" time. But these are unrelated phenomena and explanations, so I actually feel natural to wonder "why" this should be the same.
.
And finally you have an arrow of time defined by the violation of CP symmetry (if you invert matter with antimatter, thus exchanging the charges, and also invert left with right, thus changing parity, you still have phenomena that don't respect CP together). These are quantum mechanical phenomena involved in Beta Decays. This implies a preferred direction for time, since CPT symmetry is needed for causality. But then this seems a third different concept of time, unrelated to the previous two.
.
It seems there may be a way to understanding why they are actually the same concept, if you consider that CP violation played a role in the early moments after the Big Bang in "filling" the universe preferentially with matter instead of matter and antimatter equally; then if you consider that the formation of structures (e.g. stars, galaxy, etc) actually INCREASES entropy all comes together.
I recommend reading the paper for a better, proper explanation.
.
But the KEY then is that the formation of (very large) macroscopic structures in the universe under gravity increases entropy, and that's why I find it very relevant to point out that it is a common MISCONCEPTION to believe intuitively that gravity MACROSCOPICALLY reduces entropy.
Thank you—very interesting. I think I’m going to keep the text as is, because “local exception” and “apparent exception when viewed locally” is a subtle distinction that doesn’t really matter for my purposes and is close enough for me. I’m just trying to write about things going to shit, and things like animals and stars that don’t seem shitty.
I was going to make the same point about the second law of thermodynamics that Enrico made. Allow me to say it in my own words. "Progress" and increasing organization (that is, apparent reversal of entropy) is only temporary, possible in a closed system that "steals" energy from outside the system. Life evolved on earth only because plants syphoned energy from the sun, but the sun will burn out some day. And all progress made by life will go to shit.
I would also like to say a little more about the incentives to act for the good of the self and close relatives and lack of incentives to for the species as a whole. Data consistently suggests that the probability of individuals helping others decreases across genetic distance, e.g., we are more likely to help a sibling than a cousin. In one way, this makes perfect sense, but in another, it is strange because our descendants become more and more genetically different from us, to the point where a great-great-great-great grandchild is hardly more related to us than some random individual in our group today. I suppose this reinforces the idea that individual organisms are not the unit of selection; rather it is DNA. It might seem like we are acting for the good of organisms (ourself, our closes relatives with whom we share a lot of DNA), but actually we are acting for the good of the DNA inside of us.
Bottom line, you can create incentives for anything that you would like to continue (like the current Substack), but the extra lifespan is temporary and it will eventually go to shit.
Yea agreed life is only a temporary victory over the decline toward shittiness. Do you have a suggested rewrite on the thermodynamics point that would be more accurate?
You might ask Enrico for a suggestion as well. I might make the following rewrite:
16. Sometimes people offer the following "exceptions" to the second law of thermodynamics: 1) the force of gravity, which provides an incentive for bits of matter to clump together into stars and planets, and 2) natural selection, which provides an incentive for bits of self-replicating matter to build organic forms that promote their own replication. However, increasing organization within a local, closed system requires an influx of energy from the larger system in which it is embedded. Therefore, overall, entropy always increases.
Very interesting...only slightly depressing. But also inspiring. The story we tell ourselves matters. If you want to lose weight, the story you tell yourself about why you want to lose weight better be convincing enough to keep you on track.
Which got me thinking. Incentives are everything, so not doing a thing has incentives. Is it fear, is it incentive of comfort? Of not going through uncertainty? Of seeing short term pleasure?
I take exception to #5. For creatures with multi-generational family structures, there is a payoff for longer healthy life, the increased chances of progeny surviving due to both physical and knowledge inputs from the grandparents.
Off spring with dead grandparents are less likely to survive and have offspring. Probably true of orcas and maybe other cetaceans too.
Also, #7 doesn't seem to account for vampire bats. That species is known to share blood meals between unrelated colony members. There is pretty good evidence that the behavior is adaptive, and likely selected for.
The tie to kin is loose, as is the tie to grandparents noted earlier. This example may be a looser tie. The recipient survived in a colony that generally reciprocated. This helped the benefactor's offspring to survive, how? If the benefactor happened to be the recipient at some point, sure, but the trait needs a path, and in this case the path is more generalized.
At some point we need to ask about the role of this type of behavior in a group with traded favors that extend beyond kin. Human history suggests similar reinforcement. Likely there is a genetic component.
This is asymptotically close to "helping the group." Under what condition could we judge this as equivalent?
In the bat case, the benefactor is responding to signs of stress in another colony member. It is specific. The behavior generally helps the group fitness by supporting genetic diversity, at the least. When do individual actions at a local level become an emergent group behavior?
A successful colony, the group, if it survives over the long haul, could become the species. Also, members of the colony might intersperse with other colonies, spreading the genetic and behavioral traits.
My question continues to be about the spread of these traits and how finely to parse the phrase "the good of the species." Can the "good of another" become the "good of the group?" When does a behavior become indistinguishable at the species level from "the good of the species?"
Sure, impersonal. No question. However the selection pressure remains, and we benefit. The selection pressure to reach reproductive age is stronger, also true. But it is important to recognize these secondary selection pressures.
I see some discussion about thermodynamics and gravity. It's fascinating because the elements heavier than helium are almost all created through stellar processes (gravitational collapse). Those processes increase the entropy of the Universe even though we get highly complex nuclei. If the proton is not stable, and there are good reasons to think that it is unstable, then everything will decay to photons, electrons and neutrinos. Neutron stars, white dwarf stars, and even black holes will all decay away (black holes from Hawking radiation). It's gravity and thermodynamics together that give us the story arc of the Universe - and thermodynamics rules our fate.
Life is but a waystation in this unstoppable march. Given the local conditions on Earth, we are just the most efficient way of making a mess - and thermodynamics will always choose that!
Well that was food for thought. Thanks for sharing, and for stimulating few thoughts in your readers, interesting to read too.
On #16 you already got comments. I don't disagree with them, except maybe: to people saying "yeah, but what when our sun burns out or universe/expansion ends then even local entropy decrease that is life ends, so final entropy victory." (boo! hiss!) Well to that I say - we don't know? We can't be sure what happens once the universe ends? (incl to entropy) Maybe we shd have tad more - ahem! - faith? ;-) This old, "the most uplifting video" by @skdh came to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Mq6gmPo0s. :-)
But I started writing this to say something else. It's not only gravity that clumps stuff together. We also have electro-magnetism that clumps 1/2 of stuff with the other 1/2. And we have one nuclear force that does the same. And then the other that does the opposite - repel, and electro-magnetism also repels the wrong 1/2-s.
That made me wonder. Maybe gravity is truly special. (as there is not repellent version) But maybe only b/c we're missing a lot in our physics. May the missing part (half?) have anti-gravity that rappels. IDK ofc - idle speculation this. :-)
Regarding autocracy, it is true that citizens have no safe means of incentivizing the regime to act in their interests. (And even if they did, the same problems you identify with democracy would apply: "voters lack the expertise to assess the complex effects of any particular policy on any desired outcome".)
But if there is a monarch (in the sense of one man who securely owns the state), then there is an incentive for him to preserve and increase the value of his subjects: his greedy desire to maximize his wealth over the long term. Of course, a monarch's idea of a subject's value will be somewhat different than the subject's own idea of it, but they will agree in many ways. I.e. both want the subject to create a lot of wealth.
Hoppe makes this argument in Democracy: The God That Failed. Curtis Yarvin is a more modern proponent.
Yea I don’t buy the Yarvin take because the king’s long-term wealth is only secure if he can maintain his place on the throne (fending off conspirators, coup attempts, etc). The king’s interests will be in raising just enough money to buy loyalty while keeping the masses as immisserated and disconnected from each other as possible so they don’t rebel. Bruce Bueno de mesquita spells out the logic in his excellent book The Dictator’s Handbook.
You have to admit, though, that the incentive *is* there for a monarch who does expect to reign for a long life, and/or to have his family inherit.
"Dictators" are not that. They did not inherit the throne, and if overthrown or just assassinated, they cannot expect their family to maintain the throne. As such, they are more roving bandit than stationary bandit (as per Mancur Olsen).
Kings were like that before the advent of nationalism and liberalism. (Which, to be sure, can't be un-invented.) CEOs of sovereign corporations using technological methods to secure ownership -- well, this has not happened. Yet. It does seem possible to me with existing tech. The roadblock is not that, but USG and the "international community".
No bullshit, this morning my wife asked me why the water heater wasn't working. I said, "I don't know, probably because entropy makes everything go to shit." Then I opened your email.
Lovely way to start my morning off lmao. In all seriousness, great mini-essay! I was interested in economics (Thomas Sowell has excellent books) before being interested in evo psych. Funny how economics is known as the "dismal" science when evo psych appears to explain much of what people find dismal about economics. It's honestly a miracle that "free markets" (to the degree we have them) can exist at all, given that we are comically unfit to coordinate for these larger, misaligned goals. It all just seems like a happy accident.
Minor, pedantic comment about gravity and life being exceptions to the 2nd law: they AREN'T.
Entropy can't decrease "globally" (in a closed system) but it can decrease locally.
The single animal "pays" its internal reduced entropy by releasing MORE entropy into the environment.
Same goes for gravity, e.g. planetary system formation.
Charles H. Lineweaver, Chas A. Egan,
Life, gravity and the second law of thermodynamics,
Physics of Life Reviews,
Volume 5, Issue 4,
2008,
Pages 225-242,
ISSN 1571-0645,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2008.08.002.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1571064508000250)
EDIT: I know you yourself wrote "LOCAL" exceptions. But my point is that, even though it probably sound surprising, planetary system only SEEM to reduce entropy, but their formation actually increases it.
I found the paper I linked particularly enlightening because it gives a plausible explanation of "why" three different concepts of the "arrow of time" (which could be in principle unrelated) actually "converge" pointing in the same direction: time as measured "from the big bang", as measured as "the direction where entropy increases" and as "CP violation" (e.g. decays involving weak interaction)
Do you have a suggested rewrite so that it is more accurate?
I was going to post a note on this exact point then saw the above comment. I’d say something like “when viewed locally, processes like gravity and natural selection can appear to be exceptions to the second law (but actually aren’t when viewed globally).” Ie the exception to the law isn’t “local”, but a “local” perspective can give the impression of an exception.
The entropy of gravity is very confusing (to me at least), and may be better to just avoid it. But here's my attempt: In a purely thermal system particles are moving randomly and clumping represents lower entropy. But in the presence of gravity a uniform distribution has high potential energy and when the clumping happens it reduces potential energy and gives off heat (say, photons).
So in a way it's kind of like life in that it creates local complexity by emitting heat into the environment. It should also be noted that other forces can do something similar.
As for other ways to say it, Schrödinger used the concept of life surviving by "feeding on negative entropy".
Three concepts of time? Sounds like thermodynamics has gone to shit 🙉🙈
LOL.
It sounds strange but actually it was (is) something that perplexed me for many years. Shall I dump a wall of text? ;)
.
The question is, we all have a naive intuition of what time (singular) is, but it is very naive indeed.
In Galilean and Newtonian physics, time is just a coordinate, like the three spatial axis x,y,z. Doesn't matter where you conventionally put "the origin", all is flat, and you just measure "distances" in space and time (but you call the latter "intervals") between two events. Yes, there is this strange thing that time, unlike space, "flows", but it's not actually considered in any particular way. All the laws of motions are symmetrical under time reversal.
.
Then Boltzmann showed a way to connect microscopic concepts with macroscopic ones: entropy increase is related to the configurations of molecules, and in such a way an arrow of time is introduced. There is a "preferred" direction: the time "flows" in the same verse as the entropy increases (you observe a glass falling from a table shatter into pieces, you don't observe the pieces condensing together).
.
Then you have Einstein's General Relativity, and you can write "simple" solutions for the equations of the entire universe under certain assumptions (e.g. matter is scattered uniformly). This introduces a concept of "proper time" that is different from the previous one. (Per relativity, time is measured differently by different observers, but then what does it mean to say the universe is ~14 billion years old? This is time as measured by an observer that was "at rest" with the universe, being "dragged" by its expansion but not being accelerated in other ways). So of course there is an arrow of time: the one that points "away" from the Big Bang instead of "towards" it. Why should this arrow be the same as the one defined by entropy?
If it seems natural to assume they are the same, it's only because you are already assuming there is "a" time. But these are unrelated phenomena and explanations, so I actually feel natural to wonder "why" this should be the same.
.
And finally you have an arrow of time defined by the violation of CP symmetry (if you invert matter with antimatter, thus exchanging the charges, and also invert left with right, thus changing parity, you still have phenomena that don't respect CP together). These are quantum mechanical phenomena involved in Beta Decays. This implies a preferred direction for time, since CPT symmetry is needed for causality. But then this seems a third different concept of time, unrelated to the previous two.
.
It seems there may be a way to understanding why they are actually the same concept, if you consider that CP violation played a role in the early moments after the Big Bang in "filling" the universe preferentially with matter instead of matter and antimatter equally; then if you consider that the formation of structures (e.g. stars, galaxy, etc) actually INCREASES entropy all comes together.
I recommend reading the paper for a better, proper explanation.
.
But the KEY then is that the formation of (very large) macroscopic structures in the universe under gravity increases entropy, and that's why I find it very relevant to point out that it is a common MISCONCEPTION to believe intuitively that gravity MACROSCOPICALLY reduces entropy.
Thank you—very interesting. I think I’m going to keep the text as is, because “local exception” and “apparent exception when viewed locally” is a subtle distinction that doesn’t really matter for my purposes and is close enough for me. I’m just trying to write about things going to shit, and things like animals and stars that don’t seem shitty.
I was going to make the same point about the second law of thermodynamics that Enrico made. Allow me to say it in my own words. "Progress" and increasing organization (that is, apparent reversal of entropy) is only temporary, possible in a closed system that "steals" energy from outside the system. Life evolved on earth only because plants syphoned energy from the sun, but the sun will burn out some day. And all progress made by life will go to shit.
I would also like to say a little more about the incentives to act for the good of the self and close relatives and lack of incentives to for the species as a whole. Data consistently suggests that the probability of individuals helping others decreases across genetic distance, e.g., we are more likely to help a sibling than a cousin. In one way, this makes perfect sense, but in another, it is strange because our descendants become more and more genetically different from us, to the point where a great-great-great-great grandchild is hardly more related to us than some random individual in our group today. I suppose this reinforces the idea that individual organisms are not the unit of selection; rather it is DNA. It might seem like we are acting for the good of organisms (ourself, our closes relatives with whom we share a lot of DNA), but actually we are acting for the good of the DNA inside of us.
Bottom line, you can create incentives for anything that you would like to continue (like the current Substack), but the extra lifespan is temporary and it will eventually go to shit.
Yea agreed life is only a temporary victory over the decline toward shittiness. Do you have a suggested rewrite on the thermodynamics point that would be more accurate?
You might ask Enrico for a suggestion as well. I might make the following rewrite:
16. Sometimes people offer the following "exceptions" to the second law of thermodynamics: 1) the force of gravity, which provides an incentive for bits of matter to clump together into stars and planets, and 2) natural selection, which provides an incentive for bits of self-replicating matter to build organic forms that promote their own replication. However, increasing organization within a local, closed system requires an influx of energy from the larger system in which it is embedded. Therefore, overall, entropy always increases.
"Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." - Arnold Toynbee
The minute my lottery numbers come up I shall subscribe to this substack to the max. What a pity the lottery is also bullshit.
Very interesting...only slightly depressing. But also inspiring. The story we tell ourselves matters. If you want to lose weight, the story you tell yourself about why you want to lose weight better be convincing enough to keep you on track.
Do you have any thoughts on how you can tell yourself a better story about working toward your goals?
Great way to start a day! Questioning incentives to get out of bed. Will work on a list.
Which got me thinking. Incentives are everything, so not doing a thing has incentives. Is it fear, is it incentive of comfort? Of not going through uncertainty? Of seeing short term pleasure?
Great work, again.
There may be a third local exception for point 16; memes.
I take exception to #5. For creatures with multi-generational family structures, there is a payoff for longer healthy life, the increased chances of progeny surviving due to both physical and knowledge inputs from the grandparents.
Off spring with dead grandparents are less likely to survive and have offspring. Probably true of orcas and maybe other cetaceans too.
Yes that is true. But the point remains that eventually evolution stops caring about you.
Also, #7 doesn't seem to account for vampire bats. That species is known to share blood meals between unrelated colony members. There is pretty good evidence that the behavior is adaptive, and likely selected for.
Yes but they reciprocate because they (and their kin) benefit from the reciprocation. They don’t do it because it benefits the species.
The tie to kin is loose, as is the tie to grandparents noted earlier. This example may be a looser tie. The recipient survived in a colony that generally reciprocated. This helped the benefactor's offspring to survive, how? If the benefactor happened to be the recipient at some point, sure, but the trait needs a path, and in this case the path is more generalized.
At some point we need to ask about the role of this type of behavior in a group with traded favors that extend beyond kin. Human history suggests similar reinforcement. Likely there is a genetic component.
This is asymptotically close to "helping the group." Under what condition could we judge this as equivalent?
In the bat case, the benefactor is responding to signs of stress in another colony member. It is specific. The behavior generally helps the group fitness by supporting genetic diversity, at the least. When do individual actions at a local level become an emergent group behavior?
Okay, but notice that you're saying "group" instead of "species." My point was that behaviors do not evolve to benefit the species.
A successful colony, the group, if it survives over the long haul, could become the species. Also, members of the colony might intersperse with other colonies, spreading the genetic and behavioral traits.
My question continues to be about the spread of these traits and how finely to parse the phrase "the good of the species." Can the "good of another" become the "good of the group?" When does a behavior become indistinguishable at the species level from "the good of the species?"
Sure, impersonal. No question. However the selection pressure remains, and we benefit. The selection pressure to reach reproductive age is stronger, also true. But it is important to recognize these secondary selection pressures.
In short: dS ≥ 0.
I see some discussion about thermodynamics and gravity. It's fascinating because the elements heavier than helium are almost all created through stellar processes (gravitational collapse). Those processes increase the entropy of the Universe even though we get highly complex nuclei. If the proton is not stable, and there are good reasons to think that it is unstable, then everything will decay to photons, electrons and neutrinos. Neutron stars, white dwarf stars, and even black holes will all decay away (black holes from Hawking radiation). It's gravity and thermodynamics together that give us the story arc of the Universe - and thermodynamics rules our fate.
Life is but a waystation in this unstoppable march. Given the local conditions on Earth, we are just the most efficient way of making a mess - and thermodynamics will always choose that!
Yup, second law of thermodynamics
Let me inject some optimism and remind you all of Poincare Recurrences in quantum mechanics. The entropy go down one day. It just… will take a while.
Well that was food for thought. Thanks for sharing, and for stimulating few thoughts in your readers, interesting to read too.
On #16 you already got comments. I don't disagree with them, except maybe: to people saying "yeah, but what when our sun burns out or universe/expansion ends then even local entropy decrease that is life ends, so final entropy victory." (boo! hiss!) Well to that I say - we don't know? We can't be sure what happens once the universe ends? (incl to entropy) Maybe we shd have tad more - ahem! - faith? ;-) This old, "the most uplifting video" by @skdh came to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89Mq6gmPo0s. :-)
But I started writing this to say something else. It's not only gravity that clumps stuff together. We also have electro-magnetism that clumps 1/2 of stuff with the other 1/2. And we have one nuclear force that does the same. And then the other that does the opposite - repel, and electro-magnetism also repels the wrong 1/2-s.
That made me wonder. Maybe gravity is truly special. (as there is not repellent version) But maybe only b/c we're missing a lot in our physics. May the missing part (half?) have anti-gravity that rappels. IDK ofc - idle speculation this. :-)
Regarding autocracy, it is true that citizens have no safe means of incentivizing the regime to act in their interests. (And even if they did, the same problems you identify with democracy would apply: "voters lack the expertise to assess the complex effects of any particular policy on any desired outcome".)
But if there is a monarch (in the sense of one man who securely owns the state), then there is an incentive for him to preserve and increase the value of his subjects: his greedy desire to maximize his wealth over the long term. Of course, a monarch's idea of a subject's value will be somewhat different than the subject's own idea of it, but they will agree in many ways. I.e. both want the subject to create a lot of wealth.
Hoppe makes this argument in Democracy: The God That Failed. Curtis Yarvin is a more modern proponent.
Yea I don’t buy the Yarvin take because the king’s long-term wealth is only secure if he can maintain his place on the throne (fending off conspirators, coup attempts, etc). The king’s interests will be in raising just enough money to buy loyalty while keeping the masses as immisserated and disconnected from each other as possible so they don’t rebel. Bruce Bueno de mesquita spells out the logic in his excellent book The Dictator’s Handbook.
Bueno de Mesquita is great, isn't he?
You have to admit, though, that the incentive *is* there for a monarch who does expect to reign for a long life, and/or to have his family inherit.
"Dictators" are not that. They did not inherit the throne, and if overthrown or just assassinated, they cannot expect their family to maintain the throne. As such, they are more roving bandit than stationary bandit (as per Mancur Olsen).
Kings were like that before the advent of nationalism and liberalism. (Which, to be sure, can't be un-invented.) CEOs of sovereign corporations using technological methods to secure ownership -- well, this has not happened. Yet. It does seem possible to me with existing tech. The roadblock is not that, but USG and the "international community".