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)
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't see dual inheritance and evolutionary psychology as incompatible, but yes I co-host Evolutionary Psychology (the Podcast), and the evolutionary psychology vibes are intentional.
is it impossible that something we didn't adapt to want could incentivize us? i guess not. noise in the system can interfere.
imagination, life is your creation... nah. but fr, if we can just get to the level of STEM progress to reprogram incentives & exit genetic evolution, maybe these satisficing ahh coordination mechanisms we came up with & the evolved incentives can be retired, so that we have better problems & less stupid cruelty.
this doesn't seem physically impossible, and even if we want such a future bc it features some aspects which look like real incentives to our evolutionary design, the prospect of exiting genetic evolution can't be an incentive, and yet we can exploit our design to smuggle in these sneaky anti-gene goals. so whether via noise or something not yet understood, incentives aren't the only difference makers against entropy, or they can generate behavior that cancels them in the long run.
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?
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 🙉🙈
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.
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?
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
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.
I'm a fan of dual inheritance, whereas you are giving so Evolutionary psychology vibes. Am I off base here?
I don't see dual inheritance and evolutionary psychology as incompatible, but yes I co-host Evolutionary Psychology (the Podcast), and the evolutionary psychology vibes are intentional.
is it impossible that something we didn't adapt to want could incentivize us? i guess not. noise in the system can interfere.
imagination, life is your creation... nah. but fr, if we can just get to the level of STEM progress to reprogram incentives & exit genetic evolution, maybe these satisficing ahh coordination mechanisms we came up with & the evolved incentives can be retired, so that we have better problems & less stupid cruelty.
this doesn't seem physically impossible, and even if we want such a future bc it features some aspects which look like real incentives to our evolutionary design, the prospect of exiting genetic evolution can't be an incentive, and yet we can exploit our design to smuggle in these sneaky anti-gene goals. so whether via noise or something not yet understood, incentives aren't the only difference makers against entropy, or they can generate behavior that cancels them in the long run.
I'll bet you an infinite number of fractals that there are underlying incentives for the universe to move towards greater complex order.
https://aeon.co/essays/philosophers-must-reckon-with-the-meaning-of-thermodynamics