Entropy - Blog Posts

Toward Entropy

While I still wait for the chance to gather up my buds and get them into the ring of M:tA, I need to keep this place lively somehow. Through that, I've been working on shoring up my understanding of all the different interactions and possibilities--the limits of imagination itself--within the different Spheres.

Yet I always find myself drawn towards Entropy.

It's a neat little sphere in itself. When one thinks of Entropy there are many different branches to take. Chance, Chaos, Death, Fate. The depths of the concept extend far and wide, reaching its fingers into the depths of a universe both visible and unseen. As opposed to something like Life, whose influences remain important and apparent, despite its noticeably small concentration on a similar universal scale.

But that's waxing too much philosophical, and I prefer to be a rock-brained type-monkey. So, instead, I'm applying it to the life of an unfortunate piano-prodigy-turned-gambling-addict. Slowly--very, very slowly--I'm working on fleshing out the test character Gale Huckhowser. Originally, his Concept started out as Lady Luck's Lover (I love alliteration, sue me), as a smooth, suave, southern gambler type who had an uncanny knack for dodging misfortune. Yet the longer it went on and the more I explored the depths of entropy, the more I realized that concept needed more tragedy, more humanity.

So now if I want to get to that smooth, suave gambler aesthetic, coming into his own and cleaning up his act, then I need to trudge through the sacred flaw approach of alcoholism, mommy issues, love, loss, and poverty. Like notes dancing off ivory keys, following the discordant melody of patterened chaos, this fella needs to go through some shit.

Entropy and Monday Mornings

It’s a Monday morning. You reach work to find 25 unread emails, a messy house, 5 essays due, a broken coffee machine, and you’re not sure if you locked your door on the way here. And it doesn’t end there. There’s more work piling up! When there’s chaos all around us, it is only natural to feel overwhelmed. What if I tell you, every object (yes, the non-living ones) experiences this too! 

Only at a very atomic level. Each task in our mind is a microstate, a unique arrangement of thoughts at that point of time. The greater the microstates, the greater the number of tasks, the greater the chaos. Chemistry defines a microstate as an instantaneous arrangement of atoms or molecules in a system. And just as our task list increases, the chaos increases. Similarly, for a system, as the number of microstates increases, the entropy increases. Entropy is the measure of disorder or randomness or the possible number of microstates a system can have. It’s just chaos, where lower entropy means greater order and less chaos(Friday Nights), and higher entropy means more disorder and more microstates(Monday mornings).

Entropy tends to rise with time in an isolated system, such as an overloaded brain on a Monday. This implies that things naturally transition from order to disorder in the absence of outside input. Now, imagine some Lo-fi music playing in your headset as you work through the e-mails, sipping on the perfect coffee that you ordered, powering through your day. Maybe you even wrote a to-do list, helping you stay organised. Doesn’t seem so bad when an external effort is made. Similarly, in isolated systems, entropy usually tends to increase over time, meaning things usually go from a state of orderliness to disorderliness unless an external energy is put in to maintain structure.

S = k. ln(W)

Mathematically, the Entropy (S) of any isolated system can be measured by multiplying the Boltzmann constant (k) by the natural logarithm of the number of microstates it possesses (lnW). Entropy isn’t a bad thing—it’s just a natural tendency of systems to become more disordered over time, unless energy is added to maintain order. In your case, a little bit of organisation (external energy) can help you manage the entropy in your Monday morning.

In classical physics, the entropy of a physical system is proportional to the quantity of energy no longer available to do physical work. In another universe, our systems still have this extent of randomness intact. You and i are closed vessels trying to sustain, order ourselves by consuming all energy that aids.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, in a closed system, the entropy of a system can only decrease if the entropy of another system increases.

(Lately i’ve seen entanglement apply to lovesick physicists. But it’s not in ways you’d expect it to be.)

Your entropy increases with mine and i can’t comprehend how such disorder is to be borne.

Some scientists predict the entropy of the universe will increase to the point where the randomness creates a system incapable of useful work. When only thermal energy remains, the universe would be said to have died of heat death. We’ve never been scared of death, just the end of two of us. Certain nights i wake up on the verge of death by neural transmitters, leading my spirit to the gateway of days of rot.

Entropy is beautiful because with time matter in isolated systems tends to move from order to disorder. We are beautiful because in an effort to attain order, we set ourselves free of it.

Time and Entropy

black sharpie on manila paper

Miami 2009

Time and entropy arise mutually like a boat and its wake.

Entropy is fractal which means that time never began.

So relax.

Relax

black sharpie on manila paper

Miami 2009

so, I’ve taken up tailoring recently. and while I was working on a draping today, I got to thinking about entropy.

(drapings are those things where a tailor takes a blank section of cloth and sculpts a piece of clothing directly onto a model’s body. it ensures a perfect fit. entropy refers to the level of organization in a system. the less organization a system has, the greater its entropy. entropy can only be overcome with energy. it takes effort to organize a system. the natural state of the universe is one of complete entropy, i.e., the lowest energy state possible.)

A piece of broadcloth, before it’s used for a draping, is the cloth in its state of greatest entropy. it’s featureless. uniform. whatever small variations exist between one part of the cloth and another are random and will ease out over time. wrinkles. chalk markings. small snags.

a finished piece of clothing is the cloth at its lowest state of entropy, and by extension, its highest energy state. it is structured and organized. it has many features, all of which interact with each other in a coherent system. seams and darts and buttons and lining all cooperate to give the dress, or whatever it is, a fixed shape and function.

most things are like this. your body. the planet Earth. the Milky Way. they are systems made of organized parts which give them form and function. 

(the difference between you and a few buckets of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen and a few other atoms combined into an inert slurry is the entropy of the system.)

but in order for those systems to become organized, they needed energy from an outside source. without energy, everything slides towards entropy. the energy that makes your body possible comes from the food you eat. the energy from your food comes, though a few middlemen like cows or cabbages or whatever, from the Sun. the Sun’s energy comes from the fusion of hydrogen into helium. A hydrogen atom is just a proton: maybe paired with an electron, if it bumps into one. And those component particles were created in the first few wild moments after the Big Bang.

All of the energy in the universe can be traced back to the Big Bang. every organized system owes its life to the Big Bang. we’re just sipping from its cup until we die.

(where did the energy that ignited the Big Bang come from? no one knows. there’s room to see God there, if you’re so inclined.)

but the energy of the Big Bang wasn’t infinite. we are, slowly, using it up. the universe is sinking to a lower and lower energy state, all the time. according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the energy of a system can only stay the same or decrease. entropy will win. people refer to this as the heat death of the universe. according to current science, it’s the most likely end point for everything.

so anyway, I got to thinking about this while I was tailoring today.

I spent all day on this project. I put a lot of energy into it. my energy, as mechanical energy, or the physical act of sewing, into the cloth, where it’s now stored as potential energy, which is the energy of positioning. I turned chemical energy (food) into motion and then into shape. each of these transitions is a step down the ladder. a little bit more of our universe’s inheritance, spent.

and I got really sad. that probably sounds ridiculous, right? but I think about this a lot. every time I spend energy, that’s energy the universe can’t get back. a sequin off the Big Bang is now a new dress on my ironing board. was that energy well-spent? should it have gone to something else? it doesn’t matter. it’s gone now. the universe is a little bit closer to death.

then I stopped being sad, and I just felt a deep responsibility to take care of that dress. because, mathematically speaking, there’s nothing superior about organization over entropy. the particles don’t care if they’re in a high or low energy state. your atoms don’t know who you are, and it doesn’t matter to them if you’re you, or a few buckets of slurry. the value of organization is subjective. systems are important because we believe they are. the universe’s life and death only matter if they matter to us.

I like tailoring. my new dress came out well. I’m looking forward to making another one. I’m sorry that someday there won’t be any more new dresses, or anything else.

maybe that’s good enough.