By Steven Pinker*
Closed systems inexorably become less structured, less organized, less able to accomplish interesting and useful outcomes, until they slide into an equilibrium of gray, tepid monotony and stay there.
The Second Law is acknowledged in everyday life in sayings such as “Things fall apart,” “You can’t unscramble an egg,” and “What can go wrong will go wrong.”
In 1915, the physicist Arthur Eddington wrote, “The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature.” Why the awe for the Second Law? I believe that it defines the ultimate purpose of life, mind and striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order.
The Second Law also implies that misfortune may be no one’s fault. The human mind naturally thinks that when bad things happen—accidents, disease, famine—someone must have wanted them to happen. Galileo and Newton replaced this cosmic morality play with a clockwork universe in which events are caused by conditions in the present, not goals for the future.
The Second Law deepens that discovery: Not only does the universe not care about our desires, but in the natural course of events it will appear to thwart them, because there are so many more ways for things to go wrong than to go right. Houses burn down, ships sink, battles are lost for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Matter doesn’t spontaneously arrange itself into shelter or clothing, and living things don’t jump onto our plates to become our food.
What needs to be explained is not poverty but wealth.
An underappreciation of the Second Law lures people into seeing every unsolved social problem as a sign that the world is being driven off a cliff. But it is in the very nature of the universe that life has problems. It’s better to figure out how to solve them, by applying information and energy to expand our niche of life-enhancing order, than to start a conflagration and hope for the best.
Steven Pinker is a psychologist at Harvard University and the author, most recently, of “The Sense of Style.” This article is re-posted from edge.org and is here with permission.
19 Comments
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is irrelevant to us because it applies to a closed system and we live in an open system. However complex arrangements of matter are clearly a very common occurence here on Earth. Indeed there seems to be almost too much diversity in the world.I sort of get the impression that this professor wants to lead us into a discussion about "walls" and how they are closed systems.
We know the fundamental processes that bring about complex organisations of matter so I am surprised that Steven Pinker hasn't mentioned them. They are mutation, selection and replication. We need to look at these processes if we are to understand the existence of wealth. Successful systems of wealth generation exist, some are better than others, so you could say they have mutated. It is a relatively simple matter to then select the best one and then replicate it.
This is something I was alluding to the other day when discussing the power of language. Language is critical to human development and the creation of artefacts so it would make sense to go with the most successful one by selecting it and then replicating it as a sound first step toward wealth and happiness.
I'm sure that Pinker being an evolutionary psychologist and a linguist knows this.
You make an incorrect assumption in that we "select" the best system.
To assert that makes the whole evolutionary premise irrelevant as, naturally, the most efficient system will always prevail.
This point holds for your assertion the other day that we should force everyone to speak English in order to make them more prosperous. It is an arbitrary argument in regards to what you say here.
My assumption is correct, selection takes place. Natural selection/human selection. All technological development involves a selection process, often the selection of happy accidents. Complex structures are selected by something however that something doesn't have to be intelligent.
I have no idea why you think we cannot select the best one. That is where man has an advantage over natural selection. The ability to determine the best one for us rather than use the simple 'survival of the fittest' system of selection. English may not be the best but are you willing to take that chance? Guess what? It doesn't have to be the best if it has the numbers, it just has to replicate, become widespread. If we look at English as an organism it is highly adaptable and successful, it produces results.
I never said we should "force everyone" to learn English*. It is just the smart thing to do if you study history.
Once upon a time the secret to success was knowing Akkadian then Persian followed by Greek then Latin then French and now it is English.
*Ooops maybe I did write that but it is not unprecedented as in many schools around the world it is mandatory.
Okay then, advocate self selection. It seems pretty stupid to me, but I'll entertain the notion.
What you can't do in this case though is then advocate an avenue of scientific evolutionary principle in regards to it because it is contradictory. Essentially you rebut every scientific principle from evolution to the conservation of energy when you say that a process should be 'self selected' by participants.
If you want to arbitrarily associate the selection, fine. Don't try to justify it abstractly as a pseudo law of nature, though. That was what I was rebutting.
"It is just the smart thing to do if you study history.
Once upon a time the secret to success was knowing Akkadian then Persian followed by Greek then Latin then French and now it is English."
Why was it important to know these languages at specific times? And, why is it now largely irrelevant?
These languages weren't spread as mechanisms of understanding or enlightenment, they were spread through imperialism and war.
nymad To assert that makes the whole evolutionary premise irrelevant as, naturally, the most efficient system will always prevail.
That's not true. It is impossible to be the most efficient system in an environment that is constantly changing. Moderately efficient once but now no more. I'm not sure why you are focusing only on the end result rather than all stages of the process as if they don't exist. Humans have managed to stabilize environments to a degree which has enabled us to focus on managing our own evolution.
Essentially you rebut every scientific principle from evolution to the conservation of energy...
Cool, I'll take that as a major accomplishment.
...when you say that a process should be 'self selected' by participants.
The essence of being human, gods in mortal bodies, a paradigm shift in animal consciousness. Enhanced free will.
I get the impression that you don't believe in free will?
Why was it important to know these languages at specific times?
For the same reason that English is the official language of ASEAN. The current Empire's language is the language of the the most advanced and lucrative markets.
And, why is it now largely irrelevant?
Empires come and go but they can last for hundreds of years. They never become truly irrelevant as they are the foundations of the current Empire.
These languages weren't spread as mechanisms of understanding or enlightenment..
Oh I disagree. The Romans adopted a lot of Greek culture. Greek, Latin and French ARE the languages of enlightenment. Of course war is always with us and an essential component of the evolutionary struggle.
I get the impression that your objections are political and that my worldview clashes with your worldview. I do believe that certain humans are unique entities that can not be truly replicated as they are products of a unique historical process. This doesn't mean you can't make a good go of simulating it though. An example would be Japan that adopted European culture with a passion and enjoyed extraordinary success. Just look at a lot of Anime as an example. Blond, blue eyed heroes, Spenglerian Faustian yearning towards distance and infinity. They consciously selected that particular zeitgeist, bless them.
It's a pity that this subject is not generating more comments as evolutionary theory applied to human technological development is poorly understood by most people. The Theory of Evolution is 'the theory of creation' and not a rival of Creation Theory. Things like technology and economies evolve in a similar way to organisms, just much faster because of the human brain and now advanced digital information systems. Humans and computers can model the world using virtual reality (human imagination) to test designs at very low cost.
A thought about closed and open systems. A totally open system will be burnt out and smashed if too much energy gets through and frozen if too much energy escapes. Think of the surface of the Moon. The key is a system that is mostly closed and very discriminating about what it lets in. Think of a planet's atmosphere or the protective membrane of a cell.
Wealth creation should be slow and steady. Think of Mr Micawber:
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."
Here are some good YouTube videos about wealth and countries from The School of Life. The first one had to have its comments disabled due to it turning into a battleground between the Alt-Right and Marxists.
Of course the real pity is that you don't practice what you preach Zachary. Regarding your quote from Mr Micawber, that wealth creation should be slow and steady.
Most your past comments have centred around trying to encourage Investors to continue to buy property even when there is a strong indication that the market is turning. That's the type of behaviour that I would expect from an Estate Agent.
And as for your comment on: "Humans and computers can model the world using virtual reality (human imagination) to test designs at very low cost". If you worked in the Science and Tech Industry as I do, you would be aware that VR (Virtual Reality) is still very much a developing technology and certainly is not 'low cost'. Though with more capital investment I'm sure that will help to speed things along.
So how about encouraging investment in Science and Tech rather than greedily squireling money in to a massively over inflated property market.
Well. I advocate a slow and steady increase in property prices of around 4%. I find the 20%+ increases alarming. My income has always exceeded my expenses in any given year since I started working.
I probably should have clarified what I meant by virtual reality and that is humans have possessed it inside their brains for some time in the form of imagination, even visions and dreams. The ability to model the world and imagine different scenarios. Humans also use physical models, drawings, music and language etc to model aspects of reality. VR is just taking this a step further and could be a step toward developing machine consciousness.
The thing that Stephen does not emphasise enough, is that living things are a notable exception to the second law. They take basic raw materials and arrange them into the most complex and wonderful creations. I can't think of anything more opposite to the action of entropy. Living could be viewed as a battle between the forces of entropy and the opposite creative forces that we all carry. (some more than others) Unfortunately, eventually, we all fall victim to the forces of entropy, but in the meantime this wonderful gift of life gives us the power to fight back.
I'm quite disappointed there hasn't been much discussion on this article, alas, its has fallen off the front page now. Come on it's about Life, the Universe and Everything! On that subject the title of the book series that came from was of course The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy about a device which sort of exists now in the form of the mobile touch phone. This provides people with an interactive window into the World Wide Web a global information system. Huge efforts have been made to globalise the Internet so that no one is disadvantaged in this regard. Most of the people in the asylum seeker streams heading toward Europe have one of these devices.
A key aspect of human development and the accumulation of wealth is the quality and complexity of tools. The internet is something of a super tool, a vast information repository and communications system. This super tool is now super cheap and available to almost everyone. This Hitchhikers guide is leading some people to where the wealth is rather then helping them create wealth where they came from.
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