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Entropy is a difficult concept to understand. This was a well-written article that explained nothing and further muddied the waters. What is perhaps not apprec

Entropy is a difficult concept to understand. This was a well-written article that explained nothing and further muddied the waters. What is perhaps not appreciated is how the idea of entropy completely transformed our society by unleashing massive amounts of mechanical efficiency. This free energy is derived from contrast -- power comes from flow across a gradient. I wonder where the analogies work or where they fail. For instance, the importance of contrasts seem to illustrate the value of cultural differences (diversity) and raises concerns about a homogeneous world culture.

Chris2048 6y ago
> For me, this illustrates the value of cultural differences (diversity) Are you talking about cultural differences in the same sense as a temperature gradient?
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  Yes, I am, precisely. The basis would be Ronald Burt's idea of "Structural Holes", which describe the phenomenon whereby those people that "bridge" different groups of people are able to gain value from the information arbitrage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_holes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_holes Does it apply to cultural diversity? Who knows. But somehow, I feel like we want a future where differences are strengths -- and yet at the same time, the value of the differences comes from the bridging of them. Monoculture is dangerous for resilience, in any case.
contravariant 6y ago
The jump to diversity is a bit iffy. Even taking for granted that this provides a similar gradient then all you can really guarantee is that it will cause something. This could be both good and bad. Also if it works in the same way then it will only work at the cost of diversity, the second law of thermodynamics makes sure of that. So yeah, I'm not sure if your analogy works, and if it did I'm not sure if it would be useful.
- Majromax 6y ago
  For social-science applications, I think the information-theoretic notion of entropy is more appropriate. There's no social analog to the laws of thermodynamics, but we can use the notion of entropy to make statements about information content. In particular, the idea (along with the adjacent subject of Bayesian statistics) has sharpened my thinking about news: there's less information (to me) in otherwise trustworthy headlines/stories that agree with my prior notions. In an analytic sense this isn't surprising, but it runs against the emotional impulse to seek out affirming information.
  - contravariant 6y ago
    You still need to be a bit careful, because what you're describing as entropy isn't how much information is in it, but rather how much you didn't already know. Hence random noise has the maximal 'information content' but isn't useful in the slightest. And really I wouldn't worry too much about finding some mathematical justification for everything. It's an easy way to get caught up in technicalities for something that you already knew.
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  See below comment on structural holes. I completely agree with your assessment of the uncertainty here. But knowing that 1. Monoculture is dangerous 2. Diversity will be celebrated for good political reasons and 3. Unity in diversity is the classical notion of harmony and beauty ...this makes me hypothesize about a theoretical reason why cultural contrasts could be something to value. It suggests that energy can be "harvested" from flows across those cultural contrasts and that cultural contrasts require energy to maintain. I think it would produce net value because... Idk. (Note, I might be biased on this entire topic simply because I hate Facebook and miss the highly diverse 90s web)
  - akiselev 6y ago
    > ...this makes me hypothesize about a theoretical reason why cultural contrasts could be something to value. It suggests that energy can be "harvested" from flows across those cultural contrasts and that cultural contrasts require energy to maintain. I think it would produce net value because... Idk. There is a reason to value diversity but it's as far from theoretical as you can get: billions of years of evolution have demonstrated that diversity is the only way for complex ecosystems (civilization, in our case) to exist on any significant timescale. Monocultures are dangerous because the second the environment changes enough, everything dies pretty much all at once instead of transitioning between a mix of cultures best suited to survive the change. I think there's a world of research to be done on how those principles apply to societies, which are driven more by artificial selection, but there's definitely a connection.
dontcancelme 6y ago
> I wonder where the analogies work or where they fail. For instance, the importance of contrasts seem to illustrate the value of cultural differences (diversity) and raises concerns about a homogeneous world culture. Why would a culturally diverse society be better than a homogeneous one? It always comes down to the details. Take a diverse set of cultures, remove the undesirable parts of each culture, and you're left with a less diverse but better set. Unless you think cultures can have no "undesirable" parts....
- webmaven 6y ago
  > Take a diverse set of cultures, remove the undesirable parts of each culture, and you're left with a less diverse but better set. Unless you think cultures can have no "undesirable" parts.... But each culture will judge different parts of other cultures as being the undesirable ones... Perhaps a better framing would be for each culture to judge for itself which parts of other cultures are worth copying... Except that the agents doing the actual copying are individual participants in the various cultures (and subcultures!), so attempts to enforce this sort of judgement uniformly on a culture as a whole is often a recipe for a lot of intra-cultural misery.
- noobermin 6y ago
  Very convenient moving of the goal posts in your definitions here.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Chris2048 6y ago

> For me, this illustrates the value of cultural differences (diversity) Are you talking about cultural differences in the same sense as a temperature gradient?

dr_dshiv 6y ago
Yes, I am, precisely. The basis would be Ronald Burt's idea of "Structural Holes", which describe the phenomenon whereby those people that "bridge" different groups of people are able to gain value from the information arbitrage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_holes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_holes Does it apply to cultural diversity? Who knows. But somehow, I feel like we want a future where differences are strengths -- and yet at the same time, the value of the differences comes from the bridging of them. Monoculture is dangerous for resilience, in any case.

contravariant 6y ago

The jump to diversity is a bit iffy. Even taking for granted that this provides a similar gradient then all you can really guarantee is that it will cause something. This could be both good and bad. Also if it works in the same way then it will only work at the cost of diversity, the second law of thermodynamics makes sure of that. So yeah, I'm not sure if your analogy works, and if it did I'm not sure if it would be useful.

Majromax 6y ago
For social-science applications, I think the information-theoretic notion of entropy is more appropriate. There's no social analog to the laws of thermodynamics, but we can use the notion of entropy to make statements about information content. In particular, the idea (along with the adjacent subject of Bayesian statistics) has sharpened my thinking about news: there's less information (to me) in otherwise trustworthy headlines/stories that agree with my prior notions. In an analytic sense this isn't surprising, but it runs against the emotional impulse to seek out affirming information.
- contravariant 6y ago
  You still need to be a bit careful, because what you're describing as entropy isn't how much information is in it, but rather how much you didn't already know. Hence random noise has the maximal 'information content' but isn't useful in the slightest. And really I wouldn't worry too much about finding some mathematical justification for everything. It's an easy way to get caught up in technicalities for something that you already knew.
dr_dshiv 6y ago
See below comment on structural holes. I completely agree with your assessment of the uncertainty here. But knowing that 1. Monoculture is dangerous 2. Diversity will be celebrated for good political reasons and 3. Unity in diversity is the classical notion of harmony and beauty ...this makes me hypothesize about a theoretical reason why cultural contrasts could be something to value. It suggests that energy can be "harvested" from flows across those cultural contrasts and that cultural contrasts require energy to maintain. I think it would produce net value because... Idk. (Note, I might be biased on this entire topic simply because I hate Facebook and miss the highly diverse 90s web)
- akiselev 6y ago
  > ...this makes me hypothesize about a theoretical reason why cultural contrasts could be something to value. It suggests that energy can be "harvested" from flows across those cultural contrasts and that cultural contrasts require energy to maintain. I think it would produce net value because... Idk. There is a reason to value diversity but it's as far from theoretical as you can get: billions of years of evolution have demonstrated that diversity is the only way for complex ecosystems (civilization, in our case) to exist on any significant timescale. Monocultures are dangerous because the second the environment changes enough, everything dies pretty much all at once instead of transitioning between a mix of cultures best suited to survive the change. I think there's a world of research to be done on how those principles apply to societies, which are driven more by artificial selection, but there's definitely a connection.

dontcancelme 6y ago

> I wonder where the analogies work or where they fail. For instance, the importance of contrasts seem to illustrate the value of cultural differences (diversity) and raises concerns about a homogeneous world culture. Why would a culturally diverse society be better than a homogeneous one? It always comes down to the details. Take a diverse set of cultures, remove the undesirable parts of each culture, and you're left with a less diverse but better set. Unless you think cultures can have no "undesirable" parts....

webmaven 6y ago
> Take a diverse set of cultures, remove the undesirable parts of each culture, and you're left with a less diverse but better set. Unless you think cultures can have no "undesirable" parts.... But each culture will judge different parts of other cultures as being the undesirable ones... Perhaps a better framing would be for each culture to judge for itself which parts of other cultures are worth copying... Except that the agents doing the actual copying are individual participants in the various cultures (and subcultures!), so attempts to enforce this sort of judgement uniformly on a culture as a whole is often a recipe for a lot of intra-cultural misery.
noobermin 6y ago
Very convenient moving of the goal posts in your definitions here.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]