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I think the concept would be easier for me to understand if we talked about the inverse of entropy - i.e. some kind of measurement for the concentration of usef
by spuz 3y ago
I think the concept would be easier for me to understand if we talked about the inverse of entropy - i.e. some kind of measurement for the concentration of useful energy or "order". I think it would then be more intuitive to say that this measurement always decreases. Do we even have a word for the opposite of entropy?
- knolan 3y agoExergy
- dangitnotagain 3y agoPotential
- MaxRegret 3y agoNegentropy? This is a concept in information theory, but maybe also in physics.
- winwang 3y agoAnd it's closely related to the Gibbs free energy (available energy), which decreases with increasing entropy, all other things equal.
- vehicles2b 3y agoI find it intuitive to think of such “ordered” distributions as having a higher compression ratio. (Ie compare the file sizes of zipping a file with just ones or just zeros vs zipping a file with a uniform, random mixture of ones and zeros.)
- Solvency 3y agoHuh? I've never really understood this metaphor. Take any photograph in Photoshop. First, save one copy of it as a compressed JPG. Now, on the original, add a small densely repeating tiled pattern multiplied on top as a layer. Like a halftone effect, dot texture, whatever. Technically you're adding more order and less chaos. The resulting image won't compress as efficiently.
- dist-epoch 3y agoThe idea is to use the best compressor possible. So called Kolmogorov complexity.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bob1029 3y ago> Do we even have a word for the opposite of entropy? I've always referred to the inverse as "information" or "order".
- cshimmin 3y ago"information" is not a good term for the opposite. Entropy is a well defined concept in information theory (and can be connected to the physical concept). More entropy means more information, not less.
- kgwgk 3y ago> Entropy is a well defined concept in information theory (and can be connected to the physical concept). More entropy means more information, not less. More entropy means more missing information. https://iopscience.iop.org/book/mono/978-0-7503-3931-5/chapter/bk978-0-7503-3931-5ch1#bk978-0-7503-3931-5ch1s1-3 https://iopscience.iop.org/book/mono/978-0-7503-3931-5/chapt...
- kikokikokiko 3y agoAs I understand it in information theory, "more entropy" equals "more information is necessary to fully describe this thing", but I may be wrong.
- kgwgk 3y ago“more [additional] information is necessary to fully describe this thing” = “more missing information [in the incomplete description of the thing]”
- bob1029 3y agoI agree. Order is a better term to describe it. Predictability. More entropy = more total possible states the system can be in. I tend to use "information" to refer to a statistically-significant signal or data that the application/business can practically utilize. This is definitely not the same as the strict information theoretical definition.
- cjs_ac 3y agoEctropy has been suggested, but the term is not in common use.
- syntaxing 3y agoNot trying to be cheeky but wouldn’t the opposite of entropy be work?
- danq__ 3y agoEnergy should never be used to introduce entropy as the concept of energy itself is highly, highly complicated and abstract. Entropy and energy are orthogonal anyway. You can understand entropy without the need to even use the word "energy." Entropy is an aspect of probability, it is in fact a numerical phenomenon.
- Timon3 3y agoI might be completely off kilter here (please tell me if that's the case!), but what makes sense to me is to think about "how much entropy is left", as in "how much can entropy still increase between the current state and the highest entropy state". That flips the meaning to describe what you're talking about, and feels very intuitive to me.
- spuz 3y agoWhen you say "how much entropy is left?" you make it sound like a quantity that is decreasing, not increasing. That seems incorrect, no?
- Timon3 3y agoThat's why I specified that it's meant as "how much can entropy still increase between the current state and the highest entropy state". If you can't read it in that sense, either ignore the shorter question or read it as "how much increase of entropy left". Or maybe "how much entropy left until max".
- nobody9999 3y ago>"how much entropy left until max". 10^106 years[0] worth or so. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe
- tnecniv 3y agoNormally we care not about entropy but changes in entropy or entropy measured in comparison to a reference distribution, so you can just take the negative of that difference.
- kledru 3y agowe do have a word -- "negentropy". Physicists also sometimes find it easier to talk about "negentropy" instead of entropy.
- dangitnotagain 3y agoEmergence. If entropy is the distribution of potential over negative potential, emergence is that where an outcome creates potential (of some discrete domain). The mystifying relationship with thermodynamic entropy is that through accelerating entropy in other domains (burning), the entropy in the primary domain (eternal drag) is supplanted by the potentials provided by the external domain.