3 ms·
It's an interesting point of view, but the assumption that human society is bound to replicate internally the natural law of increasing entropy is quite the nat
by cornholio 3y ago
It's an interesting point of view, but the assumption that human society is bound to replicate internally the natural law of increasing entropy is quite the naturalistic fallacy. Until now, there hasn't been, to our knowledge, rational processes in our universe, capable of self reflection and decision making regarding their own behavior and organization, so past observations are not really relevant.
Sure, humanity is just another physical process that will ultimately dissolve in a high entropy lukewarm soup, but as long as we have access to low entropy, high energy density sources, we can buck the trend and choose to do quite unoptimal things, such as assigning individual rights to every individual, even those unfit for reproduction.
Zooming out past the current Stelliferous era of the universe and into the distant black hole and dark eras might risk losing quite a bit of nuance about humanity's nature and destiny.
- Radim 3y agoOf course. Different levels of resolution reveal different details, and 2. was the ultimate zoom-out. Still, I believe keeping the directionality in mind helps with perspective – even as turbulent whirls and eddies appear to float upstream, miraculously, temporarily. I now realize I forgot another observation, closer to chongli's original slightly-beyond-human resolution of bust-and-boom economic feedback loops: 3) Most people are pliable and will do as they're told. Even to their detriment, even all the way to their demise. And the process of human self-domestication is still accelerating. Historical examples abound; from extremely ancient to uncomfortably recent.