5 ms·
Entropy got a lot more exciting to me after hearing Sean Carroll talk about it. He has a foundational/philosophical bent and likes to point out that there are
by TexanFeller 2y ago
Entropy got a lot more exciting to me after hearing Sean Carroll talk about it. He has a foundational/philosophical bent and likes to point out that there are competing definitions of entropy set on different philosophical foundations, one of them seemingly observer dependent:
- https://youtu.be/x9COqqqsFtc?si=cQkfV5IpLC039Cl5 https://youtu.be/x9COqqqsFtc?si=cQkfV5IpLC039Cl5
- https://youtu.be/XJ14ZO-e9NY?si=xi8idD5JmQbT5zxN https://youtu.be/XJ14ZO-e9NY?si=xi8idD5JmQbT5zxN
Leonard Susskind has lots of great talks and books about quantum information and calculating the entropy of black holes which led to a lot of wild new hypotheses.
Stephen Wolfram gave a long talk about the history of the concept of entropy which was pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/live/ocOHxPs1LQ0?si=zvQNsj_FEGbTX2R3 https://www.youtube.com/live/ocOHxPs1LQ0?si=zvQNsj_FEGbTX2R3
- swyx 2y agowhy is it exciting at all? it is the most depressing concept i have ever heard.
- hnfong 2y agoWhat's depressing about it?
- datavirtue 2y agoThey are hung up on determinism and absolutes. In that world-view entropy is literally the devil.
- mithametacs 2y agoI’ll wait for the GUT before I declare something the most depressing concept
- TexanFeller 2y agoThe exciting part is there are different concepts of it that start from different foundations and arrive at the same thing. It’s suggestive that our understanding is incomplete and there are deeper levels of understanding to uncover. And it _could_ just be the case that the universe started with low entropy for no reason, but if there are reasons and we ponder them it could lead to some massive epiphanies in physics/cosmology.