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Entropy, Evolution, Internet

Joi makes one of those posts that makes me wish I had more time to investigate – this one was inspired by a Susan Crawford post, and Susan was inspired by a Seth Schoen post about evolution and the second law of thermodynamics, which suggests that disorder in an isolated system will increase... the system will become less organized, more chaotic. Schoen's piece is about John W. Patterson's essay "Thermodynamics and Evolution," which challenges the creationist assertion that the second law contradicts or disproves the theory of evolution, because evolution suggests that order is increasing. Susan summarizes Schoen and Patterson, noting that increased order or negentropy is localized: "This local order emerges BECAUSE the outside area is becoming increasingly disorganized." If you've read Gravity's Rainbow, think of the banana breakfast, which represents enclosed, local negative entropy while the chaos of war goes on outside.

This is where I could take more time, because there's more to these three posts and their references than I have time to capture here, but also because I know there's confusion about the second law and the concept of entropy, and I've often thought that the second law is applicable to the state of the universe we perceive now, but I've wondered if reversal is possible, so that there's a kind of puslation, that disorder increases to a point, and at that point there's a reversal; order increases and disorder decreases. I can speculate about something like that because I'm not a scientist and I'm ignorant of physics, and that makes me wish I could know more.

Joi quotes Susan, and this quote ties her post to discussions about a free and open Internet, which many want, and many others fear:

Here is Patterson's conclusion:

"In reality, ... the 'uphill' processes associated with life not only are compatible with entropy and the second law, but actually depend on them for the energy fluxes off of which they feed. Numerous other kinds of backward processes in simpler, nonliving systems also proceed in this way, and do so in complete accord with the second law."

This all ties to internet governance. A sufficiently open net will tend towards order, not chaos -- and will do so on its own, with no external pilot.

jon posted this at 8:47 AM
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