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Several have argued that the opposite of entropy is order. I don’t think this is true.. entropy isn’t a state – well, normally, although I suppose one could argue that my house is in a state of extreme entropy.. but order is. Order isn’t really normally thought of as a process, or a continuim (sp?), although I suppose that it is as well.

Anyway, somehow it just ‘feels’ like there should be a better word for a process by which things become more ordered, organized, etc..

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 9th, 2005 at 10:18 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “…”

  1. randomdreams Says:
    April 9th, 2005 at 2:32 am

    Well, entropy is the progression of things from order to chaos, so you’re right, my suggestion wasn’t a great one. How about ‘organization’, then, in its verb sense — the application of energy to a system to increase its order. Although, of course, that hides the underlying truth that organization in one system necessarily implies greater entropy in the larger system that includes the energy source used for the organization.

  2. randomdreams Says:
    April 9th, 2005 at 2:34 am

    and by the way one of my physics teachers pointed out that a hard drive full of organized data is at a higher energy state than one that’s full of random bits. I’d never really thought about that, but he claims that it’s measurable (although I think that’s a kind of silly definition of ‘measurable’.)

  3. skotte Says:
    April 10th, 2005 at 7:34 am

    i agree with you here. and it’s an interesting point, and a good question. there doesnt seem to be a really swift word which encapsulates “the opposite of entropy”. Simplification perhaps? “Occam’s razor in action” perhaps?

    by the way, the word is “continuum”. since you asked.

  4. goamaki Says:
    April 10th, 2005 at 9:08 am

    well, isn’t entropy rather a “measure” than a state? there are various degrees of it, as there would be various degrees of simplification or Organization. One can be anywhere on the scale…

  5. goamaki Says:
    April 10th, 2005 at 9:09 am

    oh, and in knowing what side of the scale you might be on, will most likely determine how certain things in your life work, or don’t work. Some people work better on one end than the other. Some need to be right in the middle. I’m about Middle, hehe.

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