On Energy, Entropy, and Probability

Epistemological Perspective on ‘How the World Works’

I.?????????????Energy and Entropy

The ontological question of “What is Reality?” is perhaps the greatest puzzle that produced by human civilization and by far, century after century, still remains as a relevant puzzle for our undertaking.

?From the modern scientific lens, reality constituted by the natural and material world. Therefore, things such matter and energy become the fundamental pieces to having a so-called ‘complete’ understanding of such perspective.

?The world of atom(mass) bounded by Einsteinian spacetime constraint, giving us the impression that physical abstraction like energy ‘is’ everything. Prior to Einstein’s theory of relativity, we were already having some consensus regarding energy, reflected on scientific formulation of Laws of Energy stating “energy is neither created nor destroyed, only converted”. This is pretty much bold claim about the nature of how our universe works. And as Sagan Standard applied: “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”, the fact that such claim about the nature of energy remains ‘true’ is just another evidence on the importance of scientific enquiry.

?As far as thermodynamics concern, the formulation for this conservation of energy is given by its first law, while the second and third laws deal with another physical abstraction,-called entropy. The model to unite those 3 laws then, goes as follows: ?We can think of entropy as the dissipating medium that exist to represent the possible state of system, while this very system is subjected to external/internal energy conversion.?

?Let’s use this example to further explain the basic: imagine a child’s room where every one of this child’s toys is organized in very structured and placed in very orderly fashion. We will introduce a typical 3-5year old children to enter into this room whenever we want to start our thought-experiment. This is our assumed initial state at t=t(0), then experiment stops at t(1)=t(0) + delta (t). Note that there is ?interval that has elapsed since our thought-experiment started. What would you suggest this final state will looks like to the above element mentioned (the children and his/her toys)? With some degree of confidence, we can suggest that the toys will no longer organized and ordered as it were at t=t(0), where most likely that all of those structure and order will be gone, therefore introducing the notion that such system has “tendency” to change its state into something we can call disorder, disorganized and unstructured. Without “energy” being applied, the system will eventually collapse to the final state as mentioned above through dissipating capacity of “entropy”.

If there is one thing we can conclude from the experiment above, it is not really about the entropy that characterized by the tendency of system to goes into disorder or about such dissipating medium (although it remains important concept), but rather the force of that mysterious time interval. Although we are still not sure whether the time is the cause or the time is actually the effect, but the change of time, is perhaps the most important and impactful epistemological perspective that we can derive from energy-entropy relationship, thus “by time, indeed, mankind is in loss”.

II.???????????Monte Carlo Simulation

Probability theory only works when sample size is greater than one, but the tricky thing about life is that N=1. This leads us to the debate of deductive vs inductive approach within the epistemological framework. But, actually it is not really about one way or the other, nor about thesis with its anti-thesis argument, rather the emphasize on the need for higher dimensional thinking as the 3D object will never fully be able to be constructed with its projection or any 2D slice of 3D object. Hence, even Monte Carlo simulation with all possible scenarios will never fully be able to grasp the totality of life’s process, and process always have to deal with the concept of time. Iterating back to our early statement that time is quite mysterious thing to deal with, one thing for sure is that we always “lose” it. There is no turning back, time is the most scarce resource in the world and the very true definition of irreversibility.

?History is full of discrete phenomena and irreversible in nature. We only experience one set of unbroken chain of one event to the another. This is a perfect place for eco-chamber, since we never really realize the function of the non-event or to basically making us aware of silent evidence. In regards to why and how the world is as it is today, we can’t really know the underlying cause of events, nor we do know about the impact of one or other event to the future. But, at least we are given an ability and tool to measure and quantify. And the social phenomena might be the crucial place to start the assessment.

III.?????????Power Laws ?

Measurement of virtually any social phenomena will bring us to a closer realization that small quantity/lesser input/ rare events could never really be insignificant, in fact perhaps it will become the most impactful thing that ever happened throughout human history without the need of any precedence nor historical analog.

First, it is important to note that as a species blessed with brain capable of just doing ‘everything’ they want, human is still a have a problem and bad intuition about any exponential thing. Imagine a football stadium that is empty at t=t(0), in which the rate of doubling the audience is 1 minute. Let’s assume it takes t=t(1000) to get the stadium half-full. How much time do we need to make a full stadium? Answer: t=t(1001). In a very short period of time, things can happen very quickly. To model it mathematically:

t represents time, F(t) represent function at any given time, F(t0) represent arbitrary function that may affect the F(t), while x could be any given real number or another arbitrary function. However, the model could be generalized even more by making the power of x is not only positive, but also negative. In our stadium case, the power t could not be negative, since time is only moving in one direction to its ever more positive axis, thus creating ever-more increasing value of F(t). In many applications, this condition is called ‘runaway’ problem, and most of the time frame as destructive power, in example thermal runaway in battery, motor runaway in engine, or runaway population growth which is associated with undesirable state of each of those particular phenomena. On the other side of axis, the negative in the power of x will create a damping force. This force is commonly found in the control system application where there is a need to overshoot the outcome, then brings back such overshoot value back to its expected outcome.

?Logarithmic function serves a better tool to talk about this idea and to help us as well to navigate the domain of “exponential” and such thing we call “Power Laws”. One can see that when the above function is taken as log, the following equation is held:

Treating log of each function as x, y and constant variable, one can easily plot the linear curve of final state of the given function with the t is representing the slope in which this log-log plot is created. Therefore, one could simply see the slope of the new log-log plot and determine whether there is “Power Laws” characteristic based on the stiffness of the slope.

?What can we do with the slope in such log-log plot? First, it can measure both “runaway” and “damping” force that potentially plays in the very underlying set of complex-system relationship on which we build the mathematical model. Secondly, it also enables us to know and detect the so-called fat-tails property, described and elaborated in more detail by Taleb’s Incerto investigation. But, the simple idea is that when we have the negative slope, and the slope is approaching 1 (or less), the more the rare event will have an impact to the aggregate. Qualitative change, and things that can’t be known in advance, hence scandal of prediction along with narrative fallacy only could bring us back to the world that we don’t understand, where they only act as the humbling mechanism to our arrogance and ignorance to understand how the world really works.

IV.??????????Amor Fati

We might never realize all of these human subjectivities that we’re imposing in our life which is really far away from the natural homeostatis tendency of the universe, left unchecked, leads to our inevitable civilization collapse. It is a complete disconnect from sacred values and traditions, the greed and selfish desire is taking over individual’s mind leaving to the destruction of environment, all meanwhile the power of God that we are possessing is channeled in self-defeating and nihilistic fashion.

?The “Sign” is everywhere, and it is only the question whether or not the human civilization will ever heed those Signs and learn from their ancestor that human being is just the irrelevant speck in the vast universe. Do not let the amazing ability to gather information and understanding to knowledge, attract us to become ever-more Intellectual (Yet Idiot) species. The life is here for us, it is our job to live it in accordance to the Way. To live it in accordance to the Law of Nature. To love one’s own fate.

?Thus spoke Nietzche: “My formula for greatness is that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it…but to love it”.