112. ENTROPY

Author James Clear, whose life work focuses on the question, “How can we live better?” wrote an article entitled Entropy: Why Life Always Seems to Get More Complicated. It made me stop and think about what restrains the forces in life that drive us to positive outcomes. This post includes selections from Clear’s article.

Clear reminds us that things can go wrong. “Problems seem to arise naturally on their own, while solutions always require our attention, energy, and effort. Life never seems to just work itself out for us.” He suggests that entropy is a force that governs our lives. So, what is that force?

“Imagine that you take a box of puzzle pieces and dump them out on a table. In theory, it is possible for the pieces to fall perfectly into place and create a completed puzzle when you dump them out of the box. But in reality, that never happens.

“Why? Quite simply, because the odds are overwhelmingly against it. Every piece would have to fall in just the right spot to create a completed puzzle. There is only one possible state where every piece is in order, but there are a nearly infinite number of states where the pieces are in disorder. Mathematically speaking, an orderly outcome is incredibly unlikely to happen at random.”

“Entropy is a measure of disorder. And there are always far more disorderly variations than orderly ones.”

“It is the natural tendency of things to lose order. Left to its own devices, life will always become less structured. Sand castles get washed away. Weeds overtake gardens. Ancient ruins crumble. Cars begin to rust. People gradually age. With enough time, even mountains erode and their precise edges become rounded. The inevitable trend is that things become less organized.

“This is known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is one of the foundational concepts of chemistry and it is one of the fundamental laws of our universe. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of a closed system will never decrease.”

“In the long run, nothing escapes the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The pull of entropy is relentless. Everything decays. Disorder always increases.

“You can fight back against the pull of entropy. You can solve a scattered puzzle. You can pull the weeds out of your garden. You can clean a messy room. You can organize individuals into a cohesive team.

“But because the universe naturally slides toward disorder, you have to expend energy to create stability, structure, and simplicity. Successful relationships require care and attention. Successful houses require cleaning and maintenance. Successful teams require communication and collaboration. Without effort, things will decay.”

“You have a combination of talents, skills, and interests that are specific to you. But you also live in a larger society and culture that were not designed with your specific abilities in mind. Given what we know about entropy, what do you think the odds are that the environment you happen to grow up in is also the optimal environment for your talents?

“It is very unlikely that life is going to present you with a situation that perfectly matches your strengths. Out of all the possible scenarios you could encounter, it’s far more likely that you’ll encounter one that does not cater to your talents.

“Evolutionary biologists use a term called ‘mismatch conditions’ to describe when an organism is not well-suited for a condition it is facing. … It is likely you’ll face mismatch conditions in your life. At the very least, life will not be optimal — maybe you didn’t grow up in the optimal culture for your interests, maybe you were exposed to the wrong subject or sport, maybe you were born at the wrong time in history. It is far more likely that you are living in a mismatch condition than in a well-matched one.

“Knowing this, you must take it upon yourself to design your ideal lifestyle. You have to turn a mismatch condition into a well-matched one. Optimal lives are designed, not discovered.”

In his footnotes, Clear adds the following statements:

“A closed system is one that is not taking in any energy from the outside. In other words, unless you add outside energy to keep things orderly, the natural trend of any closed system is to become more disordered.”

“As the renowned scientist Steven Pinker noted, ‘The Second Law defines the ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order.’”

“Interestingly, this is how the first forms of life arose. As the sun beat down on the earth it provided the additional energy necessary for molecules to form into structures that could resist the chaos of entropy. The extra energy helped the first forms of life maintain order.”

Q: How are you carving out refuges of beneficial order?