Entropy: Why Everything Falls Apart
Your coffee gets cold. Your room gets messy. You get old. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the most depressing—and most important—law in the universe.
1. Introduction: The Arrow of Time
Why can you scramble an egg, but never unscramble it? Why does time only move forward? Because of Entropy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states: "In a closed system, entropy (disorder) always increases." The universe is slowly marching from Order to Chaos. From a burning star to cold dust.
2. Life is Anti-Entropy
Life is a rebellion against physics. To stay alive, your body must fight entropy every second. You eat food (ordered energy) and excrete heat/waste (disordered energy). Erwin Schrödinger called life "Negative Entropy." We are islands of order in an ocean of chaos. But we pay a high price: we must consume energy constantly.
3. Information Entropy
Claude Shannon applied this to information. Messages degrade. Noise increases.
- Copy a stripe of tape 100 times: it gets fuzzy.
- Retell a rumor 10 times: it changes. Keeping truth alive requires energy. Maintenance is not optional; without it, the signal dies.
4. Psychological Entropy
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (the "Flow" guy) argued that the normal state of the mind is Chaos. If left alone, the brain worries, ruminates, and decays relative to anxiety. We need "Flow"—structured attention—to create order in consciousness. Work, art, and reading are tools to organize the mind.
5. Conclusion: The Beauty of Decay
Entropy guarantees death. But it also guarantees change. Without entropy, nothing would happen. The universe would be a frozen perfection. The egg cannot be unscrambled, but the omelet tastes good. Accept the decay. Accept the mess. It is the cost of being alive.