Since I spend a lot of time these days thinking about karma (long story), I'll offer my impressions: I think that you're right that an "unfeeling" universe wouldn't assign positive/negative energy to specific acts or attitudes/feelings; most who believe in karma also believe that the universe has intentions, or at least is compassionate, or something along those lines.
If we proceed from these assumptions, we can assume that we "know" acts are good or bad based upon our moral intuition about them. It's just a faculty we have.
This is analogous to our being able to perceive things about the universe, since our cognitive faculties were shaped by the same forces that shaped matter, time, etc. Although there are philosophers who challenge this assumption, too, and claim we can't actually know that we know anything about the universe, for various reasons.
Yeah, I think there are ways to develop a sturdy morality (and overall sanity) that don't involve transcendent reality, but if you can vibe with the transcendent, it sure seems to help.
It's more that it took massive amounts of coordinate effort (hence energy) to make that teacup than the micro second it takes to break it. Once the energy to make the teacup is already expended, I don't think that the universe cares all that much whether it stays intact or breaks, except to the extent that protecting the teacup against breakage itself expends more energy than breaking it.
The simple answer is that it's "easy" to turn the whole tea-cup into a broken tea-cup, but "hard" to turn the broken tea-cup into a whole tea-cup.
That's not completely accurate, but it's close enough. The model of entropy you're using applies much better to fluids than it does to solid objects, like tea-cups. For example: what happens when you mix tea with water?
The way I learned it is, there's one way for the teacup to be completely intact, but many different ways it can be broken. So what's being compared to the undamaged teacup is not one particular configuration of broken shards, but the state of being broken generally. Take that with a grain of salt; I am going off memories from years ago here.
This is concise and accurate, and probably the clearest answer of the ones offered so far.
Having said that, you have to sit with it a little to see what's meant by "one way" vs "many ways." If that distinction stays fuzzy then keep playing with the different models. The key which will really unlock the thing for you is the "one way" vs "many ways" distinction. Enjoy!
I was about to write down what I took away from my stat mech courses but fortunately decided to check the comments first. I wouldn't have been able to write it clearer, so take the like :)
The maybe only small thing I'd add is that there's an assumption that the universe evolves randomly, and so all the different states of being broken and the one state of being whole are equally likely to occur, which means that one of the many states of being broken are where you'll end up in the long run, hece the second law.
yes. reading the post my own thinking went to what we mean when we talk about a 1-in-1,000,000 chance of some outcome. there's nothing inherently special about the 1, it just represents a particular state, and that "true" state is elusive relative to the much larger probability of the "false" state.
It might be best to consider it probabilistically. What is the chance the the elements of porcelain would be randomly (NOT uniformly) distributed in a given strata of the cosmos. High! What is the chance they would happen to be in a structure that is both conveniently able to hold liquids and also easy to carry for human hands? Effectively zero! In some sense, order stands is a matter of not being random rather than any teleological purpose of a device. Even those shards of teacups are significantly more ordered than the raw elements were before they were found.
The sharts are a lower energy state, it's the teacup that possesses disorder. It's easier for the teacup to be in pieces than it is to be whole.
Why do all of the planets rotate at the same angle around the sun? Shouldn't they all rotate at various angles? Rotating at the same flat angle is the lowest energy state.
Entropy isn't about finding a lower energy state, it's about the distribution of that energy. If the planets revolved around the sun at different angles, that wouldn't be any higher or lower in energy than the actual configuration ... they revolve at the same angle because they all formed from the same solar disc, which was planar.
I don't think that's true? My understanding was it has to do with gravity... They were probably rotating at different angles initially, but after billions of years they've settled in a flat plane.
As I understand it, the use of the word "ordered" here just means that teacups do not occur unless work (basically, energy) is put into making one. That could involve human effort, but it doesn't have to --the same thing is also true of, say, a tree. Energy from the sun builds the tree, but if it is destroyed in a fire, it won't rebuild spontaneously (at least not without a new application of energy).
'Ordered' also means that the information needed to 'understand' a teacup is smaller than that needed to 'understand' a collection of individual shards.
I second your puzzlement here. My version of this has always been confusion over the notion that anything- the solar system, a flower, our human bodies- is "complex." Complex to whom? For human brains- sure. But some alien intelligence might find these things incredibly simple. Or they might perceive in an entirely novel way that goes far beyond a binary simple-complex continuum.
::cracks knuckles:: imagine if you took all the shards, put glue on the edges, and put it in a box and shook it up. Then you open the box and see how the pieces glued back together. Do this a billion trillion times.
Maybe one time, the pieces will coincidentally glue together into the original teacup. A couple times, the pieces will glue into something resembling a teacup, like imagine the original teacup but the handle on the wrong side, or the spout is much shorter. But in the billions of other attempts, you just end up with a bunch of shards glued together (although in each attempt, the specific arrangement of shards will differ).
So, ordered = the teacup shape, and disordered is a bunch of shards glued together. The general idea is that as random events happen (like knocking the teacup over), it is much likely to end up a random bunch of disordered shards than an ordered specific state.
For your alien example. Let’s say the aliens like it a different way, a different shape that makes sense for them. That different shape is still an ordered state, and is just as unlikely to occur as the teacup. Any specific shape is much less likely than a bunch of random shards.
Pretty good, though as a purely physical matter, shaking the box works better with an assortment of marbles than a mixture of glue and shards.
In a purely plodding, literal-minded way, depending on the property of the glue and the box, you could fairly predictably never end up with a teacup, but the shards adhering all over the inside of the box if the glue stuck to the box easily, or with a solid-ish bolus of shards and glue, never teacup shaped, if the inside of the box was somehow impervious to glue (teflon or something)?
The shaking symbolizes randomness, but lots of physical models intended to approximate randomness aren't random, and can be figured out physically, like roulette wheels (I hope the article I selected kinda at random on this physicist is good enough — it's at least non-paywalled):
I (an inveterate dummy) have the same conundrum when I had the 4 fundamental forces of the universe explained to me.
Gravity was described as pitifully weak in comparison to the others. But 'weak/strong' is, to my mind, a very human projection.
The line of questioning nosedived into something about the seeming surfeit of strength in gravity as an ongoing problem explained in many weird ways, including mad stuff like other dimensions or other unseen/unknown forces.
Hmm is it important to consider chemistry in this? Like, it takes a lot of energy and very particular agitation of molecules to create certain chemical bonds. But all it takes is an influx of energy to break those bonds. ....? maybe? ish?
I will be thrilled if a science person (I believe in the business they call them "scientists") comments on this thread and explains it to us bumbling humanities types. But that might be one of the key issues: we need the unicorn of a person whose mind has aptitudes for both mathematics and linguistics.
Kintsugi is about elevating the pathos of the broken thing—not sure if it applies and I’m lost in the swirl of physicists here but Japanese culture has developed some lovely strategies for meeting nature on its own terms (even if, as per the post, as humans we really don’t know what those terms are).
Since I spend a lot of time these days thinking about karma (long story), I'll offer my impressions: I think that you're right that an "unfeeling" universe wouldn't assign positive/negative energy to specific acts or attitudes/feelings; most who believe in karma also believe that the universe has intentions, or at least is compassionate, or something along those lines.
If we proceed from these assumptions, we can assume that we "know" acts are good or bad based upon our moral intuition about them. It's just a faculty we have.
This is analogous to our being able to perceive things about the universe, since our cognitive faculties were shaped by the same forces that shaped matter, time, etc. Although there are philosophers who challenge this assumption, too, and claim we can't actually know that we know anything about the universe, for various reasons.
Yeah, I think there are ways to develop a sturdy morality (and overall sanity) that don't involve transcendent reality, but if you can vibe with the transcendent, it sure seems to help.
It's more that it took massive amounts of coordinate effort (hence energy) to make that teacup than the micro second it takes to break it. Once the energy to make the teacup is already expended, I don't think that the universe cares all that much whether it stays intact or breaks, except to the extent that protecting the teacup against breakage itself expends more energy than breaking it.
The simple answer is that it's "easy" to turn the whole tea-cup into a broken tea-cup, but "hard" to turn the broken tea-cup into a whole tea-cup.
That's not completely accurate, but it's close enough. The model of entropy you're using applies much better to fluids than it does to solid objects, like tea-cups. For example: what happens when you mix tea with water?
Sabine Hossenfelder has a blog post briefly addressing this topic: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/07/10-physics-facts-you-should-have.html
TL;DR, entropy is not actually about order, but probability.
Goddamnit, she's using plain English but it still seems like Greek.
Same. I’m gonna go read Demian to recover.
😂
The way I learned it is, there's one way for the teacup to be completely intact, but many different ways it can be broken. So what's being compared to the undamaged teacup is not one particular configuration of broken shards, but the state of being broken generally. Take that with a grain of salt; I am going off memories from years ago here.
This is concise and accurate, and probably the clearest answer of the ones offered so far.
Having said that, you have to sit with it a little to see what's meant by "one way" vs "many ways." If that distinction stays fuzzy then keep playing with the different models. The key which will really unlock the thing for you is the "one way" vs "many ways" distinction. Enjoy!
I was about to write down what I took away from my stat mech courses but fortunately decided to check the comments first. I wouldn't have been able to write it clearer, so take the like :)
The maybe only small thing I'd add is that there's an assumption that the universe evolves randomly, and so all the different states of being broken and the one state of being whole are equally likely to occur, which means that one of the many states of being broken are where you'll end up in the long run, hece the second law.
yes. reading the post my own thinking went to what we mean when we talk about a 1-in-1,000,000 chance of some outcome. there's nothing inherently special about the 1, it just represents a particular state, and that "true" state is elusive relative to the much larger probability of the "false" state.
even with the understanding that the "false" state encompasses 999,999 sub-states
Chapter 3 of Michael Polanyi's _Personal Knowledge_ opens with an example that might be of interest: https://bibliodarq.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/polanyi-m-personal-knowledge-towards-a-post-critical-philosophy.pdf
It might be best to consider it probabilistically. What is the chance the the elements of porcelain would be randomly (NOT uniformly) distributed in a given strata of the cosmos. High! What is the chance they would happen to be in a structure that is both conveniently able to hold liquids and also easy to carry for human hands? Effectively zero! In some sense, order stands is a matter of not being random rather than any teleological purpose of a device. Even those shards of teacups are significantly more ordered than the raw elements were before they were found.
The sharts are a lower energy state, it's the teacup that possesses disorder. It's easier for the teacup to be in pieces than it is to be whole.
Why do all of the planets rotate at the same angle around the sun? Shouldn't they all rotate at various angles? Rotating at the same flat angle is the lowest energy state.
Entropy isn't about finding a lower energy state, it's about the distribution of that energy. If the planets revolved around the sun at different angles, that wouldn't be any higher or lower in energy than the actual configuration ... they revolve at the same angle because they all formed from the same solar disc, which was planar.
I don't think that's true? My understanding was it has to do with gravity... They were probably rotating at different angles initially, but after billions of years they've settled in a flat plane.
As I understand it, the use of the word "ordered" here just means that teacups do not occur unless work (basically, energy) is put into making one. That could involve human effort, but it doesn't have to --the same thing is also true of, say, a tree. Energy from the sun builds the tree, but if it is destroyed in a fire, it won't rebuild spontaneously (at least not without a new application of energy).
'Ordered' also means that the information needed to 'understand' a teacup is smaller than that needed to 'understand' a collection of individual shards.
I second your puzzlement here. My version of this has always been confusion over the notion that anything- the solar system, a flower, our human bodies- is "complex." Complex to whom? For human brains- sure. But some alien intelligence might find these things incredibly simple. Or they might perceive in an entirely novel way that goes far beyond a binary simple-complex continuum.
I remember Dawkins talking about this in relationship to the evolution of the human eye.
A common 'too complicated to have evolved' anti-evolution defence.
But yea, complicated for whom?
Smash take less energy than unsmash
I like this answer for its pure energy-efficiency.
::cracks knuckles:: imagine if you took all the shards, put glue on the edges, and put it in a box and shook it up. Then you open the box and see how the pieces glued back together. Do this a billion trillion times.
Maybe one time, the pieces will coincidentally glue together into the original teacup. A couple times, the pieces will glue into something resembling a teacup, like imagine the original teacup but the handle on the wrong side, or the spout is much shorter. But in the billions of other attempts, you just end up with a bunch of shards glued together (although in each attempt, the specific arrangement of shards will differ).
So, ordered = the teacup shape, and disordered is a bunch of shards glued together. The general idea is that as random events happen (like knocking the teacup over), it is much likely to end up a random bunch of disordered shards than an ordered specific state.
For your alien example. Let’s say the aliens like it a different way, a different shape that makes sense for them. That different shape is still an ordered state, and is just as unlikely to occur as the teacup. Any specific shape is much less likely than a bunch of random shards.
How did I do?
Pretty good, though as a purely physical matter, shaking the box works better with an assortment of marbles than a mixture of glue and shards.
In a purely plodding, literal-minded way, depending on the property of the glue and the box, you could fairly predictably never end up with a teacup, but the shards adhering all over the inside of the box if the glue stuck to the box easily, or with a solid-ish bolus of shards and glue, never teacup shaped, if the inside of the box was somehow impervious to glue (teflon or something)?
The shaking symbolizes randomness, but lots of physical models intended to approximate randomness aren't random, and can be figured out physically, like roulette wheels (I hope the article I selected kinda at random on this physicist is good enough — it's at least non-paywalled):
https://www.engadget.com/2016-08-10-strange-but-true-how-physicists-win-at-roulette.html
It's because Democrats and liberals hate teacups. Teacups signify racism and the oppression of the white British on indigenous Indians.
Oh, now you're mad that someone else is applying a racial lens to everything?
😂😂😂
I (an inveterate dummy) have the same conundrum when I had the 4 fundamental forces of the universe explained to me.
Gravity was described as pitifully weak in comparison to the others. But 'weak/strong' is, to my mind, a very human projection.
The line of questioning nosedived into something about the seeming surfeit of strength in gravity as an ongoing problem explained in many weird ways, including mad stuff like other dimensions or other unseen/unknown forces.
And thats all I don't know! Sorry!
Hmm is it important to consider chemistry in this? Like, it takes a lot of energy and very particular agitation of molecules to create certain chemical bonds. But all it takes is an influx of energy to break those bonds. ....? maybe? ish?
I will be thrilled if a science person (I believe in the business they call them "scientists") comments on this thread and explains it to us bumbling humanities types. But that might be one of the key issues: we need the unicorn of a person whose mind has aptitudes for both mathematics and linguistics.
Does the Japanese art of kintsugi add anything here? I don't know...
Kintsugi is about elevating the pathos of the broken thing—not sure if it applies and I’m lost in the swirl of physicists here but Japanese culture has developed some lovely strategies for meeting nature on its own terms (even if, as per the post, as humans we really don’t know what those terms are).