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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
“ the universe wants things to be in a chaotic state”
But it doesn’t. The history of the universe is a continuous process of getting more organized and complex. At the Big Bang the universe is less than the size of an atom. Then 380,000 years later the first atoms, 100 million years the first stars, then galaxies and planets and simple organisms…and then you with your brain the most complex thing we know.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Smash take less energy than unsmash
::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?
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?
Does the Japanese art of kintsugi add anything here? I don't know...
“ the universe wants things to be in a chaotic state”
But it doesn’t. The history of the universe is a continuous process of getting more organized and complex. At the Big Bang the universe is less than the size of an atom. Then 380,000 years later the first atoms, 100 million years the first stars, then galaxies and planets and simple organisms…and then you with your brain the most complex thing we know.