View source for Research:MDem/4.3r/1095 entropy

<pre># entropy and labor


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[cr. 2023-12-10T06:52:46Z]

entropy is in every particle around us, every molecule and atom of every living or nonliving thing

what is entropy?
in simple terms, whenever physical things are "built" or "wound" into some kind of complex structure, there is a continuous process that "unwinds" complex structures into simpler ones.
this might seem mysterious to somebody who only had as much physical science as the ancient Greeks. why would all the matter in our universe tend to unwind itself for seemingly no good reason? is some kind of death god busy fighting the gods of life and periodically winning? is there something wrong and chaotic with all the ideal pyramids and cubes that might compose physical matter?
however, with an understanding of basic processes in quantum physics, it should not be surprising that entropy exists. at large scales such as the scale of an apple or a table, matter seems solid, but at very small scales such as the scale of a proton, nothing appears consistent any more. inside the proton, an average of three quarks exists at any given time, but all these quarks are constantly being "unwound" from their form as particular quarks and "rebuilt" into new ones. the sea of quarks is so dynamic that for brief moments a proton can contain many more quarks than it should, or quarks heavier than a whole proton, as long as underlying processes such as the continuous tearing-apart of quarks into thin flexible tubes and the general constant motion of quantum fields composing every "noticeable" fundamental packet of stuff manage to put the same overall amount of matter back in the same place.
in a certain sense concerning literal behaviors of matter, it may not be so unsuitable a metaphor to say the spheres that make up matter /do/ have chaos inside them.

if we know that entropy is all around us — that protons exist as a bizarre storm of activity, that neutrons can rarely leak tiny packets of energy and become protons, that very big elements full of a lot of subatomic particles can break apart into smaller nuclei after something has gotten rid of a proton, neutron, or electron, and this "something" could be as seemingly-mundane as the sun and its internal fusion reactions putting subatomic particles together into elements — the next question to ask is, how big is entropy actually? do the physical processes associated with entropy only truly operate as a process at small scales, or should we be watching for possible instances where larger things can be "unwound" in the same sense as small things?


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r1

"work" as force times distance equalling energy units.
1 joule is 1 meter × 1 kilogram × 1 meter / second²
one could informally think of the equation as consisting of "the payoff" and "the acceleration"  [the 'payoff' term is usually labeled "moment"]

entropy "S" measured in joules per kelvin
gibbs free energy - temperature times change in entropy
fact i just found where radiation dose is m × kg × m / s² / kg

second law already says entropy increases from /spontaneous/ activity

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r2  [cr. 2023-12-10T09:45:40Z]

physics has a concept called "work" (W), which specifically refers to very simple kinds of work which can be performed with a simple machine
for instance, one could put a shovel — a kind of lever — under a hard clod of dirt and flip it over in order to pry it out of the ground, and W could be described as the effective mass required to move the dirt (in kilograms) speeding up at a certain rate (in meters / second²) through the distance the dirt moved in a particular direction (in meters). these units multiply together to give W (in joules), effectively a _quantity of energy_ required to move the dirt a particular distance.   [*w]
in this example, a lever is useful because the force that needs to be applied to rotate the dirt can be applied over the length of the lever instead of the shorter length of the dirt. much like a compass needle, the shovel must rotate in two opposite directions unless stopped by another force such as friction or the weight of the dirt, so it becomes possible to concentrate much more force in a small area, overpowering gravity and turning over the dirt.

in a sense, the work quantity W is connected to the more colloquial definition of work through its use in describing /in what way/ or /how effectively/ particular machines move objects and thus how useful they are to performing practical tasks. to describe the generic action of pushing a 5 kilogram box 1 meter for no actual reason would not be useful, but it becomes useful if we are already aiming to find out what does that most effectively, hence the name "work".

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r2  [cr. 2023-12-10T10:54:41Z]

another interesting case of physical definitions of work occurs with chemical reactions.
every thermodynamically closed system, such as some well-insulated containers, contains a particular amount of total energy — if the container is sufficiently sealed, heat will not come in or out. this means that under the right conditions, the sealed container can be used to measure whether the temperature of a substance increased or decreased due to a chemical reaction.

[I do not totally remember where the chemical reactions part was going but it was going somewhere]


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[cr. 2023-12-31T18:08:09Z]

the precise mathematical definition of entropy

for gas physics, this had to do with the number of possible arrangements of a gas which are equivalent
a complex arrangement of gas molecules can be described through the number of microstates (equivalent patterns) versus the number of macrostates (non-equivalent patterns with different behavior)
in a sense the ratio of microstates to macrostates describes the complexity of the ergodic behavior of the gas — how difficult is it to arrange the particles of the gas into this structure by choosing a microstate at random?

gas molecules naturally keep moving with some particular direction and speed, affected by their temperature and collisions with other molecules. it may not be literally random but as macroscopic beings we tend not to find the motion of individual particles relevant, and tend to think of it as a stochastic process with no overall pattern
the exception occurs when the stochastic motions of the gas particles create simple ergodic behaviors such as pushing molecules out of an area leaving high-density and low-density regions. the overall patternless motion of the individual particles has stacked up to produce a pattern.
at the same time, when all the gas molecules keep moving independent of each other, it is easy for the particles to disperse and these patterns to disappear. there may even be physical limits on the system which cause particles to be pushed out of a particular course. the mass and speed of another particle could stop a particle going a particular direction and knock it toward another part of the room. a dense collection of particles may resist being compressed, partly as an extension of small-scale collisions and partly because of the limited solid surface to molecules (fermion physics) that keeps them from trivially overlapping.

given these physics of a simple gaseous substance, we can see how it is that complex arrangements of gas molecules characterized by ergodic behavior become improbable. the stochastic movement of independent gas particles does not "easily" create these arrangements if we imagine the gas began in some kind of equally-spaced state.

proton entropy -
is there a sensible description for the microstates and macrostates of a group of quarks and how they sum up to an average stable proton?
it seems like there should be because we observe "odd" arrangements like the quark bigger than a proton only periodically and for short times


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[cr. 2023-12-31T18:08:09Z]

## entropy and Liberal capitalism

if you have been following along through these seemingly boring descriptions of gas physics and protons, you may have noticed a recurring pattern. a system of separate elements acting individually and stochastically, such as a room filled with helium, is not likely to maintain complexity. complexity appears for a moment, and then it unwinds.

it is, then, certainly a curious thing that we have decided to base most of United States civilization on the principle of individual stochastically-behaving elements.
Liberalism asserts that the stochastic action of independent voters can lead to policies rather than all our policies periodically unwinding.
capitalism asserts that the stochastic action of independent consumers and businesses can lead to the cumulative construction of civilization rather than large swaths of businesses periodically unwinding and constantly being replaced.
but in practice, who is not familiar with businesses going away for no good reason when people still wanted them, or Liberal parties ending up in a downward march of providing fewer and fewer policies?

at this point we should be asking ourselves why we didn't expect a stochastically-behaving system to obey the laws of entropy, shuffling along from such complex arrangements as universal health care and public transit toward its most probable and boring groups of microstates.

fortunately there is a way out
if we do not want every major institution of our civilization to unwind, all we have to do is create something other than a stochastic system
organic life, for example, is unusual for its capacity to coordinate different pieces together within cells to maintain homeostasis rather than allowing the entire organism to slowly come apart and become a puddle of water and nutrients. to maintain cells requires an input of energy and for each internal part to continue functioning, yet a cell can accomplish things no room of helium can ever achieve.
we greatly underappreciate the huge improbability and natural achievement of our own bodies — how unlikely it is that the universe would form a system capable of actively seeking and providing for its own survival. no act of labor is insignificant in such a universe. our ability to purposefully direct labor is our ability to ensure life.



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[*w] one of the first things to note while unpacking this simplified description is that physicists could have defined W as a vector thanks to the force vectors involved in the calculation and/or the angles objects such as levers have to rotate as they move. every force applied to a lever is actually a torque moving through a specific angle, and every torque is a force vector times a distance F × d, almost exactly like work. the reason work is not a vector is that distance is also a vector, making it possible to cancel out all the directionality by multiplying the two vectors into a scalar.

== research.moraleconomy.au/entry/Philosophical_Research:MDem/4.3/1095_entropy
:: cr. 2023-12-10T06:52:46Z
;      1702191166
:: ar. 1702201540
;    date revision entry created  [deleted]
:: t.  v4-3_1095_entropy
;      v4.3 scraps/ entropy and labor
; I just know i already created this entry before this date. locate first note if it exists
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