Information and Entropy.

Any complex system by definition has a low order of entropy. From living organisms to the world economic system. This low order of entropy is maintained by the information stored in the system acting on the energy input into the system to correct errors that occasionally and naturally occur in the system. You cannot avoid the 2nd law of thermodynamics! You also cannot just randomly apply energy to a system and maintain a low order of entropy, i.e. turning up the fire under the pot of water just boils the frog a little faster. Or if you will, throwing more programmers at a late project just makes it later.

As information is lost entropy will increase. This increase in entropy is linear but the damage is not. For example the mammalian cell can tolerate the loss of a small amount of genetic material (information) and can reassemble that material because duplicate material is stored. As more material (information) is deleted the amount of damage that is incurred increases. At some point it is irretrievably harmed and it dies. The line that defines this relationship between entropy and damage is geometric or possibly logarithmic but not linear.

We as a low entropy society are about to suffer a loss of information. This will take to form of corrupted data and lost data. This will result in the inability of certain parts of society to function properly and other parts to not function at all. This by definition is an increase in overall entropy. The amount of the damage to society will not be linear but rather geometric (this is the ripple effect in action).

All damage scenarios that I have seen to date appear to be linear rather than geometric. I am unsure of the implications of this other than we may reach the point of no return sooner than we expect. While the analogy to the mammalian cell is useful, at some point it breaks down. While the cell dies, societies and civilizations just move to a new level of complexity. Yes I know what we define as "our civilization" dies but really it just moves to a new level of entropy. For instance if some information survives then society reorganizes itself around that information. For example if the ability to forge iron and plow with oxen is the typical information retained then society will reorganize at that low level (high entropy). If we can maintain the production and distribution of electricity and refine and distribute oil, it takes a lot of specialized information to run a power distribution system or a refinery. Then we will probably end up about where we are now after we repair the damage.

While I havent said anything new in the above, I want to support the concept of contingency planning that preserves the maximum amount of information. This is the best way of maintaining a low order of entropy. And like the cell the damage can eventually be repaired and functionality restored.

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), August 17, 1999

Answers

A good post. However, I see one big difference between an organic system and our society, and that is economic relationships. Information by itself doesn't restore infrastructure, there has to be an economic incentive and available resources, For instance, we will certainly retain books on how things are done, such as building roads and bridges, but if the economy collapses there won't be any econmic organization or resources available to do so. The information that the Greeks and Romans collected survived, but could not be revived for centuries because the level of organization and economic activity in the medieval world wasn't sufficient to the task. It was the economic genius of the medieval Italian city-states such as Venice that created things like insurance and central banking, that freed up the money to make the Renaissance possible.

Most of our division of labor today is very highly specialised. We depend on some people to be farmers etc. to free up others to do other things. If we have a neo-Depresion scenario, it's going to be very, very hard to restore that infrastructure based on the division of labor. I know that if I have to become a farmer to eat, I won't have the time to rebuild any antique pianos or even keep my own piano in tune! If we get our bottocks kicked hard, it will take decades to get back to where we are now.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), August 17, 1999.

Forrest,

Thank you for your considered thoughts.

Analagies generally don't go to far and you are right about economic encentives. I however believe that the two go hand in hand. Even with economic encentives if there is no information there will be no product. And of course just as you pointed out without the division of labor and economic incentives there will be no product even if there is the information to produce the product. (Kind of like naked DNA doesn't do anything without the correspondig enzymes to catalyze the reactions). I'm still hooked on that analgy;>)

I was however thinking of information and entropy in a much broader sense, and the lack of financing is just another increase in overall entropy. Part of the damage if you will.

Oh well I've rambled enough.

-- LM (latemarch@usa.net), August 18, 1999.