An Introduction
It's important to be clear in any endeavour what its purpose is - with the exception of dabbling, meandering, and pleasant company. This, my first public blog is, is simultaneously a mission statement and a first instalment in the endeavour to provide insight into randomly-stumbled-upon topics, to build up reusable models and tacit knowledge. More simply, to be a source of Entropy. The hope is that this will be accessible to all with enough time, but I appreciate that this is usually a futile endeavour - we'll see. This is not a scientific review, nor a rich and detailed philosophy. This is a casual stroll through the immense and intriguing fabric humanity weaves. As of right now I have no idea what I'm going to write, how long it'll be, or how frequent. I'll leave details and citations to those that-way-inclined.
Entropy
Entropy, typically, is a measure of disorder, or information within a system. That which is forever increasing as the universe expands, and will eventually lead to its suspected heat death. It was in late 2019 that I became fascinated by the concept of Entropy and by the fact that its applications propagated rapidly beyond its first roots of Thermodynamics into Information Theory and more. In Computer Science, Entropy is used to describe the increase in information in a system, facilitated by Randomness, and used as a tool for the generation of novel outputs - literally referred to as 'Seeds'. We can expand this definition to account for all types of Disorder (see Taleb's Extended Disorder Family)1.
Disorder can be an object of genesis…
… I find to be a powerful model, that I utilise in much of my life.
Systems, Creativity, and Dysfunction
The Systems Theory approach aligns nicely with this as well. Computer systems require Entropy, but in non-complex fashions. We can look at Complex Systems also: When the Immune System is starved of Stressors, it becomes maladapted, attacking its host - see the Clean Homes Hypothesis. When economies are over-regulated (reducing Volatility), they tend to spontaneously combust - see every financial crash, or Switzerland as a counterexample. When a person is starved of Turmoil, they cease to develop resilience or, often, a sense of purpose.
Importantly for this post:
When the mind is starved of Entropy it ceases to generate novel ideas.
It's reminiscent of Einstein's "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result" sentiment. Creativity is thus dependent on Entropy. Is it any surprise that it is those artists that have travelled, engaged, and seen, that produce the most touching creations. Perhaps Dostoevsky is right and beauty will in fact save the world, but there is more to Creativity than the making of art. Creativity is embedded into everything we do in subtle ways. I've personally found that when I am in rut with my work, sometimes the best solution is to throw some chaos into the mix, do something novel, and return to the task later. I suspect this is one of the primary mechanisms behind the idea of Incubating or Percolating an idea - it's not taking a break that does it, it's the Entropic stimulus you get during said break that gives you a bump to creativity.
As with many Systems, the mechanisms underpinning them are best demonstrated when they are malfunctioning as opposed to when they are functioning. As someone with ADHD, I've spent a fair amount of time being distracted, enduring shiny thing syndrome and so on, and as part of trying to deal with it I've delved into a lot of the research on it which has uncovered an interesting mechanism - Stochastic Resonance. You may have seen examples of sympathetic resonance with things like guitar strings vibrating from a sound made across the room at the right pitch. Stochastic Resonance is like that except the mechanism for the extra oomph, is 'stochasticism' or Randomness: adding Randomness into a System with a weak signal, can counterintuively amplify the signal. It seems that the mind is much like this also. Now whether it's due to this specific mechanism or just because it keeps other parts of the mind busy, we see that people with ADHD (and others) actually get great benefit from there being random noise around, hence I find myself working in cafes most days.
Entropy in Life
Now I'd like to posit further that Entropy need not be confined to just your intellectual pursuits, but also to your life more widely. I'm a big fan of the film Yes Man, in which Jim Carrey makes a covenant at a weird conference all about saying 'Yes', to say 'Yes' to everything. Lots of stuff happens, blah blah, the moral of the story is that you should say 'Yes' to things (within reason). I've said for a long time that Entropy and Serendipity are very good friends. And my experience (much like in the film) has been that the more Entropy in my life - new experiences, new people, etc - the luckier I seem to get. There have been days where I'm struggling with a problem, I take a coffee break to talk to someone, and they just throw a random phrase out which instantly gives me the idea to solve my dilemma. This is even how I write my music: Happy accidents. But, we're creatures that dislike uncertainty, by and large, preferring the comfort of our rituals from the confines of familiar spaces. We even build stable identities for ourselves to reduce the uncertainty, despite that the world wishes us to change all the time. I can assure you that taking an occasional foray out of that comfort zone will likely lead to good things.
So, take some time to get some Entropy. It's good for you.
The Extended Disorder Family (or Cluster): (i) uncertainty, (ii) variability, (iii) imperfect, incomplete knowledge, (iv) chance, (v) chaos, (vi) volatility, (vii) disorder, (viii) entropy, (ix) time, (x) the unknown, (xi) randomness, (xii) turmoil, (xiii) stressor, (xiv) error, (xv) dispersion of outcomes, (xvi) unknowledge.” - Nassim Taleb, Antifragile