If human civilization is about to disappear, let you leave a word to sum up the civilization of mankind for thousands of years, which word you will leave, I will not hesitate to leave a word is "entropy"!
I remember that the first time I realized this word was in the high school physics class. I still don’t know what it means by the series of formulas on the blackboard.
A few days ago, this word appeared in my sight again, I was thinking, what does this word mean? With this sudden curiosity, open Google and enter "entropy". Google's explanation is that entropy is a measure of the state of certain material systems in science and technology, or the extent to which it may appear .
I don't quite understand, my exploration did not stop here. I collected a lot of information and discovered that the word "entropy" is not only the ultimate law of the universe, but also affects every aspect of each of us. It is no exaggeration to say that the word "entropy" once again subverted my understanding of the world .
So I decided to use a large text to record my thoughts on this word and how it affects all aspects of our lives.
1、
What is "entropy"?
To understand entropy, you need to know a little bit of common sense in physics. Everyone knows the law of conservation of energy that in the process of energy conversion, the total energy is constant (provided that it is in an isolated system).
However, the conversion between energy cannot be fully converted. For example, when heat energy is converted into electric energy, some energy will always be lost during the conversion process, and we cannot use the lost energy again. Become "entropy" .
When we continue to transform energy into each other (provided that it is in a closed system), all of these energy will eventually be transformed into entropy.
Therefore, physicists put forward the second law of thermodynamics, energy conversion always produces entropy, if it is a closed system, the final result is all converted into entropy .
In the past few days, I have been thinking, why can't the energy (entropy) lost in this part of the conversion be used?
Over the years, many physicists have been trying to use a certain technique to convert entropy into usable energy, but they have never succeeded. Physicists call this process of increasing entropy the law of entropy increase. And entropy is irreversible and is constantly increasing .
What is interesting is that the experiment done by a physicist named Maxwell's Demon is particularly interesting. He proposed an assumption that violates the second law of thermodynamics. (Very interesting physics experiment, you can find out if you are interested, not much nagging here)
But Maxwell's demon hypothesis was quickly broken by the concept of "information entropy" proposed by the founder of Shannon's information theory (mentioned later).
We just summarized what entropy is from a physics point of view, so let's summarize what entropy is in the vernacular that most people understand?
In a closed environment, if something is not affected by external forces, it will always develop in the worst direction . This explanation, I suddenly realized, is enough to explain many things that happen in our lives.
For example, if no one cleans a tidy house, it will become more and more messy, rather than becoming more and more tidy. If people do not have self-discipline, they will become more and more lazy.
2、
How to resist entropy increase?
We understand the concept of entropy. Although entropy cannot be used again, how can we resist entropy?
The increase in entropy is irreversible and is continuously increasing. Unless..., unless it is an open system, or the introduction of external forces, that is, the introduction of negative entropy, is it possible to resist the increase in entropy?
The famous physicist Schrödinger mentioned in the book What Is Life that human life depends on negative entropy.
Looking at the development of the entire human civilization, from the primitive agricultural age to the industrial age, to the steam age, the electrical age, and the artificial intelligence age from now to the future. The progress of human society is to make the whole world orderly. Since then, with trains, airplanes, and computers, we regard the world as a complete system, and the entire system continues to operate in an orderly manner.
As everyone knows, humans have introduced a large amount of external energy to maintain the order of the world. Where does the external energy come from? In the early days, the burning of branches was used to provide energy. When trees were not enough, coal was excavated, and when coal was not enough, water, wind, and solar energy were used. As human beings accelerate energy consumption, entropy is also accumulating.
At the same time, partial order must also cause disorder in the environment. Natural disasters continue to increase every year, and global warming, species extinction, smog, and sandstorms are also increasing. If one day, the entropy reaches its maximum, it is conceivable that the consequences of humans...
Although human beings continue to progress, they continue to introduce negative entropy to maintain the orderly development of society, but they also pay a great price and speed up the demand and consumption of external energy. (The influence of entropy on the development of the universe will be discussed later)
The evolutionary process of life is also a process of entropy reduction. From single cell to multi-cell, from RNA to DNA, human evolution, limbs, and brain, all show that life is in the process of continuously reducing entropy, from disorder to existence. sequence.
To achieve the lowest entropy, I can't say that it must be intelligent in the future, but so far, it is only intelligent.
3、
When it comes to entropy, we must understand the law of entropy increase.
The law of entropy increase shows that things always develop in the direction of entropy increase, and the direction of entropy increase is very easy because it does not require the help of external force.
For example, if people are not self-disciplined, they will gradually become lazy and slowly enter the comfort zone. This process is also a process of entropy increase, so why do we say that we should learn to live a self-disciplined life? This is originally the process of resisting entropy reduction. Personal life will become orderly and fulfilling.
Let's look at what Schrödinger said, the birth of mankind is the process of reducing entropy.
Do you think the law of entropy increase only explains this? No, there is also the compound interest effect we often mention. Many people understand the compound interest effect, but it is difficult to persist day after day. The famous investor Warren Buffett is using the compound interest effect to realize his wealth freedom.
The compound interest effect also conforms to the law of entropy increase, only the introduction of external energy day after day, that is, the process of entropy reduction day after day, when the entropy reduction is enough to resist the entropy increase, then your life has reached a kind of peak.
4、
In addition, the law of entropy increase can span many fields, such as thermodynamics, history, management, cosmology, biology, software programming, and the entropy in information theory that Xiaolu mentioned to everyone at the beginning. Don't worry, I will give examples to the big guys one by one.
Information Theory-Entropy
Let’s talk about information entropy, which was proposed by Shannon, a great man of information theory. This stuff involves both macroscopic and microscopic states. Because of the large scope of this article, I only talk about applications in this field.
For example, data compression, entropy, which we often use as developers, can explain the principle of data compression. Really completely random data cannot be compressed, no matter how awesome technology you use, because completely random data , Entropy is very large, and some people have demonstrated this with mathematics.
In information theory, entropy is best understood as a measure of uncertainty rather than a measure of certainty, because the more random the information source, the greater the entropy, which is the case with data compression.
History-Entropy
A bit of historical common sense knows that the rise and fall of the major dynasties can be said to be exchanges in turns and continuous cycles. If you often read history, you will find that the rise and fall of each dynasty shows certain laws to some extent.
And I'm currently reading a book about history "Unspoken Rules". When the bureaucratic system of the entire dynasty continued to grow, the internal system operation gradually became very complicated. Whether it was the operation of various bureaucratic prevalence, social resources would be consumed too quickly, and at the same time, the entropy would continue to increase. When the dynasty is about to change, the entire system will collapse.
The rise of each dynasty was the most prosperous in the first period, because the whole system was orderly, and gradually became disorderly, and finally the whole dynasty was crushed.
Management-Entropy
In addition, it reminds me that management is also closely related to entropy in companies today. A huge enterprise has a higher level of entropy and is more difficult to manage than an industrial company with three or five people.
On the contrary, startups with three or five people can maintain a level relative to low entropy, because a little bit of negative entropy can maintain the stability of the system, not at a high entropy level like tens of thousands of large companies. , Difficult to manage.
Therefore, if many large companies want to maintain the entire low-entropy level, they have to remove the high-entropy "matter" from the system and introduce low-entropy "matter". For example, layoffs, lay off some old employees, and then introduce new employees, so as to maintain the relative stability and balance of the system.
Finally, let’s talk about the status of entropy in cosmology.
5、
"Entropy", the ultimate law of the universe.
And physicists enlarged this closed system to the universe, and the universe is a closed system. From the beginning of the Big Bang, the entire universe was in the most orderly state, and then it continued to evolve, and the entropy continued to increase. If there is no external force, the entire universe will become more and more disordered. It can be imagined that one day , When the entropy of the universe has increased to its maximum value, it is the death time of the universe .
How does physics assume this phenomenon? According to the second law of thermodynamics, as an "isolated" system, the entropy of the universe will increase with the passage of time, from order to disorder. When the entropy of the universe reaches its maximum value, all other effective energy in the universe is already available. Converted into heat energy, the temperature of all materials reaches thermal equilibrium. This state is called heat death. There is no longer any energy that can sustain movement or life in such a universe.
to sum up
In the past few days, I don’t know why, I was so interested in some things that I couldn’t help myself. Then I kept searching for some information on the Internet and buying some corresponding books. After thinking and summarizing, I found that outside the programming field, There are so many fun and useful things.
I accidentally used a word and wrote an article about 3,000 words. Due to the limited time, there is no further research and thinking about entropy. I think through these thoughts, the biggest gain is to let me know the greatness of knowledge and culture.
A deeper experience, the more you know, the more you don’t know ! Heartbreaking again!
Finally, for this sentence, borrowing information entropy to say a little bit of my own unique insights, I think information entropy, especially in our Internet field, the difference between people is particularly obvious. Some people do one thing easily, whether it's starting a business or doing a side job or doing daily work.
Because when you have more and more information and resources in your hands, you consume less and less energy, and you can easily succeed in doing one thing. On the contrary, if most people want to accomplish one thing, they need to consume a lot of energy, the corresponding uncertainty is large, and the information entropy is also large.
To give a very simple example, many people sell goods very quickly, because they have sources and customers that other people can’t control. Compared with the genius of others or good at a certain field, it is better to say that this person knows how to lower Own information entropy.