Dear Many, Many Authors...

[branchandroot]

...Entropy is not destruction. Entropy is gridlock.

Now, if that's your idea of the ultimate undesirable, which must be fought by all living beings with the utmost of their hearts and souls, fine! Go for it, write your little heart out, I'll probably even buy it just to see it. But the little physicist in the back of my head is crying pathetically into her beer over the sheer inaccuracy with which "entropy" is too often used, and every time she thinks about how widespread this bad press is getting she wails in a truly heartrending fashion.

Gridlock, got it?

Only slightly sarcastic love and kisses,
Branch

Comments

[7veils]

I always understood entropy to mean stagnation or inertia. I guess that would be a way of describing gridlock.

[branchandroot]

Hmm. In any dis-equal system, it's a tendency to dispersion, to increased variety of interactions; so not so much the early stages. The ultimate end of entropy, though, is (theoretically) perfect equilibrium across the entire system with no further movement of energy or alteration of state possible. There's no "downhill" or "open" energetic state available any more, unless more of something is added from outside the system. I suppose you could call that stagnation, though the connotation doesn't quite /feel/ right to me.