Entropy Will Fuck You | Hacker News Reader

Entropy Will Fuck You

systemoflife.substack.com

33 pointsdilanj18 comments

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It's interesting to think about how technology has increased humanity's control over entropy. While entropy is generally increasing, a lot of new technology can be simplified to a new way of decreasing entropy. Especially in the field of biotech and gene therapy. Evolution is based on entropy and yet the cutting edge of biology has become guiding or in some cases undoing the effects of it.

I think it's against human ambition to surrender to entropy. Religion has emphasized surrender as a way to find peace but I don't personally see how those words do anything except placate. There's no deeper meaning to surrendering, other than what someone gives to it. Progress isn't made in calm waters.

To a certain degree, it is looking at different sides of the same coin. Surrendering to a higher power to find meaning in entropy as opposed to surrendering to the fact that there might not be a deeper meaning or higher power. Giving up on feeling "peace" is an option too.

> Religion has emphasized surrender as a way to find peace but I don't personally see how those words do anything

Surrender is not resignation, it is acceptance. You have to acknowledge and then emotionally accept what truly is, in order to be able to effectively construct a different future.

Entropy is the lack of information, not disorder :

http://www.av8n.com/physics/thermo/entropy.html#sec-s-vs-dis...

Also, the system that we see having an increase in entropy is [the Sun + the photons it emitted], not just the Sun.

The article would have been a lot better if it had mentioned the classical definition of entropy (by Clausius), which is essentially energy dividided by temperature. From this definition it is easy to see that incoming energy from the Sun at 5700 K which is then dissipated at 250 K, will result in a local entropy decrease.

A related great read is the book Into the Cool[1]. Highly recommend.

[1] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo353393...

Too bad many people can't really share this otherwise-insightful post thanks to its NSFW title.

Because they don't want to invite chaos and entropy into their lives. Their order-making will never succeed though*.

*According to the article.

Too bad many people see the word "Fuck" as being NSFW.

I wonder how many insights your circles have missed because they are too sensitive to language.

I said NSFW, not NSFL. No problem sharing this among friends, but it's not generally appropriate to drop a link with a title like that in a work chat with 100+ people or whatever.

This is hardly insightful. It's like every startup founder with a Medium/Substack account wants to be like Paul Graham and attempts to write pithy self-help blog posts when they're really just parroting the Tao of Pooh. Stick to writing about business.

I think it's valuable to read about the perspective of people I otherwise wouldn't be able to have this kind of discussion with.

I disagree -- it's insightful, interesting and thought-provoking to me. I find value in that, and some of the ideas/thoughts he expressed in the post. Further, it's some guy's blog post. He's not trying to Win The Internet.

What's HN policy on bloggers posting their own content? Should it prefaced with a "Show HN"?

This is an interesting article that's worth discussing.

From my understanding, there's no specific rule about anything like that. "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread." [0] Generally people on here care only if there is an issue about a conflict of interest in some way. I am sure there are rules about spamming but flagging usually takes care of that situation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

Worth mentioning -- every time I've posted a blog post as "Show HN", it's edited by mods to not include "Show HN."

So I guess there's your answer.

Blogs don't qualify for "Show HN".

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

Self-promotion is permitted, but should be within reason.

There are accounts which submit only their own content, and that frequently. These tend to get marked as spam, the sites blocked, and often the profiles are banned.

If you submit a mix of sources, including occasionally your own, you should be fine.

Blogs don't qualify as "Show HN": https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

(Speaking as an HN reader. I'm not part of YC.)

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