Ask HN: Entropy' Inapplicable to Personal Lives? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Entropy' Inapplicable to Personal Lives?

1 pointMollyRealized5 comments

A friend of mine recently took his own life. I've been processing the experience as I can.

One of the things he spoke about was the belief that entropy meant that our personal lives were destined to go to shit.

I recognized that same belief from my own life. I had discarded it, believing it was applicable to physics but not human beings.

I found this Wired article [1] and sent it to him. (He was the kind of person who responded to feed-your-brain kind of stuff like that, so it was not as tone-deaf a move as you might think.) We also did a great deal of talking, and, yes, I tried to do whatever I could to also get him to professionals' care.

Given that HN has a lot of learned people about it, I am curious about how people have dealt with this concept - smart people applying the concept of 'entropy' in physics to justify deep pessimism for personal lives' outcome.

This situation seems popular enough that others here would've encountered this before, too.

[1] - http://archive.today/PLvun

I think science is not "smart" when applied as the basis for a moral framework. Religion is more smart as an answer to big questions of life.

Fundamentally the difference is that religion is rooted in philosophy while science is rooted in empirical reasoning.

Using science to answer philosophical questions is like trying to drive a nail with a screwdriver, and then thinking you're a genius because you found a way to consolidate two tools into one.

Aw man, sorry to hear this about your friend. Inanimate objects are directly subject to the laws of physics, but living beings that have intention and will are able to circumvent those. For example, I can jump despite gravity existing. Yes, "in the long run, we're all dead", but applying laws of entropy as a reason to not live seems indicative of a lack of will, rather than a natural law every being must follow.

Sorry for your loss. That must be difficult to go through.

I don’t think that analogies from physics are always helpful. But the encouraging thing about entropy is that you can lower it by spending energy. And that seems to be a very apt analogy for living.

Doesn’t help when you are depressed though, because spending energy is then the last thing you want, even though you full well know how this is hurting you.

Doesn't really match with observation. Maybe between now and the heat death of the universe things will go to shit, but locally the earth has been on a generally upward trajectory the last 4 billion years, with complex life forming etc. No reason to think that everything living now has to experience the long run march to complete randomness.

To be clear as to my own viewpoint: I agree. I am simply curious as to how others feel (a) about the subject itself and (b) how they handle the topic in discussions with friends/colleagues.

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