Entropy and life

Everything that is built will eventually break. It will serve it's moment and purpose and be replaced.

It does not mean we should not build. Just know that the thing we build is only another that will serve it's time and purpose. Enjoy it. Appreciate it. Use it.

Messaging and social connection via social media is no different. Every message comes to you for a reason and season. There is no time limit. For now. For a few hours. For whatever. Every person stops in for a reason or a season. Every communication will break or end. Every person will leave just as systems break. A new system is built or reconditioned from the old one. Another person stops by or revisits.

Entropy: the structure and order of things. It feeds off the energy of that which surrounds it. Sometimes the greater the energy around them the better organized they become. "They" or "it" are systems such as those that drive the internet, living organisms, physical objects and yes social interactions.

What does this have to do with cuddling?

COVID-19 changed our social interaction as we know it. We are told to physically distance each other which brings some change to our routine: disorganization, chaos or just minor upheaval. So we are all experiencing some break in our usual daily routine: some kind of entropy.

But it's entropy that's driven by a desire to try new things. To reengineer how we view something as intimate as platonic physical cuddling and simulate it in some way or fashion in a virtual environment.

Hopefully out of the break or breakdown( however you look at it) in platonic physical cuddling as we know it we can create something different or perhaps even new . We can be negentric.

Has COVID-19 really been our entropy in 2020? Or is it just a natural break in life as we know it ? A break that creates it's own spring for some thing different in the way we live and interact with each other?

Amidst this pandemic are many stories of survival and hope. Could our negenetry in this be the more extensive use of blood plasma of COVID-19 survivors to innoculate and / or treat susceptible victims of the virus?

The more extensive use of antibody testing for further research on how the body's immune system deals with COVID-19?

TheLilSpoon

Thank you for writing this.
This was a lovely read. Sorta breaks my heart thinking about things and life in the sense of everything comes to an end eventually. I am a nurse and 100% agree with your last two points.

I'll use this moment to plead with the population: please wash your hands, stay inside and away from others, if you're asked to be quarantined - stay. Inside. For. The. Whole. Quarantine. - wear a mask in public, wipe your shopping carts down, wipe your steering wheel down, don't touch your face, encourage everyone around you to do all the same. The sooner we can get this under control the sooner we can resume some sort of normalcy (though that will forever be altered in my opinion).

Please. I go to work every day putting myself and my family at risk to keep my community safe.

Please listen to the healthcare workers. This may get worse before it gets better. But I like to think it can't possibly rain all the time.

Hang in there guys.

AloneTogether

MrPaul

@Bles
Speaking as an engineer...
Entropy is a measure of the degree of disorder in a system.

The universe tends toward increased entropy, and this is will lead to the eventual “heat death” of the universe, where all stars have expended their fuel and everything is at the same temperature.

In our daily lives, we perform work to counter entropy. Any act of organization is effectively working against the natural state of disorder, reducing entropy.

Now we perform “work” to avoid the disorderly behavior that spreads Covid19. So the steps we take reduce our collective social entropy, and create more order and less entropy. It may be perceived as disorder, but it is the opposite.

geoff1000

In 1961, the US "set ourselves the task, before the decade is out, of putting a man on the Moon, and returning him safely to the Earth". That is a round trip journey of about half a million miles.

If the progress had been linear, by 1966, Neil Armstrong should have stepped on the Moon, and been on the return journey. It is instead, very non-linear, so it would be unfair to measure progress that way.

In the same paradoxical way, if an alien were looking at mankind, and assessing how well we were "fighting Covid-19" ; they would see a very large proportion of us, are simply staying at home and doing no work at all.

If they didn't understand the situation, they might wonder what those people are playing at. As the Duke of Westmorland complains on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, "O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day !"

The situation means the normal rules for assessing the contribution people are making, don't apply at the moment ; and it can be a bit confusing.

JasonCuddles

This thread title reminds me if this

@JasonCuddles thanks for your video clip on the physical concept of Entropy. It's an oft misused and misunderstood concept.

It's quite interesting that particles in space move towards different heat sources and explore different states to find it's own balance. As I watched I thought of the body systems operating in a much different way but functioning on a similar principle of balance via the feedback loop. Thank you.

@MrPaul thank you also for the engineer's perspective. The principle of "measuring the degree" of disorder as opposed to the act of perceiving the appearance of disorder. So shelter in place recommendations/restrictions are ways to preserve health and manage further transmission based on an assessment of the degree of ill health possible if person to person movement is not contained. Hence to avoid the potential "disorder" or upheaval likely.
Thanks again.

geoff1000

Entropy has been described as "time's arrow" because every event either maintains entropy, or increases it. Useful mechanical energy either manages to avoid turning itself into heat, or doesn't. Knowing the entropy of the two states, indicates which came first.

There is a theoretical breach of Second Law of Thermodynamics, because particles of gas : convert heat into mechanical power, as evidenced by the movement of a dust particle with Brownian Motion ; and create a temperature difference in a column under the effect of gravity, as they change speed with height following the rules of ballistics.

However, my feeling is that the useful energy which could be extracted from heat, and hence the entropy reversed, over the working life of a device to exploit it ; would be less than the energy needed, and hence the entropy created, when it was made.