Things happen because they are likely, even with self-organization
When we observe that living beings (including humans and their economy) are self-organizing occurrences, i. e. their continued existence depends on regularly lowering entropy within themselves, this could be understood to mean that living beings were in some sort of permanent struggle against ever-increasing entropy. However, a newer theory, called Maximum Entropy Production, says that
Why do things happen?
Things happen because they are likely. In other words, things happen because entropy increases. Nothing happens only in systems that are at their maximum possible entropy already—we say they are in thermodynamic equilibrium. However, since the overall universe is still far from thermodynamic equilibrium, it is likely that any such system will eventually be subject
Humans and their economy are self-organizing
If we look at all the highly ordered changes humans affect on their environment, it is obvious that we decrease the entropy of our immediate environment. For example, houses are not a random pile of the constituent materials. The dried clay is in the bricks, not evenly distributed as dust all over the place, mixed
What is entropy and why does it always increase?
Entropy is a measure for how randomly distributed particles and energy within a system are. For any given mixture of different elements, it is highest when all atoms are completely mixed across the entire space and all energy is evenly distributed heat. For example, if I had a mixture of the noble gasses Helium and
Halbe’s Razor
Many philosophical and in fact political, economic and cultural “problems” are instead questions of thermodynamics. Or, at the very least, by looking at the thermodynamics behind them, many wrong avenues can be discarded outright. The underlying reason for this is the intricate relationship between entropy and randomness. High entropy means a lot of randomness, and