Editing Talk:2318: Dynamic Entropy

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This seems to tie in with the recent comic [[2315]]: ''Eventual Consistency'', which is also about entropy (in a thermodynamic(al) sense), but I guess that like the rest of the world I don't know what entropy really is, because if [[wikipedia:Entropy (information theory)|entropy]] is a measure of how "surprising" a variable is, why is everything being flat and spread out evenly called a state of maximum entropy? Everything being the same doesn't sound very surprising to me... --[[User:IByte|IByte]] ([[User talk:IByte|talk]]) 09:08, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 
This seems to tie in with the recent comic [[2315]]: ''Eventual Consistency'', which is also about entropy (in a thermodynamic(al) sense), but I guess that like the rest of the world I don't know what entropy really is, because if [[wikipedia:Entropy (information theory)|entropy]] is a measure of how "surprising" a variable is, why is everything being flat and spread out evenly called a state of maximum entropy? Everything being the same doesn't sound very surprising to me... --[[User:IByte|IByte]] ([[User talk:IByte|talk]]) 09:08, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 
::Because entropy is the ''inverse'' of how "surprising" or organized or full of information a system is. [[User:Bugstomper|Bugstomper]] ([[User talk:Bugstomper|talk]]) 09:27, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 
::Because entropy is the ''inverse'' of how "surprising" or organized or full of information a system is. [[User:Bugstomper|Bugstomper]] ([[User talk:Bugstomper|talk]]) 09:27, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
βˆ’
::It's not about "surprising" but about an even spread of probability, so for matter a complex molecule has less entropy than a smaller molecule because the atoms are held in place, and if the quarks in the atoms aren't even held together in subatomic particles then that is ultimate entropy. For information having more possible choices for the message or password spreads the probability of any one occurrence around more possibilities. If it is narrowly defined it has low entropy because the probability is concentrated in a few items.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.104|162.158.75.104]] 13:53, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
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::It's not about "surprising" but about an even spread of probability, so for matter a complex molecule has less entropy than a smaller molecule because the atoms are held in place, and if the quarks in the atoms aren't even held together in subatomic particles then that is ultimate entropy. For information having more possible choices for the message or password spreads the probability of any one occurrence around more possibilities. If it is narrowly defined it has low entropy because the probability is concentrated in a few items.
  
 
I can think of a number of cases where "dynamic" would be a bad thing, but not necessarily pejorative. The structure of a building had better not be dynamic (think "sudden energetic disassembly"), and when my (salaried, should be steady) paycheck becomes dynamic, I have to talk to HR. Can someone come up with a pejorative? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.212|162.158.78.212]] 11:16, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 
I can think of a number of cases where "dynamic" would be a bad thing, but not necessarily pejorative. The structure of a building had better not be dynamic (think "sudden energetic disassembly"), and when my (salaried, should be steady) paycheck becomes dynamic, I have to talk to HR. Can someone come up with a pejorative? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.212|162.158.78.212]] 11:16, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

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