Literal Odds and Ends

[Okeefenokee]

fun·da·men·tal·ism
ˌfəndəˈmen(t)lˌizəm/Submit
noun
a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.

[Speaker to Animals]

fun·da·men·tal·ism
ˌfəndəˈmen(t)lˌizəm/Submit
noun
a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.

Yeah, I tried that already.

[Okeefenokee]

fun·da·men·tal·ism
ˌfəndəˈmen(t)lˌizəm/Submit
noun
a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.

Yeah, I tried that already.

Marxists.

[Speaker to Animals]

We should try redefining keywords used in Marxism from now on.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Like watching a pair of hobos argue over capital gains tax.

[Okeefenokee]

I think it would be better to think of wealth as flowing from low to high.

That way hobos are the job creators.

[Haumana]

I think it would be better to think of wealth as flowing from low to high.

That way hobos are the job creators.

[Fife]

Pondering entropy.

It is impossible for a system to operate in such a way that the only result would be an energy transfer by heat from a cooler body to a hotter body, ie, heat flows from hot to cold.

It is impossible for any system to operate in a thermodynamic cycle and deliver a net amount of work to its surroundings while receiving energy by heat transfer from a sole reservoir, ie, heat rejection is impossible.

There is a natural direction to the process to increase disorder or randomness or uncertainty, ie, the universe flows naturally to disorder.

The preferred equilibrium state of the universe points toward greater disorder or randomness or uncertainty.

Disorder can be created by geometric (spatial) change or through heat transfer.

Entropy is maximized when statistical probability is maximized, ie, the equilibrium state.

This is me,

Order is the product of work, a consumption of energy.

Disorder is the natural state.

Redistribution, the change from high concentration to low concentration, is a function of entropy.

The final result of redistribution, as well as entropy, is statistically maximized disorder.

Order is only achieved by expenditures of energy in opposition to entropy.

Entropy, in this universe, will ultimately win.

The universe is telling us we can't depend on it, ie, Marxism is sociological entropy

Just going back and looking through this thread this morning. Are you guys familiar with Asimov's The Last Question?

https://www.physics.princeton.edu/ph115/LQ.pdf




BTW, I think Marxist entropy and sociological entropy engulf us all the time.

Without reading or googling anything about the following question, what would your instincts tell you about how many different ways there are to shuffle up a deck of playing cards?

What would you guess?


Well, we like to think of the deck in the way we imagine it -- at the conclusion of a solitaire game, in a very particular and familiar order; or when we hit gin; or when we have a really good poker hand; &c.

In fact, every time you shuffle a deck of cards, you have just created an order of the 52 cards that almost beyond certainty has never existed before, and almost beyond certainty will never exist again with future blind shuffles.

The possible outcomes on a random shuffle of your deck of cards is 52!. That's like 8 x 10^67.

The chase for "order" coming from some authority about prices, education, whatever, whatever, is a *slightly* more complex system than a deck of cards, har-har. A Marxist is about as likely as a Pentecostal snake-handler to have a solution that works, that is to say, statistically zero.

[Fife]

[Speaker to Animals]

The social engineers need to come explain to my dogs that the "time changed", and it's really not dinner time even though they damned well know it down to the minute somehow.