Author: warrior Lan Ling
Source: Campus Dry Goods Diary (ID:xiaoyuanhuo 52 1)
If physics can only keep one law, I will keep the law of entropy increase.
The person who said this sentence is Wu Guosheng, director of the history of science in Tsinghua University.
Although you may refute this view, isn't this Newton's mechanics and Einstein's theory of relativity?
Mo Jun is also puzzled, but it is definitely not aimless for Professor Wu to say such a thing. Right or wrong, the component of the law of entropy increase can be seen.
Coincidentally, Wu Jun also said something similar.
If the earth is destroyed, how can we write all the essence of the earth civilization on a business card and let other civilizations know that we once had this civilization?
The answer given by teacher Wu Jun is three formulas:
1+ 1=2 (for mathematical civilization)
E=mc (Einstein mass-energy equation)
S=-∑ P ln P (definition of entropy)
▲ from getting
Schrodinger also said something similar in What is Life: "People live against the law of increasing entropy, and life lives by negative entropy. 」
Sir Eddington once said, "I think the principle of entropy increase is the highest of all laws in nature." If someone points out that your theory of the universe is inconsistent with Maxwell's equation, then Maxwell's equation may be wrong; If your cosmic theory contradicts observation, then observers sometimes make mistakes; But if your theory violates the second law of thermodynamics, I dare say that you are hopeless and your theory will only lose face and collapse. "
(Note: Eddington said that he is the only scientist in the world besides Einstein who really understands the theory of relativity. Although it looks a little fun, it should be quite awesome. )
So the question is, what is the law of entropy increase? Why is it so important? What's the big impact on us? This can make many people suddenly realize.
0 1
Why does the law of entropy increase
Let many people suddenly realize.
Because it reveals the ultimate law of the evolution of the universe.
This law includes the evolution law of all our living and non-living things, and life also includes the evolution law of individuals and groups.
Non-life: For example, matter always evolves towards entropy, the house will be chaotic if it is not cleaned up, the mobile phone will become more and more stuck, the earphone line will be chaotic, the hot water will gradually cool down, and the sun will continue to burn and rot ... until the end of the universe-thermal silence.
Life and individuals: for example, self-discipline is always more painful than laziness, giving up is always easier than persistence, and getting worse is always easier than getting better.
Only a few determined people can manage themselves well, and most of them have irregular work and rest, irregular diet and irregular study.
Life and groups: for example, the organizational structure of large companies will become bloated, employees will become bureaucrats, and the overall efficiency and innovation ability will also decline; Closed countries will be eliminated by the world.
All these phenomena can be explained by a law-the law of entropy increase.
Because things always develop in the direction of entropy increase, everything that conforms to entropy increase is very relaxed and comfortable, such as laziness.
The road that few people take also explains self-discipline in the last chapter.
Because everything is developing in an irregular, disorderly and chaotic direction, if you want to be self-disciplined, you have to fight against entropy, which will be very painful.
I remember someone once asked model Jun "Why should people be self-disciplined?" I was speechless and didn't know how to answer. Because everyone has the right to choose their own lifestyle, which can be sloppy or self-disciplined.
Now I think I have found the answer. Life itself is a process of self-discipline, that is, the process of entropy reduction.
02
What is the law of entropy increase?
Definition: In an isolated system, if there is no external force to do work, its total chaos (entropy) will increase continuously.
There are three very important words: isolated system, no external force to do work, complete chaos (entropy).
First, let's explain what entropy is.
Entropy was first proposed by the German physicist Clausius in 1865 to measure the "internal chaos" of a system.
You can understand it as invalid energy in the system.
For example, you spend 100 J energy to get an object from A to B. In the process, a lot of energy is not converted by 100%, but some of it is lost in the universe.
This part of energy is irreversible, can not be reused, and is always increasing.
From here, you can deduce that the stars will eventually go out, life will eventually disappear, and the universe will become a dead silence and entropy.
This state is also called heat silence.
So what is the law of entropy increase?
This is the process of entropy increase.
But this is for the whole universe. If we want to target the earth, a country, an enterprise and a person, we must add two restrictions-closed system+no external force to do work.
As long as any system meets the requirements of a closed system and is not maintained by external forces, it will tend to be chaotic.
So is life.
03
How to fight against entropy increase and achieve transcendence
The law of entropy increase is called the most frustrating law.
It not only indicates that the universe will eventually die of high temperature, but life will eventually disappear.
In addition, in a small aspect:
It affects the development law of the country and enterprises, making the organization bloated, lacking efficiency and innovation;
It affects all aspects of individuals and makes us satisfied with laziness, difficulty in persistence and self-discipline. ...
So what can be done to solve this problem?
According to the definition, there are two conditions for entropy increase: closed system+no external force to do work.
As long as these two conditions are broken, it is possible for us to achieve entropy reduction.
It sounds so abstract, how to understand it?
Maybe we can get inspiration from life, and the development of the whole life is a history of negative entropy.
From the moment we move from inorganic life to organic life, it is doomed that this will be a hard and wonderful epic.
Our ancestor was a "protein ++RNA" polymer, and scientists named her Luca.
Luca copied a lot by absorbing energy, but the problem is that the entropy of the universe generally increases, so the decrease of Luca's entropy will lead to a sharp increase in the entropy of the environment.
With the deterioration of the environment, Luca had no choice but to evolve and become more advanced to adapt to the changes in the environment, so DNA polymers were born.
DNA is more stable and smarter than RNA. However, it consumes more energy and absorbs more substances, resulting in a greater increase in the entropy of the environment than before.
So DNA polymers were forced to evolve into single cells. Similarly, the entropy of the environment increased again, so single cells evolved into more advanced multicells, and the Cambrian explosion of life was born.
Because the isolated system can't get enough energy, many cells start to move and have the ability of perception, such as vision, smell, hearing and so on.
Since then, life has embarked on the road of intelligent evolution.
This process is also called "weak compensation" by Wang Dongyue.
That is to say, the entropy reduction process of life will aggravate the entropy increase of the environment, so the environment will get worse and worse. In order to survive and get enough energy and material, life must become more intelligent. ...
Ok, now let's sum up, in the process of entropy reduction of life, we have been doing three things.
First, efforts should be made to ensure energy supply. For example, from chemical action to photosynthesis and respiration; The combination of photosynthesis and respiration; To multicellular organisms.
Second, try to open the system. Cells evolved from immobile to swimming, crawling, walking and flying.
Third, try to be smart. In order to get more matter and energy with less energy, life has evolved the ability of perception. For example, the dominant shrimp at that time had big eyes. The more information you know, the more entropy dissipation you can reduce.
These three points are the evolutionary elements of enterprises and individuals.
04
enterprise
1, active work
Many companies are very hard at the beginning of their business and spend a lot of energy on the evolution of various strategies and organizations every day.
However, as the enterprise grows bigger and more mature, employees will slowly slack off, the organization will become bloated, and the system will be stale and out of touch.
Therefore, as a leader, you should strive to ensure the vitality of the enterprise. For example, adopt a flat structure, let the team fight independently, and return to the enthusiasm at the beginning of the business.
Remember that the comfort zone is the first trump card of the law of entropy increase, and you can't relax at any time. Once you reduce the energy input, the entropy increase of the enterprise will come back immediately.
2. Open systems
There is a great discovery about open system, called dissipative structure, which brings us a glimmer of hope.
What is dissipative structure? It has three characteristics:
① Openness
How to understand?
You can understand that the system discharges useless entropy and then absorbs new available substances, energy and information.
(Note: There are three kinds of entropy, namely, material entropy, energy entropy and information entropy. In the theory of relativity, matter and energy are the same thing, but for understanding, we separate them here. )
For example, your daily metabolism, for example, you lost a body fat through exercise, for example, you read a good book.
Based on this, enterprises can also get inspiration.
If enterprises want to fight against the increase of entropy, they must get through and discharge all the things that have degenerated into entropy from the system.
For example, corrupt system, unproductive employees, backward information and so on; Then absorb fresh blood, such as advanced ideas, new talents, cutting-edge information and so on.
Huawei is the most respected concept, and this dissipative structure is regarded as the underlying logic of Huawei.
Ren Zheng Fei said: "We must avoid closed systems. We must establish an open system, especially the hardware system. If you don't open it, you die. "
At the same time, Huawei eliminated 10% of cadres and 5% of employees every year. Every year 1.8 million people will eliminate 5,000 to 9,000 people to activate this team.
② Stay away from equilibrium.
How to understand this?
You can understand that when the entropy increases gradually, although the system will become more and more chaotic, this structure is more stable. This stability is an equilibrium state, and you should stay away from this equilibrium state.
For example, if an enterprise grows bigger, it will form a very stable structure, probably a bureaucratic structure.
It will be difficult for enterprises to implement new ideas, introduce new talents and absorb new information.
The solution is to break this balance and let the system flow internally.
In this respect, Handu Yishe is the best model you have ever seen. They adopt a small team model, with 2-3 people in each team, including designers, page production specialists and commodity management specialists.
Employees are free to choose any team or form their own team. Through a series of mechanisms, such as division, authorization, competition and elimination, sufficient internal flow is carried out.
In the end, the incompetent employees (entropy) were eliminated, and the remaining elites continued to flow, reorganize and become stronger.
③ Nonlinear
How to understand nonlinearity?
You can understand that a small change can also lead to a huge mutation. (The related experiment is Bernoulli convection. )
For example, under a standard atmospheric pressure, if you heat a pot of water, the front 99 will not boil, but if you heat it to 1, it will boil, which is nonlinear.
The same is true for the same enterprise. You may have made a lot of efforts before, but don't be discouraged. The factors that hinder the increase of entropy are nonlinear. One day, a small investment of yours will bring about a huge mutation.
Amazon, for example, may be the most failed enterprise in the world, but they are very tolerant of failure, because they are constantly betting that "every little effort and attempt may bring unexpected surprises."
05
individual
Maybe you will feel that you can't reach the height of applying the law of entropy increase in enterprises. Never mind, the law of entropy increase also applies to your personal development.
For example, work, life, study, mood, growth, interpersonal relationship and so on are all related to this.
Take life as an example. Every day, all kinds of trivial things come in. If left unchecked, our life will become more and more chaotic.
After that, if you want to return to an orderly state, you have to pay a very high price.
Such examples abound, life is a mess, I don't know what I want, I don't know how to start if I want to change the status quo, I can only muddle along.
This state is that life has fallen into a state of extreme entropy increase, being led by countless chaotic things and losing control of life.
There are many other things, such as emotions. Many times, we feel sad, irritable and anxious, in fact, because the emotions are too chaotic, and many emotions are intertwined, which makes you unable to start. Psychologically, it's called emotional granularity.
Another example is paying attention to this matter. It seems that it is difficult for us to concentrate after high school. The reason is that there are too many things to think about all day. One minute you have to do this, one minute you have to do that, one minute you have this mood, and one minute you have that mood.
When these miscellaneous things pile up together, it will disturb our attention and make us unable to concentrate on one thing.
Similarly, there are irregular work and rest, irregular diet, laziness and so on, all because things always tend to increase entropy.
If we don't actively invest in entropy reduction, life will be out of our control.
So what should we do? The solution remains:
1, active work
You can't wait until life is out of your control before you step in.
You should keep a clear head every day and actively invest time and energy in sorting out your emotions, what you do and what you want every day.
I learned a trick in the future university, called removing interference.
Empty all the emotions and events at this moment, and then write them all in the memo. You can call it a tracking system, and then there are only three things in your mind forever.
For example, Model Jun did three things today, writing articles, reading books and establishing a writing system.
Other things, such as washing clothes, picking up express delivery and cleaning up WeChat collection, are put into the tracking system first.
If you have some sudden emotions, such as suddenly remembering something embarrassing, just throw it all in. Or unexpected things, such as a wechat sent by someone, you think it can't be solved in a minute or two, so you throw it in.
This has advantages. First of all, there are always only three most important things in your mind, and you won't mess around.
And you can rest assured, because you have written it down, you don't have to worry, and you will have time to deal with it when you finish it.
Another example is learning this thing. When writing this article, my mind is a mess. What should I do?
The first principle of mind mapping is to reduce the confusion of information.
But this process is really extremely painful. I need to classify and summarize the data constantly, and some places have to be revised repeatedly.
Pain and pain, suddenly the law of entropy increase appeared in my mind. Isn't the process of ordering knowledge the process of entropy reduction?
So pain is inevitable, and comfort is reserved for the dead.
Although it is very painful, you should take the initiative to do it.
2. Open systems
Dissipative structure is also used to analyze here, but it was mentioned in previous enterprises. Let me briefly talk about it here.
① Openness
You should always keep in touch with the outside world, bury the entropy of the past and embrace the new tomorrow.
What is past entropy?
For example, spilled milk, stale cognition, people who can't go back.
What is embracing a new tomorrow?
For example, go to a new environment (travel), gain new knowledge (study) and meet new people (socialize).
② Stay away from equilibrium.
It is easy for us to fall into a state of balance. Even if you try a new thing and meet a new person, you will get familiar with it quickly and keep this state. This is the "comfort zone" in cognition.
If you find that your life has not been turbulent for a long time, you must be in a state of balance.
For example, I have been writing for two years, and my writing level has not improved for a long time. This is a state of balance, not good.
You should constantly surpass yourself and give yourself new goals and new plans.
③ Nonlinear
Nonlinear is actually the compound interest effect.
Maybe a lot of your efforts are a drop in the bucket at the moment, and your study life has not changed much.
But please don't lose heart, continue to insist on entropy reduction, and wait until one day, you only need a little effort to start your life.
3, intelligent
Finally, I want to say one thing, which is also the most powerful of all entropy reduction methods.
It is not only applicable to the evolution of any organization, but also to our personal evolution.
This is the third point of life evolution mentioned earlier-intelligence.
The history of entropy reduction in a lifetime is a history of becoming smart.
Why do creatures have to be intelligent? Aren't external work and open systems enough for us to survive?
Model Jun dare not say that 100% needs intelligence, but from the perspective of life evolution, it seems that everyone is developing in this direction.
Because once your entropy decreases, your environment will increase, which means the environment will get worse and worse.
If organisms want to survive, they need stronger entropy reduction ability.
Where does this stronger entropy reduction ability come from? Obviously photosynthesis, respiration and open systems are not enough.
Knowing this, you will understand why an RNA aggregate evolved into a single cell, evolved into a multi-cell, evolved into a limited reproduction, evolved into an ape, evolved into a homo sapiens, and evolved into us today.
This intelligent process is inevitable.
It's just that we are lucky. Maybe in some outer space, creatures like dolphins have wisdom.
This process was integrated into a philosophical concept by Wang Dongyue.
When our living environment becomes more and more difficult, in order to survive, we need stronger viability.
For example, from the farming era to the industrial era, to the current Internet era, to the future era of artificial intelligence.
"This is why our competitiveness is getting bigger and bigger today, why we are getting more and more anxious, because the environmental entropy has increased. 」
Ok, now we understand that the ultimate direction of entropy reduction is intelligence.
So how do you become smart?
The answer is to reduce the information entropy.
What is information entropy? It is used to measure the uncertainty of information. The greater the information entropy, the greater the uncertainty.
In the process of becoming smarter, you get more information and eliminate some uncertainties, so the entropy decreases.
There are two kinds of entropy mentioned above, thermodynamic entropy and information entropy. In fact, these two kinds of entropy can be equated by formulas, because it takes energy to obtain information.
1 bit information entropy = kln2 (j/k) thermodynamic entropy
When your information is limited, you need more energy and more entropy to do something.
For example, to do the same set of test papers, the time and energy required for learning hegemony and learning scum are definitely different. Learning hegemony can be done in an hour, and learning scum may not be finished in three or four hours.
For example, steel mills, small steel mills spend a lot of time and energy, and the material utilization rate is low, while large enterprises not only consume less energy but also have higher efficiency because they have more information.
This is also the reason why great entrepreneurs read widely. Think of Charles Munger's words:
There is no smart person I have met in my life who doesn't study every day. No, none. Warren reads as much as I do, which may surprise you.
The function of intelligence is to find order from disorder and reduce a lot of blind work.
Whether enterprises or individuals want to look down on the world from a higher dimension, it is not enough to do work and explore. You have to add another dimension of information to achieve the effect of four or two.
This process is actually a model that thinking has been doing-vision and cognition.
If you want to achieve something in this life, try to improve your horizons and cognition and make yourself smarter.
06
Matters needing attention
First, the increase of entropy is neither good nor bad.
It seems that the whole article is avoiding how to increase entropy. It seems that entropy increase is a heinous villain.
But we must know that for the universe, entropy increase is only a law, and there is no difference between good and bad.
Good or bad is only an artificial moral representation, which has no meaning to the universe.
Second, disorder is only a probability event.
It seems to be an inevitable event that things move from order to disorder. Actually, it is not. It is a probabilistic event, but the probability of disorder is very high, and the probability of order is almost negligible.
In mathematics, infinite probability is called inevitable event.
For example, let monkeys type at will on the keyboard. Typing this article is called order, and others are called disorder.
Then the probability of order can be ignored, and we can say that the trend of things is from order to disorder.
That's all I know about the law of entropy increase.
If you get an epiphany from this, please don't be stingy and share it with your friends.
A person may not walk faster, but a group of people will definitely go further.
About the author: Warrior Lan Ling, a young man who loves life crazily.
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