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The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of closed physical systems always tends to increase, meaning that systems march from order to disorder. Think of dropping a dash of ink into a glass of clear water. The initial state, the one in which the drop of ink is localized in a gorgeous swirl, is information-rich. There are few ways
... See moreCesar Hidalgo • Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
Thus in refuting the determinist philosophy behind the mathematics of Newton and the imperial logic of Hilbert, he opened the way to a new mathematics, the mathematics of information.8 From this demarche emerged a new industry of computers and communications currently led by Google and informed by a new mathematics of creativity and surprise.
George Gilder • Life After Google
Wired • Mother Earth Mother Board
The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite, that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder, greater entropy. Yet all around us we see magnificent structures—galaxies, cells, ecosystems, human beings—that have somehow managed to assemble themselves.
Steven H. Strogatz • Sync: How Order Emerges from Chaos In the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life
here: these very actions of agents’ exploring, changing, adapting, and experimenting further change the outcome, and they’d have to then re-adapt and re-adjust.
W. Brian Arthur • Complexity Economics: Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute's 2019 Fall Symposium
“The productivity equation is a nonlinear one,” fiction writer Neal Stephenson explains. “If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. But as those chunks get separated and fragmented, my productivity as a novelist drops spectacularly.”
Anne-Laure Le Cunff • Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World
First law: The energy of the universe is constant. Second law: The entropy of the universe always increases.
James Gleick • The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood
In daily life, the Lorenzian quality of sensitive dependence on initial conditions lurks everywhere.