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Rank Disorder

The rules on the fridge upset Rupert, too.

'Fight entropy?' he said, frowning. 'I don't understand.'

'What is entro-thing anyway?' Janice asked, before I could respond. 'Sounds like a tummy bug.'

'It's a measure of randomness,' I said. 'According to the second law of thermodynamics, in a system left to itself, the organised energy gradually becomes disorganised.'

'That sounds like clever-clever scientific stuff.' Janice opened the fridge and took out a carton of milk.

'Like that milk,' I said, pointing to it. 'Now it's cold. Gradually, it'll get warm.'

'So warm milk is random and cold milk isn't?' she asked.

'Yes. It's to do with the molecules,' I said; rather lamely, I fear.

'Oh, molecules.' She looked at me. Then she poured milk in her coffee and put the carton back.

'In an isolated system left to itself, disorder increases,' Rupert said. 'That's on average over the whole system.'

'You mean things seem to balance out,' Janice answered.

'Yes.'

'Hm.' She turned away.

'But the universe as a whole is an isolated system left to itself,' Rupert said to her retreating back. 'So entropy has to increase. You can't fight it!' Janice disappeared through the door so he turned his attention back to me. 'If you decrease entropy in one place, you increase it in another. By more.'

'You can increase order in the system you're dealing with. It's a matter of perspective,' I said.

'But not in total!' Rupert was getting excited. He tends to quiver when this happens. 'You can't fight it. You can't.'

'It's another lost cause, I know,' I said. 'But I quite like lost causes. They heighten the sense of absurdity.'

'Agh.' He gave a shudder as if the lost cause was crawling up his arm.

'Perhaps we should just take it as a metaphor,' I said. This was a mistake. Metaphor is to Rupert as fire is to the snowman.

He peered at me with a look close to horror. 'What do you mean?'

'I think 'Fight entropy' is just a way of saying that we should try to put more order into our lives.'

'If that's what you want to say, why don't you say it?'

I had not real answer to that so I changed tack slightly. 'In information theory, entropy is the measure of the uncertainty of a statement. I think we should fight uncertainty, too. Even though that might be another lost cause.'

'If you wanted to fight uncertainty, you wouldn't use metaphor,' he said. 'You would say what you meant.'

'Isn't there a place for economy of expression?' I asked. 'Constructive ambiguity?'

'No, no, no, no, no, NO, NO!' His voice rose to a shriek. He was staring at me with big round eyes.

'No,' I said. 'I suppose not.'

7 November 2008

 

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© Chris Else 2008