Eating Bullets

One thing our species is really good at is avoiding reality. This is perhaps the single most distinctive characteristic of homo sapiens, even more a mark than our vaunted intelligence and technical skills. I say that because Chimps can be trained to do some pretty remarkable human-like things. The more I look at our close non-human relatives, the more I see ourselves in them.

But, the one thing the rest of our Earthling compatriots seem unable to do is avoid reality. Only modern people can imagine they are not trapped, not addicted and not compelled by their lifestyles. We join Will E Coyote everyday in trips over the cliff, not even realizing that we're off the cliff. We are forever stuck in that part of the cartoon before the realization. So, if we are doomed, we don't know it and probably never experience it. Perhaps the most amazing thing about our species is that such a maladaptive trait is so pervasive, and that we have succeeded regardless of it.

Now, I think we might succeed a lot more and in better ways, if we would pay attention to the world about us. It really isn't necessary to get killed falling off cliffs to prove that falling off a cliff is deadly. We know that. In many cases, we have enough "theoretical" knowledge to calculate a result that would happen; we don't need to do the experiment. But there is a deep anti-intellectual trend in homo sapiens, which inevitably leads to jumping off cliffs. The ability to avoid reality is the same thing as our ability to "visualize" the future; i.e., to make things seem to be what we want them to be without reference to any so-called "physical reality." That ability underlies the creation of Will E Coyote who, in nature, would have been good for exactly one guffaw. (It is also one of my reasons for thinking that "moral values" are subjective, and that a subjectivist philosophy is essential in understanding our species and our world.)

There are some problems that simply won't "go away." They test our ability to create our own reality, to make the world whatever we want it to be. One of those problems is ENTROPY. It comes up in many different ways. For example, global climate change is an instance of the degradation of stored energy. Every living thing depends on an energy gradient, the flow of energy from higher to lower potential. Living things are part of that gradient; i.e., they are one of the pathways by which energy flows from high to low potential. The entropy concept implies that, sooner or later, we all run down, even if we can slow down the run-down at a cost of greater and greater energy inputs. Time itself may in some way be related to entropy, as both things are one-way operations.

It follows the cost and effort required to keep people alive only increases as they age. The longer you live, the more things go wrong, because entropy works against all organized systems. The Third Law of Thermodynamics, that Entropy always increases, is measured by disorganization because randomness is the chief visible indicator of entropy. Large number of things fall under the Third Law: forgetfulness, disease, death, highway repairs, and Murphy's Law. The Red Queen problem is an intimate consequence, or possibly a restatement of that Law. Taking entropy as a heuristic, the obvious conclusion is that more work is always required because things always fall apart.

Starting from the simple notion of entropy, it should be a short step to these conclusions:

It doesn't take that long for most of what we do to become dust. Most of us are faded memories in a few years, and often forgotten within our survivors' lifetimes. Only a few luminaries manage to survive in our records for more than a century or two. Ancient persons are memorable only because modern people got lucky 500 years ago, when hordes of ancient records were recovered. I say "lucky," because we also know of several disasters in which even more records were destroyed. It's almost a miracle we have any knowledge of our ancient ancestors; entropy militates against it.

Now, the inevitable political consequences (remember, this is L&F!). The things government does are not going to get done without cost and effort, any more than anything else gets done without cost and effort. We assign many tasks to our government, such as building and maintaining schools, highways and hospitals, delivering water, taking away garbage and sewage, fighting fires, crime and wars, educating the citizenry, regulating business, keeping records, judging disputes and generally assuring things happen in an orderly way according to well known laws. All those things involve a cost; they aren't free because they cannot be free. So, to refuse taxes and drain governmental resources is insanity, if one expects to get something for nothing. All that happens is the government collapses eventually, and all of us get nothing. That is why I think Libertarians are anarchists in disguise. I also think those screaming the loudest against government would change their tune quick enough, if they were left high and dry.

The longer people live, the more expensive health care will get. There's probably no way around that. It's another consequence of entropy. So, wanting to live longer implies an ever increasing source of income. At some point, there has to be a trade-off between money and life. "Your money or your life."

Gresham's Law is another phenomenon associated with entropy. Living things tend to hoard and defend resources valuable to themselves. If they didn't, they might not be around much longer. So, in market systems the currency will always be degraded; hence inflation. It's a fool's paradise in which "prices are stable" and the currency retains its value. When there is price stability, it means some Peters are robbed to pay Paul, and Paul owns the abacus. Put this observation another way, and you arrive inevitably at the Tragedy of the Commons.

I've been writing a lot about reality lately. That's because most of what is wrong with Bandit government and the American people is they make and believe lies. Lies are another form of entropy.