In the world of thermodynamics, entropy is the state of randomness in a system. The lack of order or predictability.
This is an essay not about entropy in the context of thermodynamic equation balancing or a diatribe on monotonous living. Rather, it is an analysis of how we should incorporate its concepts and fundamentals in the way that we apportion our time.
After an 8 hour flight to Lisbon, I stepped out onto the airport runway, groggily adjusting to the chilling breeze. Lisbon had everything in a tourist’s dream - winding cobblestone streets, colorful tile-clad buildings, and vibrantly patriotic inhabitants. As we settled into the backseat of an Uber, with unfailing regularity, my dad started chatting up the driver.
He began to talk about the driver’s occupation , discovering that he was a realism painter who dreamed of moving to New York City. In my own perspective, this conversation was fleeting and ephemeral. The relationship–at some level– that had been formed would last the 7 minutes until we reached our destination. The probability of any continuation was close to zero. And so I brought this thought up with my dad, whose thoughts were vastly different.
He said that he loved the possibility of discovering something new. It was joyous and gratifying. The way that most of us, including myself, approach conversation is through psychological transactions. People constantly look to extract joy, information, or opportunity from most conversations. This is not to say that people are Machiavellian in nature, but rather, it is a fact of cognition that governs our brain. My dad was different.
He was a social Maven (idea introduced by Malcolm Gladwell). A Maven is the kind of person who is endlessly curious and adept at gathering and retaining information. It is these sorts of people that create epidemics of success and opportunity.
Now how does this relate to entropy? Well, by unapologetically probing and inquiring from the people he met, my dad was increasing the probability of random occurrences in his life. He was making his life more entropic. Which brings me to the main point of this essay–we should be constantly looking to increase the net entropy of our lives.
In 1978, neurologist Dr. James Austin published a book entitled Chase, Chance, & Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty, where he discussed the types of luck. One of these was coined "luck from motion." The idea was that by increasing the number of collisions in your life, you are thereby increasing your surface area of luck. In other words, the increase in collision count makes the probability of lucky events occurring more significant. He's talking about increasing entropy.
Increasing the entropy in your life opens you up to more and more possibilities. Let's look at this in the frame of your most treasured social circle – your closest friends. You are likely to have a lot in common with your closest friends; you often have the same interests, live in the same place, and grew up with the same sort of lifestyle. But it's breaking out of this through random movement that redeems itself to be the most important later on.
In Getting a Job, Granovetter coins a theorem called "the strength of weak ties." He argues that when trying to find new opportunities, ideas, and information , weak ties–your acquaintances– are always more important than strong ones. These people often occupy very different worlds than you.
This principle holds true for more than just jobs, of course. Friends operate in ability spheres of concentric circles. The knowledge, opportunities, and access is more often than not, very similar to your own. And the way to break out is to increase your net entropy. Read something random, talk to somebody for no reason other than to increase your net number of collisions. The odds of success increase with every increase.
People are successful not because of genetic predisposition, but because they got an opportunity through luck, and were ready to take advantage of it. This is proven by the most successful individuals of our generation.
For example, Bill Joy is an American computer scientist who created Suns Microsystems. From the very beginning, he was considered to be a prodigy. But his success is attributed to more than just his archetypical genius ability. During his college years, he happened to go to the University of Michigan, one of the only institutes in the world with access to a supercomputer. When he was unable to continue using their servers, he happened to have a friend whose family had access to large amounts of compute.
We spend a majority of our energy on becoming more able to take this advantage - by becoming better at our occupations, learning more through books and articles, and exercising our physical bodies. But rarely, do we attempt to maximize the chance of opportunity. At face value, the randomness might feel pointless; unlikely to yield any results. But for every interaction, the probability of expected payoff is the same. This is the same misconception that leads us to believe that when playing poker, we're more likely to get a good hand because our previous cards have been poor.
Another related idea that can help make sense of this reasoning: the arc of any action, on average, is not what we think it is. Oftentimes, movements that would cause an increase in net entropy, have unintended results. Think about it. We know the results of most of the actions that we take in our daily lives. You know that if you drink a cup of coffee, your adenosine receptors will create a feeling of greater euphoria. You know that if you play Catan, you will be grappling with the game theory of trade. These are low entropy decisions.
We need to embrace the potential of pursuing endeavors whose outcomes remain uncertain. And at some point, hopefully, it becomes second nature. Our surface area of collisions will grow so large that access to new opportunities and information will not be a passing dream, but a likely trajectory.
Nice connection across multiple pieces of literature - "luck from motion" especially stood out to me as a phrase to keep in mind for future use.
Like I mentioned to you earlier, I'm reminded strongly of Taleb's writings:
"Half the time I hate Black Swans, the other half I love them. I like the randomness that produces the texture of life, the positive accidents, the success of Apelles the painter, the potential gifts you do not have to pay for.
It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself.
In Black Swan terms, this means that you are exposed to the improbable only if you let it control you. You always control what you do; so make this your end.
I am sometimes taken aback by how people can have a miserable day or get angry because they feel cheated by a bad meal, cold coffee, a social rebuke, or a rude reception. Recall my discussion in Chapter 8 on the difficulty in seeing the true odds of the events that run your own life. We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions—remember that you are a Black Swan"
- The Black Swan, Ch 19