Entropy and Empire--How physics made humans kings
Thank the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, OCD, And Marie Kondo for our place in the world
Welcome back! This one is written by Sarah (Alan comments in a side bar). In two weeks, we’ll switch. Why all the back and forth? Check out what we are about.
“On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
In college, I was a structural biochem major turned anthropology major. How does one go from the molecular world of protein folding to studying braless women and rudimentary fishing techniques?
My pivotal moment came on a Saturday night. I sat in the UCSD library studying molecular bonds and down below, there was a concert. The windows shook with the deep thump and swell of the music.
Yeah, that’s right, Alan, you were down there—not that I really knew you at the time. But you were there, with hundreds of other kids. Moshing away. No cares in the world.
Alan: If I remember it was Skankin’ Pickle and I danced barefoot and bruised the bottom of my feet. I had no idea you could actually bruise the bottom of your feet…fascinating.
In that moment, I shut my book, dropped my biochem class and signed up for the only classes that still had openings…anthropology. And joined my friends to dance the night away.
I’m sure my parents were thrilled.
Alan: Your father took a while to warm to your barefooted friend.
Turned out I loved anthropology. And I learned the answers to intriguing questions such as:
Why did humans start to walk on two legs? Their big ole brains.
Why did they develop language? Their big ole brains.
Why did they use tools? Their big ole brains.
To be fair, sometimes the answer was opposable thumbs.
Alan: More examples: Why do humans text while driving? opposable thumbs … let’s see a dolphin do that.
But, I’m older now, and I have to wonder, what if it wasn’t the big ole brain that drove humans to success? What if it’s our ability to fool our big ole brains?
And not fool our big ole brains about just anything but about something in particular—the second law of thermodynamics.
I bet you didn’t see that coming.
Alan: I did. Was it due to my large frontal lobes? My opposable thumbs? Because I read the title? We may never know…
The first rule of thermodynamics is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed—it merely passes from one system to another. The second law of thermodynamics is that systems move from more ordered states to less ordered states, or toward an increase in entropy or randomness. For example, imagine dropping a mug—it wouldn’t hit a tile floor and assemble into an even more structured form, say a miniature version of the Empire State Building, but would instead create a zone of danger shards bound to find unsuspecting toes.
Alan: For more examples of the shift from ordered states to disordered states see Skankin’ Pickle (also sorry about the mug).
“Organization is not an option; it is a fundamental survival skill and distinct competitive advantage.” -Pam N Woods
An enduring quirk of the human condition is the innate drive to fight entropy. And not just fight it, but revel in it. We organize our clothes, tidy our houses, create excel spreadsheets, make To Do lists and playlists, rank the top ten comedies of all time, organize notes into songs, string sounds together into rule-based sentences, and even categorize people and social groups. Physics tells us that work has to be enacted on a system to decrease entropy. Work has to be done to force randomness into pattern, chaos into organization, clutter into bookshelves. But humans, although we expend metabolic work (the energy costs of movement and thought) to organize randomness in a system, we have fooled our big ole brains into seeing this work as fun or relaxing.
Alan: As a neuroscientist, with a background in physics, who exists in a perpetual state of existential bewilderment, who has contemplated this very question, I can say with some level of confidence: Groundhogs Day, Forty-Year-Old Virgin, Forgetting Sarah Marshal, Being John Malkovich, Dodgeball …
“Order is the sanity of the mind, the health of the body, the peace of the city, the security of the state. Like beams in a house or bones to a body, so is order to all things.” -Robert Southey
I can’t resist a jigsaw puzzle or puzzle matching games—the ultimate epitome of spending pointless time organizing chaos. I’m not alone. Puzzle games generate over $42 billion in revenue globally with over 50 billion downloads. Cheers to my Tetris, Sudoku, mahjong, Portal, jigsaw puzzle colleagues out there.
Research shows that when psychosocial stressors increase, humans cope by increasing their devotion to decreasing entropy. During the pandemic, the demand for jigsaw puzzles increased 300-400%. By the way, the demand for jigsaw puzzles also spiked during The Great Depression. In a nutshell, turning chaos into orders helps people make it through the day. According to a 2018 Ravensburger poll, 59% of people found puzzles to be relaxing. 47% said puzzling relieved stress.
Humans find comfort and joy from sorting, categorizing, and organizing. I’ll leave the neuroscience up to Alan, but I suspect it has to do with the little packets of dopamine that are released in the human brain when a particularly tricky piece is pushed into place. But this in itself is interesting—that the human brain would find the fitting together of two puzzle pieces together rewarding is sort of weird. We’ve fooled ourselves into finding it a treat to decrease entropy.
Alan: Since you asked… I basically think it is a contribution of multiple different systems. As you say, there is a pertinent role of dopamine and the nucleus accumbens. But don’t give short shrift to the Bayesian brain hypothesis and anticipation.
The Bayesian brain hypothesis suggests we reduce internal energy expenditure, read ‘entropy’ by iterative reduction in prediction error — completely in line with your hypothesis (see Friston for more on this).
I also think anticipation deserves special mention. We have multiple brain systems that predict our future state. While anticipation of reward is often through the accumbens, to fully understand our current homeostasis, we need to predict a future state from old physiological data (by over a second old for some signals). Our brain development of advanced prediction systems allow us to make complex predictive models or maybe even compels us to. There’s also an important role of the caudate for hypothesis testing … oh, wait sorry not my blog. Sorry about that… and the mug.
Let’s talk about the “enjoy housework crowd.” There are some people—lots of people, actually—who enjoy tidying house, cleaning the dishes, and putting the house to rights. I’m not one of them—and my messy house often embarrasses me. Which has got to mean something, too. Why in the world would a messy house embarrass me? Because our drive to fight entropy is so deeply instilled that when we perceive that we’re failing in our DNA-bound mission of organizing chaos, we can be filled with shame, embarrassment, and even seek out mega-organizers to show us a better way. Enter guru entropy fighter: Marie Kondo.
Marie Kondo made an empire of cleaning up with her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Near and far people embraced her cleaning philosophy and celebrated their wins in organizing their homes, their cars, and lives—making her a very successful and wealthy entropy warrior.
Alan: That reminds me there is a puddle and shards of ceramic I need to get to when we get home (sorry).
Because I’m a psychiatrist (or maybe it’s because I was an anthro major?). I often think about the evolutionary drives that show up in my office. In humans, an extreme need to fight entropy is the diagnosis Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). OCD is a combination of obsessions (experiencing distressing intrusive thoughts or images) and compulsions (often the urge to clean, organize, sort, count or check the things that have been cleaned, organized, sorted, counted or checked.) For a person with OCD, resisting the urge to organize, for example, by straightening the cushions or orienting all the book spines in the house due North, can cause significant distress. They can be stuck organizing until things feel “just so” which can take hours. In severe cases, the need to organize can interfere with work, eating, sleeping, and keeping meaningful relationships with others. OCD can be thought of as an extreme version of the mechanism underlying humans success— and, indeed, many people with OCD find a way to make their symptoms work for them in a positive way.
“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”- Terry Pratchett
So, maybe, just maybe, humans are successful not because of our big ole brains, but because of our ability to fool our big ole brains.
As for me, I’m glad that my brain saw structural biochem work as work that day. Because, if I had seen it as fun, I never would have changed my major to Anthro, I wouldn’t have gone downstairs, and I wouldn’t have danced with that crazy British guy moshing at the concert down below.
Alan: And maybe I wouldn’t have ended up with bruised feet — just think about that for a second.
Boots and the Brain
As in every Boots and the Brain Blog, there’s the neuroscience part and the boots on the ground action part…
The “Brain”…
Alan: I have sooooo many thoughts on this one.
The first is: yes.
The second is: is that why I’m constantly enumerating my thoughts?
Third: I think the popularity of gambling is an interesting case of this battle against entropy. Obviously, dopaminergic (accumbens), but also very much falls into our very human desire to try and outwit chaos. Unlike puzzles where we are seeking to return an object to its ordered state, we know the cards are never returning to the out of the box state but we seek patches of seemingly predictable segments that we call ‘luck.’
Fourth: Why did I already use up my neuroscience talk about anticipation and the accumbens and now I have to skip it here?
Fifth and final: I think we alternate between the urge of order (Tetris) and chaos (Grand Theft Auto). Sometimes, we stop equating disorder with entropy and entropy to the passage of time, and the passage of time to our inevitable death and we just break stuff. We wage wars, we talk about politics with strangers, and, yes, we ‘accidentally’ drop a mug. There, I said it, I confess.
Epilogue: To exist is to experience the passage of time, and time may not exist beyond being a representation of entropy in our mind. Thus we don’t exist to organize but organize to exist.
The Boots part:
-Come over to our house and do the dishes
-Come over to our house and pick the clothes up off the floor
-We also have dog poop in the backyard
Congratulate yourself on a job well done and focus on the sense of accomplishment it provides.
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I wonder if demonstrations of extreme orderliness are some kind of evolutionary signal of fitness like big muscles or the large plumage of a bird. Presumably doing that much extra work against entropy must indicate to a potential mate that you not only physically capable, but are willing to change diapers, cook and clean.
I loved this article. Explains why I read the news in the morning - WP followed by NYT- then anfter all that chaos and discomfort the next moves are to play all the NYT games to put categorize and put things in order. I feel so much calmer after that!