[rationalbeaver]

You're on the right track with that, although I'd say it's centered around order, rather than entropy.

It's hard to do it justice here, but the book builds off of existing information theory to offer an explanation of why there are pockets of order in the universe (like our solar system) instead of uniform chaos.

From there it explains how natural systems can increase in complexity over time, and then moves eventually into human systems like cities and economies.

He basically uses physics and thermodynamics to explain economics, which I found fascinating.

This book made me realize just how valuable dense cities are for economic progress and innovation (and why that is - one reason being that it's relatively difficult to transfer knowledge and know-how from one human to another). It also provides an interesting sort of grand purpose for humanity - to be caretakers of this little region of ordered information we find ourselves in.

[seansamuelson]

This was definitely the best book I read in the last year and really changed my larger worldview and led me down the path into information and chaos theory. I particularly like how you put it here: "It also provides an interesting sort of grand purpose for humanity - to be caretakers of this little region of ordered information we find ourselves in." that is an elegant summary of that concept which really resonated with me, but I hadn't been able to quite put into words. Thanks!

[james_s_tayler]

Yeah, definitely sounds like a good read.

Interestingly a great deal of progress can simply viewed as reducing or containing entropy.

Whenever a claim is made that something "improves developer productivity" I am very dubious of that claim. Instead I try to evaluate it along the axis of "how much entropy does this help contain? And what ways does the abstraction leak? That is to say where is this thing adding to the overall entropy of the system?". I find that gets better mileage.