[Lyapunov_Lover]

The author makes a mistake here.

It's fine to think of entropy as messiness; that's the Boltzmann picture of statistical mechanics. The mistake is thinking that lowering entropy, or getting rid of the mess, is a satisfactory strategy.

Think of it as a negative feedback system, like a thermostat. Keeping entropy low means continually correcting errors. This is a successful strategy only if the world always stays the same, but it notoriously does not. Some degree of messiness is needed to remain flexible, strange as it may sound. There must be room to make the good kind of mistakes and happy little accidents (as Bob Ross would put it).

Because the author chose an analogy rooted in statistical mechanics, here's another: supercooled water. Take a bottle of purified water and put it in the cooler. It gets chilled below freezing temperature without freezing. If you give it a shake, it instantly freezes. The analogy may sound a bit vapid, but noise is the crucial ingredient for the system to "find" its lowest-energy state. The system crystallizes from some nucleation site.

It's the same with evolution. Mutations are a must. Keeping our genetic entropy low isn't a viable option, because that means we'll get stuck and die out. There must be opportunity for randomness, chance, chaos, noise; all that jazz.

This is how China became an economic powerhouse under Deng Xioping, for instance. They experimented with various policies and if something accidentally turned out to work great, it became something of a "nucleation site". The policy that worked in, say, Shaowu, would spread all across China. But it would never have worked if they stuck with a rigid, Confucian strategy of keeping "entropy" low at all times.

Entropy isn't necessarily fatal. Entropy can be used as a strategy for adaptation.

[anigbrowl]

This is why I feel wary whenever I hear the phrase 'best practices'. Although they're generally promoted with good intentions, they're often accompanied by a utilitarian certitude that rapidly hardens into dogmatic inflexibility, followed by defensiveness or outright dishonesty in response to unforeseen consequences.

Most 'best practices' are good defaults, but the superlative rhetoric comes with the unstated assumption that any deviation is necessarily inferior, and that the best cannot be iterated upon. This drains agency from actors within a system, selecting for predictable mediocrity rather than risky innovation.

[tomcam]

> a utilitarian certitude that rapidly hardens into dogmatic inflexibility…

Fascinating perspective to me, and probably the right one. The term “best practices“ gives me a warm feeling because I view it as a good starting point, one that will save me some time because others have figured out what not to do. It never occurred to me that best practices would be a static thing.

[anigbrowl]

I feel the same way in the sense of not wanting to reinvent the wheel, but I often reflect on how implementation of 'best practice', 'zero tolerance' or other aspirational standards often falls upon administrators who might not have (or want) expertise in the practice area.

[googlryas]

See also: "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder" by Nassim Taleb.

[sylvain_kerkour]

Hi, author here.

Thank you very much for this very precious feedback! I think it way better explain what I wanted to say in "3rd Poison: Momentum".

But, there is an important distinction to make: The China you are describing seems to have way more "available energy" (people and resources) than needed and no really specific goals, while in my experience it's rarely the case for smaller organizations, teams and individuals.

So, how to innovate and avoid starvation while operating on limited resources? This certainly deserves its own post :)

[lbotos]

Thanks for this comment. I work as a senior leader and I've been trying hard to help my teams understand that we should do small mutations and successful mutations are things we should scale.

A lot of people struggle with this disconnect of "the mess" of "variety" but I think your comment helped me to maybe get some more analogy that could help folks get unlocked to the thinking.

[formerkrogemp]

Philosophically, many problems in our society might theoretically be attributed for optimizing for local maxima or other short term goals. Incentives and goals aren't aligned, and rules are far too rigid in favor in too few of the people. Democratic policies as in benefiting the people and democratic as in we elected this policy. Innovation and mutation are the spice of life.

[agumonkey]

noise is the way out of local optimums ?

[orthecreedence]

I've observed this personally! After finding a solution to a problem and repeating it numerous times, I'll often randomly change one parameter of the solution (I'm talking about things like opening jars, not building complex systems, but it could apply there as well) to see if it works better. This often happens randomly because I ask my self "what if I did this?" as I'm performing the action.

The result is that almost invariably, I found a new way of doing something that's better than before. It often takes multiple tries, but it's something that takes little energy because it can be done throughout the day and the stakes are small.

Applied to a larger scale, random adjustments to larger systems can be exactly what's needed.

[leoedin]

I'm curious - what's your "better" way of opening a jar?

[orthecreedence]

Before I was using my teeth, then one day I randomly tried using my hands. It surprisingly worked much better and I'm shocked more people don't do it this way.

Kidding =]. I actually don't have a better way of opening jars, it was more an example to show the triviality of the type of problems this kind of trial and error can work for. Maybe a better example is figuring out a repeatable way to get a stubborn door to shut. Things like that.

EDIT: Actually, you probably already know this, but if you turn a jar upside down and hit it on a counter top, it can knock the lid loose enough to twist off. I didn't mention it because I didn't figure that one out on my own, but if you're looking for jar-opening tips, that's a good one.

[agumonkey]

I can even see this applied to human existence. Thinking out of the box is basically glitching your ideas.

[lazide]

Pretty much the only one, near as anyone can tell, though an easy way to encourage or help someone or something get stuck in a local optimum is also a stable habitat/environment, as it avoids weeding out problematic noise from helpful noise until it is too late for all but the best luck to save it.

[a-nikolaev]

pretty much

[titzer]

Simulated annealing comes to mind.

[aaronblohowiak]

Another way of wording this / looking at it is in the trade-off between "adaptation" and "adaptability" (cf https://people.clas.ufl.edu/ulan/files/Conrad.pdf ). Adaptability requires additional energy to maintain that -- in a steady state -- is wasteful. Being highly adapted to a particular niche/circumstance is fragile to change. There is an intrinsic trade-off.

This is also mirrored in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficiency%E2%80%93thoroughnes...

[Archelaos]

> It's fine to think of entropy as messiness; that's the Boltzmann picture of statistical mechanics.

But it should be added: If one leaves the field of kinetic gas theory and focuses on scenarios where cohesion becomes relevant, such as in crystallisation, an increase in entropy means an increase in order.

[bryzaguy]

Perfect use of “all that jazz”

[chrisweekly]

Related: itcan be challenging to strike the right balance between efficiency at one pole and flexibility (/agility/resilience) at the other.

[andoofthewoods]

the latter part of your comment reads like exposition for the Dune novels :P